The Rest is Noise : : Listening to the Twentieth Century

Locations
Call Number: 780.904 Ro
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	780.904 Ro	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Includes index.
1900-1933. The golden age : Mahler, Strauss, and the fin-de-siècle ; Doctor Faust : Schoenberg, Debussy, and atonality ; Dance of the earth : the rite, the folk, le jazz ; Invisible men : American composers from Ives to Ellington ; Apparition in the woods : the loneliness of Jean Sibelius ; City of nets : Berlin in the twenties -- 1933-1945. The art of fear : music in Stalin's Russia ; Music for all : music in FDR's America ; Death fugue : music in Hitler's Germany -- 1945-2000. Zero hour : the U.S. army in Germany, 1945-1949 ; Brave new world : the cold war and the avant-garde ; Grimes! Grimes! : the passion of Benjamin Britten ; Zion park : Messiaen, Ligeti, and the avant-garde of the sixties ; Beethoven was wrong : bebop, rock, and the minimalists ; Sunken cathedrals : music at century's end.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A spectacular introduction to 20th century classical music submitted by andrewjmac on February 29, 2008, 8:04am Alex Ross has written a book that deals with the last century of music from many different angles: political, social, personal. If you know very little about modern classical music, this text introduces you to the important composers and pieces as well as why they are considered so highly in a way that is enjoyable to read and makes you want to hear the pieces as he discusses them. The approach to the music is very complex but never looses sight of the works themselves and how it feels to listen to them. The author also has provided <a href="http://www.therestisnoise.com/audio/">samples</a> of many of the pieces he discusses for free on his The Rest is Noise blog. Be careful, this book takes a long time to read as you will keep getting up to listen to new pieces and getting lost in music you never knew you would love.

Accessible and informative submitted by kassafrass on July 13, 2019, 9:16am Makes music of the 20th century fascinating and appealing, even if you've never really been sold on the more abrasive works of the century. I particularly enjoyed gaining a better understanding of the relationships composers had with each other as contemporaries, friends, and rivals. Nice to know the "why" behind a lot of pieces that seem hard to swallow at first, but gain depth and meaning with more context.