The Rest Is Noise

Listening to the 20th Century

By: Alex Ross

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern music, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to downtown New York in the '60s and '70s. We meet the maverick personalities and follow the rise of mass culture on this sweeping tour of 20th-century history through its music.

Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including two ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism. In addition, he was named a 2008 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, given for achievements in creativity and potential for making important future cultural contributions.

©2007 Alex Ross (P)2007 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

• National Book Critics Circle Award, Criticism, 2007

He Writes What He Cares About and So I Care

If you could sum up The Rest Is Noise in three words, what would they be?

How fusty old composers overcame life's vicissitudes to produce meaning in sound -- Alex Ross's prose makes his critical ear accessible to me. Walking in the park, listening to his words, I could almost hear the tension of the notes that made the first listeners uneasy.

B-O-R-I-N-G!!!!!!!!!!!!

if it was intended to be a history book about music...for the general reader...it missed the mark by a mile....if you, like me, have absolutely zero knowledge about music....cannot play an instrument...don't know the difference between a sharp or a flat.....stay away from this book.....too technical for me....and I suspect the general public.

Excellent for serious music enthusiasts

This book is an important contribution to writings and analyses of 20th century music. It deals largely with 'serious' musical art forms and does so, for the most part, in great depth. By providing the political and social backgrounds during the lives of some composer, Ross enriches the book with valuable contexts that help us to understand the music of each period. He continually makes interesting connections between each composer with both their peers and mentors, providing some astonishing insights that are not commonly known. Fascinating stuff! The period in Europe between 1900 and 1945 is most effectively delivered and illuminating, as is American art music in the 50's and 60's.

Ross is a wonderful writer who employs rich descriptive language and a nice balance between facts and occasional humorous antidotes. The narrator does a fine job of endeavoring to bring the text to life without letting too much unnecessary drama get in the way. It's a large book, and he moves it along at a good pace.

As already indicated by several other reviewers, this book is not for everyone. It would be particularly relevant to the serious music enthusiast, students and music educators, and arts historians. Recommended.

Solid and Fun Listening

This audiobook is to classical music what Bill Bryson's A Brief History on Nearly Everything is to Cosmology. If you enjoyed that work, you will enjoy this. It is packed with insight not only into the masterworks of classical music, but the lives of the composers, their unique relationships with each other, and the history of the time. Its brilliant, and I could not get enough. The narrator is a perfect complement to the book.

Disconnected series of factoids

I was really looking forward to this book, but it was impossible to get into. There really is no theme whatsover to each chapter. It's a laundry list of "interesting" facts that the author managed to unearth--the type of stuff you would hear an obnoxious music enthusiast using to try to impress people at a cocktail party.

The best book I've "read" on the subject

Being a music student, I am surrounded by information on my obsession of choice. However, I find that it is difficult to find good sources for more contemporary music development, style and history. This book provides more than an overview, as it carefully delves into nearly every imaginable aspect of western music in the last century.

Great, entertaining and very informative

But, The chapter on Brittin felt hella too long. Overall great though. Thanks for the knowledge

Excellent in all respects

What did you love best about The Rest Is Noise?

A superb combination of history, biography and musical analysis

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Rest Is Noise?

The extent to which the US government, in Germany after WW II, used music to shape the culture away from Aryan extremism.

Which character – as performed by Grover Gardner – was your favorite?

No characters, a nice piece of non-fiction. He's got a great, and well measured voice. Really appreciated it.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Not sure one would be made but how about Jazzing up the Repertory.

Any additional comments?

If you've got half an ear for classical music and haven't caught on to modernism (which is almost 100 years old now) this is the book for you. You'll refer back to it many times.

Learned so much!

I'm a professional musician and I spent an entire semester as an undergrad studying 20th century music, but there were many times during my listen to "The Rest..." when I went- hey, I didn't know that!
Ross starts us out at the turn of the 20th century in the hotbed that was German late-Romantic music (Strauss, Mahler), and we walk through the remainder of the 20th century, not necessarily in chronological order. Instead, Ross deals with places and chunks of time, putting composers and the way they wrote into the context of social and political history: Weimar Germany, Nazi Germany, 20's Paris, New-deal USA, Soviet Russia, Post- WWII Europe, 60's NYC, and so on. The trick for the listener is to remember that this is world history seen through the lens of music history.
Yeah, you're gonna learn quite a bit about what went on musically. But even if you already knew a lot about that, you're gonna understand what it was like to be a musician, why composers wrote music the way they did at certain times and places, and how people reacted to that music.
I would caution the listener that it's a fairly musically sophisticated book. Ross hastens to assure us that he did not write it as a music history text, but as a guide for the educated concertgoer/ listener, and I think that's true. However, be prepared for some fairly advanced terminology. This is not for the newcomer to the world of "classical" music.
It's taken me almost 2 months to wade through this book. It's long and dense, and I went back over some sections again because I just really wanted to absorb all the information. It's totally worth the work though, for a fine understanding of musical history and just-well- history. Ross also has a website connected with the book which is chock full of exerpted recordings of the pieces he discusses.

Learn! Listen! Enjoy!

Enables a View of Musical History

I feel I benefited from the knowledge invoked in this book. At times it was difficult and I had to listen over again.
Being able to listen to the music on my own was helpful. Anyone who would enjoy many varieties of music should be listening and / or reading "The Rest is Noise ".