The Rest is Noise : Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

Alex Ross's sweeping history of twentieth-century classical music, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, is a gripping account of a musical revolution. The landscape of twentieth-century classical music is a wild one: this was a period in which music fragmented into apparently divergent strands, each influenced by its own composers, performers and musical innovations. In this comprehensive tour, Alex Ross, music critic for the `New Yorker', explores the people and places that shaped musical development: Adams to Zweig, Brahms to Bj?rk, pre-First World War Vienna to `Nixon in China'. Above all, this unique portrait of an exceptional era weaves together art, politics and cultural history to show how twentieth-century classical music was both a symptom and a source of immense social change. This edition includes a definitive list of the greatest recordings of twentieth-century music.
Binding: Paperback / softback