In a Music department colloquium a few hours before his March 5 presentation, “New Yorker” music critic Alex Ross introduced music in the words of Bulgarian novelist Elias Canetti: “the living history of mankind.” No one’s work exemplifies this idea more than Ross’— since his undergraduate years at Harvard University, the author and journalist has been animated by a desire to understand music in its historical context.
“I’m obsessed by the 20th century,” Ross admitted.
While at Harvard, he hosted a radio show on the University station called “Music Since 1900,” which he credits as one of the indirect sources of “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century,” Ross’ magnum opus five-year book project, released in 2007 to great critical acclaim.
“The Rest is Noise” was listed as one of “The New York Times Book Review’s” ten best books of 2007—no easy feat for a non-fiction study of a century of classical music most often viewed as dissonant, elitist, and inaccessible. Part of the book’s success may be due to its companion blog, therestisnoise.com, which features audio samples of the pieces discussed, informal entries on a variety of musical subjects, and links to Ross’ “New Yorker” columns, archived back to 1996.
Ross used “The Rest is Noise” as the source material for the presentation he delivered in the CFA Cinema. Although some University music professors have voiced concerns about the accuracy of several minor technical details, the consensus of the department and musicologists at large seems to be that Ross’ wide-ranging and accessible study is an ideal book for one to begin learning about the composers, audiences and politics that dictated the course of classical music in the 20th century.
In his 90 minute talk, Ross condensed his book into a brief exploration of notable figures, from turn-of-the-century composer Richard Strauss to contemporary composer John Adams. He combined photographs of the composers, in a surprising and pleasing human touch, and audio samples delivered on cue with a focused lecture, sprinkled with wit and assured humor.
Ross emphasized colorful biographical details about the men and women of 20th century music. Phil Lesh, bassist for The Grateful Dead, and Steve Reich, famous minimalist composer, were college roommates. Lesh took LCD while listening to the complete symphonies of early-20th century composer Gustav Mahler and was never heard from by the classical world again. A pre-fame Reich went on from college to perform in the premiere of composer Terry Riley’s “In C,” an iconic minimalist work from 1962 that incorporated the work of John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Bob Dylan along with Riley into his own style. Ross also spoke of the fascination of the American composer La Monte Young with the work of the German early-20th century composer Anton Webern and how it influenced his 1960s long-tone drone compositions. Young also befriended and exchanged ideas with The Velvet Underground.
Ross often cited these seemingly improbable correspondences between “pop,” “jazz,” “underground” and “classical,” viewing them as intertwined traditions rather than genres separated by an impermeable boundary.
“Music is, in the end, one big continuum,” Ross observed.
He assigned the label of composer to some unlikely targets, including,Björk, describing the Icelandic musician’s childhood fascination with the music of the avant-garde Karlheinz Stockhausen. Ross confronted the current state of affairs in the classical world with the metaphor of a river delta: no artistic movement holds center stage, as John Adams’ new ”Harmonielehre” project, based on the eponymous music theory text written by the serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg, vies for attention with Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes” at the Metropolitan Opera, and Maurice Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe” plays at Carnegie Hall.
Despite his tongue-in-cheek citation of the oft-repeated comment, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” Ross proved himself to be definite evidence to the contrary. In the current confluence of artistic inputs, Ross sets forth to get people excited about them all. Rather than advocate specific artists over others (although he does recommend recordings and performances), his writing aims to dispel the prejudices which discolor classical music and reveals the humanity in a vastly less condescending and livelier art than one might expect.
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