I just read the new book by Alex Ross, "The Rest is Noise" which is a history of classical music in the 20th cventury. It's an exhilirating intellectual tour de force. Ross is the best "describer" of music I've ever read. Music resists being put into words -- they are two very different media. But Ross has the ability to do this -- his descriptions of works I am familiar with is always both precise and exciting. He makes the reader hear or at least want to hear the music. But his major contribution is to fuse 20th century music with the many political and social forces that shaped it. His description of the sufferings of Prokofiev and Shostakovitch under the malign rule of Stalin is tremendously moving. Ross does not make the mistake of glorifying composers just because they were musical geniuses. Richard Strauss, Shostakovitch, Alban Berg, Copland, Schoenberg, Britten all emerge as flawed individuals who happened to have the ability to create great music, sometimes under intensely difficult conditions. None of them was a saint. One wishes Strauss had taken a more decisive stand against Nazism or that Britten didn't like little boys or that Shostakovitch had exhibited more moral courage against Stalin -- but they didn't. What they did was create wonderful music despite their limitations as humans. For Ross, the disintegration of western democracy and society under the twin scourges of Nazism and Communism led to the disintegration of traditional classical music. But the worst of the disintegration took place after World War II when composers abandoned "music" and started producing what is best described as unpleasant noise in pursuit of various elitist political and cultural programs. Ross tries to do justice to these various composers, none of whom ever commanded any attention from the public. It's noteworthy however that few of them are represented in the list of 30 recommended recordings he usefully appends to the book. Instead, we find symphonies by Sibelius and Mahler, Strauss's glorious "Four Last Songs" and concertos by Prokofiev and Ravel. I conclude from this that the past 50 years has mostly been a lost era for classical music with a couple of notable exceptions. Hopefully, the next 50 will see a recovery. Anyone interested in music should read this book but its appeal should be wider than that. This is really a history of the 20th century as reflected through music and as such a magnificent achievement. For more about me and my book, The Nazi Hunter: A Novel, in which music plays a major part, go to www.alanelsner.com.
posted by alan at
5:46 AM
0 Comments
