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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: In Wagner’s lingering shadow, modern classical music advanced boldly, propelled forward by the groundbreaking compositions and dramas of Richard Strauss.
Chapter 3: Mahler’s Sixth Symphony met the avant-garde unlike Strauss’s Salome did.
Chapter 4: In Vienna, Schoenberg emerged as a radical, dissonant, highly influential voice.
Chapter 5: Stravinsky soared to fame with The Firebird and The Rite of Spring.
Chapter 6: Post–World War I, Europe craved a new sound from Paris, arriving together with strong jazz influences and colors.
Chapter 7: In the United States, with classical music seen as European, composers embraced jazz or wrote for Broadway.
Chapter 8: In pre–World War II Berlin, musical style politics mirrored the era’s deep divisions throughout society at-large.
Chapter 9: Politics shaped music in Stalinist Russia and in an America uneasy about Communism.
Chapter 10: In FDR’s America, composers argued over what music should be made while a wave of European refugees rapidly arrived stateside.
Chapter 11: In postwar Germany, the Darmstadt School emerged, as the avant-garde became increasingly aggressive and brash.
Chapter 12: Minimalism sprang from the American West Coast and rooted itself in New York’s bohemian art scene.
Chapter 13: John Cage dismantled classical composition while minimalism presented a path forward.
Chapter 14: The influence of twentieth-century classical music still deeply permeates today’s eclectic popular music.
Description
The Rest Is Noise (2011) takes you on a musical journey through the twentieth century, from the game-changing work of Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky to the minimalist compositions of John Cale and Philip Glass. Author Alex Ross puts modern classical music into eye-opening perspective, chronicling the revolutionary changes and how they were influenced by the tumultuous events of the 1900s.
Who Should Listen
- Music buffs and fans of classical music
- Anyone interested in the history of the twentieth century
- Scholars of contemporary art