I’ve been reading a highly-praised new book called The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross, the music critic for the New Yorker.  Its subject matter is twentieth century music. Ross has done remarkable research, coming up with fascinating details and making thoughtful connections, but the book lacks any discernible thesis or point of view. It is a survey of twentieth century music rather than an analysis – as the title hints – of what it all means.

In view of Ross’s well-known admiration for both rock and classical music, I had expected him to explore the relation between popular and classical music throughout the century as part of a sociological examination of why music developed the way it did. But there is little of that in The Rest is Noise. I learned some things about some composers and some pieces but nothing about why the century started with Mahler and Strauss and ended with Adams and an assortment of mid-level composers. In 2008 there are no giants whose latest work is eagerly anticipated all over the world. Why? Ross gives no opinion.

He is also not very discriminating about composers. Cage, Stockhausen and La Monte Young were clearly charlatans if not certifiable lunatics, and Philip Glass has been writing the same music over and over for years. He’s probably as surprised as anyone that people continue to pay him for it. In The Rest is Noise these composers are all wonderful.

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