The story of 20th-century classical music
The often-misunderstood world of 20th-century classical music is fortunate to have an advocate as capable as Alex Ross. A critic for The New Yorker, a devoted music blogger and a recent MacArthur Genius, Ross has taken the lead in popularizing contemporary classical without dumbing it down. The Rest Is Noise, his first book, is the rare layperson’s history that can also satisfy the experts. Telling the story of classical music since 1900, the book conveys Ross’s delight in this music without sacrificing the intellectual rigor it often demands.

Ross starts with Mahler and Strauss, whose music formed a bridge that crossed from the extravagant Romanticism of the late 19th century to the strange modern music of Schoenberg, Cage, Stockhausen and beyond. Although the music is always the center of his focus, Ross also delivers stirring portraits of the composers behind it: especially strong are his evocations of Schoenberg, the uncompromising prophet of atonality who nonetheless craved popular respect, and Shostakovich, the maverick and innovator who played an anxious game of cat and mouse with the Soviet authorities for the better part of his career.

Throughout, Ross’s story is enriched by an awareness of the greater cultural trends against which 20th-century classical music was composed. Beyond the obligatory inclusion of the two World Wars, Ross also shows how the music was impacted by popular music, literature, social and religious movements, and more. His breadth of knowledge is further proven by an exhaustive roll call of composers, although one of the book’s few flaws is that too many of them are jammed in near the end. Several years in the making, The Rest Is Noise is a substantial work, a popular history of 20th century classical music against which all further entries in the field will have to be judged.