The Rest Is Noise: Listening To The Twentieth Century
Art Ross
Read February-March 2009
Copy borrowed from Ramsey County Public Library, Shoreview branch
Essay written Friday, March 3rd, 2009
I decided one drunken Saturnday night in January that I should join a book club. The reason I've never done a book club before is because I hate people, and want nothing to do with a club of them. Also, I don't want to be told what to read and when. I'd rather be on my own schedule and free to my own tastes. And my tastes are diverse. Also also, I don't want to feel obligated to finish a book if I don't like it after the first few pages or chapters.
But the mist of alcohol as insulation against a ten degrees below zero evening helped me to realize: I can create my own book club. So I did, and I e-mailed my colleague M. to invite him in. That's it, just us two. He liked the idea and suggested for the first book The Rest Is Noise: Listening To The Twentieth Century by Art Ross. I found that the library had it, requested it, and read it. He was halfway through it at the time of my inebriated invitation, so he had a good head start on me. But he's done now too, and we're just waiting for our busy schedules to allow a time for us to get together to discuss what we read. (Oh who am I kidding? His busy schedule. I have no schedule. He has a career. I work 7:00 to 3:30, and have nothing else going on outside of that, except for normal parental stuff.)
I always wanted to call this book "The Art Of Noise" when I thought of it in my mind, since the author's name is Art and that word is also therefore on the cover.
I should have stipulated at the beginning of the book club that we are to read books no longer than 350 pages. Right off the bat he hit me with a 600-page mammoth. I should retaliate with Thomas Pynchon's Against The Day.
Good book. I always feel so stupid and uninformed when I read stuff over my head like this, but then, everything is over my head. Hopefully I absorbed something and I'm a little less ignorant. Of all the music discussed in this the only things I was familiar with at all were some things by Mahler, some Sibelius, and Philip Glass and Steve Reich, these latter two being composers I was introduced to in recent years by colleague/book club co-founder M.
The tone of the book was good though, despite being over my head. Maybe it wasn't over my head so much as just about music I hadn't heard. The author certainly made the composers "come to life," despite how overused that expression is. Wikipedia articles about people are almost always deadly boring. The descriptions in this book are fascinating. I was compelled for the whole book, which is quite the feat. Maybe my mind wandered for a page or two, but it could have been much worse.
I've got to track down some of these composers and get myself knowledgable on this stuff. I feel like music history has passed me by.
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