![]() ![]() ![]() I knew that Philip Glass worked as a taxi driver until after the premiere of Einstein on the Beach, but I was unaware that Steve Reich and various other composers also had side jobs until well into their career.Īlex Ross does portray Pierre Boulez as the bogeyman of 20th century classical music. As it turns out I'm not the only artist with a full-time job as a side job. I don't usually enjoy reading biographies, because they tend to be full of redundant details about non-essential periods in a person's life, but I found the many mini-biographies in The Rest Is Noise quite inspiring. The Rest Is Noise provides an excellent overview of 20th century classical music. I'm glad that I finally came around to reading it and now wish I had done so earlier. My prejudices were confirmed when, on a visit to a bookstore, I opened the book on a random page and noticed some disparaging remarks about Pierre Boulez and a reference to the "cultural largesse of the European welfare state".Įager to fill a gap in my knowledge, eventually I put aside my reservations and ordered the book, but because the paperback edition is quite voluminous and doesn't easily fit into a briefcase, it ended up on my bookshelf. ![]() It sounds like a reactionary book by some conservative American music critic who thinks that all music from Schoenberg onwards is just noise. ![]() I must confess that I was initially put off by the title. Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross is a landmark book on 20th century classical music. ![]()
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