This is a chapter from Alex Ross’s groundbreaking history of twentieth-century classical music, ‘The Rest is Noise’. Further extracts are available as digital shorts, accompanying the London Southbank festival programme.Benjamin Britten lived for most of his life around the Suffolk coast, and is buried in the Aldeburgh churchyard. He once stated that all his music came from there. ‘Peter Grimes’ i…
This is a chapter from Alex Ross’s groundbreaking history of twentieth-century classical music, ‘The Rest is Noise’. Further extracts are available as digital shorts, accompanying the London Southbank festival programme.Against the background of the carnage and upheaval of WWI, Europe saw the violent birth of a new musical avant-garde. Ross examines the search for novelty and authenticity by Strav…
Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2008.A sweeping musical history that goes from the salons of pre-war Vienna to Velvet Underground shows in the sixties.In ‘The Rest is Noise’, Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, gives us a riveting tour of the wild landscape of twentieth-century classical music: portraits of individuals, cultures, and nations reveal the predicament of the composer in…