I finally have a sense of 20th century music--not all avant garde. What a wonderfully written book. Alas, it is not all-inclusive--nothing about the St. Petersburg Folk Society--but it is one of those wonderful treasures that informs and delights simultaneously. Who knew 20th century music was so damn interesting? ( )

Insight: that modern composition has much less acceptance than modern painting, architecture, etc; and is perhaps most influential / evident in film music.

Insight: the parallels (and admittedly, contrasts) in how music was used as propaganda between the fascist, totalitarian, and democratic republican states during the interwar period is fascinating. Hitler / Goebbels and Stalin perhaps unsurprising, yet FDR / New Deal and Kennedy utilized it, too. For example, it appears the story of Beethoven's motif in the Fifth Symphony and the link to Morse Code "V" was applied after WWII?! Similarly, Penderecki's Threnody for the Victim's of Hiroshima started with title 8'37", and the new title suggested by someone else!

The basis of tonality touched upon, highlighting my need for a primer in basic compositional theory. Similarly, the basis of serialism and intro to minimalism, other modern composition.

[I found Jan Swafford's Sep 08 SLATE review (www.slate.com/id/2200716/) useful: an excerpt can be found in the published reviews section of LT.] ( )

This book surveys 'classical' composers from Mahler and R. Strauss up to the present. One of the things I really liked about it was the way he pretty much doesn't care about the distinction between who's 'progressive' and who's 'conservative' - Shostakovich and Copland get as much coverage as Messiaen and Boulez. (You can contrast it with Paul Griffiths' Modern Music, which very much takes the orthodox modernist line, devoting tons of space to Stockhausen, Maderna, Nono etc. and being utterly patronising about Shost and Britten.)
Also, he does a very good job of placing the music in its broader cultural and political contexts without that ever being overbearing. Another plus is that he has the extremely rare gift of being able to describe pieces of music in a way that gives an idea of what it sounds like, and without bewildering the reader with technicalities.

He also has many 'ah yes!' insights along the way. I'll just give a couple of my favourites.
He argues, based on features of the physical way people perceive music, that twelve-tone music will always be unsettling in a way that can't be wholly accounted for by the fact that it's an unfamiliar idiom. (He's not *anti*-twelve-tone music, far from it, but just thinks that we should acknowledge that it really is difficult to listen to, and that that's not just down to closed-minded listeners.)

Another bit I liked was the way he tells the history of post-WWII American music, where Cage comes out as a major liberating influence, not just from tradition, but from the European avant-garde as well. So he traces a lineage from Cage to Feldman to Lamonte Young to Riley and Reich. (Sadly, Alan Hovhanness gets left out of Ross's story here, whereas I think he should have been mentioned as a key figure. He and Cage were good friends, and admired each others’ music despite the obvious differences.)

Another point I liked was where he quoted Duke Ellington objecting to people saying that jazz is 'modern classical music' or 'black classical music.' Ellington thought that to call jazz any type of classical music was to deny jazz its own ‘original genius’. I've always thought something like this, but it's good to know that I have the authority of Ellington on my side!
Incidentally, some of the reviewers made a big point of the supposed fact that Ross tells the whole story of 20th century music from Mahler to the Velvet Underground. The truth is that it is a history of classical music compositon in the 20th century, with jazz and rock being discussed a bit, but only as part of that broader cultural context I mentioned earlier.

Of course I have some reservations. One minor one is the journalistic tone of some of the writing - e.g. on the first page Gershwin is introduced as 'George Gershwin, creator of Rhapsody in Blue''. I can't fully articulate why this phrase annoys me so. I think it's got something to do with the facts that (1) Gershwin didn't 'create' Rhapsody in Blue, he composed it; (2) one would think that anyone wanting to read a book on the history of 20th century music would know who George Gershwin was. Also, people who use "[sic]" when quoting people as often as he does really should look to the beam in their own eye. (You'll see what I mean if you read it.)

That might just be me, but a more serious complaint I have is that British composers are almost totally neglected. He talks about the influence of folk music traditions on composers, and he discusses the usual suspects - Bartok, Janacek, etc. - but *where is Vaughan Williams??* Likewise, Tippett barely gets a mention. The only British composer to get extended treatment is Britten. He gets a whole chapter to himself, including a ten-page summary of Peter Grimes. Now, I like Britten but this seems excessive, and only makes the neglect of other British composers all the more galling.
He does *almost* compensate for this at the very end with one nice remark, on how British music went through many of the same phases as music elsewhere, but 'without the constant background noise of ideological disputation.' A nice little insight I think, especially as he has told a plausible story about how it wasn't just in the Soviet Union, but in Western Europe and the U.S. as well, that composers were subjected to political pressures.

On the whole the book has a bit of an Americo-centric bias - for example, you would get the impression that the most important thing Messaien ever did was to visit Utah.

But please don't be put off by my complaints! Any book that aims at this kind of comprehensiveness on *any* subject is bound to strike any reader as biased or lacking in some ways. On the whole it's a great read, from which you can get plenty of both new information and new insights. As you'd expect, the comments about the immediate present and the speculations about the future are a bit vague. But they are optimistic, and he makes optimism about music's future seem plausible.

A final word of warning: if you do read this book, you'd better either have a very large collection of 20th century music, or a lot of money to spend on building one! Time and time again you will find yourself reading Ross's description of a piece and saying to yourself "I want to hear that *now*." ( )

I was skeptical going in...not because I haven't enjoyed Alex Ross' writing in the New Yorker, but because good music criticism does not a music historian make. My doubts were unfounded. I took a risk and used this book as the text for my Music in the Twentieth Century course (for non-majors) and I'm never looking back.

Ross keeps a general chronological outline, but centers a century's worth of music around a political and artistic narrative. One of the more intriguing aspects is his use of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus as a recurring presence, drawing an inextricable link between compositional history and Faustian endeavors. However, in most cases, we see composers who battle with the Mephistopheles of totalitarianism not as raving lunatics, but as artists torn between their commitment to art and general survival.

The author is unafraid to talk about the actual music, painting vivid descriptions, and unfettering important musical concepts for a general audience. His free online audio guide is a beautiful supplement to his discussions in the book (and serves to fill in some of the necessary "gaps" ). Ross makes intriguing choices that run counter to traditional histories of twentieth century music (entire chapters devoted to Sibelius and Britten, for example), but makes a strong case for a socio-political approach rather than a canonical, or "great master" approach. Composers like Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg are not confined to time frames, but reappear out of the tapestry when their music echoes in the ears of compositional trends.The twentieth century appears as a pre-existent soundscape, whose tones, rhythms, and harmonies are manipulated by the various composers traversing the various hills and streams of modernity. ( )

An excellent overview, and worth having in your library if you have an interest in music history. The companion website is also very useful. ( )