The Rest Is Noise

Somewhat belatedly, I wanted to add my voice to the rising -- and not in the slightest bit atonal -- chorus of praise for my old friend Alex Ross and his amazing book, The Rest Is Noise, which just made the Times' list of the ten best books of 2007, as well as about a dozen other best of 2007 lists. I've known Alex since I was twelve, so call me biased, but I think the book has established convincingly what a lot of people have been thinking for a while now: that Alex is the best American music critic of his generation -- and not just classical music critic. (He has a great pop ear as well, for all forms of media, and actually turned me on to about half the TV shows that I celebrated in Everything Bad Is Good For You.)

The subtitle of the book is "Listening To the Twentieth Century" and in the opening pages, Alex explains that his goal is ultimately an account of the century "heard through its music."  But to my mind The Rest Is Noise is something slightly different, and maybe just as interesting. It's the history of a certain related set of sounds -- atonal, twelve-tonal, serial, dissonant, random -- that were more or less nonexistent in Western musical culture circa 1900 that became, if not dominant, then at least ubiquitous by the end of the century -- in classical compositions, Hollywood scores, indie rock, and countless other venues. In other words, it's the story of the rise of a certain sonic appetite for noise that would have been unimaginable to the ears of the late 1800s but that is commonplace today, in both low and high culture and all the middlebrow realms between.

What I find so fascinating here is the way Alex tries to explain how those sounds came into being -- by reaching out beyond the usual biographical explanations about rogue geniuses and rivalries between them, though he has plenty of great stories along those lines as well. In reaching for that explanation, Alex does in fact pull in much of the twentieth century: political upheaval, technological developments like the tape recorder, the tragicomic Hollywood migrations of the World War II era European intellectuals. He also dives down in several arresting passages into the neuropsychology of noise and harmony, explaining how the brain translates acoustic waveforms into such emotionally charged events.

About a third into the book, Alex has a telling line where he says: "The fabric of harmony was warping, as if under the influence of an unseen force." I think of The Rest Is Noise as an attempt to bright that force to light, and in bringing it to light, explain the way in which the force is actually composed of multiple intersecting elements, many of them working on different scales of cultural experience: from neurons to individual biographies to technological innovations to World Wars. This approach is one about which Alex and I -- sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly -- have been sharing ideas over the past decade. It's the approach I used in explaining (with much less erudition) the forces behind the Sleeper Curve in Everything Bad Is Good For You. I've called it various things, including systemic criticism or "long zoom" thinking, but to really understand the model in action, your best bet is reading Alex's book.

The other reason to read Alex's book is that he's got a mesmerizing ability to translate music into verbal imagery. Take this one description of Schoenberg's Six Little Pieces for Piano: "It is built  on a hypnotic iteration of the interval G and B, which chimes softly in place, giving off a clean, warm sound. Tendrils of sound trail around the dyad, touching at one point or another on the remaining ten notes of the chromatic scale. But the main notes stay riveted in place. They are like two eyes, staring ahead, never blinking." Practically every other page has descriptions this intense and visceral; you constantly want to put down the book and load up iTunes to hear all the elements that Alex has brought into your consciousness. (Thankfully, he's assembled an extensive listening guide of samples online.)

My other favorite little tidbit from the book: in the mid-sixties, while struggling to build a career for themselves as composers, Philip Glass and Steve Reich "briefly formed a company called Chelsea Light Moving and eked out a wage carrying furniture  up and down the narrow staircases of New York walk-ups." That's just awesome. I am so totally going to go out and start a band called Chelsea Light Moving.

Comments

[Jonah Lehrer]

Great post. Made me appreciate "The Rest is Noise" even more, and I've already spent way too much time talking about how great/brilliant/rich it is. But I love your idea that it's a book about a new kind of sound, and about how that sound was a natural response to the sturm und drang of the 20th century.

[rlusardi]

It's good to hear all the praise for the book. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my Christmas list. I started reading his articles in Slate and was happy to see him make the switch to the New Yorker. Agreed, that pretty much every one of his articles makes me want to hear the music that he's describing. I've been waiting for a good music history book that isn't too clinical. This covers the 20th century, we just need to convince him to work on another couple centuries now :).

[Farid]

"Alex is the best American music critic of his generation."

Absolutely right. Ever since I've started reading his blog, I have much more appreciation for classical music in general and opera in particular.

I have finished reading his book yet but so far it's brilliant.

Thanks for the post Steven.

[jill]

that's
great

[Matthew Shorter]

The "long zoom" sounds a lot like the approach to knowledge advocated by Edward O Wilson in his book Consilience, and he also gives an example of the technique applied in relation to a piece of imaginary artistic criticism. I'll be interested to see it applied across a wider canvas and to a subject of intimate interest to me...

Thanks for the tip.

[John McCarthy]

Sir:

I have a fact nit-pick from your otherwise wonderful book "The Ghost Map". Chicago did not have a cholera epidemic in 1885. If 10% of the city died it would have been around 70-90,000 people dead. see [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/041112.html] for a good explanation as well as the always dubious [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_1885_cholera_epidemic_myth]

Don't be ashamed, it has been related over and over again by people that should know better.

[Daniel E. Friedman]

The writing in the book sounds superb. However, many of my colleagues, including myself, feel that timeless music doesn't need to be verbally described in order to be further understood. Having said that, I really did enjoy your post and am prepared to investigate the book further with an open mind.

[Outlaw California casinios]

Schwartzenegger insists the victims of the 2007 Southern California firestorm temporarily

residing at Jack Murphy Stadium are happy.
First he calls Tonight Show host Jay Leno an "idiot". Then he drops this bomb.
If it were Gray Davis the gods would have their media attack him mercilessly for these

mistakes. Together they may be enough to cost any other politician his career. But not

Arnold Schwartzenegger.
They say he makes comments like these all the time, clues which are all buried. And it's

because they have BIG plans for him::::He is a tool who will be used to accomplish

historical evil for the gods.

They say there is a strange sense of "unease" at the State Capitol, perhaps because he

doesn't belong there. He is not American. Sadly this is an issue that is too readily

discounted:::::His loyalties lie with a country that was the enemy of the United States a

mere 65 years ago. Just as we witnessed with Clinton in 1992 expect blacks to register and

vote en masse for Schwartzenegger as well, a clue and a red flag.

Just as we haven't seen any more of that "Everybody is happy." idiocy from the Preditor so

do we no longer hear anything of the possibility a firefighter started one if not more of

these SoCal fires, buried forever.
Weight training (promoted in every prison system in the country), promotion of

pharmeceuticals (steroids), desensitizing "guy flicks" all prove the name "Preditor" is

warranted.
Less than 24 hours passed after a traffic accident on I-5 before Schwartzenegger declared a

state of emergency, but it took over 2 full days before he did the same for the San

Francisco Bay envionmental disaster incident.
Preferential treatment of powerful Indian casinos proves he is an elitist.
The gods are offering clues.

The gods love reverse positioning, and this Austrian genocide issue is an OUTSTANDING

example:::
There is symbolism between the two:::Hitler was an Austian-born leader of a foreign nation.

It appears as if Hitler is a monster. When Schwartzenegger does his thing he will appear

as a hero, an enforcer of decency. Quite the opposite is true, ironically.
Monsters like Al Capone, violent gangsters from the 20s and 30s thought they were going up.

Instead they were routed into the Nazi death camps::::This Austrian genocide event

disposed of these monsters.
Schwartzenegger's genocide event will dispose of society's VICTIMS, people who are the way

they are (abusive, abrasive, violent, criminal) BECAUSE of their disfavor.
People will say the Italians were pushed into it too, but I'd like to remind you black

evidence is contradictory (crack, AIDS, etc). Italian evidence REINFORCES corruption

(1906, ). Based on these clues it is safe to say the Italians are more disfavored than

Africans.
Ironically, Hiter is the enforcer of decency. Schwartzenegger is the monster. But the

movies already prove Schwartzenegger is a promoter of indencency, so when his genocide

event happens there will be no secrets.

This exposure from me can change their script. Or, more appropriately said, alter the

Manifest Destiny's senarios to fall in line with the god's script.
That means Schwartzenegger was never going to be used. But I think the evidence we have

suggests he in fact IS the one foreshadowed with the Hitler figure, his genocide event

foreshadowed with the Holocaust.
And, ironically, blacks will show up at the polls to vote for their own deaths.
I believe there is symbolism with Ronald Reagan as well.

There is one geographic clue I have not addressed in years:::Uranus, a planet tilted 90

degrees on its axis. I have stated in years past that I think this is a clue offered by

the gods suggesting the fate of planet Earth, that tectonic plate subduction would be the

method of disposal:::Earth’s axis will shift breaking continental plates free and

initiating mass subduction.
Undesirables will either perish in the government marijuana erradication program "gone

awry" or be the recipients of reparations granted by the US government because of it.
I believe the New Testiment battle of the Anti-Christ and the Second Coming of Christ will

ocurr in subsequent years SPECIFICALLY because these people will be distracted with the

money during the event.
When the Earth's axis shifts people will be cast into outer space with gold cards in hand.
I think this was foreshadowed on an episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Bart are on the

disfavored ship and eject, only to experience a sense of euphoria, expand then explode in

the vacuum of space.
When the United States government pays out reparations I believe you have less than a

handful of years before the gods end on Planet Earth.

Vienna was the center of the music world for a reason.
Any middle age person today remembers the excitement surrounding classical music in the

mid-20th century.
Classical music was "in play". Expect the same "magic" was employed back then as well.
Motzart's ugly for a reason. Similarly, Schwartzenegger's appearance is suspect as well.

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