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Product Description
Review
‘Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues. This essay is Alex Ross’s own chaconne, one that only he could have written – a display of lateral thinking as virtuosic, in its own way. It alone is worth the price of the book, which I strongly encourage you to buy.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘One minute, you're immersed in Mozart, and then suddenly you're on tour with Radiohead and contemplating what it must have felt like for an unworldly Finnish conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, to take the reins of the LA Philharmonic. Reading the book is the literary equivalent of an iPod on shuffle; it offers fresh and unexpected stimulation at every turn.’ Guardian
‘The qualities that make him a top-notch critic become clearer in concentrated reading…Ross is an avowed buff. He loves music with a nerdish obsession and he wants you to love it as much as he does’ New Statesman
Product Description
Includes a new chapter on John Cage.
Alex Ross’s award-winning international best-seller, ‘The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century’, has become a contemporary classic, establishing him as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians; this is his much anticipated next book on the subject of music.
In ‘Listen To This’ Alex Ross, the music critic for the New Yorker, looks both backwards and forwards in time, capturing essential figures and ideas in classical music history, as well as giving an alternative view of recent pop music that emphasizes the power of the individual musical voice.
After relating his first encounter with classical music, Ross vibrantly sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews wth modern pop masters such as Bjork and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and to indie-rock hipsters in Beijing. In his essay ‘Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues’, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music history - from Renaissance dance to Led Zeppelin - through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament.
Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross writes in a style at once erudite and lively, showing how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition. He explains how pop music can achieve the status of high art and how classical music can become a vital part of the wider contemporary culture. Witty, passionate and brimming with insight, ‘Listen to This’ teaches us to listen more closely.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Alex Ross has spent most of his life dedicated to writing about classical music and does so with such a keen ear and consummate skill with words it doesn't really matter whether you are a classical music buff or not. It is a joy to read such a passionate and knowledgable writer sharing his thoughts on the subject with such enthusiasm and erudition, each sentence resonates with a vibrancy that makes you wish you had a greater experience of the classical music tradition.
Ross explores the relevance of classical music in a post modern world, the challenges it faces to engage a new generation and the stuffy elitist image that hampers that progress. As with its economic progress, China looks set to dominate that particular music scene in the future now that it has enthusiastically embraced the tradition, with millions of young people in the country already taking up instruments it can only be a matter of time before China becomes a major player on the scene.
The writer's love of music is not limited to classical, as he writes about going on the road with Radiohead and spends time with Bjork as she creates an esoteric musical masterpiece. It doesn't matter what musical genre Ross is writing about, he always perfectly captures every tone and texture with a precision that is a masterclass in musical reportage.
All the chapters are individual so that they can be read in any order like music articles, personally my favourite is the superb piece about Marian Anderson entitled Voice of the Century, this piece encapsulates all the qualiites that make Ross such a brilliant writer. If you love music and enjoy excellent writing on the subject, then I cannot recommend this book enough.
Ross explores the relevance of classical music in a post modern world, the challenges it faces to engage a new generation and the stuffy elitist image that hampers that progress. As with its economic progress, China looks set to dominate that particular music scene in the future now that it has enthusiastically embraced the tradition, with millions of young people in the country already taking up instruments it can only be a matter of time before China becomes a major player on the scene.
The writer's love of music is not limited to classical, as he writes about going on the road with Radiohead and spends time with Bjork as she creates an esoteric musical masterpiece. It doesn't matter what musical genre Ross is writing about, he always perfectly captures every tone and texture with a precision that is a masterclass in musical reportage.
All the chapters are individual so that they can be read in any order like music articles, personally my favourite is the superb piece about Marian Anderson entitled Voice of the Century, this piece encapsulates all the qualiites that make Ross such a brilliant writer. If you love music and enjoy excellent writing on the subject, then I cannot recommend this book enough.
1 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is for a present and has not yet been opened. However, it was specially requested because Ross's previous book, The Rest is Noise was excellent.
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