{"id":949,"date":"2008-04-30T23:25:47","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T06:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/?p=949"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:53:07","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T02:53:07","slug":"brilliant-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/30\/brilliant-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"brilliant criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout history, the great works of literature (whether well-received or not) have sparked equally great works of literary criticism.\u00c2\u00a0 Alex Ross&#8217; brilliant history of music in the twentieth century has sparked criticism of the highest order &#8211; most lately by the great British tenor Ian Bostridge, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/article3848743.ece\">writing<\/a> in the <em>Times Literary Supplement<\/em> (think the English equivalent of <em>The New York Times Review of Books<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to E. for the tip.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a taste:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Alex Ross&#8217;s The Rest is Noise tells the story of what happened to Western classical music in the twentieth century. We all know that the invention of recorded sound around 1900 made possible an extraordinary dissemination of the riches of the classical repertoire &#8211; largely composed for the rich and powerful &#8211; to the mass of ordinary people. On the gramophone, the radio, television and, subliminally and hence more powerfully, through the movies, the classical sound in all its variants (even the supposedly rebarbative confections of the Second Viennese School) has insinuated itself into the culture at large. Never before have so many people listened to, or liked, so-called classical music. Yet this extraordinary triumph has culminated in a malaise, a feeling, widespread in the musical profession and elsewhere, that classical music is in crisis and that things have never been so bad. Classical music feels abandoned, left behind as history has moved on, sulking in its tent as the real cultural action happens somewhere else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout history, the great works of literature (whether well-received or not) have sparked equally great works of literary criticism.\u00c2\u00a0 Alex Ross&#8217; brilliant history of music in the twentieth century has sparked criticism of the highest order &#8211; most lately by the great British tenor Ian Bostridge, writing in the Times Literary Supplement (think the English [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[148,115],"tags":[17,443],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-music","tag-criticism","tag-the-rest-is-noise"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-fj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1163,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/09\/23\/alex-ross-is-a-genius\/","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":0},"title":"alex ross IS a genius","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"At least according to the MacArthur Foundation, who made Ross one of its 2008 Genius Grant Fellows. Here's his bio from the Foundation website: Alex Ross is a critic whose writing captures the often-elusive aesthetic and technical aspects of classical and contemporary music with clarity, grace, and wit. A staff\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;appreciation&quot;","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/alexmichalek2-400x487.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":718,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/29\/alex-ross-rockstar\/","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":1},"title":"alex ross &#8211; rockstar","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Alex Ross, classical music critic for the New Yorker, and critically-acclaimed author of the critically-acclaimed book The Rest is Noise, and bloggie-nominated-finalist blogger, will appear on the Colbert Report tonight, Tuesday January 29, 2008 (guest subject to change, would be the required caveat).\u00c2\u00a0 Go figure!","rel":"","context":"In &quot;appreciation&quot;","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"arb.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/arb.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":498,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/19\/best-book-i-wish-id-had-in-college\/","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":2},"title":"best book I wish I&#8217;d had in college","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm just one chapter into Alex Ross' magnum opus (so far) The Rest is Noise (Listening to the Twentieth Century). I'm loving it so far, and have learned several things so far that I never knew, but should have at least been aware of, specifically that Strauss' Salome was not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;music&quot;","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/BookCoverBlog.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":136,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2006\/12\/07\/critics-critiqued\/","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":3},"title":"critics critiqued","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I found this link via The Oregonian's classical music critic David Stabler's blog. Very interesting reading. Basically, Time Out New York put together a panel of critics to evaluate the major critics in New York City in all major areas, including classical music. Our own colleague in the blogosphere, Alex\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;the orchestra world&quot;","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":951,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/02\/more-brilliance-from-a-ross\/","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":4},"title":"more brilliance from A-ross","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Alex Ross, music writer for the New Yorker, who was Pulitzer shortlisted for his music history page-turner The Rest Is Noise, and blogger at the site of the same name, just wrote a review of the series presented at Carnegie Hall by the Brentano Quartet, which concerned the late works\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;appreciation&quot;","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/080505_r17340_p233.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":355,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/06\/08\/classical-music-blogger-does-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":949,"position":5},"title":"classical music blogger does good","author":"Charles Noble","date":"June 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The pianist Jeremy Denk (of Think Denk fame) has gotten a very nice mention of his performance of Charles Ives' \"Concord\" Sonata. Now Jeremy can use \"brilliant\" - the New York Times, in his promo materials! You can read the entire article (ostensibly a review of a concert from the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;the orchestra world&quot;","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}