If nothing else comes out of this book club, the associated book recommendations have been worth it.
Wendy Lesser just sold two books!
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For Copland I chose the nice album on Naxos of Leonard Slatkin conducting the Detroit Symph. in Symphony #3 and the Three Latin American Sketches. Copland seems like the most listenable of moderns to me, along with Vaughn Williams and a few others. A style that, in retrospect, seems ready-made for sentimental and stirring occasions, pastoral movie scenes, etc., and crucial to later exponents like Randy Newman. But first Copland had to come up with it, and this is one composer I really wish I could listen to with naive ears. It must have been such a kick to hear these pieces when they came out.
The chapter about music under the Nazis gave me nothing I wanted to linger on (though I liked the idea of party functionaries being rounded up and dragged off to sit through Wagner). It did touch off another book recommendation – Anniversaries, Uwe Johnson’s great novel of German life under Nazism and Communism, which came out in an excellent English translation a few years ago. It’s endlessly long, so one needs to pack a lunch, but what a book.
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Absolutely, it sounds so trite and cliche now, but what a revolution it would have been in it’s time.
It touched off a huge debate between an old friend and I. He is also reading the book, and was so disheartened by the communism, nazism and americanism infecting music, so I asked him if music should be art free and pure of politics. His response was interesting, and zeroed in on the idea of coercion as the corrosive force implied by the pressure put on composers during those times. I then asked if culture could also coerce, like politics can. Then we talked about power, in realtion to me too, Stalin, the red hunt of the 50’s, the metal bands favored by modern skinheads.
I really did not expect to get from Shostakovich to Skrewdriver in one conversation, but such is the power of this book!
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That discussion sounds fascinating. The “should” factor aside, I think it’s safe to say that music will always be used for political persuasion, no matter how many cease and desist letters musicians send to candidates. I think of someone like Paul Robeson, and the idea that the long political emergency demands every possible piece of ordnance.
But the question of culture being coercive is an especially interesting one. Everything I’ve read about China under Mao, the Red Guards, etc., says you bet.
I agree with you about the book – getting back into it this week and hope to have something to say soon.
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That particular chapter was very disheartening, and I feel somewhat fortunate that I’m not a huge fan of Wagner’s music, so I don’t have to think about the moral conflict of listening to his music.
But if I were to find out that Mozart was a mass murderer, I have to admit that I’d try to separate the great works of art from the horrible person, maybe for selfish reasons.
On another note, I found it hilarious that Boulez was such a huge critic of Stravinsky’s music when he was a brash young composer, but when he matured and became a conductor, his performances of Stravinsky’s work are some of my favorites.
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What a character Pierre Boulez is! (In the “Brave New World” chapter.) He manages to insult or dismiss so many of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, then ends up as a leading conductor of their music (along with his own). But his compositions (e.g. on the “Sur Incises” album in the Boulez 2000 series) seem like the best of 20th Century invention to me – inviting, surprising, with some really dreamlike beauty in places. I read a few of Ross’s New Yorker pieces on Boulez (paywall) and they augmented the picture nicely. Also glad to see Elliott Carter in there.
In the cutting room floor department, I was sorry to see Alan Hovhaness get only a fleeting mention. He’s an entertaining composer who’s given me a lot of pleasure over the years and I’d have liked to read more about him. But there must have been some hard decisions throughout.
Hope everyone on here is doing well and enjoying music.
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This piece in today’s NY Times is well worth a read and a listen – very much in line with what we’re reading.
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I’ve had Messiaen on hard repeat during work hours for a week now, about time to switch it up!
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I’ve had “Quartet for the End of Time” around for a while, but never knew the story of its being composed in a POW camp for the instruments at hand. Puts it in a whole nother light.
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Wow! That is really a change of pace.
This one is like someone took a piano player from a Nordstroms and electroshocked them until they did something interesting:
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Ha! Thanks for the good recording & very funny description.
Meanwhile I’ve been into Britten’s Peter Grimes and I can really see the analogy to Copland – the composer who’s both serious and a national favorite because he’s just so entertaining. Listening to this opera is like sitting down to a big thrilling Technicolor movie, full of drama and beautiful melody. Among the composers in this book he seems as fun to listen to as Gershwin, Ellington, or (in musical comedy mode) Bernstein.
Glad you had fun with Kapustin – a real discovery, I think.
Well, although the schedule fell apart, I did finish “The Rest is Noise” and am glad I made it a goal.
The last two chapters, “Beethoven was Wrong” and “Sunken Cathedrals” yielded nine new composers I had not heard of (or have forgotten I had heard of), two new Reich pieces to listen to and a hearty belly laugh at the image of a Boston blue hair yelling “All right, I’ll confess!”.
As with all recent hstories, it leaves me wondering who, and what we will thing of and about in 90 years, as time sifts the wheat from the chaff. Will we talk about Cage when Cage is gone, or will he have just helped us move a little bit forward, and fade to the books?
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So far my listening from teh last two chapters includes:
(and some Kenny Clarke)
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book as Ross has a very readable style. I also learned a lot, not just about composers that were new to me, but also those that I was familiar with.
I loved the way that a few composers seemed to pop in and out of various chapters, particularly Schoenberg. It provided some continuity, making it a cohesive book rather than a collection of essays.
I particularly enjoyed reading the stories of the various Russian composers, particularly the contrast between those that left Russia (like Prokofiev and Stravinsky) and those that stayed (like Shostakovich).
The chapter about Nazi Germany was extremely well written, but I can’t say it was enjoyable. It was harrowing and is probably the chapter that will stay with me for a long long time. I normally try to separate the value of a piece of art from the moral character of the artist, but I’m finding it incredible difficult in this case.
My biggest problem with the book was that I don’t feel that he was clear about the scope, i.e. what was he going to write about and what was he going to ignore. The book is called “Listening to the Twentieth Century”, but I think it should have been called “Listening to the evolution of Nineteenth Century classical music in the Twentieth Century”, and if I wanted to be mean, I might add “(In the eyes of a white middle aged male elitist)” at the end of that alternative title. Probably unfair, but perhaps not entirely.
I can see why he kept jazz on the sidelines, other than acknowledging its influence on various composers, because he would have probably doubled the size of his book had he included it, but jazz is so intertwined in the evolution of 20th Century music that it just felt like an omission to me.
I was confused about his choice of composers from the 1970s onwards, highlighting the more avant-garde composers over more popular composers who focused on movie scores, like John Williams and Danny Elfman. It’s a little like writing a history of rock & pop in the 20th Century, and focusing on Yo La Tengo and Pavement, and ignoring Madonna. Similarly, he appeared to ignore pioneers of electronic music like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
But on the whole, this book was a major success for me. I gave up trying to listen to music by composers in the chapter I was reading, but I have a long list of works that I want to try out.
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I’d also like to thank @mfadio for organizing this book club. Perhaps this didn’t turn out the way he originally intended, since the weekly discussion petered out for various reasons, but I thought it was a massive success, and I hope we have more of these.
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Nice of you to say. Are you picking the Jazz book?
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Friends, sorry I fell behind here… I was enjoying the scary atmospherics of Ligeti’s quartets and concertos when work swamped me. But I’m finishing the book now, and I think @PaisleyUnderground nails it: “Listening to the evolution of Nineteenth Century classical music in the Twentieth Century." With that qualification, the book is a great education. The neglect of jazz is most annoying when someone like Cecil Taylor is dispensed with so quickly. (I also agree with you about Sakamoto and others.) Fortunately, we have books by Albert Murray, Gary Giddins, Ben Ratliff, Nate Chinen, Ted Gioia and others to fill things in on the jazz side.
I’d like to put in a plug for the new documentary movie Fire Music: The Story of Free Jazz. Great archival performance stuff, and old and new interviews. Lots of Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Carla Bley, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane’s free jazz period, and more. It’s in limited theatrical release now and I’m hopeful it will be streaming before long.
Big thanks to @mfadio for organizing this adventure, and for this last bunch of listening choices. This has been such a pleasure!
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@enthusiast.haas I’ve really enjoyed reading your comments. Would you like to pick the next book?
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Thanks and back at you!
I’d certainly be happy to research some suggestions. What kind of music are we interested in reading about? If it’s post-bop jazz, I think Nate Chinen’s Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century would be a good bet.
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That sounds really interesting. I could even start a little further back than that. My jazz knowledge is slim beyond the actual catalog.
We could also just read a Chuck Klosterman essay about Kiss, and tell everyone we read something more important. Kind of like a girl I know who told everyone she loved Wim Winders movies, but spent most of her time rewatching “Raising Arizona”.
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