A Bit Of Noise On, The Rest Is Noise: The Book — Part Deux

[Note: This post has been edited as of 5:56 PM Eastern on 6 Dec to correct some minor errors and infelicities of expression, and for clarity.]

We’ve now finished reading The Rest Is Noise, and what we had to say in this post about Part I holds true for Parts II and III. By book’s end we in fact found ourselves even more awed by Mr. Ross’s depth and breadth of learning, and our admiration for and pleasure in his lapidary prose only increased the more familiar and intimate we became with it. We’ve also come to admire his music-historian evenhandedness and open-mindedness, most especially in the chapters covering the avant-garde of the fifties and beyond for much of the “music” of which we’ve little, if any, good to say. (Yes, we felt constrained to insert those nasty scare-quotes as we’ve no compelling reason to be music-historian evenhanded or open-minded in our assessment, such as it is.)

Although we can’t imagine anyone with an interest in classical music not buying a copy of The Rest Is Noise, if you’ve no intention of buying the book, we urge you to at least hie yourself to your local public library and read the chapter titled, “’Grimes! Grimes!’: The Passion of Benjamin Britten” which is perhaps the most beautifully written and deeply felt chapter in the entire book. Britten’s Peter Grimes is one of our most cherished works in the entire literature, and Ross does it full justice in this chapter even though we found ourselves at odds with parts of his reading of this everywhere ambiguous work. It’s testimony to the persuasive power of Ross’s prose and to his insightful and learned analysis that we’ve determined to give the work a fresh, new hearing with Ross’s ears, so to speak. Who knows? After we’re done, we might find ourselves in perfect agreement with what he had to say — or not. Either way, makes no difference. The point is, what he had to say all but compels us to revisit the work with new ears, and that, after all, is the most important thing, isn’t it. The same could be said for all the music Ross discusses in this book no matter whether that music is known to the reader or not. Which brings us to our final comment on The Rest Is Noise.

If ever a book cried out for companion CDs, The Rest Is Noise is it. Why no such CDs (or high-bit-rate MP3 downloads) were prepared for or offered with the hardcover edition of this book is a mystery too impenetrable for our meager mind to unravel. At best, it seems an egregious oversight; at worst, a monumental marketing stupidity. That Mr. Ross has up on his blog, The Rest Is Noise, brief, standard-bit-rate MP3 samples (or links to same) of some of the music discussed in each chapter is no fully satisfactory answer and no fully satisfactory solution although it certainly beats having nothing. Farrar, Straus and Giroux needs to hop on the stick PDQ to correct this oversight or this stupidity as the case may be.

Better late than never, as the old saw goes.