I recently finished reading "The Rest is Noise" by Alex Ross. It is subtitled "Listening to the Twentieth Century". Ha! I gave up reading after the umpteenth reference to Schoenberg. Jazz gets short-shrift and bebop takes up all of 3 pages!
Do yourself a favor if you are jazz listener. Don't buy this book! It is a classical elitist rag. I enjoy The New Yorker but even great writing can't distract you from the biased approach Ross exhibits in his review. I would provide examples but I threw the book out.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
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1 comment:
If you read the book, he actually has a whole chapter/section devoted to jazz. The reason Schoenberg is mentioned so much is cuz he is the so-called father of 'modern music'. And it's actually far from 'classical elitist rag'. Sounds like someone's too quick on judgment.
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