The Fredösphere

Everyone's linking to the amusing BBC interview of a couple of European critics attempting to take down a notch Alex Ross' beautiful book The Rest Is Noise.  Kyle Gann has an elegant and gracious (gracious to Alex, anyway) rebuttal, and he quotes Alex's cool line about the German music tradition now resembling a crime scene.  Sequenza21, where I first saw the link, has a more varied discussion in the comments section.  It's all fascinating; it is a crime scene itself.

Have I commented on the book yet?  If I haven't, well, I liked it so much, I even recommended it to the Wifeösphere, who has only so much time and interest for classical music (beyond my own, of course).  Nuts to detailed descriptions of the music; we don't need more of that whole Dancing About Architecture stuff; inspire us to curiosity, then let us go directly to the music itself.  This, Alex has done.  He's even made me want to give Messiaen's thorny Canyons another try.

Labels: Composer, Culture