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Guardian first book award
The Rest is Noise (Find this book in our catalog) Alex Ross's much acclaimed history of 20th century music is undisputed winner of the 2008 prize
Click here for the Guardian article.
This is the summary in our catalog:
"The Rest Is Noise takes the reader inside the labyrinth of modern sound. It tells of maverick personalities who have resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with pure beauty or battered them with pure noise, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art." "Alex Ross, in this sweeping and dramatic narrative, takes us from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken. The end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music."--BOOK JACKET."

Labels: Alex Ross, Book awards, Guardian First Book award, The Rest is Noise