The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

by Alex Ross

  “We had some fundamental”: Dizzy Gillespie, with Al Fraser, To Be, or Not…to Bop (Da Capo, 1985), pp. 140–41.

  “pedal point”: From Mingus’s notes to The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Impulse!/ MCA IMPD-174).

  “You play what you want”: Grover Sales, Jazz: America’s Classical Music (Da Capo, 1992), p. 127.

  “It is a way”: Gunther Schuller, “Third Stream” (1961) and “Third Stream Revisited” (1981), in Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller (Oxford UP, 1986), pp. 114–20. The quotation comes from the second essay, p. 119. For Schuller and Free Jazz, see Whitney Balliett, Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954–2000 (St. Martin’s, 2000), pp. 114–17.

  “The music just comes out”: Author’s interview with Reich, April 14, 2003.

  “smelly old house”: Ann M. Pescatello, Charles Seeger: A Life in American Music (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), p. 53.

  “an undefiled Eden”: Michael Hicks, Henry Cowell, Bohemian (University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 13.

  “There is a new race”: Carol J. Oja, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (Oxford UP, 2000), p. 128. See also Hicks, Henry Cowell, p. 39.

  Native American thundersticks: See Cowell’s Ensemble, composed 1924/56.

  Nancarrow: Cowell’s suggestion about the player piano is found in his New Musical Resources (Cambridge UP, 1996), p. 65. For more, see Kyle Gann, The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (Cambridge UP, 1995), esp. pp. 5–7.

  “find a way outside ”: Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch: A Biography (Yale UP, 1998), p. 21.

  Gilmore’s biography: See ibid., p. 18.

  Ramon Novarro: Ibid., p. 47.

  “Faustian” strain: Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music: An Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots and Its Fulfillments, 2nd ed. (Da Capo, 1974), pp. 8 and 16.

  “There is, thank God”: Philip Blackburn, ed., Harry Partch: Enclosure 3 (American Composers Forum, 1997), p. 93.

  a reading of Partch’s: Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman, Lou Harrison: Composing a World (Oxford UP, 1998), pp. 44–45.

  “Use only the essentials”: Ibid., p. 23.

  Cage and Cowell: Leta E. Miller, “Henry Cowell and John Cage: Intersections and Influences, 1933–1941,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59:1 (Spring 2006), pp. 47–111.

  “vogue of profundity”: JCS, p. 130.

  Beethoven had misled: Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde (Penguin, 1976), p. 102. See also Martin Duberman, Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community (Dutton, 1972), p. 288.

  “Beethoven was wrong!”: John Ashbery, discussion at Guggenheim Museum, May 14, 2001. 483 Vexations performance: Harold C. Schonberg, Richard Shepard, Raymond Ericson, Brian O’Doherty, Sam Zolotow, Anon., Howard Klein, and Marjorie Rubin, “A Long, Long, Long Night (and Day) at the Piano,” New York Times, Sept. 11, 1963.

  Warhol: Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (Pantheon, 2003), pp. 108 and 136.

  Feldman’s height and weight: B. H. Friedman, “Morton Feldman: Painting Sounds,” in Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, ed. B. H. Friedman (Exact Change, 2000), p. xi.

  “Wasn’t that beautiful?”: Morton Feldman Essays, ed. Walter Zimmermann (Beginner, 1985), pp. 36–37. See also Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, p. 107; MFS, p. 30; and “Hisses, Applause for Webern Opus,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 1950.

  “an absolutely unforgettable”: SRW, p. 202.

  Wolpe, Varèse: MFS, pp. 31 and 257.

  “more direct, more immediate”: Zimmermann, Morton Feldman Essays, p. 38.

  “Music seems to have”: Wilfrid Mellers, Music in a New Found Land: Themes and Developments in the History of American Music (Knopf, 1965), p. 191.

  “silent protest”: MFS, p. 152.

  “Can’t you hear”: Alvin Curran’s communication to author, May 14, 2006.

  “There’s an aspect”: “Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and Heinz-Klaus Metzger in Discussion” (1972), as heard on the LP set Music Before Revolution (German EMI/Odeon 1C 165-28954/57Y).

  kabbalistic thought: For informed speculation on this topic, see Raphael Mostel, “The Tale of a Chance Meeting That Set the Music World on Its Ear,” Forward, Feb. 2, 2001.

  “wipes everything out”: MFS, p. 136.

  “Western civilization music”: “Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and Heinz-Klaus Metzger in Discussion.” 489 “He writes a piece”: Give My Regards To Eighth Street, p. 48.

  Sibelius assignment: See Morton Feldman Papers, Music Library, SUNY Buffalo. One exam question reads as follows: “By means of a Schenkerian sketch or other method familiar to you, analyze the first movement of the Sibelius Symphony No. 5. In a brief essay, comment on Sibelius’s use of orchestration to highlight aspects of the formal and harmonic structures of this composition.” 489 “Would that I had known”: Milton Babbitt, “On Having Been and Still Being an American Composer,” in Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics, ed. John Rahn (Norton, 1994), pp. 146–47.

  colorful testimonials: See Michael Broyles, Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music (Yale UP, 2004), pp. 169–71. Discussion of the alleged atonal, twelve-tone, and/or serialist domination of American composition departments in the fifties and sixties can be found in Joseph N. Straus, “The Myth of Serial ‘Tyranny’ in the 1950s and 1960s,” Musical Quarterly 83:3 (Fall 1999), pp. 301–43; and Anne C. Shreffler, “The Myth of Empirical Historiography: A Response to Joseph N. Straus,” Musical Quarterly 84:1 (Spring 2000), pp. 30–39.

  trenchant commentaries: See Kyle Gann, Music Downtown (University of California Press, 2006), pp. 1–15.

  Fluxus: For documentation of the works and manifestos mentioned, see the websites www.medienkunstnetz.de and www.artnotart.com.

  ONCE Festival: For the definitive account, see Leta E. Miller, “ONCE and Again: The Evolution of a Legendary Festival,” essay included with the box set Music from the ONCE Festival, 1961–1966 (New World 80567-2). See also Kyle Gann, “I-80 Avant-Garde,” Village Voice, Nov. 17, 1987.

  “took matters”: Gordon Mumma, “The ONCE Festival and How It Happened”(1967), reprinted at brainwashed.com/mumma/writing.html (accessed July 17,2006).

  Music for Solo Performer: See N. B. Aldrich, “What Is Sound Art,” at emfinstitute.emf.org/articles/aldrich03/lucier.html (accessed July 17, 2006).

  “dancers went around”: Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (Schirmer Books, 1997), p. 262; see also Joel Chadabe, Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music (Prentice Hall, 1997), p. 86.

  Young’s childhood: William Duckworth, Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers (Schirmer Books, 1995), p. 218. See also Keith Potter, Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass (Cambridge UP, 2000), p. 23.

  “sense of space”: Potter, Four Musical Minimalists, p. 23.

  In a 1989 performance: See Edward Strickland, Minimalism: Origins (Indiana UP, 1993), p. 119. The description of the Trio is also based on a performance of the just-intonation version at Young’s MELA Foundation on Sept. 24, 2005. See also Potter, Four Musical Minimalists, p. 39.

  Terry Jennings and Dennis Johnson: Strickland, Minimalism, p. 129; and Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Cambridge UP, 1999), pp. 140–41.

  Young’s Composition and Piano Piece: Potter, Four Musical Minimalists, pp. 51–52. 494 according to legend: Strickland, Minimalism, p. 137.

  “the best drug connection”: Testimony of Billy Name, in Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (Penguin, 1996), p. 4.

  Indian influence: Strickland, American Composers, p. 65. See also Terry Riley, “The Trinity of Eternal Music,” in Sound and Light: La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, ed. William Duckworth and Richard Fleming (Bucknell UP, 1996), pp. 98–103.

  “To be held”: Dave Smith, “Following
a Straight Line: La Monte Young,” Contact 18 (Winter 1977–78), p. 5.

  Cale’s drones: Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga, Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story (Omnibus, 2002), p. 13; Potter, Four Musical Minimalists, p. 71.

  “What La Monte”: Duckworth, Talking Music, p. 282.

  marijuana and mescaline: Ibid., p. 269.

  “I want this kind”: Interview with Riley in notes to the recording Music for The Gift, Bird of Paradise, Mescalin Mix (Organ of Corti 1).

  “a very straight guy”: Strickland, American Composers, p. 112.

  “So What”: Ibid., p. 113.

  “the sun coming up”: K. Robert Schwarz, Minimalists (Phaidon, 1996), p. 39.

  “Climaxes of great sonority”: Alfred Frankenstein, “Music Like None Other on Earth,” San Francisco Sunday Chronicle, Nov. 8, 1964. 496 chiming Cs: Strickland, American Composers, p. 113.

  “the Pentagon was turned”: Riley’s notes to the recording of A Rainbow in Curved Air (CBS MK 7315).

  “REICH: The composer moved out of Manhattan in 2006.

  wheels on rails: Author’s interview with Reich.

  “If I had been”: SRW, p. 151.

  Reich’s favorite records: Reich’s communication to author, May 4, 2006.

  “If you want”: SRW, p. 203.

  Coltrane fifty times: Strickland, American Composers, p. 38.

  A. M. Jones: SRW, p. 10. 497 Event III/Coffee Break: Phil Lesh, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (Little, Brown, 2005), pp. 37–38.

  “It’s an acoustical reality”: Author’s interview with Reich.

  Mahler blows Lesh’s mind: See Dennis McNally, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead (Broadway Books, 2002), p. 69; and Lesh, Searching for the Sound, p. 35.

  “In the group of people”: Potter, Four Musical Minimalists, p. 170.

  Michael Nyman: See his Experimental Music, pp. 1–9.

  “I am interested”: SRW, p. 34.

  “All music turns out”: Ibid., p. 35.

  commented to Strickland: Strickland, Minimalism, pp. 222–23.

  Four Organs scandal: For various accounts, see ibid., p. 222; Schwarz, Minimalists, pp. 70–71; Alan Rich, “Surging Forward by Standing Still,” LA Weekly, March 15, 2006; and Harold C. Schonberg, “Concert Fuss,” New York Times, Jan. 20, 1973.

  “a wasteland”: John Rockwell, All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century (Knopf, 1983), p. 111.

  Chelsea Light Moving: Potter, Four Musical Minimalists, pp. 260–61.

  Robert Hughes: Schwarz, Minimalists, pp. 122–23.

  twelve-tone row: Tim Page, “Music in 12 Parts,” in Kostelanetz, Writings on Glass, p. 101.

  ninety thousand dollars: Tim Page, “Philip Glass,” in ibid., p. 7; Philip Glass, Music by Philip Glass (Harper and Row, 1987), p. 54.

  “The music danced”: Rockwell, All American Music, pp. 109–10.

  “poetic justice”: Author’s interview with Reich.

  Cale and Young: Smith, “Following a Straight Line,” pp. 4 and 7.

  Cale shocks Mme Koussevitzky: John Cale and Victor Bockris, What’s Welsh for Zen: The Autobiography of John Cale (Bloomsbury, 1999), p. 53.

  “six ounces of opium”: Ibid., p. 64.

  MacLise quit: Bockris and Malanga, Up-Tight, p. 28.

  Eno’s early musical loves: Prendergast, The Ambient Century, pp. 116–18.

  greeting him: Author’s interview with Reich.

  techno, house, and rave: See Simon Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture (Routledge, 1999), pp. 36 and 200, for this crossover.

  turntable lineage: For more, see Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (University of California Press, 2004).

  “Repetition is a form”: Brian Tamm, Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound (Da Capo, 1995), p. 25.

  “Repetitive musicking”: Robert Fink, Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice (University of California Press, 2005), pp. 21–22.

  15. Sunken Cathedrals

  Adams at Brushy Ridge: This description is based on the author’s visit in June 2000. A new house has since been built.

  Mahler’s temperature: “Das Befinden Gustav Mahlers,” Neue Freie Presse, May 18, 1911.

  “Parlez-moi d’amour”: Peter Burt, The Music of Tru Takemitsu (Cambridge UP, 2001), p. 22; and Tru Takemitsu, “Contemporary Music in Japan,” Perspectives of New Music 27:2 (1989), pp. 199–200.517 “picture scroll unrolled”: Yoko Narazaki, “Takemitsu, Tru,” in NG 25, p. 23.

  “No, this piece”: Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai, Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (Algora, 2004), p. 333.

  Jiang Qing’s musical tastes: Ibid., pp. 254, 266–67, 252.

  He Luting’s interrogation: Ibid., pp. 236–39.

  “Who’s Mozart?”: Ibid., p. 293; and “Tan Dun on the International Stage,” Sinorama, July 2001.

  “We had the simplicity”: www.redpoppymusic.com/artists.html (accessed Jan. 16, 2007).

  Ferneyhough: The bar described is II/40.

  IRCAM budget: Georgina Born, Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (University of California Press, 1995), p. 85.

  “Well, perhaps”: Stephen Johnson, “When the Wall Came Down,” BBC Music Magazine, Nov. 2002, p. 20.

  “twelve very different”: Malcolm Ball, “Licht aus Stockhausen,” www.stockhausen.org/licht_by_malcolm_ball.html (accessed Aug. 13, 2006).525 In C at Darmstadt: Richard Toop, György Ligeti (Phaidon, 1999), p. 146.

  Andriessen: For more, see Maja Trochimczyk, ed., The Music of Louis Andriessen (Routledge, 2002).

  “I have to acknowledge”: David Bundler, 1996 interview with Gérard Grisey, www.angelfire.com/music2/davidbundler/grisey.html (accessed Aug. 13, 2006).

  “My music has been concerned”: Andrew Clements, “Helmut Lachenmann: Truth, Beauty, and Relevance,” notes to recording of Streichtrio, TemA, Trio fluido (Auvidis Montaigne MO 782023).

  “uncontaminated”: Ulrich Mosch, “Lachenmann, Helmut,” in NG 14, p. 93.

  Ilya Musin and Shostakovich: Martin Anderson, obituary for Ilya Musin, Independent, June 10, 1999.

  “I set down”: Alex Ross, “The Connoisseur of Chaos,” New Republic, Sept. 28, 1992.

  “had an incredible influence”: Author’s interview with Schnittke, Feb. 5, 1994.

  Shostakovich and Schnittke: See Alexander Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke (Phaidon, 1996), pp. 60–72.

  “I want you”: Karen Campbell, “A Russian Composer’s Path to Freedom,” Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1997.

  “transfigurations”: Laurel E. Fay, program notes for a concert of Gubaidulina’s music at Carnegie Hall, Dec. 6, 2006.

  Pärt’s study of polyphony: Paul Hillier, Arvo Pärt (Oxford UP, 1997), p. 65.

  ECM sales: Tina Pelikan’s communication to the author.

  Pärt in AIDS ward: Patrick Giles, “Sharps & Flats,” Salon, Nov. 18, 1999.

  Adams’s childhood and college experiences: Details from the author’s interviews with Adams in June 2000 and from a forthcoming memoir by Adams.

  SUGGESTED LISTENING

  Ten Recommended Recordings

  Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, Pieces for Orchestra, Levine / Berlin Philharmonic (DG/ArkivMusic.com)

  Stravinsky, Rite of Spring and Petrushka, Stravinsky / Columbia Symphony (Sony)

  Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Reiner / Chicago Symphony (RCA)

  Sibelius, Symphonies Nos. 4–7, Karajan / Berlin Philharmonic (DG)

  Britten, Peter Grimes, Davis / Royal Opera House (Philips)

  Copland the Populist, Tilson Thomas / San Francisco Symphony (RCA)

  Shostakovich, Symphonies Nos. 5 and 9, Bernstein / New York Philharmonic (Sony)

  Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time, Tashi (RCA)

  Ligeti, Atmosphères and Lontano, Nott /
Berlin Philharmonic (Teldec)

  Reich, Music for 18 Musicians (ECM)

  Twenty More

  Panorama: Claude Debussy (DG)

  Mahler, Sixth Symphony, Abbado / Berlin Philharmonic (DG)

  Strauss, Salome, Karajan / Vienna Philharmonic (EMI)

  Berg, Wozzeck, Abbado / Vienna Philharmonic (DG)

  Janácek and Schulhoff, String Quartets, Talich Quartet (Calliope)

  Prokofiev and Ravel, Piano Concertos, Argerich / Abbado / Berlin Philharmonic (DG)

  Stravinsky, Symphonies, Stravinsky / Columbia Symphony (Sony)

  Ives: An American Journey, Tilson Thomas / San Francisco Symphony (RCA)

  Gershwin, Porgy and Bess, Rattle / Glyndebourne Opera (EMI DVD)

  Weill, The Threepenny Opera (“Berlin 1930” edition, Teldec)

  Shostakovich, String Quartets Nos. 3, 7, 8, St. Lawrence Quartet (EMI)

  Strauss, Metamorphosen and Four Last Songs, Karajan / Berlin Philharmonic (DG)

  Xenakis, Orchestral Works and Chamber Music (col legno)

  Stockhausen, Elektronische Musik, 1952–1960 (Stockhausen Edition No. 3)

  Cage, The Seasons (ECM)

  Feldman, Rothko Chapel (New Albion)

  Pärt, Tabula Rasa (ECM)

  Adams, Harmonielehre, de Waart / San Francisco Symphony (Nonesuch)

  Lutosławski, Third Symphony, Salonen / Los Angeles Philharmonic (Sony)

  Golijov, Ayre, and Berio, Folk Songs, Dawn Upshaw (DG)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For assistance with research I would like to thank Therese Muxeneder and Eike Fess at the Schoenberg Center in Vienna; Pia Hadl and Alexander Moore at the Graz Opera; Nancy Shawcross at the Alma Mahler-Werfel collection at the University of Pennsylvania; Werner Grünzweig at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Maria Wilflinger at the Austrian National Library in Vienna; Gabi Hollender at the Thomas Mann Archive in Zurich; Sven Friedrich at the Richard Wagner Museum; Noëlle Mann at the Sergei Prokofiev Archive; John Bewley at the Music Library of the State University of New York at Buffalo; Suzanne Eggleston Lovejoy at the Yale University Music Library; and staff members of the Britten-Pears Library in Aldeburgh, the Music Division and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, the Wiener Library at Columbia University, the Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and, especially, National Archives II in College Park, Maryland.