Listen to This

By Alex Ross

In Listen to This, the award-winning music critic and author of The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross looks forward and backward in musical culture: capturing essential figures in classical music history, as well as giving an alternative view of recent pop music.

From his own first encounter with classical music to vibrant sketches of Schubert, Verdi and Brahms; from in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead to the lives of a high school’s music students, Ross shows how music can express the full complexity of human experience. He explains how pop music can achieve the status of high art and how classical music can become a vital part of wider contemporary culture.

Witty, passionate and brimming with insight, Listen to This teaches us to listen more closely.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Nov 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9780007357147

Alex Ross

Alex Ross graduated from Harvard in 1990. He wrote for the New York Times from 1992 until 1996 when he became staff writer at the New Yorker. His first book The Rest is Noise is about the cultural history of music since 1990, which won the Guardian First Book Award. It was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson non-fiction prize and the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of Listen to This. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for Listen to This

[adzebill · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some really good, and a great range of music journalism, from Brahms to Björk. Best read in conjunction with his website, which has audio clips (I discovered this afterwards). Sometimes it's a bit frustrating to read a musical analysis of a Brahms symphony you've never heard. Even made me want to try listening to Dylan.

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A hit and miss collection, which isn't too surprising, given the range and my own peculiarities as a reader. The first, manifesto-like piece is very entertaining: say no to Classical Music, yes to demanding music, which is what a bunch of boring people call Classical Music! Then a piece on a short sequence which is used across all genres and throughout the musical hierarchy, deftly showing that our separations of popular from classical are more or less nonsense... which is also tremendously boring if you've already been convinced of that. From there Ross attempts to practice, rather than theorize about, this 'music is just music' idea.

He's at his best when writing mini-biographical journalistic pieces, as with his discussion of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bjork, and 'late' Brahms, but take that with a pinch of salt, because it might just be that I love Brahms and like Bjork and contemporary music while not being all that keen on, say, Sinatra and Schubert.

The weakness, as with almost everyone who tries to make the leap from classical writing/playing to 'pop' writing/playing, is that he treats pop as if it's a tradition in the same way that classical music is a tradition. The great sounds (string sections; piano sonatas) and composers (from Palestrina on down) are a given set of excellences. Pop music has no such tradition, but writers like Ross act as if the most well-known interesting pop musicians (Bjork, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Kurt Cobain (soi disant)) are actually the most interesting, which is a long way from the truth. The best pop musicians, and the ones most worth writing about, don't end up with long careers or hit records; they're not very well known. They come up with a sound or two, a song or two, and then often--not always--fade away. I imagine that Ross could write about, say, the backroads of experimental metal and the niche sites of electronic music just as well as he does about Radiohead. Is there an audience for that? Perhaps not right now, but the music journalist's job is to create that audience. I'd love to see Ross write about the most interesting pop music out there right now, rather than just the groups he can get a New Yorker profile out of.

[harrietbrown_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Alex Ross is a stellar writer, and I'm willing to bet he's a great musician, too. This book of essays is based on articles he wrote for the New Yorker and the New York Times from the late 1990's, until 2011. The essays cover everything from the musical history of the descending chromatic bass line (also known as the "lament," and "the walking blues"), to Bjork and Radiohead, and Bach, Brahms, and Bob ... as in Bob Dylan. Along the way, Mr. Ross captures the many ways music communicates deeper emotions than can be expressed in words, as in his description of Peter Lieberson's song for his dying wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, "Sonnet XCII." As with Mr. Ross's previous work, "The Rest if Noise," I have nothing but superlatives. If you love music, you'll want to read this book.

[albertgoldfain · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A few interesting chapters, but less unified than "The Rest is Noise". Some chapters read like liner notes and really require the music to be playing.

[jeffv_19 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved Alex Ross' last book, The Rest is Noise, about 20th Century music. The New York Times music critic comes back with a follow-up, Listen to This, a series of essays running the gamut from Verdi and Brahms to Bjork and Radiohead. What you, dear reader, will get from this book depends on (1) your affinity with the subject matter and (2) your level of music education. Ross is well-educated (obviously), and too often he seems to flex his knowledge to impress his peers -- and that leaves more pedestrian readers in the dust. It is mostly when discussing Classical music that Ross goes over the edge...his more contemporary subjects are easier to follow. It's nice to hear a respected critic cover the gamut of music styles. Rarely does the general audience look so deeply into contemporary music -- and with good reason, most of it is shallow and vapid. Ross picks good subjects though -- in fact, I once heard Bill McLGlaughlin on the radio expounding on the music of Bjork (who happens to be one of my faves). Ross also covers the deplorable state of music education in this country -- but I think he could have done better. In passing he mentions the academic correlation between music education and academic excellence -- this is something I have first-hand experience with. Of course, this does not help combat anti-intellectual right-wingers responsible for slashing arts funding in the first place.The Rest is Noise took advantage of the audiobook format by offering a lot of samples in line with the discussion. There is still some of that in Listen to This, but not nearly enough -- and it's especially noticeable when Ross is at his most obtuse. There is a companion website that I'm sure would help...but it's not practical given my preferred method of listening to audiobooks while driving, running, or biking. Ross is a good voice for his generation, though, and I'll likely continue to support his writing as long as he doesn't alienate me completely.. I hope his next book, like his previous, will look to appeal to a more general audience from start to finish. But as it is, there's something for everyone here.

[Khaled Al Kammar · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Rest is Noise has already made Alex Ross my favourite contemporary writer on music. This, while not as thoroughly enjoyable/coherent/consistent as The Rest is Noise, it is still exceptionally engaging, informative, and an overall interesting read.

[Eduardo Simpson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book, a great journey through different kinds of music with a fresh and well documented point of view.

[squealermusic-893611 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Pretty good collection of previously published articles. Radiohead and Bjork but also interesting classical folks I hadn't previously heard of.