Alex Ross, "Listen To This"

I have just discovered that I never wrote a proper review of Ross' "The Rest is Noise", although I alluded to the book's profound affect on me in posts like these from two years ago.

"The Rest Is Noise" was an instant classic upon release, you can easily find breathless praise for it in various corners of the internet, and somehow it took me ten years to get around to reading it.  This book was as close to a Pied Piper moment in music literature that I'm likely to experience in my lifetime.  

"Listen To This" is an enjoyable companion piece for those already enamored by Ross' writing.  Based mainly on long form pieces written mainly for the New Yorker over the years, Ross continues to make complex musical concepts accessible, all while focusing on the context behind the music and the personalities of those who made it.  The autobiographical first chapter, "Crossing the Border From Classical to Pop", provides the context behind the context.  The author grew up in a household steeped in classical music and nothing else.  He only became exposed to other genres of music (alternative, punk) during his college years, before drifting back to his first, true love once more as a writer for the New Yorker and other publications.  

I view the strengths of "The Rest Is Noise" through this lens.  The strongest chapters focus on explaining classical music and its culture to The Rest of Us.  "Inside the Marlboro Retreat" is a charming profile of this difficult to access breeding ground for America's finest young talent.  Part musical summer school, part rehearsal boot camp, Ross takes a deep dive into the environment that brings out the best in a performance artist.  Every page is packed with amusing anecdotes and wild personalities.  His essays/profiles of Schubert and Brahms closely examine the whys behind the development of their careers, while engaging in some mild psychoanalysis that illuminates more than criticizes.  

His profiles of contemporary non-classical artists were less successful.  Only in the Bjork profile did I feel that I learned something profound about the artist and their passion for pursuing musical inspiration.  Other profiles (Dylan, Radiohead, and "The Edges of Pop") come off as an outsider's view, importing musical descriptors from the classical world into the pop and rock worlds in an attempt to intellectualize the appreciation of their art.  On a somewhat unrelated note, I found it amusing how Ross interviews Dylan-ologists who analyze the minutiae in his lyrics and name drop academics who had nominated Dylan for a Nobel Prize.  The article was written in the late 90's, and the tone of the piece good naturedly plays along with these absurd proclamations.  All in good fun ... until, of course, Dylan really did win the Nobel Prize twenty years later.  

Ross is at his best as a historian, describing the evolution of a concept or style.  Equally well, he can take a seemingly well-known subject (like Brahms) and take the reader back to another, describing the real time trials and predicaments of the hero composer much like an epic balladeer would.  But sometimes the long form article comes off as merely that -- long.