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What Members Thought
This book is made so much more enjoyable because of the Internet--one of the few books you can say that about--because of the availability of samples of the music on the book's web site. I enjoyed the first chapters best because the author allowed me to imagine what a momentous event it must have been, in an age before recorded music, to be in the audience when a composer's music first premiered.
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This excellent book kept me absorbed. I've always liked classical music but never have come to terms fully with Berg, Webern, Shoenberg, Richard Strauss but have always loved Mahler, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Sibelius. Ross seems to have a masterful knowledge of the music and the history of the 20th century (and they are inextricably intertwined when you consider the demands of Soviet Realism on music and the way that both Hitler and Stalin got involved in music, music-makers, and composers.
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I did not enjoy this as much as its average rating of 4.10 leads me to think I should have but what I found is that much of the book talks about technical music details that I don't understand and, more importantly, don't actually wish to understand.
I found the author very informative and his love of all things music and his passion for the subject definitely come across. I learned a lot about composers that I didn't know about, and I spent a fair bit of time on the website listening to the musi ...more
I found the author very informative and his love of all things music and his passion for the subject definitely come across. I learned a lot about composers that I didn't know about, and I spent a fair bit of time on the website listening to the musi ...more
Apr 26, 2015
Lise Petrauskas
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
music,
21st-century-non-fiction
