Currently reading
Becoming Kuan Yin: The Evolution of Compassion
Collected Stories of William Faulkner
The Glass Key
The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation)
Accent on Form: An Anticipation of the Science of Tomorrow
The Expert versus the Object: Judging Fakes and False Attributions in the Visual Arts
War and Peace
The Position of Things: Collected Poems 1961-1992
The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain (Mandarin Chinese and English Edition)
Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
alex ross is one of the few remaining music critics for a major american periodical (there used to be many more, but it's a dwindling profession/art), in his case, the new yorker. he attends a concert more than once if possible, with the score and without, in order to both understand the music and feel it. and he's young, so his ears aren't burdened with decades of ear wax, "received wisdom," archaic prejudice, etc.how rare is it to ever find anyone who can write about music!? (an impossible challenge on the face of it, if one is going to say anything more than technical data like, "... the dotted sixteenths in bar25 mirror the attenuated chromatic intonation ..." etc etc)his grasp of the material is sure; his writing is tonic, refreshing; his insights are sharp; his tone, fresh. he's on the dime.he's been working on this book for some time and finally it's out. (there are a few inevitable repetitions here and there, in stitching the whole thing together, but — hey!)hands-down, THE best book on 20th-century Western music you'll ever find in THIS one.AND you can enhance your reading by visiting his website, where he's posted representative selections, for each chapter, as well as his always lively bloghear, here!
