Listen to This
by Alex Ross

–Reviewed by Ellen O’Connell

In Listen to This, music critic Alex Ross states that music is nothing more than noise made by people, and he describes himself as someone who sits with furrowed brow, analyzing the substance of the noise he hears. All but one of the essays in his latest book are compiled (although “heavily edited,” in Ross’s words) from his regular New Yorker columns. Like the symphonies and rock songs he describes, Ross’s book is a cymbal-crashing work of exuberance.

“The American classical audience is assumed to be a moribund crowd of the old, the white, the rich, and the bored,” writes Ross in his opening essay, “Crossing the Border from Classical to Pop.” Ross is insistent that good music is not just played in New England conservatories or by metropolitan symphonies. “I hate ‘classical music’: not the thing but the name,” he says. “It cancels out that music in the spirit of Beethoven could still be created today.”

The wideness of Ross’s listening is as impressive as his ability to make a case for it. Ross is determined to call into question the conventional categories of musical art. An essay on Mozart’s stylistic context and perfection is followed by an essay on Radiohead, which produces “a new kind of classical music for the masses,” meaning intricate pieces that play with time signatures and incorporate string sections. The perception of classical music as “elite,” a description that harms as much as helps sales, Ross blames on the mass producers who market music not as a necessity-noise made by people for people-but as a luxury.

Although Ross asserts that, “Writing about music isn’t especially difficult,” he is clearly a critic of considerable dedication. He withstood a rainstorm to talk with Radiohead’s brainy musicians. He listened to the complete works of Mozart to collect his thoughts for “Mozart’s Golden Mean.” Ross brings particular enthusiasm and profundity in writing about classical music, but his anecdotal explorations of rock, pop, and folk are equally enjoyable.

Ross’s varied music appreciation began in very early adulthood. As a student at Harvard in the late 1980s, Ross studied under composer Peter Lieberson and DJ’ed at the college radio station. His first book, The Rest is Noise, was not only a best seller but also a National Book Award winner and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Ross begins and ends his book with essays on Brahms, whom he calls “the most companionable” of composers. “[Brahms] addresses us not in the godlike voices of Bach, nor in some Mozartian or Schubertian trance,” writes Ross, “but on roughly equal footing, as one troubled mind commiserating with another.” The paradox of Brahms’ music is that it speaks of solitude yet offers companionship.

The pleasure of Ross’s latest book comes from his unwillingness to talk about classical music in pop terms or about pop music in the language usually reserved for classical. Instead, Ross describes the experience of the iPod, listening to Wagner before switching over to Radiohead or Bob Dylan. His language combines seriousness with the pure joy that comes from loving music, with jokes and stories about the composers he loves. And where words stop, the music begins: Ross supplies readers with several pages of his own suggested listening, which, as imagined, is as diverse and thoughtful as the essays that precede them.

Excerpt: “Playfulness was Mozart’s saving grace. His counterpart in modern times is perhaps George Gershwin, who was charming and self-infatuated in equal measure. Latter-day attempts to find a dark, despondent layer in Mozart’s psychology have been unconvincing.”

Buy the book: Skylight Books, Powell’s, Amazon

Ellen O’Connell has been published in several national literary magazines and is a contributing writer to the forthcoming book, The Moment (2011 Harper Perennial). This year she was nominated for the 2011 Pushcart Award and currently teaches creative writing at UC Santa Barbara.

*Photo courtesy of lincolnblues.