Ross - The Rest is Noise

Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20^th Century (2007) is about the evolution of, and movements within, 20^th century music around the world. It raises a fundamental question that those who aspire to leadership and artists alike face – how far can you push those who you seek to influence without losing their attention and loyalty?

Ross references some of my favorite composers of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century. In particular, he references Gustav Mahler numerous times and portrays him as one of the most successful composers in creating music that was popular in his time, grew in importance after his death, and set the stage for many of the innovations that other composers would emulate. Mahler models pushing the edge, challenging his listeners, and raising fundamental questions through music that could very well be studied as examples of innovation for multiple arenas of human activity. (The picture here is Max Oppenheimer’s “The Philharmonic,” a massive wall-sized painting now displayed in the Belvedere of Vienna, Austria, with Mahler as the central figure.)

The title for Ross’ book is never explained but my presumption is that composers and musicians who don’t make it into the text are in his estimation – just noise. But many, many composers are included with whom I am unfamiliar or are less understandable for me. Composers such as Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern are examples. The fact is that I’ve not studied these composers carefully enough to know if I might over time develop a taste for their creations. In addition to referencing Mahler in numerous places, Ross also notes that Ravel often pushed listeners and highlighted the example of La Valse which he characterized as a dazzling incarnation and satire of the 1920s. “…trombones snarling and percussion rattling, the music becomes brassy, sassy, and fierce… portraying a society spinning out of control, reeling from the horrors of the recent past toward those of the near future.” (p.121)

Several of my favorite composers of the early 20^th century were considered nationalists, those who hung on to cultures that were changing. As nationalists, they stayed connected with listeners even though they were panned by critics and the musical intelligentsia. Rachmaninov wrote in 1939, “I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien” (p. 175) and Sibelius said, “Not everyone can be an ‘innovating genius’” (p. 175) and resigned himself to having a smaller, locally connected, and modest place in musical history. Another of these composers is Aaron Copeland who related to so many in the early 20^th century by portraying history and places with which all could identify. Copeland’s case is interesting for having emerged at a time when the U.S.A. government generously supported the arts through the Works Program Administration (WPA), which offered special funding through the Federal Music Project. (p. 303) I would also include Leonard Bernstein in this group of listenable composers; Bernstein’s national reach went beyond the U.S.A. at the same time it directly reflected contemporary cultural conversations in such works as “On the Town,” Westside Story,” and “Mass.”

One of the most difficult periods of music for me to understand is what was known as the avant-garde era. Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, written while he was being held in a Nazi concentration camp and first performed in 1941 by prisoners, is identified by Ross as starting this era. This particular music adopts many new approaches in composition and is “hair raising” (literally, the feeling one gets when the hair on your arms or the back of your neck tingle with tension) in the sense of its poignant message as well as dissonant harmonies used in the composition.

For those who listen to a lot of music, one can acquire a taste for some of the more experimental composers of mid to late-20^th century. Arvo Part or Gyorgy Ligeti are interesting examples and both of their compositions have been used in popular movies. Ligeti’s Requiem was particularly well received when parts of it were used for the 1968 Hollywood blockbuster, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s hard to imagine a more effective musical background for “the various apparitions of an inscrutable black monolith, which represents the invasion of the superior alien intelligence” (p. 510) in the early moments of the film.

In the final pages of the book Ross reflects, “To the cynical onlooker, orchestras and opera houses are stuck in a museum culture, playing to a dwindling cohort of aging subscribers and would-be elitists who take satisfaction from technical expert if soulless renditions of Hitler’s favorite works,” (p. 560) which include Wagnerian operas, Richard Strauss tone poems, and other heroic and, as we now understand them, sometimes demonic portrayals. Yet, a couple of pages later, he proposes that “a thousand-year-old tradition won’t expire with the flipping of a calendar of the aging of a baby-boom cohort” (p. 562). Indeed, perhaps the confusion, the struggle of avant-garde, contemporary, and electronic music is simply a prelude to a new consolidation of music in the 21^st century.

And we return to the question of what we might learn about pushing the edges in music that is applicable to pushing the edges in leadership? Clearly, some composers and performers restricted their creativity in order to stay connected to a listening public. Likewise, leaders often tone down their visions in order to relate better to collaborators and followers. Some composers and leaders will dismiss the importance of relating and will drive hard into innovation and change, with a common result being failure to connect. In order for art to evolve and for social and organizational change to occur, there probably needs to be both kinds – those who carefully calculate their aspirations and those who are willing to give it their all and let someone else come along who can adapt and modify the message so that change is eventually achievable.