Books about 20th Century Classical

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Are there any good ones?

Ideally I'm after an overview / history of most of the 20th century (particularly one focussing more on avante garde stuff, not just Shos, Britten, Copeland etc) although I'd also be interested in things covering specific composers or scenes if they were good.

It'd be nice to find something that isn't afraid to get technical and cover the nuts and bolts of the techniques and forms involved as well, I'm a bit pedantic and get annoyed by things that expect you to understand the history of the ideas while only giving you a rough overview of what the ideas actually are.
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
Alex Ross's "The Rest is Noise" is good. Runs the gamut from Sibelius, Stravinsky, Webern to Boulez, Britten, Copeland and every one in between but also good on some of the lesser known US figures.

Its for the general reader, but he seems quite good at convaying the ideas at work (e.g. serialism). Its not 'technical' though.

His blog is good too.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
Are there any good ones?
particularly one focussing more on avante garde stuff, not just Shos, Britten, Copeland etc

Skip Alex Ross then, he's pretty weak on the avant garde. Paul Griffiths is probably your man - Modern Music and After is your book. Also try Arnold Whittall's Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I randomly got And The Rest Is Noise for christmas and am part of the way through it.

It's really good. It is pretty light on the technical details, but that's not really the point of it. What's interesting is the way that he seems to be a lot more receptive to the music than he is to the accompanying rubric - that he can love the sonic artefacts produced by Schoenberg or Stockhausen without believing that any musician who has not experienced the necessity of Schoenberg's methods is USELESS or that any musician who isn't inaccessible and avante-garde is basically writing consumerist muzak. I guess that now I'd be quite interested to read something a bit more defensive that side of criticism.

He doesn't seem to have much time for Adorno, either, but does anyone think that much of Adorno's actual pronouncements on culture these days?
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
from a buddy of mine:

Ok, here is my own kind of incompetent, but complete, scan of the English translation (and revised edition) of Iannis Xenakis' FORMALIZED MUSIC. As far as I can tell, the scan is very good and clear, but the entire file is 550mb; this isn't particularly practical or acceptable, but every time I changed the dpi rate or other parameters using Acrobat, the clarity took a noticeable dive. Any help would be much appreciated so future scans are not so huge, and maybe somebody with skillz can download this one and reduce it while keeping it looking sharp? Also some pics excerpted from this book, just to whet ya'll's appetites (these actually look like shit here, much much better in the scanned document....I converted them to jpg and the quality took a dive):

some excerpts:

xenakis_TOC.jpg

Xenakis_Metas.jpg

xenakis_2.jpg

xenakis_3.jpg

xenakis_4.jpg

xenakis_5.jpg

xenakis_6.jpg

xenakis_7.jpg

xenakis_8.jpg

xenakis_9.jpg

http://www.shareonall.com/Xenakis_FormalizedMusic.part1_hizx_rar.htm
http://www.shareonall.com/Xenakis_FormalizedMusic.part2_qplx_rar.htm
http://www.shareonall.com/Xenakis_FormalizedMusic.part3_ydzg_rar.htm
 
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