The postlude

A unified, comprehensive history of 20th century music is the philosopher's stone of modern criticism: How to transmute such vast, maddening complexity into conceptual gold? It's like trying to nail quicksilver to the wall: What do you even call the stuff? The term "classical music" was obsolete before the century began, with the eccentric sound palaces of Strauss and Mahler. By the contemporary era, with the likes of John Adams and Philip Glass, the "classical" label had become ludicrously inapt.

Whatever you call it, music in the 20th century exploded into a dazzling, perplexing array of styles that far outran the audience's ability to keep up. There is a deep connection between Strauss' cacophonous "Elektra" and John Cage's experiments in silent composition, but it would take a brave man to attempt such a bold synthesis.

Alex Ross is the man. In "The Rest Is Noise," the music critic of the New Yorker attempts to embrace the full range of 20th century music: to describe its sounds; to trace its evolution; and , to elucidate the profound impact of music on modern history, and vice versa. What powers this amazingly ambitious book and endows it with authority are the author's expansive curiosity and refined openness of mind.

Ross begins in 1906 with the first performance of "Salome" in Graz, conducted by Strauss, a historic evening that brought under one roof Puccini, Mahler, Schoenberg and (so he would later claim) the adolescent Adolf Hitler. The book concludes with the 1987 premiere of Adams' "Nixon in China" in Houston. Ross provides engrossing, authoritative accounts of the emergence of atonality and 12-tone music; the interlock between the rise of modernism in music and dance, in the ballets of Debussy and Stravinsky; and Shostakovich's tormented relationship with Stalin. Like any good encyclopedist, he draws on the best existing expertise. Yet many of his most fascinating pages arise from the author's far-ranging primary research into subjects previously known primarily to academic specialists.

A biographical sketch of 19th century African American violinist and composer Will Marion Cook is as moving as that of many better-known composers. The debut of Cook's opera based on "Uncle Tom's Cabin," planned for the 1893 World's Fair , was canceled because the female lead didn't have train fare to Chicago. After Cook's Carnegie Hall debut, when a well-meaning critic gave him left-handed praise, Cook stormed into his office and proclaimed, "I am not the world's greatest Negro violinist. I am the greatest violinist in the world!"