New Directions in Music

Before Alex Ross' "The Rest is Noise" takes over the discussion, it seems only fair to put in a good word about the one and original book on twentieth century music, the one that's the most even-handed and is aware of all the trends--David Cope's "New Directions in Music." I first read this book in its first edition back in 1974. It was a most valuable guide through a world I'd only become aware of in 1972, a world infinitely fascinating, but bewilderingly immense. A fair and detailed guide like this was exactly what I needed. This is as unapologetic a book as one could wish, too. The emphasis for everything covered, from Cowell to antimusic, is descriptive rather than judgmental. So you always feel like you're getting the straight story. The most recent edition, the seventh, is from 2001, so covers three more decades worth of music making than the rather slender volume I started on. Despite a fine book by Michael Nyman (Experimental music: Cage and beyond), David Cope's book remains the single most comprehensive and most valuable survey of twentieth century music I know. Emphasis on the word "music." Other books on new music, including the most recent one alluded to above, spend a lot of time on history and biography and psychology and physiology. Those are all interesting things, to be sure, but music often seems in the other books a mere by-product of social and emotional forces. Not so in "New Directions in Music." This is simply and consistently a book about music.