Stefan Wolpe was a member of a generation of composers, born around the turn of the twentieth century, who sought to refashion the entente between the artist and society in the belief that modernist art could transform the individual and society. To that end they composed artful functional music for amateurs as well as for the theater and concert hall. Born in Berlin in 1902, Wolpe was a disciple of Ferruccio Busoni and studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar. He collaborated with Hanns Eisler in the workers' music movement and left Germany in 1933. He studied briefly with Webern in Vienna before settling in Palestine. In 1938 he emigrated to the United States, where he remained until his death in 1972. Wolpe responded to the musics of his adoptive homelands, incorporating elements from folklore in music of driving and exhuberant complexity. He was a leading member of the abstract expressionist milieu in New York and was much sought after as a teacher by avant-garde composers in the fields of jazz, film, and concert music. His deeply-held optimism sustained him through a continual struggle for livelihood and recognition. The essays here are by distinguished composers, critics, performers, and musicologists, many of whom were acquainted personally with the composer. They include recollections, studies of social and cultural contexts, and detailed analyses of particular compositions and performances. The book is edited by Austin Clarkson, general editor of the composer's music and writings. A chronological catalogue of Wolpe's works concludes this first book on an eminent American composer.

Cohen traces a history of modernism in migration through the composer Stefan Wolpe, from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College.

A TIME Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2012 A New Yorker Best Book of the Year Los Angeles Magazine's #1 Music Book of the Year A unique and revelatory book of music history that examines in great depth what is perhaps the best-known and most-popular symphony ever written and its four-note opening, which has fascinated musicians, historians, and philosophers for the last two hundred years. Music critic Matthew Guerrieri reaches back before Beethoven’s time to examine what might have influenced him in writing his Fifth Symphony, and forward into our own time to describe the ways in which the Fifth has, in turn, asserted its influence. He uncovers possible sources for the famous opening notes in the rhythms of ancient Greek poetry and certain French Revolutionary songs and symphonies. Guerrieri confirms that, contrary to popular belief, Beethoven was not deaf when he wrote the Fifth. He traces the Fifth’s influence in China, Russia, and the United States (Emerson and Thoreau were passionate fans) and shows how the masterpiece was used by both the Allies and the Nazis in World War II. Altogether, a fascinating piece of musical detective work—a treat for music lovers of every stripe.

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.