I have in my hand The Rest is Noise—Listening to the 20th Century, by Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, published in Brazil by the Companhia das Letras with great fanfare, in a technically perfect translation guaranteed to earn a place in the Flip awards2 this year.
It’s a curious case, editorially speaking: a plunge into a musical tradition usually considered hermetic and avant-garde. To the extent that it renders its subject attractive it performs an important service. But at the same time, and in spite its having been a finalist for the Pulitzer, we have to state that, if it were a pack of cigarettes, it would have to carry the warning: “Culture alert: prejudicial to the image of your country.”
In 568 pages, in prose both modern and florid, Ross follows the careers of several dozen composers and describes several hundred works. He creates a meticulously elaborated tapestry, informing us of the escapades of Alma Mahler, the sexuality of Copland and Partch, Schoenberg’s suicide attempts, and the jealousies and rivalries of dozens of others. But there’s just two sentences about Villa-Lobos—they make an appearance in the story merely as a footnote to the artistic trajectory of Milhaud—and nothing else concerning other Brazilian composers.
Colloquium: Contemporary Brazilian Music and Thought 