All That's Left Is Noise Author: Alex Ross (USA) Translator: Guo Jianying Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press

The debate over the rights and wrongs of modern music has never gone away. At a time when paintings by Picasso and Pollock are selling for millions, and since Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, stirring musical works have continued to send ripples of unease through listeners. Modern music is everywhere. Avant-garde sounds are prevalent in Hollywood thriller soundtracks, and minimalism, starting with the Velvet Underground, has had a huge impact on rock, pop and dance music. Alex Ross, the distinguished music critic for The New Yorker, illuminates this secret world and shows how it permeated every corner of 20th-century life.

All That Remains Is Noise tells the story of the maverick personalities who resisted the cult of a classical past, fought against the indifference of the general public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether enchanting their audiences with the purest beauty or assaulting them with the purest noise, the composers have always been brimming with the passion of the present, rejecting the stereotype of classical music as a declining art.

From pre-World War I Vienna to 20th-century Paris, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the 1960s and 1970s, Ross weaves together the history and music of the 20th century, making revelatory connections between its most influential composers and the wider culture. Through the music he tells, All That Remains Is Noise retells the history of the 20th century.

Alex Ross

He graduated from Harvard University in 1990 and has been writing music reviews for The New York Times since 1996. He is the author of The Rest Is Noise (2007) and Listen to This (2010). The Rest Is Noise won the 2007 National Review Award, the Guardian Book Award, and was selected as one of the New York Times and Time Magazine's Top Ten Books of the Year and The Washington Post's Best Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. Ross was awarded the Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honorary doctorates from the New England Conservatory of Music and the Manhattan School of Music.

Guo Jianying

Born in Beijing in August 1953. Obtained a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in computer science from Tsinghua University and Peking University respectively. Currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to working in R&D and management in the information industry, he has a deep interest in music and other humanities for many years and has been taught by many musicians, poets and philosophers. He has collaborated with other translators to translate and publish Wagner and Philosophy.