Includes bibliographical references (p. [545]-593) and index

Includes discography: p. [595]

1900-1933. The golden age : Strauss, Mahler, and the fin de siècle ; Doctor Faust : Schoenberg, Debussy, and atonality ; Dance of the earth : the Rite, the folk, le jazz ; Invisible men : American composers from Ives to Ellington ; Apparition from the woods : the loneliness of Jean Sibelius ; City of nets : Berlin in the twenties -- 1933-1945. The art of fear : music in Stalin's Russia ; Music for all : music in FDR's America ; Death fugue : music in Hitler's Germany -- 1945-2000. Zero hour : the U.S. army and German music, 1945-1949 ; Brave new world : the Cold War and the avant-garde of the fifties ; "Grimes! Grimes!" : the passion of Benjamin Britten ; Zion park : Messiaen, Ligeti, and the avant-garde of the sixties ; Beethoven was wrong : bop, rock, and the minimalists ; Sunken cathedrals : music at century's end

The scandal over modern music has not died--while paintings by Picasso and Pollock sell for millions of dollars, works from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences. Yet the influence of modern music can be felt everywhere. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalist music has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward. Music critic Alex Ross shines a bright light on this secret world, taking us from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, and riots. The end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.--From publisher description