The Rest Is Noise Series: Zion Park: Messiaen, Ligeti, and the Avant-Garde of the Sixties

This is a chapter from Alex Ross’s groundbreaking history of twentieth-century classical music, ‘The Rest is Noise’. Further extracts are available as digital shorts, accompanying the London Southbank festival programme.After the war, composers took up what might be called catastrophe style with a vengeance. The twentieth century was undoubtedly one of the most horrific periods of human history – but terror was not always the subject of its composers. For some, attempting to transcend or reject the despair that consumed other artists led to the creation of some of the century’s most beautiful music.Now a major festival running throughout 2013 at London’s Southbank, The Re…