Zero Hour

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 program. Following the Allied victory, all over Europe, young people were emerging from the rubble into adulthood—amongst them, leading figures of the post-war musical scene. They would be indelibly marked by their teenage experiences, their memories coloring their compositions. Now a major festival running throughout 2013 at London's Southbank, ‘The Rest is Noise’ is an intricate commentary not just on the sounds that defined the century, but on art's troublesome dance with politics, social and cultural change.