Alex Ross, critic for the New Yorker and author of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century discusses the challenges of writing about recent musical history, especially when your intended audience ranges from expert musicologists to interested non-specialists.

Excerpts cut from Ross’s new book on listening to the 20th century.

British composer Peter Dickinson spoke with the late American composer Earle Brown about John Cage in 1987.

An interview with the editor of CageTalk: Dialogues with and about John Cage (University of Rochester Press).

An excerpt from the experimental novel Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto.

An interview with the author of Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto.

An interview with Charles Hamm as well as an appreciation and excerpts from his landmark 1983 book, Music in the New World in celebration of his receiving the American Music Center’s first-ever Music Educator Award.

Excerpted from Computer Models of Musical Creativity by David Cope.

A critical look at three recent music books published by the MIT Press: Computer Models of Musical Creativity by David Cope; Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation by David Huron; and Gareth Loy’s Musimathics: The Mathematical Foundations of Music, Volume One.

According to an essay by Ben Johnston originally published in 1970, the world of “serious music” stubbornly bases itself on a sterile presumption.