The inspiration behind the South Bank Centre's year-long festival of 20th century music Alex Ross's masterpiece is a sweeping musical history from pre-war Vienna to the Velvet Underground. The landscape of twentieth-century classical music is a wild one: this was a period in which music fragmented into apparently divergent strands each influenced by its own composers performers & musical innovations. In this comprehensive tour Alex Ross music critic for the ' New Yorker' explores the people & places that shaped musical development: Adams to Zweig Brahms to Bjork pre-First World War Vienna to ' Nixon in China'. Winner of the Guardian First Book Award this unique portrait of an exceptional era weaves together art politics & cultural history to show how twentieth-century classical music was both a symptom & a source of immense social change.