Liner notes to What Belongs to You

Alex Ross · 17 Jun 2026 · therestisnoise.com ↗

2 korrents from this piece

Alex Ross did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Prose written in an intensely musical, rhythmically dense style is inherently difficult for composers to adapt successfully into music.

Their wordsWriters of such concentrated style can pose a danger for composers.
Our reading
Benjamin Britten is the benchmark among English-language composers for setting the work of intensely musical writers like Shakespeare and Keats to music.

Their wordsIn the English-language arena, Britten sets the standard for handling writers of inborn musical power-the likes of Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Keats, Hopkins.