Praise for Music After the Fall:
Music book of the year, 2017
an essential survey
— Will Robin, The New York Times
Rutherford-Johnson weaves … descriptions effectively into an interesting and reflective discussion of the cultural context that suits the work in question, returning again and again to reportage of/from musicians, performance settings, modes of creation, and other cultural contexts. The book covers a massively broad range of creative musical approaches and techniques and from this point of view is an impressive and useful volume, as a primer to students and practitioners alike, on what is going on today and how we got here.
–– John McLachlan, The Journal of Music
… an ambitious proposition – to explore an encylopedic array of contemporary works across such abstract themes – yet Rutherford-Johnson pulls off the challenge with insight, wit and (an often under-valued quality in musicological writing) compassion. … Music After the Fall not only topples the towers of so much musicological analysis, but also makes for an enticingly good read. For at its core, this is a book of stories: stories of how certain music came to be, who heard it, how they heard it, and what happened next. And best of all, these stories make you want to get listening.
–– Kate Wakeling, BBC Music Magazine, May 2017
stimulatingly broad and broad-minded
–– Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News
Music After the Fall is at its best when engaging the leading figures of the 21st-century avant-garde. There are illuminating passages on Peter Ablinger …, Jennifer Walshe and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf. … In passages such as these – and there are many of them – Music After the Fall succeeds, faced with a bewildering range of styles, in showing us how to approach the at times forbidding terrain of contemporary music.
–– Liam Cagney, Gramophone, May 2017
sharp, provocative and always on the money
— Brian Morton, The Wire, May 2017
read ‘Music after the Fall’ and listen to the musical riches that it unearthes
— Jan Niewenhuis, Gonzo Circus [Netherlands], trans. Samuel Vriezen
The Rambler 