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Philosophy of New Music
A publishing event—a revealing new translation of Theodor Adorno's manifesto of musical radicalism
In 1947 Theodor W. Adorno, one of the seminal European philosophers of the postwar years, announced his return after exile in the United States to a devastated Europe by writing Philosophy of New Music. Intensely polemical from its first publication, every aspect of this work was met with extreme reactions, from stark dismissal to outrage. Even Schoenberg reviled it. Despite the controversy, Philosophy of New Music became highly regarded and widely read among musicians, scholars, and social philosophers. Marking a major turning point in his musicological philosophy, Adorno located a critique of musical reproduction as internal to composition itself, rather than as a matter of the reproduction of musical performance. Consisting of two distinct essays, “Schoenberg and Progress” and “Stravinsky and Reaction,” this work poses the musical extremes in which Adorno perceived the struggle for the cultural future of between human emancipation and barbarism, between the compositional techniques and achievements of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In this completely new translation—presented along with an extensive introduction by distinguished translator Robert Hullot-Kentor—Philosophy of New Music emerges as an indispensable key to the whole of Adorno's illustrious and influential oeuvre.
In 1947 Theodor W. Adorno, one of the seminal European philosophers of the postwar years, announced his return after exile in the United States to a devastated Europe by writing Philosophy of New Music. Intensely polemical from its first publication, every aspect of this work was met with extreme reactions, from stark dismissal to outrage. Even Schoenberg reviled it. Despite the controversy, Philosophy of New Music became highly regarded and widely read among musicians, scholars, and social philosophers. Marking a major turning point in his musicological philosophy, Adorno located a critique of musical reproduction as internal to composition itself, rather than as a matter of the reproduction of musical performance. Consisting of two distinct essays, “Schoenberg and Progress” and “Stravinsky and Reaction,” this work poses the musical extremes in which Adorno perceived the struggle for the cultural future of between human emancipation and barbarism, between the compositional techniques and achievements of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In this completely new translation—presented along with an extensive introduction by distinguished translator Robert Hullot-Kentor—Philosophy of New Music emerges as an indispensable key to the whole of Adorno's illustrious and influential oeuvre.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1949
About the author
Theodor W. Adorno
620 books1,483 followersTheodor Wiesengrund Adorno was one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II. Although less well known among anglophone philosophers than his contemporary Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adorno had even greater influence on scholars and intellectuals in postwar Germany. In the 1960s he was the most prominent challenger to both Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science and Martin Heidegger's philosophy of existence. Jürgen Habermas, Germany's foremost social philosopher after 1970, was Adorno's student and assistant. The scope of Adorno's influence stems from the interdisciplinary character of his research and of the Frankfurt School to which he belonged. It also stems from the thoroughness with which he examined Western philosophical traditions, especially from Kant onward, and the radicalness to his critique of contemporary Western society. He was a seminal social philosopher and a leading member of the first generation of Critical Theory.
Unreliable translations hampered the initial reception of Adorno's published work in English speaking countries. Since the 1990s, however, better translations have appeared, along with newly translated lectures and other posthumous works that are still being published. These materials not only facilitate an emerging assessment of his work in epistemology and ethics but also strengthen an already advanced reception of his work in aesthetics and cultural theory.
Unreliable translations hampered the initial reception of Adorno's published work in English speaking countries. Since the 1990s, however, better translations have appeared, along with newly translated lectures and other posthumous works that are still being published. These materials not only facilitate an emerging assessment of his work in epistemology and ethics but also strengthen an already advanced reception of his work in aesthetics and cultural theory.
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April 25, 2013
adorno has his head up his ass a little i think but this thing still has some value to the small subsection of the world that is interested in both post-hegelian metaphysics and avant-garde western classical. he says a dumb thing somewhere in there to the effect of "music has always been a bourgeois art form" that i think kind of epitomizes the problems with this book: it has like a really flawed sense of history in that sense and that informs where his attentions are focused. like i agree with him on a lot of his points that he makes about just how radically progressive twelve-tone technique is but i think that he kind of takes a rejection of pop music for granted. he doesn't really bring up his irrational anti-democratic hate of popular music forms here but it kind of pervades throughout it. cornelius cardew kind of marks the opposite side of this coin.
October 18, 2026
Who’s Afraid of Theodor Adorno?
Whether we wish to admit it or not, we need Adorno. He’s a necessary corrective - maybe even an over-corrective. Reading him is like taking medicine: you may not want it, it may be uncomfortable, but lord knows it’s good for you and you’ll be grateful after all, even if it takes a while for your body to assimilate the cure. He’s the antidote to (fascist!) complacency in all its sinister forms.
Not even the supposed innocence of aesthetic complacency is safe from Adorno’s penetrating gaze; indeed, perhaps no realm of human experience is more in need of his relentless critique, precisely because it strikes us as so unimportant, so irreducibly subjective and individual, beyond the nexus of society and its logic of domination.
Adorno sees this for the ideological illusion that it is. In modern capitalism, in the world of the culture industry, art is either in league with the status quo or situated at the fringes of what it can digest, problematising the world and its system of production. Intent notwithstanding, art can sedate just as much as it can liberate, and in this respect it is inextricable from questions of objectivity and social responsibility.
Adorno is here to tell you that the music you listen to does not exist in a vacuum, that its aesthetic goals and the relation of these goals to society has an objective effect on your relation to the world and the way in which you swim in its ideological ferment. Even if you don’t know it, that perfectly innocent pop song could well be subtly inching you closer to reconciling yourself with the way of the world, erasing your ability to envisage alternative lines of flight and fixing you to the given forms of experience.
Nothing is harder to accept than that you are responsible for your own enjoyment!
This is why (beyond his ludicrous and genuinely unjustifiable dismissal of jazz) Adorno’s philosophy of music, not to mention his philosophy of art more generally, ruffles so many feathers: it holds you to account. It forces you to reckon with the fact that, in the aesthetic, contradictions of the ethical and political are operative and therefore can only be ignored at your peril. Perhaps it will take the widespread proliferation of AI music for people to recognise this, but, of course, by then it may be far too late.
Philosophy of New Music is divided into two parts: first, a critical evaluation of Schoenberg and Serialism, and second, a ferocious evisceration of (pre-serial) Stravinsky and everything his music represents. Whilst the latter has its problems, the former—rightfully the lion’s share of the text—is utterly magnificent.
Adorno is no apostle of serialism — far from it! His relationship with the twelve tone technique and its technicians might be characterised as a cautious, honest camaraderie — did I really expect Adorno of all people to be so neatly partisan? Sure, he composed in the style under one Alban Berg, but his essay on Schoenberg bears witness to the sobriety and openness of his perspective - a vantage point far above the thrill of innovation for its own sake.
From here, he mourns (in his own special way…) the fall of free atonality from its transformative, almost christ-like assumption of the world’s pain, into empty formalism and reconciliation with domination of the rigid tone row.
Serialism was radical—even revolutionary!—when it gave expression to the hitherto mute iniquity of the fractured given (the scattered despair of post-war Europe). Indeed, precisely because it remains a startlingly immediately reflection of the objective condition of the individual in modernity, I actually found serialism a more inviting entry point into the world of classical music than, say, Beethoven’s 9th. Fancy that!
It is for this reason that, as Adorno puts it, “Adequately listening to the same Beethoven works that the fellow in the subway contentedly whistles in fact requires far greater effort than does adequately listening to the most avant-garde music”.
For Adorno, Schoenberg’s music is the aesthetic equivalent to non-identity thinking par excellence. In other words, Schoenberg’s atonal, hyper-chromaticism, through its very structure (or lack-thereof), refutes the supposed identity of society’s idea of itself with its truth.
Society would like to think of itself as reconciled, as an organic whole in which the fracture is the aberrant and accidental; through its sanctioned music of ideal harmony and predictability, society would have us believe that it is, in the words of Baudrillard, a utopia achieved. Schoenberg reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth.
At the same time, Schoenberg’s work is not, as this description may lead one to believe, a stuffy, didactic rejection of all tradition in the name of a principled indictment of its objective conditions. Rather, it brings to bear the diremption between the individual and the world, the schism between the subject and their past, in order not merely to demystify the dream of a perfect suture, but to forge its own image of reconciliation – a new dream of wholeness beyond the categories of the given.
Whilst Adorno doesn’t spell this logic out in so many words, I have found it useful to approach his aesthetic thinking in terms of the distinction between representation and recognition. In a somewhat Platonic vein, Adorno finds mimesis to be constitutively limited by the coordinates of its ideal model, rendering it trapped in complicity with the given of ethical life. Once representation becomes recognition, however, we enter the realm of critique.
Whereas mimesis does not make room for mediation, recognition involves the relation of the particular art work to its universal content, thereby enabling the practice of non-identity thinking – the cornerstone of Adorno’s critical heuristics. When you recognise something, you see it for what it really is, you apprehend not merely the surface semblance but the appearance in its nexus with what it is not. In doing so, you can see how it might be entrenched in an otherness to which it would otherwise pretend to be totally separate in its absolute in-itselfness; you see how it falls short of its own claims. In other words, you see how it might be critiqued.
Understood in these terms, a simplified account of Philosophy of New Music says the following: whereas Stravinsky merely represents society, Schoenberg recognises it.
But, i spite of all this, how easily serialism became its opposite! No, not because it succumbed to popular tastes or anything so external — its sclerotic demise was strictly internal to its logic. The very same thing that succoured the critical edge of serialism was precisely what doomed it: its vigorous identity with the world. Since it achieved this identity by virtue of a technique (the tone row), what once laid bare the horror of post-war Europe soon became empty formalism — a technical fetishism which now closed the minimal gap of non-identity between the serialists and the administered world.
There comes a time when that which confronts society begins to replicate it (the line is impossibly more fine than you might suppose): first only in the fleeting subtly of gesture, and then in a total submission still proudly assured of its total freedom. You are what you negate! Reification comes for us all…
Serialism wished to submit the musical material to its imperious subjective designs, and in this sense, insofar as serialism’s dogged pursuit of total enlightenment culminated in the very domination of nature it initially hoped to undermine, it is easy to see how Philosophy of New Music serves as a coda to The Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Like the enlightenment, serialism wished to emancipate the subject by self-legislation, but in doing so it ultimately proscribed the truly novel, insofar as it might fall outside of the laws it had established for itself (“No rule is more repressive than one that is self-promulgated”). In both serialism and enlightenment thinking, reason (epitomised in the tone row) became an unreflective end-in-itself, hostile to the possibility of its self-evaluation and thereby dogmatic in its application.
Now onto Stravinsky. I’m not ashamed to admit that, before I had even read the essay, I had already decided, on the basis of my own enjoyment, that Adorno was—no, had to be—wrong. I was (and still am - the tension still pulls at me) desperate to protect my precious artwork, to absolve myself of complicity with “reactionary” art in advance. It was a foregone conclusion that Adorno simply must be one-sidedly dogmatic towards Stravinsky and hagiographic towards Schoenberg, even if everything I knew about Adorno’s unparalleled judiciousness pointed in the complete opposite direction. Woe to those who underestimate him!
The Rite of Spring is dissonant, yes, but unlike the dissonance of Schoenberg, it settles into a relative predictability through its repetition, founding the dissonance into a new sort of consonance over the course of its runtime — it says the wrong thing so many times that it seduces the subject into its retroactive correctness, as it were.
We have to ask: is this a problem? Does it defeat the “point” of dissonance (whether polytonal or atonal, emancipatory or otherwise), its gesture towards a line of flight beyond its internally contradictory form, to reinsert it into schema and regularity?
Does the brute fact of The Rite of Spring’s enduring popularity—not to mention Hollywood’s enthusiastic absorption of its language—testify to Adorno’s point? Even if it initially scandalised the beau monde and invigorated the radical intelligentsia, does its eventual widespread social acceptance and relative accessibility condemn the work of art to being nothing but an appendage of the reigning ideology? Can art really be transgressive if it is eventually absorbed into the society against which it had attempted to make its resistance known? Or does this simply mean that we must be strict historicists about the ethical and political value of art, as something which is exhausted entirely in its temporal relationships?
Of course, this would condemn practically every transgressive work to self-cancellation. Even the most shocking and critical works have found their place in society, even if they remain niche and contested. After all, “society” is not a static object but a progressively unfolding totality which, especially under capitalism, is particularly adept at absorbing and integrating even the most cutting critiques into its logic. Must we then only tolerate those rare works which absolutely refuse popular consumption? Whilst this is certainly not what Adorno is calling for, it’s worth considering whether this is indeed the implication of his thinking.
The trouble with Adorno is that he has a very narrow, yet very sophisticated, framework for what can be accepted as “revolutionary” or discarded as complicit with the culture industry and the tyranny of the instrumental reason. Of even greater concern, however, is this: he’s probably correct!
He rightly lampoons Stravinsky’s work for its self-conscious pursuit of authenticity, which, naturally, are only to be found in yearnings for an impossible past. Even as Stravinsky’s attitude becomes increasingly cynical and comedic in his neoclassical phase, this only further demonstrates his reactionary stance. It is as if he is saying: yes, all this pomp and tradition is all rather ridiculous, but still, it must be. Obey!
This does, however, indicate a certain limit in Adorno’s approach. He would have surely detested Schnittke (as he did Shostakovitch), for example, because he would fail to see how “pastiche”, as a method or attitude in-and-for-itself, is an empty formalism which can be just as hostile to reification and easy listening as was Schoenberg, but only when understood in light of precisely what it *does* with the material it pastiches. Does it satirise it? Does it discover its nullity? Does it complicate the rationalised classification of music into discrete genres in the first place?
Whereas Schoenberg fetishises the means in pursuit of self-expression through self-legislation, Stravinsky fetishises the content in league with the alien authority of the given. For Schoenberg, authenticity emerges, if it emerges at all, as a horizon, or at most a possible result. For Stravinsky, on the other hand, authenticity is the already assumed, pre-established goal, realised in the self-conscious handling of the material provided by society. As Adorno is keen to highlight, there is perhaps nothing less “authentic” than this!
One thing you will notice in the essay on Stravinsky is that there is truly not a “kind” word to be found. Adorno really, really doesn’t hold back. Any sentence that begins in the guise of a complement soon reveals its menace, congratulating Stravinsky only to the extent that he achieves the heights of aesthetic barbarity. Philosophy of New Music has no hero—Schoenberg’s place in Adorno’s judgement cannot be captured by basic moral categories—but it certainly has its villain. I believe Hitler is brought up at least once in relation to Stravinsky’s neoclassicalism, for whatever that’s worth.
Whether we wish to admit it or not, we need Adorno. He’s a necessary corrective - maybe even an over-corrective. Reading him is like taking medicine: you may not want it, it may be uncomfortable, but lord knows it’s good for you and you’ll be grateful after all, even if it takes a while for your body to assimilate the cure. He’s the antidote to (fascist!) complacency in all its sinister forms.
Not even the supposed innocence of aesthetic complacency is safe from Adorno’s penetrating gaze; indeed, perhaps no realm of human experience is more in need of his relentless critique, precisely because it strikes us as so unimportant, so irreducibly subjective and individual, beyond the nexus of society and its logic of domination.
Adorno sees this for the ideological illusion that it is. In modern capitalism, in the world of the culture industry, art is either in league with the status quo or situated at the fringes of what it can digest, problematising the world and its system of production. Intent notwithstanding, art can sedate just as much as it can liberate, and in this respect it is inextricable from questions of objectivity and social responsibility.
Adorno is here to tell you that the music you listen to does not exist in a vacuum, that its aesthetic goals and the relation of these goals to society has an objective effect on your relation to the world and the way in which you swim in its ideological ferment. Even if you don’t know it, that perfectly innocent pop song could well be subtly inching you closer to reconciling yourself with the way of the world, erasing your ability to envisage alternative lines of flight and fixing you to the given forms of experience.
Nothing is harder to accept than that you are responsible for your own enjoyment!
This is why (beyond his ludicrous and genuinely unjustifiable dismissal of jazz) Adorno’s philosophy of music, not to mention his philosophy of art more generally, ruffles so many feathers: it holds you to account. It forces you to reckon with the fact that, in the aesthetic, contradictions of the ethical and political are operative and therefore can only be ignored at your peril. Perhaps it will take the widespread proliferation of AI music for people to recognise this, but, of course, by then it may be far too late.
Philosophy of New Music is divided into two parts: first, a critical evaluation of Schoenberg and Serialism, and second, a ferocious evisceration of (pre-serial) Stravinsky and everything his music represents. Whilst the latter has its problems, the former—rightfully the lion’s share of the text—is utterly magnificent.
Adorno is no apostle of serialism — far from it! His relationship with the twelve tone technique and its technicians might be characterised as a cautious, honest camaraderie — did I really expect Adorno of all people to be so neatly partisan? Sure, he composed in the style under one Alban Berg, but his essay on Schoenberg bears witness to the sobriety and openness of his perspective - a vantage point far above the thrill of innovation for its own sake.
From here, he mourns (in his own special way…) the fall of free atonality from its transformative, almost christ-like assumption of the world’s pain, into empty formalism and reconciliation with domination of the rigid tone row.
Serialism was radical—even revolutionary!—when it gave expression to the hitherto mute iniquity of the fractured given (the scattered despair of post-war Europe). Indeed, precisely because it remains a startlingly immediately reflection of the objective condition of the individual in modernity, I actually found serialism a more inviting entry point into the world of classical music than, say, Beethoven’s 9th. Fancy that!
It is for this reason that, as Adorno puts it, “Adequately listening to the same Beethoven works that the fellow in the subway contentedly whistles in fact requires far greater effort than does adequately listening to the most avant-garde music”.
For Adorno, Schoenberg’s music is the aesthetic equivalent to non-identity thinking par excellence. In other words, Schoenberg’s atonal, hyper-chromaticism, through its very structure (or lack-thereof), refutes the supposed identity of society’s idea of itself with its truth.
Society would like to think of itself as reconciled, as an organic whole in which the fracture is the aberrant and accidental; through its sanctioned music of ideal harmony and predictability, society would have us believe that it is, in the words of Baudrillard, a utopia achieved. Schoenberg reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth.
At the same time, Schoenberg’s work is not, as this description may lead one to believe, a stuffy, didactic rejection of all tradition in the name of a principled indictment of its objective conditions. Rather, it brings to bear the diremption between the individual and the world, the schism between the subject and their past, in order not merely to demystify the dream of a perfect suture, but to forge its own image of reconciliation – a new dream of wholeness beyond the categories of the given.
Whilst Adorno doesn’t spell this logic out in so many words, I have found it useful to approach his aesthetic thinking in terms of the distinction between representation and recognition. In a somewhat Platonic vein, Adorno finds mimesis to be constitutively limited by the coordinates of its ideal model, rendering it trapped in complicity with the given of ethical life. Once representation becomes recognition, however, we enter the realm of critique.
Whereas mimesis does not make room for mediation, recognition involves the relation of the particular art work to its universal content, thereby enabling the practice of non-identity thinking – the cornerstone of Adorno’s critical heuristics. When you recognise something, you see it for what it really is, you apprehend not merely the surface semblance but the appearance in its nexus with what it is not. In doing so, you can see how it might be entrenched in an otherness to which it would otherwise pretend to be totally separate in its absolute in-itselfness; you see how it falls short of its own claims. In other words, you see how it might be critiqued.
Understood in these terms, a simplified account of Philosophy of New Music says the following: whereas Stravinsky merely represents society, Schoenberg recognises it.
But, i spite of all this, how easily serialism became its opposite! No, not because it succumbed to popular tastes or anything so external — its sclerotic demise was strictly internal to its logic. The very same thing that succoured the critical edge of serialism was precisely what doomed it: its vigorous identity with the world. Since it achieved this identity by virtue of a technique (the tone row), what once laid bare the horror of post-war Europe soon became empty formalism — a technical fetishism which now closed the minimal gap of non-identity between the serialists and the administered world.
There comes a time when that which confronts society begins to replicate it (the line is impossibly more fine than you might suppose): first only in the fleeting subtly of gesture, and then in a total submission still proudly assured of its total freedom. You are what you negate! Reification comes for us all…
Serialism wished to submit the musical material to its imperious subjective designs, and in this sense, insofar as serialism’s dogged pursuit of total enlightenment culminated in the very domination of nature it initially hoped to undermine, it is easy to see how Philosophy of New Music serves as a coda to The Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Like the enlightenment, serialism wished to emancipate the subject by self-legislation, but in doing so it ultimately proscribed the truly novel, insofar as it might fall outside of the laws it had established for itself (“No rule is more repressive than one that is self-promulgated”). In both serialism and enlightenment thinking, reason (epitomised in the tone row) became an unreflective end-in-itself, hostile to the possibility of its self-evaluation and thereby dogmatic in its application.
Now onto Stravinsky. I’m not ashamed to admit that, before I had even read the essay, I had already decided, on the basis of my own enjoyment, that Adorno was—no, had to be—wrong. I was (and still am - the tension still pulls at me) desperate to protect my precious artwork, to absolve myself of complicity with “reactionary” art in advance. It was a foregone conclusion that Adorno simply must be one-sidedly dogmatic towards Stravinsky and hagiographic towards Schoenberg, even if everything I knew about Adorno’s unparalleled judiciousness pointed in the complete opposite direction. Woe to those who underestimate him!
The Rite of Spring is dissonant, yes, but unlike the dissonance of Schoenberg, it settles into a relative predictability through its repetition, founding the dissonance into a new sort of consonance over the course of its runtime — it says the wrong thing so many times that it seduces the subject into its retroactive correctness, as it were.
We have to ask: is this a problem? Does it defeat the “point” of dissonance (whether polytonal or atonal, emancipatory or otherwise), its gesture towards a line of flight beyond its internally contradictory form, to reinsert it into schema and regularity?
Does the brute fact of The Rite of Spring’s enduring popularity—not to mention Hollywood’s enthusiastic absorption of its language—testify to Adorno’s point? Even if it initially scandalised the beau monde and invigorated the radical intelligentsia, does its eventual widespread social acceptance and relative accessibility condemn the work of art to being nothing but an appendage of the reigning ideology? Can art really be transgressive if it is eventually absorbed into the society against which it had attempted to make its resistance known? Or does this simply mean that we must be strict historicists about the ethical and political value of art, as something which is exhausted entirely in its temporal relationships?
Of course, this would condemn practically every transgressive work to self-cancellation. Even the most shocking and critical works have found their place in society, even if they remain niche and contested. After all, “society” is not a static object but a progressively unfolding totality which, especially under capitalism, is particularly adept at absorbing and integrating even the most cutting critiques into its logic. Must we then only tolerate those rare works which absolutely refuse popular consumption? Whilst this is certainly not what Adorno is calling for, it’s worth considering whether this is indeed the implication of his thinking.
The trouble with Adorno is that he has a very narrow, yet very sophisticated, framework for what can be accepted as “revolutionary” or discarded as complicit with the culture industry and the tyranny of the instrumental reason. Of even greater concern, however, is this: he’s probably correct!
He rightly lampoons Stravinsky’s work for its self-conscious pursuit of authenticity, which, naturally, are only to be found in yearnings for an impossible past. Even as Stravinsky’s attitude becomes increasingly cynical and comedic in his neoclassical phase, this only further demonstrates his reactionary stance. It is as if he is saying: yes, all this pomp and tradition is all rather ridiculous, but still, it must be. Obey!
This does, however, indicate a certain limit in Adorno’s approach. He would have surely detested Schnittke (as he did Shostakovitch), for example, because he would fail to see how “pastiche”, as a method or attitude in-and-for-itself, is an empty formalism which can be just as hostile to reification and easy listening as was Schoenberg, but only when understood in light of precisely what it *does* with the material it pastiches. Does it satirise it? Does it discover its nullity? Does it complicate the rationalised classification of music into discrete genres in the first place?
Whereas Schoenberg fetishises the means in pursuit of self-expression through self-legislation, Stravinsky fetishises the content in league with the alien authority of the given. For Schoenberg, authenticity emerges, if it emerges at all, as a horizon, or at most a possible result. For Stravinsky, on the other hand, authenticity is the already assumed, pre-established goal, realised in the self-conscious handling of the material provided by society. As Adorno is keen to highlight, there is perhaps nothing less “authentic” than this!
One thing you will notice in the essay on Stravinsky is that there is truly not a “kind” word to be found. Adorno really, really doesn’t hold back. Any sentence that begins in the guise of a complement soon reveals its menace, congratulating Stravinsky only to the extent that he achieves the heights of aesthetic barbarity. Philosophy of New Music has no hero—Schoenberg’s place in Adorno’s judgement cannot be captured by basic moral categories—but it certainly has its villain. I believe Hitler is brought up at least once in relation to Stravinsky’s neoclassicalism, for whatever that’s worth.
October 20, 2012
Bracing.
This work is at once approachable and hermetic. Familiarity with Schoenberg and Stravinsky seems to be the only real price of admission, yet behind the matter at hand is Adorno's broader philosophical battle ground: Hegel and the legacy of German Idealism (through to Marx and the critique of capitalism); arguments with Lukács and Benjamin on the political stakes of art, in production and reproduction; and themes from his (and Horkheimer's) recently completed Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, which permeate the text. Progress and restoration, enlightenment and myth... there is not, of course, a simple way of mapping one set of concerns onto the other, but as ever with Adorno, brandishing his Hegelian stripes, there is no way of grasping the stakes of what these two composers are doing without articulating the social totality in which they figure.
This is Adorno at his most acutely critical. The section on Schoenberg has an eye to his later works and the total serialism of the fledging Darmstadt composers, diagnosing tendencies toward to the domination of the musical materials, an analogue to the domination of nature by reason; on Stravinsky, limb-tearing of the highest order, a philosophical slasher work, condemning the tendency towards sacrifice and regression found within appeals to a previous time: paganism and classicism.
Once the attentive reader has found their breath, they should proceed directly towards "Stravinsky: A Dialectical Portrait", which drives the knife in further as much as it applies a tourniquet, and "Vers une musique informelle", Adorno's late meditation on what could be a way forward in this dangerous game of musical creation.
This work is at once approachable and hermetic. Familiarity with Schoenberg and Stravinsky seems to be the only real price of admission, yet behind the matter at hand is Adorno's broader philosophical battle ground: Hegel and the legacy of German Idealism (through to Marx and the critique of capitalism); arguments with Lukács and Benjamin on the political stakes of art, in production and reproduction; and themes from his (and Horkheimer's) recently completed Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, which permeate the text. Progress and restoration, enlightenment and myth... there is not, of course, a simple way of mapping one set of concerns onto the other, but as ever with Adorno, brandishing his Hegelian stripes, there is no way of grasping the stakes of what these two composers are doing without articulating the social totality in which they figure.
This is Adorno at his most acutely critical. The section on Schoenberg has an eye to his later works and the total serialism of the fledging Darmstadt composers, diagnosing tendencies toward to the domination of the musical materials, an analogue to the domination of nature by reason; on Stravinsky, limb-tearing of the highest order, a philosophical slasher work, condemning the tendency towards sacrifice and regression found within appeals to a previous time: paganism and classicism.
Once the attentive reader has found their breath, they should proceed directly towards "Stravinsky: A Dialectical Portrait", which drives the knife in further as much as it applies a tourniquet, and "Vers une musique informelle", Adorno's late meditation on what could be a way forward in this dangerous game of musical creation.
February 8, 2011
Adorno is my Jesus.
June 13, 2023
Adorno feels that music is characterized primarily by its dialectical nature -- its pull between reflecting its entire culture and its purely individual composer, between its mathematical objectivity and its phenomenological subjectivity, between its attempt at total aesthetic freedom and its relation to constricting forms. The music of Schoenberg, he feels, is an attempt to bring that dialectic to its most radical possible conclusion, ie with the Twelve Tone System and its attempt to make a form that is at once totally unfettered by other considerations and yet intensely constricted. This, in conjunction with Schoenberg's earlier efforts at musical expressionism through Wagnerian and atonal musical dramas, had the highest opportunity to produce Pure Music, as undiluted as possible -- yet while the initial efforts had high returns, serialism quickly collapsed back onto the common problems of musical structure and began producing works such as Schoenberg's violin concerto and Webern's late string quartet (which satisfied serialism but were, according to Adorno, totally hollow and servile works). The project ultimately failed, perhaps because of the essential ephemerality of music or else because of the random paroxysms of history. Schoenberg's latest works, such as the String Trio or the very beautiful Violin Phantasy, Adorno characterizes as a new frontier in totally unlimited free atonality, but his comments almost seem to paint a morbid picture about the possibility of a pure music.
This essay on Schoenberg he wrote as a prelude to his main focus, an intense assault on the works of Igor Stravinsky. The main idea of Stravinsky's works, he says, is to create a perfect music based off the imperfect state of 20th century man's mind -- the great Rite of Spring, for example, is not a musical depiction of a savage world but rather a deliberate presentation of modern man's naive nostalgia for savage times. According to Adorno this project, while well-intentioned perhaps, was executed by means of a totally effects-laden and essentially simple music, using brute scales and erratic rhythms to permit an accessible experience for listeners and becoming itself as mediocre as its subject matter. The essential effect is that Stravinsky's music celebrates its own demise (music as collapsed to bourgeois whims on the most literal level) and is therefore suicidal and schizophrenic, and takes the form of a child's game of pretend (in its constant pastiching) -- and Stravinsky's neoclassical compositions are just as dully fetishistic, but having the ironic quality of exposing that Stravinsky's radicalism was nothing more than mindlessly conveyed simplicity. This was all written before the serialist era of Stravinsky, which in all likelihood probably irked the ire of Adorno for the same reasons Webern's late serialist compositions did.
I had come to this book in hopes that Adorno, being a classically trained expert in modern music, could explain Stravinsky's musical efforts to me, but Adorno rarely delves into proper musical analysis here. His analysis is presented in the form of a rather convoluted and somewhat unnecessary Hegelian dialectic, which here seems to have been purely a stylistic choice to dress up the meta-aesthetic analyses he could otherwise have written in a vastly more straighforward language; but that doesn't really matter. His comments on Stravinsky seem essentially correct to me, although they just make me like Stravinsky more (or really, for the first time, since I was never impressed with him until listening to his works deeply to evaluate Adorno's analysis) as a sort of defiantly flamboyant figure willfully laying down to rot as society falls apart, using this pretext as an excuse to spin his striking, winding melodies. The comments on Schoenberg are much more edifying, rightly demonstrating the continuity of Schoenberg's compositional intentions across all his eras (as Pierre Boulez' compilation of Schoenberg achieves by juxtaposing tonal, atonal and serialist works together) and their perpetually musical and emotive character that is often obscured by the serialist technics for many listeners. But I'm not sure this book would suffice as a good introduction to a layman, if only perhaps by virtue of the thick obscurity of both modern music and Adorno's ridiculous writing style.
This essay on Schoenberg he wrote as a prelude to his main focus, an intense assault on the works of Igor Stravinsky. The main idea of Stravinsky's works, he says, is to create a perfect music based off the imperfect state of 20th century man's mind -- the great Rite of Spring, for example, is not a musical depiction of a savage world but rather a deliberate presentation of modern man's naive nostalgia for savage times. According to Adorno this project, while well-intentioned perhaps, was executed by means of a totally effects-laden and essentially simple music, using brute scales and erratic rhythms to permit an accessible experience for listeners and becoming itself as mediocre as its subject matter. The essential effect is that Stravinsky's music celebrates its own demise (music as collapsed to bourgeois whims on the most literal level) and is therefore suicidal and schizophrenic, and takes the form of a child's game of pretend (in its constant pastiching) -- and Stravinsky's neoclassical compositions are just as dully fetishistic, but having the ironic quality of exposing that Stravinsky's radicalism was nothing more than mindlessly conveyed simplicity. This was all written before the serialist era of Stravinsky, which in all likelihood probably irked the ire of Adorno for the same reasons Webern's late serialist compositions did.
I had come to this book in hopes that Adorno, being a classically trained expert in modern music, could explain Stravinsky's musical efforts to me, but Adorno rarely delves into proper musical analysis here. His analysis is presented in the form of a rather convoluted and somewhat unnecessary Hegelian dialectic, which here seems to have been purely a stylistic choice to dress up the meta-aesthetic analyses he could otherwise have written in a vastly more straighforward language; but that doesn't really matter. His comments on Stravinsky seem essentially correct to me, although they just make me like Stravinsky more (or really, for the first time, since I was never impressed with him until listening to his works deeply to evaluate Adorno's analysis) as a sort of defiantly flamboyant figure willfully laying down to rot as society falls apart, using this pretext as an excuse to spin his striking, winding melodies. The comments on Schoenberg are much more edifying, rightly demonstrating the continuity of Schoenberg's compositional intentions across all his eras (as Pierre Boulez' compilation of Schoenberg achieves by juxtaposing tonal, atonal and serialist works together) and their perpetually musical and emotive character that is often obscured by the serialist technics for many listeners. But I'm not sure this book would suffice as a good introduction to a layman, if only perhaps by virtue of the thick obscurity of both modern music and Adorno's ridiculous writing style.
Read
October 18, 2023Soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy6t8...
(być może pierwszy utwór dodekafoniczny Schönberga).
"Dla wielkich mniej ważą dzieła skończone niż owe fragmenty, nad którymi praca trwa całe życie. Bo tylko ten, kto słabszy, kto bardziej rozproszony, lubuje się ponad wszystko w zakończeniach i jak gdyby wraca po nich do życia. Geniuszowi wszelka cezura - ciężki cios losu czy lekki sen - przerywa pracę. Taką właśnie cezurę geniusz sygnalizuje fragmentem" (Benjamin W., Schriften, t. 1, Frankfurt am M, 1955, s. 518, [w:] Adorno T., Filozofia nowej muzyki, s. 155).
"Bezkształtność nie ma w sobie nic z wolności - przeciwnie:, panuje w niej podobny rygor jak w nagiej przyrodzie: nie ma niczego równie drętwego jak ów 'proces powstawania'" (207).
#
"[...] przemysł kulturalny wychował swe ofiary tak, by w godzinach wolnych, wydzielonych im na konsumpcję duchową, unikały wysiłku, więc ofiary te z coraz większym uporem czepiają się fikcji, która przesłania im istotę rzeczy"(19-20).
kicz, dyktatura zysku nad kulturą
"Konstruktywne jest już dzisiaj tylko odrzucenie oficjalnej kultury; przyczynia się ona do szerzenia barbarzyństwa, choć się na nie obłudnie oburza" (20).
"[...] apetyty konsumenta dotyczą nie tyle uczucia, a którego utwór się rodzi, c uczucia, które budzi - czyli inkasowanej w mniemaniu konsumenta przyjemności" (22).
"Rada, by artysta za dużo nie myślał (choć jego wolność nieodparcie go do tego zmusza), jest tylko wyrazem tęsknoty słuchacza za własną utraconą naiwnością - tęsknoty, którą przywłaszczyła sobie i wyzyskała kultura masowa" (24).
"Jeśli wściekłość na awangardę jest tak przesadna, tak bardzo nieproporcjonalna do jej roli w społeczeństwie późnoprzemysłowym, a już na pewno do jej udziału w jego kulturze, to dlatego, że nowa sztuka zamknęła przed zalęknioną świadomością drogę ucieczki przed totalnym racjonalizmem; dlatego, że dzisiaj sztuka, jeśli ma w ogóle jeszcze jakąś treść, bezkompromisowo odzwierciedla i uświadamia wszystko to, o czym chciałoby się zapomnieć. Ten sens nowatorskiej sztuki je wrogowie usiłują przedstawić jako jej bezsens, jako dowód, że sztuka ta już nic społeczeństwu nie daje" (24-25).
"Jeśli sztuka kiedykolwiek obumrze, to dopiero w epoce ludzkości uspokojonej. Śmierć, jaka dziś jej grozi, byłaby tylko tryumfem gołego istnienia nad usiłującą mu sprostać świadomością" (26).
"Stając się dziedziną samowystarczalną, muzyka staje się tym samym potwierdzeniem branżowej organizacji społeczeństwa, potwierdzeniem brutalnej wszechwładzy prywatnego interesu, wyczuwalnej nawet w bezinteresownych przejawach monady" (29).
"Nowatorskiej muzyce pozostaje tylko trwanie w zasklepieniu, bez ustępstwa na rzecz kuszącego pseudohumanizmu, który właśnie ta muzyka z powodzeniem demaskuje jako zakapturzony antyhumanizm. Racja bytu nowatorskiej muzyki tkwi nie tyle w jej pozytywnej treści, ile w tym, że przez swą zorganizowaną beztreściowośćzadaje ona kłam treści ustroju społecznego, który odrzuca. W obecnych warunkach nowatorska muzyka skazana jest na stanowczą negację" (32).
"Nawet bowiem najbardziej samotnicza wypowiedź artysty przemawia do ludzi właśnie swym samotnictwem, swą rezygnacją z oklepanej komunikatywności, i z tego paradoksu czerpie są żywotność" (33).
"Niemal żaden z nielicznych śmielszych utworów, jakie dziś jeszcze powstają, nie jest przedawany na rynku, lecz wszystkie są z góry opłacane przez mecenasów lub takie czy inne instytucje" (33-34).
"U artysty [...] już sama określoność terminów i okazji niszczy ową spontaniczność, jakiej domaga się wyemancypowana zdolność wyrazu" (34).
"[...] w epoce wszechobecności radia i adaptera ludzkość w ogóle zaczyna odwykać od przeżywania muzyki" (35).
"Tam, gdzie nie chodzi o pracę użyteczną społecznie, lecz o to, co najlepsze w całym świcie: o urąganie wszelkiej uzyteczności [...]" (35).
"[...] laikiem wymagającym od muzyki już tylko przyjemnego szemrania, które by towarzyszyło jego dniom roboczym" (36).
"[...[ aprobuje się jeden z kierunków rozwojowych świadomości [...] burżuazyjnej, degradujący wszystkie wytwory duchowe do roli czystych funkcji, do roli rzeczy istniejących tylko ze względu na inne, a wreszcie do roli artykułów codziennej potrzeby. [...] stanowi milczacą akceptację zmaterializowania wszelkiej duchowości w społeczeństwie towarowym, akceptację konsumpcyjno-towarowego mienika racji bytu sztuki jako miernika prawdy społecznej w ogóle. [...] Jest to język urzędniczo-administracyjnego ucisku" (38).
"W momencie dziejowym, w którym pojednanie podmiotu z przedmiotem zostało wypaczone w szatańską parodię, w zagładę podmiotu przez obiektywny porządek rzeczy, prawdziwemu pojednaniu służy już tylko taka filozofia, która odrzuca złudne pozory pojednania i powszechnemu wyobcowaniu przeciwstawia jednostkę wyobcowaną bez ratunku, za którą nie przemawia już bodaj żadna 'rzecz sama w sobie'" (41).
"[...] w muzyce trwa nadal monopol filistrów [...]" (46).
"Establishment, tłumiący wszystko, co od niego różne, usprawiedliwia takie stanowisko brakiem 'osiągnięć'. Ci dam za drzwiami - powiada - to poszukiwacze, to pionierzy, a przede wszystkim postacie tragiczne. Ich następcom będzie znacznie lepiej: jeśli z góry się poddadzą, to czasem się ich nawet wpuści" (46).
"Formy sztuki rejetrują dzieje ludzkości rzetelniej niż dokumenty. Wszelka surowość formy da się odczytać jako protest przeciwko surowości życia" (41).
"Zarzut stawiany późnemu indywidualizmowi w sztuce jest właśnie dlatego tak bardzo żałosny, że przeocza jego społeczną istotę. 'Mowa samotna' mówi więcej o tendencji społeczeństwa niż mowa komunikatywna" (61).
"[...] jednostki i zindustrializowane społeczeństwo są ze sobą we wzajemnej relacji, jako stale ze sobą sprzeczne, i komuniująsię z sobą poprzez lęk" (62).
"Jeśli człowiek samotny cytuje, to znaczy, że jego lęk szuka ucieczki w konwencji" (67).
"[...] absolutna jednostka [...] wcale nie jest absolutna. W jej osamotnieniu przejawia się społeczeństwo. [...] Absolutne wyzwolenie jednostki od typu czyni z kolei jednostkę typem przez to, że ją polemicznie i pryncypialnie od yupu uzależnia" (68-69).
"W swej zatwardziałej naiwności zręczność ta stała się dziś agresywna" (75).
"Nieskończonośc to czysta tożsamość" (88).
"[...] wyzwoleńcza siła jest nie do pomyślenia bez neurotycznej słabości człowieka nękanego lękiem" (99).
"[...] talent [...] urąga niemożliwościom [...]" (101).
Jest "tylko popłuczyną tej idei" (122).
"Żaden artysta nie potrafi sam jeden rozwiązać sprzeczności między wyzwoloną sztuką a zniewolonym społeczeństwem; może co najwyżej wyzwoloną sztuką sprzeciwić się zniewolonemu społeczeństwu, a i w tę możliwość łatwo mu zwątpić" (137).
W tym właśnie przejawia się astrologiczny zabobon: [...].
[...] w najprawdziwszym tego słowa znaczeniu sfetyszyzowane [...].
"Muzyka wykazuje słuszność historii i dlatego historia usiłuje zniszczyć muzykę. To jednak przywraca muzyce jej słuszność i daje jej paradoksalną szansę przetrwania. Niesprawiedliwa jest zagłada sztuki w niesprawiedliwym ustroju. Racją bytu sztuki jest bunt przeciw uległości, do jakiej doprowadziła sztukę jej własna centralna zasada i jej nieskazitelna konsekwencja. Póki istnieje muzyka ujęta w kategorie produkcji masowej, wspomagająca 'ideologię' i stosująca technikę ucisku, póty ma swój cel muzyka inna: muzyka bezcelowa. Ona jedna w swoich najdojżalszych i najbardziej konsekwentnych wytworach reprezentuje prawdziwy obraz totalnego ucisku, a nie jego 'ideologię'. Jako bezkompromisowy obraz rzeczywistości muzyka ta staje się niemożliwa do pogodzenia z tą rzeczywistością. Tym samym zgłasza weto wobec niesprawiedliwości sprawiedliwego na nią wyroku. Procesy techniczne, które uczyniły nową muzykę obiektywnym obrazem społeczeństwa ucisku, są bardziej postępowe niż technika produkcji masowej, która zgodnie z duchem czasu ignoruje nową muzykę i społeczeństwu ucisku rozmyślnie służy.
Produkcja masowa i wszelka produkcja do niej upodobniona jest nowoczesna w tym sensie, że przejmuje z przemysłu pewne schematy, zwłaszcza schematy dystrybucji. Nowoczesność ta jednak nie dociera zupenie do samych produktów. Urabiają one swych słuchaczy najnowszymi metodami psychotechniki i propagandy i same są skonstruowane propagandowo, ale właśnie dlatego są skazane na wieczne powtarzanie wątłej i drętwej tradycji.
[...]
Malowanie obrazu czy pisanie kwartetu jest dziś już może zacofaniem w porównaniu z podziałem pracy i planowymi eksperymentami technicznymi w filmie; ale właśnie obiektywny kształt techniczny obrazu i kwartetu umożliwia istnienie filmu, któremu dzisiejszy społeczny tryb jego produkcji wręcz zagraża" (145-146).
"Źródłem muzyki jest pewien gest blisko spokrewniony ze źródłem płaczu. Jest to gest rozluźnienia. W toku tego gestu ustępuje napięcie mięśni twarzy, które zwracając twarz aktywnie ku otoczeniu, jednocześnie ją od niego odcinało. Muzyka i płacz rozchylają usta i dają ujście zatamowanemu człowieczeństwu" (163).
"[...] zastąpienie 'życia' przystosowaniem ekonomicznym, którym kieruje skoncentrowana władza gospodarcza. Wśród ludzkości, która sama siebie przekształca w rzecz, w przedmiot organizacji [...]" (242-243).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy6t8...
(być może pierwszy utwór dodekafoniczny Schönberga).
"Dla wielkich mniej ważą dzieła skończone niż owe fragmenty, nad którymi praca trwa całe życie. Bo tylko ten, kto słabszy, kto bardziej rozproszony, lubuje się ponad wszystko w zakończeniach i jak gdyby wraca po nich do życia. Geniuszowi wszelka cezura - ciężki cios losu czy lekki sen - przerywa pracę. Taką właśnie cezurę geniusz sygnalizuje fragmentem" (Benjamin W., Schriften, t. 1, Frankfurt am M, 1955, s. 518, [w:] Adorno T., Filozofia nowej muzyki, s. 155).
"Bezkształtność nie ma w sobie nic z wolności - przeciwnie:, panuje w niej podobny rygor jak w nagiej przyrodzie: nie ma niczego równie drętwego jak ów 'proces powstawania'" (207).
#
"[...] przemysł kulturalny wychował swe ofiary tak, by w godzinach wolnych, wydzielonych im na konsumpcję duchową, unikały wysiłku, więc ofiary te z coraz większym uporem czepiają się fikcji, która przesłania im istotę rzeczy"(19-20).
kicz, dyktatura zysku nad kulturą
"Konstruktywne jest już dzisiaj tylko odrzucenie oficjalnej kultury; przyczynia się ona do szerzenia barbarzyństwa, choć się na nie obłudnie oburza" (20).
"[...] apetyty konsumenta dotyczą nie tyle uczucia, a którego utwór się rodzi, c uczucia, które budzi - czyli inkasowanej w mniemaniu konsumenta przyjemności" (22).
"Rada, by artysta za dużo nie myślał (choć jego wolność nieodparcie go do tego zmusza), jest tylko wyrazem tęsknoty słuchacza za własną utraconą naiwnością - tęsknoty, którą przywłaszczyła sobie i wyzyskała kultura masowa" (24).
"Jeśli wściekłość na awangardę jest tak przesadna, tak bardzo nieproporcjonalna do jej roli w społeczeństwie późnoprzemysłowym, a już na pewno do jej udziału w jego kulturze, to dlatego, że nowa sztuka zamknęła przed zalęknioną świadomością drogę ucieczki przed totalnym racjonalizmem; dlatego, że dzisiaj sztuka, jeśli ma w ogóle jeszcze jakąś treść, bezkompromisowo odzwierciedla i uświadamia wszystko to, o czym chciałoby się zapomnieć. Ten sens nowatorskiej sztuki je wrogowie usiłują przedstawić jako jej bezsens, jako dowód, że sztuka ta już nic społeczeństwu nie daje" (24-25).
"Jeśli sztuka kiedykolwiek obumrze, to dopiero w epoce ludzkości uspokojonej. Śmierć, jaka dziś jej grozi, byłaby tylko tryumfem gołego istnienia nad usiłującą mu sprostać świadomością" (26).
"Stając się dziedziną samowystarczalną, muzyka staje się tym samym potwierdzeniem branżowej organizacji społeczeństwa, potwierdzeniem brutalnej wszechwładzy prywatnego interesu, wyczuwalnej nawet w bezinteresownych przejawach monady" (29).
"Nowatorskiej muzyce pozostaje tylko trwanie w zasklepieniu, bez ustępstwa na rzecz kuszącego pseudohumanizmu, który właśnie ta muzyka z powodzeniem demaskuje jako zakapturzony antyhumanizm. Racja bytu nowatorskiej muzyki tkwi nie tyle w jej pozytywnej treści, ile w tym, że przez swą zorganizowaną beztreściowośćzadaje ona kłam treści ustroju społecznego, który odrzuca. W obecnych warunkach nowatorska muzyka skazana jest na stanowczą negację" (32).
"Nawet bowiem najbardziej samotnicza wypowiedź artysty przemawia do ludzi właśnie swym samotnictwem, swą rezygnacją z oklepanej komunikatywności, i z tego paradoksu czerpie są żywotność" (33).
"Niemal żaden z nielicznych śmielszych utworów, jakie dziś jeszcze powstają, nie jest przedawany na rynku, lecz wszystkie są z góry opłacane przez mecenasów lub takie czy inne instytucje" (33-34).
"U artysty [...] już sama określoność terminów i okazji niszczy ową spontaniczność, jakiej domaga się wyemancypowana zdolność wyrazu" (34).
"[...] w epoce wszechobecności radia i adaptera ludzkość w ogóle zaczyna odwykać od przeżywania muzyki" (35).
"Tam, gdzie nie chodzi o pracę użyteczną społecznie, lecz o to, co najlepsze w całym świcie: o urąganie wszelkiej uzyteczności [...]" (35).
"[...] laikiem wymagającym od muzyki już tylko przyjemnego szemrania, które by towarzyszyło jego dniom roboczym" (36).
"[...[ aprobuje się jeden z kierunków rozwojowych świadomości [...] burżuazyjnej, degradujący wszystkie wytwory duchowe do roli czystych funkcji, do roli rzeczy istniejących tylko ze względu na inne, a wreszcie do roli artykułów codziennej potrzeby. [...] stanowi milczacą akceptację zmaterializowania wszelkiej duchowości w społeczeństwie towarowym, akceptację konsumpcyjno-towarowego mienika racji bytu sztuki jako miernika prawdy społecznej w ogóle. [...] Jest to język urzędniczo-administracyjnego ucisku" (38).
"W momencie dziejowym, w którym pojednanie podmiotu z przedmiotem zostało wypaczone w szatańską parodię, w zagładę podmiotu przez obiektywny porządek rzeczy, prawdziwemu pojednaniu służy już tylko taka filozofia, która odrzuca złudne pozory pojednania i powszechnemu wyobcowaniu przeciwstawia jednostkę wyobcowaną bez ratunku, za którą nie przemawia już bodaj żadna 'rzecz sama w sobie'" (41).
"[...] w muzyce trwa nadal monopol filistrów [...]" (46).
"Establishment, tłumiący wszystko, co od niego różne, usprawiedliwia takie stanowisko brakiem 'osiągnięć'. Ci dam za drzwiami - powiada - to poszukiwacze, to pionierzy, a przede wszystkim postacie tragiczne. Ich następcom będzie znacznie lepiej: jeśli z góry się poddadzą, to czasem się ich nawet wpuści" (46).
"Formy sztuki rejetrują dzieje ludzkości rzetelniej niż dokumenty. Wszelka surowość formy da się odczytać jako protest przeciwko surowości życia" (41).
"Zarzut stawiany późnemu indywidualizmowi w sztuce jest właśnie dlatego tak bardzo żałosny, że przeocza jego społeczną istotę. 'Mowa samotna' mówi więcej o tendencji społeczeństwa niż mowa komunikatywna" (61).
"[...] jednostki i zindustrializowane społeczeństwo są ze sobą we wzajemnej relacji, jako stale ze sobą sprzeczne, i komuniująsię z sobą poprzez lęk" (62).
"Jeśli człowiek samotny cytuje, to znaczy, że jego lęk szuka ucieczki w konwencji" (67).
"[...] absolutna jednostka [...] wcale nie jest absolutna. W jej osamotnieniu przejawia się społeczeństwo. [...] Absolutne wyzwolenie jednostki od typu czyni z kolei jednostkę typem przez to, że ją polemicznie i pryncypialnie od yupu uzależnia" (68-69).
"W swej zatwardziałej naiwności zręczność ta stała się dziś agresywna" (75).
"Nieskończonośc to czysta tożsamość" (88).
"[...] wyzwoleńcza siła jest nie do pomyślenia bez neurotycznej słabości człowieka nękanego lękiem" (99).
"[...] talent [...] urąga niemożliwościom [...]" (101).
Jest "tylko popłuczyną tej idei" (122).
"Żaden artysta nie potrafi sam jeden rozwiązać sprzeczności między wyzwoloną sztuką a zniewolonym społeczeństwem; może co najwyżej wyzwoloną sztuką sprzeciwić się zniewolonemu społeczeństwu, a i w tę możliwość łatwo mu zwątpić" (137).
W tym właśnie przejawia się astrologiczny zabobon: [...].
[...] w najprawdziwszym tego słowa znaczeniu sfetyszyzowane [...].
"Muzyka wykazuje słuszność historii i dlatego historia usiłuje zniszczyć muzykę. To jednak przywraca muzyce jej słuszność i daje jej paradoksalną szansę przetrwania. Niesprawiedliwa jest zagłada sztuki w niesprawiedliwym ustroju. Racją bytu sztuki jest bunt przeciw uległości, do jakiej doprowadziła sztukę jej własna centralna zasada i jej nieskazitelna konsekwencja. Póki istnieje muzyka ujęta w kategorie produkcji masowej, wspomagająca 'ideologię' i stosująca technikę ucisku, póty ma swój cel muzyka inna: muzyka bezcelowa. Ona jedna w swoich najdojżalszych i najbardziej konsekwentnych wytworach reprezentuje prawdziwy obraz totalnego ucisku, a nie jego 'ideologię'. Jako bezkompromisowy obraz rzeczywistości muzyka ta staje się niemożliwa do pogodzenia z tą rzeczywistością. Tym samym zgłasza weto wobec niesprawiedliwości sprawiedliwego na nią wyroku. Procesy techniczne, które uczyniły nową muzykę obiektywnym obrazem społeczeństwa ucisku, są bardziej postępowe niż technika produkcji masowej, która zgodnie z duchem czasu ignoruje nową muzykę i społeczeństwu ucisku rozmyślnie służy.
Produkcja masowa i wszelka produkcja do niej upodobniona jest nowoczesna w tym sensie, że przejmuje z przemysłu pewne schematy, zwłaszcza schematy dystrybucji. Nowoczesność ta jednak nie dociera zupenie do samych produktów. Urabiają one swych słuchaczy najnowszymi metodami psychotechniki i propagandy i same są skonstruowane propagandowo, ale właśnie dlatego są skazane na wieczne powtarzanie wątłej i drętwej tradycji.
[...]
Malowanie obrazu czy pisanie kwartetu jest dziś już może zacofaniem w porównaniu z podziałem pracy i planowymi eksperymentami technicznymi w filmie; ale właśnie obiektywny kształt techniczny obrazu i kwartetu umożliwia istnienie filmu, któremu dzisiejszy społeczny tryb jego produkcji wręcz zagraża" (145-146).
"Źródłem muzyki jest pewien gest blisko spokrewniony ze źródłem płaczu. Jest to gest rozluźnienia. W toku tego gestu ustępuje napięcie mięśni twarzy, które zwracając twarz aktywnie ku otoczeniu, jednocześnie ją od niego odcinało. Muzyka i płacz rozchylają usta i dają ujście zatamowanemu człowieczeństwu" (163).
"[...] zastąpienie 'życia' przystosowaniem ekonomicznym, którym kieruje skoncentrowana władza gospodarcza. Wśród ludzkości, która sama siebie przekształca w rzecz, w przedmiot organizacji [...]" (242-243).
March 27, 2024
Gibt irgendwie alles schon Sinn was der dude da erzählt und ist irgendwo interessant aber leider alles invalide weil musikmäßig so bar for bar schönberg von Strawinsky so intergalaktisch gecookt wird dass es nicht mehr normal ist
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March 27, 2018Essential reading for understanding the state of musical composition and reception during the first half of the Twentieth Century. Adorno contrasts the socio-political implications of the music of two of the greatest high modernist composers, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, casting Schoenberg as the determinate negation of the Beethovenian tonal and formal legacy, favored by the bourgeoisie in their ascendancy, while Stravinsky is severely critiqued for his ties with the forces of reaction, despite his undeniable technical achievements. Brilliant critiques of Petrushka and the Rite of Spring, as works celebrating the dissolution of the subject with brutal deployment of modernist technology yoked with authoritarian collectivist social relations, while the acerbic irony of The Soldier's Tale is given cautious advocacy before Stravinsky's wholesale capitulation to reaction in his move to neoclassicism. Adorno's dialectical strategy of extreme polarization brings out the differences in the composer's styles in stark relief. Essential for understanding Adorno's difficult philosophy of music and his approach to music history. This is the preferred recently-made translation by Adorno scholar Robert Hullot-Kentor.
October 2, 2015
Ah. Adorno. Sometimes the sweep of thought leave me baffled. But most of the time the prose leaves me bewildered. His system of values is so despicable, but then again, many of his analyses are so spot on. And no-one can bash people like Adorno: "Universal necrophilia is the last perversity of style; it is hardly still possible to distinguish it from the normalcy in which it finds its affirmation - that sediment, namely, in the conversations of music which is looked upon as its second nature." Poor Stravinsky. How to answer to that?
January 20, 2019
Loved it. Of course to get the most of it, like my teacher says, you need to be both a philosopher and a musician, but I am neither and was still able to get a good percentage of the book, at least enough to keep reading and enjoy it. I think its only required to have a certain familiarity with the history of classical music(19th and 20th centuries). To know stuff like what is atonal and tonal music.
September 17, 2023
Good job teddy.
July 27, 2008
Very few people are able to write intelligently about music. No one does it better than Adorno.
Most people like the chapter about Schönberg and dislike the one on Stravinsky. For me, its opposite.
Most people like the chapter about Schönberg and dislike the one on Stravinsky. For me, its opposite.
May 27, 2015
This book is "also" about music. Coyness aside, it stands with DoE and In Search of Wagner as a fulsome social critique and ideological demystification.
November 28, 2023
I genuinely have no clue how one reads Adorno’s early work without reading Negative Dialectics or having a robust background on Hegel. Either this, or that one gets a lot more from reading past works after reading his magnum opus. Otherwise, so much would feel like straight jargon here, at least for me. Nevertheless, this work definitely deserves more credit than it gets in Adorno’s catalog as its title can feel alien but, as he says in the preface, this is the true continuation of Dialectic of Enlightenment. Here, the ‘mimetic impulse’ shared between Art and Philosophy shines through, although still in its premature form, where Schoenberg’s 12-tone/atonal music becomes the epitome of ‘New Music,’ which becomes a representative of avant-garde art in general. The primary antagonism is that of New Music and Popular Music—one that is or is close to being ahistorical, and another that is contemporaneous or completely of the time. Of course, the latter is the banality of the culture industry that only reproduces ideology and itself, hijacking or cannablizing all and any forms of artistic production that is unaware of its economic conditions or ‘fungibility’ (as Adorno loves to say). Thus, his seemingly anti-Marxist stance is that art that becomes ‘protest’ and ‘rebellion’ against its origins and capitalist hijacking is always found in the experimental, the ineffable, the INCONSUMABLE (against fungibility at all costs). Thus, good art is art that is never made for the masses as their desire has necessarily been equated with consummation/consumerism. However, my main critique is that Adorno never finishes his argument on why radical art/music is where knowledge, truth, and ideas are located, when in many ways Schoenberg can be seen as the absolute non-knowledge in music. The fact that he brings no conversation of nonidentity or negativity into these very positivistic claims of new music is very much an opportunity missed and makes his upshot weaker. Otherwise, a thorough understanding of traditional classical music along with Schoenberg and atonal contemporaries obviously would make deriving most of Adorno’s commentary more enjoyable and easier. Also, I did not read the Stravinsky addendum, who becomes a Nietzschean opposition to Schoenberg, so I may revisit this review at a later date.
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February 5, 2020Posto che le premesse da cui parte Adorno sono ormai del tutto superate, che l'approccio hegeliano-marxista sociologico-dialettico oltre che essere nel 2020 patetico mi disgusta letteralmente, che la contrapposizione esemplare Schönberg/Stravinskij nel 1949 aveva certamente più senso che non di lì a pochi anni quando il secondo avrebbe iniziato a utilizzare, in modo peculiarissimo, le tecniche del primo (la sintesi di tesi e antitesi?), il capitolo su Schönberg mette comunque in luce molte verità della e sulla dodecafonia e riesce a essere profondamente stimolante, mentre quello su Stravinskij è più debole, più irritante e vi si vede chiaramente che non solo Adorno non capisce - anche quando la dipinge correttamente nel suo superbo gelo - la musica del compositore, ma anche che non la può comprendere: si indigna esattamente di ciò che la rende meravigliosa. Forse perché io sto con Stravinskij e sottoscrivo la sua visione: «Ho sempre cercato di distinguere fra l'oggetto musicale e l'emozione che esso ispira, in quanto l'oggetto è attivo, l'emozione reattiva. Il punto è, semplicemente, che i miei sentimenti sono molto meno interessanti dell'arte di Beethoven, e che, in primo luogo, Beethoven non comunicava le sue emozioni ma le sue idee musicali, che nondimeno possono averle trasmesse. In altre parole, io sto esattamente all'opposto di Diderot, il quale chiedeva a un dipinto di “commuoverlo”, di “spezzargli il cuore”, di farlo “tremare” e “piangere”, ma “dopo” soltanto di “deliziargli gli occhi”.» Figurarsi quanto pensava alla borghesia, al capitale e alla società vincolata. Ciò che è interessante in questo saggio - e ad Adorno sarebbe venuta una sincope - è l'analisi formale, “fenomenologica” delle due differenti visioni. Il resto è scempiaggine.
May 22, 2012
La vérité de la musique, écrit Adorno, se livre par l'effort d'embrasser simultanément en réflexion ses orientations les plus opposées. En l'espèce, dans l'entreprise qui décèle l'unité des oppositions entre les compositeurs obéissant le plus complètement qui soit à leurs "impulsions" (p.21).
Schönberg a établi une technique de composition qui parachève la soumission de la nature (celle du son en l'occurrence) à la raison, non seulement en brisant la force d'envoûtement de la première par le biais du calcul, mais plus encore en rendant convergentes et synthétiques les dimensions de la musique développées indépendamment jusqu'ici : contrepoint, mélodie, harmonie, orchestration, forme (p.62). De la réussite présumée de cette synthèse s'ensuit que le dodécaphonisme (la transformation d'une série initiale de douze sons non-répétés) est "véritablement le destin" de la musique (p.77).
Stravinsky, à l'opposé, suit la pente du primitivisme, de la régression vers la puissance de l'ancestral et du mythe. Orientation qui ne réalise et ne découvre pas tant le progrès que la prémisse indépassable de toute musique : les rites collectifs (danse et culte) (p.28); et à travers eux, l'empire des gestes, du face-à-face, et de la parole (p.121).
Ce qui avantage plus particulièrement Schönberg dans la perspective défendue ici est son élection de la solitude et de l'angoisse comme thème expressiviste d'arrière-plan. Même refusant d'en faire lecture psycho-sociologique, le compositeur de Die glückliche Hand révèle dans l'esseulement et l'impuissance de l'individu le produit et le sort collectifs des sociétés industrielles administrées (p.57-58).
Il s'agit, et ce trait est souvent (quoique ironiquement) négligé, d'un exercice de pensée dialectique, non seulement au niveau précédent (embrasser l'unité des deux orientations opposées), mais également au niveau subalterne, où, il me semble, la négativité de la dialectique resplendit avec le plus d'évidence.
En effet, c'est à l'intérieur des deux portraits que s'exerce le plus clairement la perspective maîtresse déjà campée avec Horkeimer dans un livre-époque (La dialectique de la raison, édition originale 1944). Rappelons que la ligne de force de l'ouvrage est que la raison émancipatrice détruit concrètement ses conditions de réalisation à mesure qu'elle avance, en élargissant le mythe qu'elle combat et la nature qu'elle veut dominer jusqu'à combattre et dominer son porteur lui-même (selon la célèbre formule : la domination des objets par les sujets devient domination des sujets comme objets).
En l'espèce, et ce point vaut comme une critique sévère, le système de Schönberg tombe, écrit Adorno, dans cette dialectique négative en imposant les règles de la technique avec la même obstination englobante qu'une superstition (telle l'astrologie, p. 75). L'intuition qui a donné naissance aux règles (dont on a tiré des règles) a fini par leur succomber comme à une implacable seconde nature (p.76) ; par surcroît, la domination du son par soumission au calcul s'obtient au détriment du sens.
Dans un ordre d'idée qui reconduit (tout en diminuant il me semble) cette charge, Stravinsky ne rétablit pas tant la subjectivité authentique par l'englobement collectif, qu'il ne procède de la certitude de la vacuité du sujet moderne (p.155-156). Traduisant l'archaïsme sous un angle davantage parodique que thérapeutique à l'égard de cette vacuité (préservée triomphante), un Sacre du printemps serait l'acceptation comme inévitable de ce dont elle semble(rait) vouloir nous sauver.
S'ensuit-il que Stravinsky est plus près que Schönberg de réaliser l'idée hégélienne (qui fournit une prémisse à l'ouvrage) selon laquelle l'art est cheminement de l'esprit vers sa vérité, moyennant l'affirmation de son indépendance par rapport aux formes de son expression entourées des superstition et des pouvoirs en soi de jadis ? Je suis enclin à le croire, d'autant plus que Stravinsky (le Stravinsky de Adorno) opère une synthèse inédite entre la prémisse jugée indépassable de toute musique ("les pratiques collectives du culte et de la danse" p.28) et la découverte apparemment inexorable du vide, sinon de la conscience émancipée, du moins de la force de refus ("l'énergie du négatif") où elle s'abreuve et avec laquelle elle finit par sa confondre.
Le style de Adorno rend la lecture de l'ouvrage occasionnellement pénible. La hâte et l'urgence qui l'habitent nous donnent l'impression d'un ouvrage conçu en réalité comme une seule et même phrase (avec un point d'exclamation en coda). Pour quiconque ne se forge pas un solide résumé de la ligne d'argumentation de Adorno, son argumentation prend rapidement une forme de "mauvais infini", échouant à la systématicité à laquelle elle prétend, et référant l'explanandum A à l'explanandum B, lui-même connecté à l'explanandum C, ainsi de suite dans une chaîne sans fin discernable (ne laissant que des éléments à expliquer).
Il est surtout permis de nommer les incohérences des incohérences avec Adorno comme avec quiconque n'aurait pas l'autorité et la profondeur de son jugement musical.
La musique nouvelle passe de négation d'une société devenue totalement organisée et administrée (p.30) - négation par injection d'un maximum de dissonance - à la négation d'une société complètement désordonnée ("chaos social") prétendant réaliser la liberté humaine - négation en abandonnant toute illusion d'harmonie (p.140).
Les cinquante années de recul que nous avons par rapport à Schönberg, Stravinsky et leur époque pour dégager une unité de leur opposition ont-elles favorisé des analyses plus convaincantes que celles d'Adorno ? Des identités plus claires que celles atteintes au terme de son examen (p. 80) ?
Je ne saurais me prononcer au-delà de (1) l'hypothèse que tous (ou peu s'en faut) auront abandonné le déterminisme historique qui arme (continue d'armer) certaines déclarations adorniennes ; et de (2) la recommandation de ne PAS croire en l'épuisement des efforts de synthèse nous offrant des vues (au moins des ébauches de vues) d'ensemble de l'évolution de la musique contemporaine (récente, actuelle, nouvelle, etc.). Ce qui est réconfortant lorsque l'on connaît le degré atteint ou conquis dans l'éclectisme et l'auto-référentialité normative (ne seraient valable pour juger d'une oeuvre, que les standards posés de manière immanente par cette oeuvre). Sans synthèse, point de salut.
August 10, 2018
I was disappointed with the first section on Schoenberg. Adorno’s reliance on jargon, both Hegelian and musicological (not to mention his own unique terminology), makes it difficult to follow his reasoning if you are not a polymath specializing in both. Also, why are there no paragraph breaks? Is this just a feature of the edition that I have? This consequent lack of structure burdens the reader’s comprehension. Overall it is an interesting read, what with the distinction between Schoenberg and Stravinsky a striking study in contrasts. The section on Stravinsky is much easier to follow and contains more of the cultural and psychological investigations one would expect form a member of the Frankfurt School. However, Adorno does himself no favors in his rejection of popular music in favor of such exalted composers with such a dry discourse on the latter. It would seem that his cultural Marxism is much better suited for criticism than congratulations.
Given that Adorno’s discussion revolves exclusively around opera, it would be helpful, particularly for today’s reader, to read into that history beforehand to better understand the early 20th century composers discussed (I would recommend Abbate's "A History of Opera).
Given that Adorno’s discussion revolves exclusively around opera, it would be helpful, particularly for today’s reader, to read into that history beforehand to better understand the early 20th century composers discussed (I would recommend Abbate's "A History of Opera).
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May 18, 2020Lo leí pensando que me iba a encontrar un tratado de filosofía y sociología con tintes de musicología y resultó ser a la inversa. Dado que no tengo grandes conocimientos de la música de Schönberg y Stravinski, muchas páginas dedicadas a analizar su música me han confundido y no han atraído mi atencion como deberían, aunque las más puramente filosóficas son realemnte intersantes, a la par que angustiosas, pues te hacen darte cuenta de hasta qué punto el sujeto está preso en las ideas que le imponen.
Me da la sensación de que las ideas filosóficas aquí expuestas, lo que más me ha llamado la antención, se encuentran mejor explicadas en otras obras suyas, frente a las ideas musicales, las realmente originales del libro, que me sugieren menos leídas en crudo. Es un buen ensayo y no diré que no merezca la pena leerlo, siempre que la cuestión te interese mucho, aunque no creo que sea lo mejor de Adorno ni lo más importante.
Me da la sensación de que las ideas filosóficas aquí expuestas, lo que más me ha llamado la antención, se encuentran mejor explicadas en otras obras suyas, frente a las ideas musicales, las realmente originales del libro, que me sugieren menos leídas en crudo. Es un buen ensayo y no diré que no merezca la pena leerlo, siempre que la cuestión te interese mucho, aunque no creo que sea lo mejor de Adorno ni lo más importante.
November 11, 2024
książka szyta tak bardzo grubymi nićmi, że rozrywa się przy przy pierwszym, nieco bardziej pogłębionym pytaniu. Adorno wybiera drogę barwnej retoryki zamiast logicznej argumentacji. trzeba się dużo drapać po głowie, bo przeskoki z opisu do opinii, relacjonowanej jako "racjonalna i obiektywna" są potężne. tym bardziej zastanawiające jest to, że ich materiałem jest najbardziej abstrakcyjna, rozpływająca się forma sztuki, czyli muzyka. złośliwie można ograniczyć tę pracę do tego, że Schoenberg = spokój, racjonalność, zasady, a Strawiński = burżuazja, mieszczaństwo, niespójność, sztuczność czy nawet faszyzm.
Jest tu kilka kilka ciekawych inside'ów o oindywidualizmie, przemyśle kulturowym, narracjach meta i cytacie, ale trzeba tę myśl wyłuskiwać z trochę nadętej i bardzo arbitralnej oceny kompozytorów.
Jest tu kilka kilka ciekawych inside'ów o oindywidualizmie, przemyśle kulturowym, narracjach meta i cytacie, ale trzeba tę myśl wyłuskiwać z trochę nadętej i bardzo arbitralnej oceny kompozytorów.
April 23, 2026
(the second star was just me wanting to be generous because I felt bad giving it one star…..and I suppose I should thank him for giving me great fodder to push back on in all of my academic work this term!!)
September 29, 2020
Uma abordagem absolutamente fantástica e esclarecedora. O capítulo "Stravinsky e a Restauração" é muitíssimo bom. Uma lição sobre arte, música, estética e história. Merece ser lido por todos.
❤
❤
January 12, 2022
Three short essays.
Not much “new” stuff for me.
Being a Schönberg fan, I oddly find myself liking Stravinsky more(than S.) through Adorno’s interpretation.
Not much “new” stuff for me.
Being a Schönberg fan, I oddly find myself liking Stravinsky more(than S.) through Adorno’s interpretation.
December 29, 2022
I feel that Adorno had more love to Mravinsky than Schoenberg.
March 13, 2023
chill
December 19, 2024
Bastantes barras, es de estos libros a los que merece la pena volver de vez en cuando. Pero también mucha chapa. Además a mi me mola el jazz y al friki este se ve que no.
July 19, 2025
REALE VOTO SAREBBE 1 STELLA E MEZZO
March 5, 2023
Un peu long. Un peu intéressant. Le plus compliqué de la musique avec le style d’écriture le plus lourd. Do not recommend to my casual music listening friend (please don’t cancel me)
Want to Read
June 24, 2011on hold
February 6, 2016
Pretty hard to read! I had to stop during the first part.
November 1, 2016
Schoenberg vs Stravinsky
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