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Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy
Theodor W. Adorno goes beyond conventional thematic analysis to gain a more complete understanding of Mahler's music through his character, his social and philosophical background, and his moment in musical history. Adorno examines the composer's works as a continuous and unified development that began with his childhood response to the marches and folk tunes of his native Bohemia.
Since its appearance in 1960 in German, Mahler has established itself as a classic of musical interpretation. Now available in English, the work is presented here in a translation that captures the stylistic brilliance of the original.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69), one of the foremost members of the Frankfurt school of critical theory, studied with Alban Berg in Vienna during the late twenties, and was later the director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt from 1956 until his death. His works include Aesthectic Theory, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, The Jargon of Authenticity, Prism, and Philosophy of Modern Music.
Since its appearance in 1960 in German, Mahler has established itself as a classic of musical interpretation. Now available in English, the work is presented here in a translation that captures the stylistic brilliance of the original.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69), one of the foremost members of the Frankfurt school of critical theory, studied with Alban Berg in Vienna during the late twenties, and was later the director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt from 1956 until his death. His works include Aesthectic Theory, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, The Jargon of Authenticity, Prism, and Philosophy of Modern Music.
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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390 people want to read
About the author
Theodor W. Adorno
606 books1,401 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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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 12, 2025
Despite growing up playing in youth orchestras and chamber groups and attending university for cello I spent a lot of time strongly disliking Mahler. I found his music obtuse and uninteresting. But in the past few years I’ve started to really enjoy his music. This book gave me a whole new appreciation for Mahler’s works and put into words a lot of what his music makes me feel.
July 20, 2024
Schoenberg wrote in his great essay on mahler that, to write about Mahler, one can only either criticize him or evangelize him; while Adorno has pretenses in this book to writing a stricter analysis of Mahler vis a vis his complicated theory of aesthetic dialectics, this book really is at heart an incredibly enthusiastic rhapsody in praise of Mahler's music. Adorno's basic thesis is that Mahler is a modernist (as opposed to an exaggerated, late romantic in the vein of Strauss and Bruckner) and that every identifiable moving vector in his music, such as harmony and melody but also form and capacity for performance and program, is constructed dialectically, so that everything about Mahler's music is evocative of a cascading series of ironies equally profound, and sometimes the selfsame as, Hegelian-Marxist thought. The basic shape this takes is that Mahler's music, constructed around pastiches and quotations and developed according to a frenized anxious logic, at once strives incessantly and genuinely towards the transcendental but is capable of reaching it only ironically, and that this paradoxical and impossible movement is ultimately comprises the same quasi-gnostic mire of Adorno's intense pessimism. Consider the 6th symphony, which bounces between imitations of military marches and frenzied development -- despite all of Mahler's attempts at bringing the music towards an ecstatic resolution a la Beethoven's 5th, he can only continue to hammer harder and harder into the exaggerated military marches until they cease to be amusing and represent only the 'tragic inescapability of fate', as the cliche for this symphony goes.
To be honest, I am reticent to recommend this book, not because it is bad or 'too hard', but rather because it is intensely autistic and requires both an intimate familiarity with the obscure emotional spaciality of Mahler's music and also with Adorno's obscurer dialectical terminology, which would make this book almost nonsensical to all but a very select few readers. Still, as opposed to his Schoenberg-Stravinsky book, Adorno is vastly more concrete and musical, and most of the book, as I said above, is mostly just rapid-fire listing of favorite sections of Mahler's music and rapturous delight in identifying the distinctive melodic and harmonic intrusions that happen so commonly in Mahler's music -- essentially complete analyses are given of the fourth and ninth symphonies, and he cites the fifth and sixth so often that practically every measure is covered. Also helpful are the myriad of small details Adorno knows about Mahler, both musically (such as his analysis of the harmonic schema of the seventh, and the motivic origins throughout all symphonies) and conceptually (he answers many questions I've had for a long time, such as the function of the adagietto in the fifth).
This book has, then, the character of a long and in-depth conversation with an extremely intelligent friend on the music of Mahler, but I am not entirely sure I agree completely -- Adorno seems to, a posteriori, discuss Mahler under the presumption that Mahler's dialectics follow the same rules as the Marxist dialectics of the Frankfurt school, which leads to some strange claims such as that the morbidities of the ninth symphony are an expression of the inescapable character of capitalism (perhaps better than Leonard Bernstein's claim, that this symphony was a prediction that the holocaust would happen 30 years later), or that the jubilant character of the eighth symphony are false primarily because Adorno feels that true dialectic, generically, can have a happy conclusion. Moreover, I think the layers of irony that are attributed here to Mahler are not necessarily useful since, while one can definitely characterize their emotive affect as such, the evocative nature of the symphonies and their complex devices precede the metaphysical analysis of affect; that is to say, for example, nothing about the fourth symphony requires that its image of pastorality, as Adorno argues, is necessarily an impossible image, since while it will always remain a musical work there is nothing that necessitates this metaphysical framing, even if Mahler's sources and mildly schizoid composing style do sustain this analysis for those who find it compelling. Indeed, I have always been somewhat reticent to accept the image of Mahler as an avant-garde modernist, as opposed to a sui generis late romantic, in that both device-wise (you can trace the proto-serialism Adorno sees here to Beethoven, and the explosive affect-centered structure to other romantics, even if Mahler takes both much farther) and emotively ... yet all the same it is very good to read what Adorno, a friend to some of the greatest composers of all time and a highly trained classical pianist in his own right, has to say on these matters.
To be honest, I am reticent to recommend this book, not because it is bad or 'too hard', but rather because it is intensely autistic and requires both an intimate familiarity with the obscure emotional spaciality of Mahler's music and also with Adorno's obscurer dialectical terminology, which would make this book almost nonsensical to all but a very select few readers. Still, as opposed to his Schoenberg-Stravinsky book, Adorno is vastly more concrete and musical, and most of the book, as I said above, is mostly just rapid-fire listing of favorite sections of Mahler's music and rapturous delight in identifying the distinctive melodic and harmonic intrusions that happen so commonly in Mahler's music -- essentially complete analyses are given of the fourth and ninth symphonies, and he cites the fifth and sixth so often that practically every measure is covered. Also helpful are the myriad of small details Adorno knows about Mahler, both musically (such as his analysis of the harmonic schema of the seventh, and the motivic origins throughout all symphonies) and conceptually (he answers many questions I've had for a long time, such as the function of the adagietto in the fifth).
This book has, then, the character of a long and in-depth conversation with an extremely intelligent friend on the music of Mahler, but I am not entirely sure I agree completely -- Adorno seems to, a posteriori, discuss Mahler under the presumption that Mahler's dialectics follow the same rules as the Marxist dialectics of the Frankfurt school, which leads to some strange claims such as that the morbidities of the ninth symphony are an expression of the inescapable character of capitalism (perhaps better than Leonard Bernstein's claim, that this symphony was a prediction that the holocaust would happen 30 years later), or that the jubilant character of the eighth symphony are false primarily because Adorno feels that true dialectic, generically, can have a happy conclusion. Moreover, I think the layers of irony that are attributed here to Mahler are not necessarily useful since, while one can definitely characterize their emotive affect as such, the evocative nature of the symphonies and their complex devices precede the metaphysical analysis of affect; that is to say, for example, nothing about the fourth symphony requires that its image of pastorality, as Adorno argues, is necessarily an impossible image, since while it will always remain a musical work there is nothing that necessitates this metaphysical framing, even if Mahler's sources and mildly schizoid composing style do sustain this analysis for those who find it compelling. Indeed, I have always been somewhat reticent to accept the image of Mahler as an avant-garde modernist, as opposed to a sui generis late romantic, in that both device-wise (you can trace the proto-serialism Adorno sees here to Beethoven, and the explosive affect-centered structure to other romantics, even if Mahler takes both much farther) and emotively ... yet all the same it is very good to read what Adorno, a friend to some of the greatest composers of all time and a highly trained classical pianist in his own right, has to say on these matters.
November 19, 2007
Adorno writes so beautifully and precisely about music that it really is the next best thing to actually hearing it. I think he gets to the heart of Mahler as an antagonistic outsider dealing with the decaying and disintegrating scraps of civilization, and he illustrates it with copious musical examples. Some of his descriptions illuminate Mahler's work as a whole with more clarity and poetry than I could imagine, like some of my favorite passages:
"The image corresponding to breakthrough is damaged because the breakthrough has failed, like the Messiah, to come into the world. To realize it musically would be at the same time to attest to its failure in reality. It is in music's nature to overreach itself. Utopia finds refuge in its no man's land."
"Free as only one can be who has not himself been entirely swallowed by culture, in his musical vagrancy he picks up the broken glass by the roadside and holds it up to the sun so that all the colors are refracted."
"Mahler's movements, in their entirety, are streams on which is borne whatever is caught up in them, yet without its particularity being entirely absorbed."
And my favorite, about DAS LIED VON DER ERDE and the Ninth:
"The Symphony's specific relation to DAS LIED, however, is likely to be found in the experience that in youth infinitely much is apprehended as a promise of life, as anticipated happiness, of which the aging person recognizes, through memory, that in reality the moments of such promise were life itself. The missed and lost possibility is rescued by the very late Mahler, by contemplating it through the inverted opera glass of childhood, in which it might still have been possible."
The book is so rich in passages like this one, which makes it a great literary experience while also sharpening your ears.
"The image corresponding to breakthrough is damaged because the breakthrough has failed, like the Messiah, to come into the world. To realize it musically would be at the same time to attest to its failure in reality. It is in music's nature to overreach itself. Utopia finds refuge in its no man's land."
"Free as only one can be who has not himself been entirely swallowed by culture, in his musical vagrancy he picks up the broken glass by the roadside and holds it up to the sun so that all the colors are refracted."
"Mahler's movements, in their entirety, are streams on which is borne whatever is caught up in them, yet without its particularity being entirely absorbed."
And my favorite, about DAS LIED VON DER ERDE and the Ninth:
"The Symphony's specific relation to DAS LIED, however, is likely to be found in the experience that in youth infinitely much is apprehended as a promise of life, as anticipated happiness, of which the aging person recognizes, through memory, that in reality the moments of such promise were life itself. The missed and lost possibility is rescued by the very late Mahler, by contemplating it through the inverted opera glass of childhood, in which it might still have been possible."
The book is so rich in passages like this one, which makes it a great literary experience while also sharpening your ears.
January 30, 2021
Adorno gülle gibi ağır, ondan kısa öz birkaç aforizma çıkarırsanız ne güzel. Zaten kitap tamamen beyin çağlaması şeklinde akıyor(!), adam dolmuş beyler. O anlattıkça ipin ucu da kaçıyor.
Yine de bazı yorumları o kadar vurucu ki, insan budur işte demeden geçemiyor. Yazarak çizerek not alarak altından belki kalkılabilecek bir kitap, okumak bazen işkenceye dönebilir, zaten Mahler'i merak etmiyorsanız kitap ilk 10 sayfasında bana müsade der gider.
Mahler'in senfonilerini romanlara benzetmesi, roman kurgusunda senfoniler geri çağırmalar 'flashbackler' romandaki kişilerin olay kurgusuna gerektiğinde katılması gibidir. Yeni temalar süpriz yaratmaz, tanıdık ve beklenir gelir.
Birkaç çevirdiğim alıntı ile dağılalım.
"Romanlarda olduğu gibi Mahler'de de bir felaketin eşiğinde mutluluk gelişir. Mahler'de mutluluk, kumarbazın kaybı ve mahvolması kadar zıtına zincirlenmiş olarak kalır."
"Ve genel olarak Mahler'in temaları, bir romandaki karakterler gibi, özlerini değiştirmeden koruyan temalar geliştirirken tanınabilir."
Yine de bazı yorumları o kadar vurucu ki, insan budur işte demeden geçemiyor. Yazarak çizerek not alarak altından belki kalkılabilecek bir kitap, okumak bazen işkenceye dönebilir, zaten Mahler'i merak etmiyorsanız kitap ilk 10 sayfasında bana müsade der gider.
Mahler'in senfonilerini romanlara benzetmesi, roman kurgusunda senfoniler geri çağırmalar 'flashbackler' romandaki kişilerin olay kurgusuna gerektiğinde katılması gibidir. Yeni temalar süpriz yaratmaz, tanıdık ve beklenir gelir.
Birkaç çevirdiğim alıntı ile dağılalım.
"Romanlarda olduğu gibi Mahler'de de bir felaketin eşiğinde mutluluk gelişir. Mahler'de mutluluk, kumarbazın kaybı ve mahvolması kadar zıtına zincirlenmiş olarak kalır."
"Ve genel olarak Mahler'in temaları, bir romandaki karakterler gibi, özlerini değiştirmeden koruyan temalar geliştirirken tanınabilir."
Read
August 1, 2025Adorno seems to be characterising Mahler’s work in a manner that clearly links it between the ensuing atonality and the beforehand late Romanticism, with the inner construction of the works being defined by the permeating schwebend ('floating') markings, so-called centrifugal forces (as opposed to superordinate forms) - and in this sense being closest to Schoenberg - alongside the character of the gargantuan, the striving towards perfection, towards something the existence of which in music points towards the inexistence of it in reality, and in this sense being very Romantic. But also how these elements are premised on each other, are co-constitutive.
This both on one hand illustrates that Adorno wasn’t just preoccupied with atonality as an ad hoc theoretical justification for incidental personal taste (he shows an obvious musical and theoretical appreciation for squarely tonal music) and on the other makes me appreciate Mahler more than perhaps I did before.
This both on one hand illustrates that Adorno wasn’t just preoccupied with atonality as an ad hoc theoretical justification for incidental personal taste (he shows an obvious musical and theoretical appreciation for squarely tonal music) and on the other makes me appreciate Mahler more than perhaps I did before.
May 13, 2019
Adorno demonstrates the agility and power of his approach to art in this book. Mahler, according to Adorno, met the objective demands of the form of orchestral music in such a way that his material revealed the negative truths of the general course of history. This is not music about the existential meaning of life, the jargon of authenticity as Adorno might say, but about the paradoxes of social life that at once confer happiness and isolation on the outcasts of society. "Objective temper needs subjective intervention to be realized" (p. 128): such is the role of the successful artist in laying bare negative truths.
August 6, 2024
Adornos musikfilosofiske værk om komponisten Gustav Mahler har været en rigtig svær omgang at læse. Jeg ved simpelthen ikke nok om hverken musikteori eller Mahlers konkrete æuvre til at forstå tekstens komplekse analyse… Læg dertil at Adorno skriver notorisk ikke-logisk, fragmenteret og nogle steder nærmest kabbalistisk kryptisk…. Måske Klim kunne have brugt nogle af deres Murakami-$$ til at hyre en ordentlig forordsforfatter!
Men jeg tror jeg forstod at Adorno forsøger at udvide musikteorien, så den kan bruges som analyseværktøj til også at forstå klassiske værkers placering og indflydelse på deres historiske og kulturelle samtid, og at Mahler (der ellers er senromantikker) gennem nogle bevidste sammenbrud i hans symfonier markerer sig som en form for latent modernist - måske ligefrem en budbringer af det moderne!
Så måske er Mahler den første modernist, den første der med Adornos ord viser, at metafysikkens umulighed bliver den sidste metafysik og hvis det er tilfældet er han vel værd at lytte til. Jeg tror i hvert fald jeg vil sætte mig ned og prøve at sætte et symfoni på anlægget nu.
Men jeg tror jeg forstod at Adorno forsøger at udvide musikteorien, så den kan bruges som analyseværktøj til også at forstå klassiske værkers placering og indflydelse på deres historiske og kulturelle samtid, og at Mahler (der ellers er senromantikker) gennem nogle bevidste sammenbrud i hans symfonier markerer sig som en form for latent modernist - måske ligefrem en budbringer af det moderne!
Så måske er Mahler den første modernist, den første der med Adornos ord viser, at metafysikkens umulighed bliver den sidste metafysik og hvis det er tilfældet er han vel værd at lytte til. Jeg tror i hvert fald jeg vil sætte mig ned og prøve at sætte et symfoni på anlægget nu.
January 10, 2025
I'm sure this book is a must read if you are planning to do some academic work on Mahler - or if you're just a huge Mahler Fan. Potentially, then, this is a nice read
For me, reading this was an intellectual feat. During long parts of it, I felt like Adorno's just saying shit. His writing about music is a little too metaphoric/allegorical for me. There seems to be a disconnect between his allegories and his musical analysis. This makes it kinda hard to understand, what is the underlying argument here: that Mahlers music is great because it is not pretending that synthesis (or maybe even happiness "Glück") is achievable anymore (c. Adornos Negative Dialectics). But at the same time, it is still working out a way to compose the whole and the individual...? It would have been great to get an physiognomy of how that works beyond the immediate analysis of the symphonies.
For me, reading this was an intellectual feat. During long parts of it, I felt like Adorno's just saying shit. His writing about music is a little too metaphoric/allegorical for me. There seems to be a disconnect between his allegories and his musical analysis. This makes it kinda hard to understand, what is the underlying argument here: that Mahlers music is great because it is not pretending that synthesis (or maybe even happiness "Glück") is achievable anymore (c. Adornos Negative Dialectics). But at the same time, it is still working out a way to compose the whole and the individual...? It would have been great to get an physiognomy of how that works beyond the immediate analysis of the symphonies.
March 18, 2023
It's nice to read Adorno about a subject he's passionate about. A lot more positive than what you'll find in his other essays, about music or else. There's still a degree of criticism found in the things that he uses to contrast Mahler, like 'modern culture' or Wagner, but are mostly passing remarks. As for his perspective of Mahler, it's a joy to read in itself while always presenting a profound analysis: superficially easy to grasp but also very in depth.
January 31, 2018
(Je ne l'ai pas lu en entier, mais plusieurs parties.)
Adorno donne de bons et précis éléments d'analyse de la musique de Mahler, que ce soit sur le ton, la forme, le caractère, ou même l'aspect plus personnel et idéologique de sa musique.
Adorno donne de bons et précis éléments d'analyse de la musique de Mahler, que ce soit sur le ton, la forme, le caractère, ou même l'aspect plus personnel et idéologique de sa musique.
December 16, 2020
Interesting but difficult read, worth it to understand adorno’s philosophy of aesthetics alongside Hegel and Kant
August 18, 2022
shit sucked ass bruh adorno a fucking dumbass, franfurt school at its best (its not good)
December 12, 2022
me estoy enamorando de la obra de Mahler aunque no aguanto dos sinfonías seguidas...
June 2, 2025
adorno is a nerd
December 7, 2022
Not an expert in music so every bit of the book feels right to me.
November 14, 2016
'Mahler was a poor yea-sayer. His voice cracks, like Nietzsche’s, when he proclaims values, speaks from mere conviction, when he himself puts into practice the abhorrent notion of overcoming on which the thematic analyses capitalize, and makes music as if joy were already in the world. His vainly jubilant movements unmask jubilation, his subjective incapacity for the happy end denounces itself'.
Inside the book, there is the most typical view on Mahler for 40-50s, staying on a huge wave of post-war criticism towards XIX century and modernist art. Writing about composer's style and aesthetics, Adorno's being ultimatively harsh and irreconcilable, and in a strange way it reminds Schoenberg writing style, who in general had an opposite view on Mahler' works. Both of them surely rooted in a deep tradition of german criticism culture, especially Schumann and Wagner's essays, which gives - and it feels very well in the book - some sort of fleur of the 'school'.
This book is a document of an epoch, controversial and well written. The highest point of agonal yesterday.
Inside the book, there is the most typical view on Mahler for 40-50s, staying on a huge wave of post-war criticism towards XIX century and modernist art. Writing about composer's style and aesthetics, Adorno's being ultimatively harsh and irreconcilable, and in a strange way it reminds Schoenberg writing style, who in general had an opposite view on Mahler' works. Both of them surely rooted in a deep tradition of german criticism culture, especially Schumann and Wagner's essays, which gives - and it feels very well in the book - some sort of fleur of the 'school'.
This book is a document of an epoch, controversial and well written. The highest point of agonal yesterday.
September 6, 2007
In my view, a FAR better account of Mahler's creative genius and social importance (ie, in a constructive, progressive sense) than that provided by Stuart Feder in Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis. Much of Adorno's writing was lost on me, as he often discussed musical theory, with which I am hardly familiar--but his social/philosophical interpretations of Mahler are fantastic and, I would say, much-needed in our world.
December 31, 2020
Adorno thinks Mahler’s symphonies are antithetical and musical gasp of Romantic Age. Mahler musically suspends expectations and jumbled symphonic writing pieces together a fragmented century. He operates through negativity, rather than affirmation, saying a resounding No! to music status quo. Pessimist dialectic, Marxist and unspiritual. Influential Mahler critic, provides substantial thought, not final word.
May 5, 2022
Es un análisis de la obra de Mahler desde una perspectiva exclusivamente teórica. Adorno apela a sus profundos conocimientos musicales para desentrañar la obra del último gran compositor de esta talla.
Me resultó todo un reto leer algo así, sin conocer mayor cosa de teoría musical y, sobre todo, sin estar familiarizado con la obra de Mahler. Ahora que me pongo a escucharlo trato de encontrar las aristas que Adorno, músico y compositor, además de filósofo, describió tan bien.
Me resultó todo un reto leer algo así, sin conocer mayor cosa de teoría musical y, sobre todo, sin estar familiarizado con la obra de Mahler. Ahora que me pongo a escucharlo trato de encontrar las aristas que Adorno, músico y compositor, además de filósofo, describió tan bien.
July 7, 2014
read it for an article I'm writing....lol definitely not "pleasure reading"
May 31, 2015
Hard going, but not to be missed.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews