Essays on Music
- by Theodor Adorno (Author) , Richard Leppert (Editor) , Susan H. Gillespie (Translator)
- August 2002
- First Edition
- Hardcover $78.95, £66.00 Paperback $41.95, £35.00
Title Details
Rights: Available worldwide Pages: 760 ISBN: 9780520231597 Trim Size: 6 x 9 Illustrations: 1 music example
Introduction
Adorno was a genius; I say that without reservation. . . . [He] had a presence of mind, a spontaneity of thought, a power of formulation that I have never seen before or since. One was unable to grasp the emerging process of Adorno's thoughts; they emerged, as it were, finished. That was his virtuosity. . . . When you were with Adorno you were in the movement of his thought. Adorno was not trivial; it was denied him, in a clearly painful way, ever to be trivial. But at the same time, he lacked the pretensions and the affectations of the stilted and "auratic" avant-garde that one saw in George's disciples. . . . By all notable standards, Adorno remained anti-elitist. Incidentally, he was a genius also in that he preserved certain child-like traits, both the character of a prodigy and the dependence of one "not-yet-grownup." He was characteristically helpless before institutions or legal procedures. Jürgen Habermas, "A Generation Apart from Adorno"
They saw themselves as Jews, as left-wing intellectuals and as critical sociologists in an environment which had been more or less completely purged of people like themselves, and in which all the signs had long since been pointing clearly to the restoration of the old order. The unique symbiosis represented by German-Jewish culture [whose liberal traditions had been a marked feature of Frankfurt University prior to Nazism] had been irreversibly destroyed. Apart from Horkheimer and Adorno, none of the distinguished lecturers or professors from the heyday of Frankfurt University—the last years of the Weimar Republic—returned. Horkheimer, Adorno and Pollock could count on being met with patience and good intentions precisely because they were, and remained, the exceptions. 28
Whoever doesn't entertain any idle thoughts doesn't throw any wrenches into the machinery. Theodor Adorno, "Meaning of Working through the Past"
About the Book
Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of the principal figures associated with the Frankfurt School, wrote extensively on culture, modernity, aesthetics, literature, and—more than any other subject—music. To this day, Adorno remains the single most influential contributor to the development of qualitative musical sociology which, together with his nuanced intertextual readings of musical works, gives him broad claim as a continuing force in the study of music. This long-awaited collection of twenty-seven essays represents the full range of Adorno's music writing. Nearly half of the essays appear in English for the first time; all of the essays are fully annotated; and the previously translated essays have been corrected and missing text restored, making this volume the definitive resource on Adorno's musical thought.
About the Author
Richard Leppert is Samuel Russell Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. His previous books include Art and the Committed Eye: The Cultural Functions of Imagery (1996) and The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body (California, 1993).
“Adorno is a great stylist.” — The Wire
"To understand the significance of music for the musicians who created it and the society in which it was produced is therefore a challenge to music-lovers. Perhaps no writer on music devoted more energy to this task than Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, and the translations into English of his writings on philosophy and music and their diffusion have been multiplying in recent years while, at the same time, his ideas have become widely influential in the US and Europe." — New York Review of Books
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments Translator's Note Abbreviations Introduction (by Richard Leppert) 1. LOCATING MUSIC: SOCIETY, MODERNITY, AND THE NEW Commentary (by Richard Leppert) Music, Language, and Composition (1956) Why Is the New Art So Hard to Understand? (1931) On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music (1953) On the Problem of Musical Analysis The Aging of the New Music (1955) The Dialectical Composer (1934) 2. CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND LISTENING Commentary (by Richard Leppert) The Radio Symphony (1941) The Curves of the Neddle (1927/1965) The Form of the Phonograph Record Opera and the Long-Playing Record (1969) On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938) Little Heresy (1965) 3. MUSIC AND MASS CULTURE Commentary (by Richard Leppert) What National Socialism Has Done to the Arts (1945) On the Social Situation of Music (1932) On Popular Music [With the assistance of George Simpson] (1941) On Jazz (1936) Farewell to Jazz (1933) Kitsch (c. 1932) Music in the Background (c. 1934) 4. COMPOSITION, COMPOSERS, AND WORKS Commentary (by Richard Leppert) Late Style in Beethoven (1937) Alienated Masterpiece: The Missa Solemnis (1959) Wagner's Relevance for Today (1963) Mahler Today (1930) Marginalia on Mahler (1936) The Opera Wozzeck (1929) Toward an Understanding of Schoenberg (1955/1967) Difficulties (1964, 1966)
Bibliography Source and Copyright Acknowledgments Index
- Finalist, Otto Kinkeldey Award, American Musicological Society
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Review of Theodor Adorno's "Essays on Music"
2003, Essays in Philosophy
This is a collection of twenty-seven of Theodor Adorno's essays on music, some newly translated for this volume (twelve translated into English for the first time by Susan Gillespie). The essays are grouped into four sections, each preceded by Richard Leppert's commentary: "Locating Music: Society, Modernity, and the New"; "Culture, Technology, and Listening"; "Music and Mass Culture"; and "Composition, Composers, and Works." Leppert has also contributed an introductory essay that is both biography and introduction to "the intellectual tradition within which Adorno's thought developed" (vii). The earliest of the essays dates from 1927, the latest from 1969 (the year of Adorno's death). Essays in Philosophy, Vol. 4 No. 2, June 2003
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My article explores some aspects of Theodor W. Adorno's work in relation to contemporary music in general and electroacoustic music in particular. Let us recall that Adorno never seriously considered the latter, which he regarded more as a technological bricolage than as a legitimate source for the production of works. One of the purposes of this paper is to demonstrate that under the definition of musique informelle, Adorno opens wide the door to all musics, even those that do not depend directly on musical writing.
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Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) is a gigantic figure in musical aesthetics, and many still consider his views relevant, not only for analyzing the modernist music he was inspired by and that he inspired himself, but also for more contemporary developments in classical music. John Adams (b. 1947) is arguably the foremost contemporary composer who has tried to break away from the modernist musical language that was still very much dominant when he began his career as a composer, and he has been very outspoken about his antipathy toward the Schoenbergian-inspired compositional techniques that are at the background of Adorno's musical aesthetics, particularly his Philosophy of New Music. By presenting an interpretation of Adams's music that draws on some key aspects of John Dewey's aesthetics – aesthetic experience, rhythm, and his appreciation of common culture – I raise the question of how relevant Adorno's seminal book still is for understanding the aesthetics of the new music of today.
Dalia Mariasin
Michael Lydon
Adorno and Popular Music. A Constellation of Perspectives
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Introduction to the sociology of music
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Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of the principal figures associated with the Frankfurt School, wrote extensively on culture, modernity, aesthetics, literature, and -- more than any other subject -- music. To this day, Adorno remains the single most influential contributor to the development of qualitative musical sociology which, together with his nuanced intertextual readings of musical ...
Theodor W. Adorno - Essays on Music Selected, with Introduction, Commentary, and Notes by Richard Leppert. Translations by Susan H. Gillespie and others Contents
This volume makes available for the first time a general collection in English of Adorno's essays on music that surveys the breadth of his work, and at the same time provides detailed background commentary. The twenty-seven Adorno essays included here-some short, others long-are divided into four major sections, preceded by a general introduction. The introduction provides a biographical ...
Created Date 1/27/2009 5:34:04 PM
In music, by contrast, the meaning of the word 'form' is traditionally narrower, more succinct. It extends to the musical relations which are realised in time. It refers in the first instance to the articulation of larger contexts. As is well known, these reach down into the minutest cells of the events unfolding in time, into theme and motive.
Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music Today art in its entirety, and music in partic ular, feels the shattering effects of that very process of enlightenment in which it participates and upon which its own progress depends.
336 pages ; 25 cm "Quasi una Fantasia contains Adorno's own selection from his essays and journalism over more than three decades. In its analytical profundity it can be compared to his Philosophy of Modern Music and to the monographs on Berg, Mahler and Wagner.
Essays on Music. Theodor Adorno. University of California Press, Aug 8, 2002 - Music - 743 pages. "A book of landmark importance. It is unprecedented in its design: a brilliantly selected group of essays on music coupled with lucid, deeply incisive, and in every way masterly analysis of Adorno's thinking about music.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of the principal figures associated with the Frankfurt School, wrote extensively on culture, modernity, aesthetics, literature, and--more than any other subject--music. To this day, Adorno remains the single most influential contributor to the development of qualitative musical sociology which, together with his nuanced intertextual readings of musical works ...
Philosophy of modern music by Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969 Publication date 2007 Topics Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation, Stravinsky, Igor, 1882-1971 -- Criticism and interpretation, Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874-1951, Stravinsky, Igor, 1882-1971, Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics, Music theory -- History -- 20th century, Music theory Publisher London : Continuum ...
Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music (2003) Translator's preface Hartmut Scheible's pithy and useful brief introduction to Adorno's life and work Scheible, Hartmut, Theodor W. Adorno. Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt's Monographien. Hamburg: 1989. The following references are to pp. 8 (quote) and 17. opens with the observation that, biographically, Adorno's familiarity with and ...
Music resembles language in the sense that it is a temporal sequence of articulated sounds which are more than just sounds. They say something, often something human. The bet-ter the music, the more forcefully they say it. The succession of sounds is like logic: it can be right or wrong. But what has been said cannot be detached from the music. Music creates no semiotic1 system.
This black-and-white juxtaposition of Adorno and Benjamin -- while perhaps valuable as a reductive pedagogical device for presenting an historical debate on aesthetics and politics - depends in large measure on some- what hasty readings of Adorno's essays on popular music and jazz,2 and of the 1.
1See Max Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996) for a comprehensive introduction. Most valuable are the substantial commentaries that introduce a selection of Adorno's writings on music in Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music, selected, with intro., commentary, and notes by ...
by Paddison, Max Publication date 2004 Topics Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969 -- Criticism and interpretation, Music -- Social aspects, Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics, Music -- 20th century -- History and criticism, Popular culture Publisher London : Kahn & Averill Collection internetarchivebooks; printdisabled; inlibrary Contributor Internet ...
Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts presents monographs, essay collec-tions, and short books on philosophy and aesthetic theory. It aims to publish books that show the ... yond Resemblance," in Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music (Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 2006); "Second Salvage," in
This is a collection of twenty-seven of Theodor Adorno's essays on music, some newly translated for this volume (twelve translated into English for the first time by Susan Gillespie).
Created Date 3/5/2007 1:51:48 PM
Introduction to the sociology of music by Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969 Publication date 1976 Topics Music -- Social aspects Publisher New York : Seabury Press Collection internetarchivebooks; inlibrary; printdisabled Contributor Internet Archive Language English; German Item Size 780270384 xii, 233 p. ; 22 cm Translation of Einleitung in die ...