5.
Adorno’s contrast between light and serious music: organic
development vs prefabricated building blocks for prefabricated feeling
Introduction to the
Sociology of Music
Theodore W Adorno
Seabury Press
ISBN 0-8164-92662-2
pages 21-22
...
Conversely, as long as the
objective spirit was not yet wholly planned and steered by administrative
centers, the higher art would recall the extent to which its own principle
involved injustices to the many. Time and again it felt the need of something
else, of something that would resist the formative esthetic will and that might
serve as the touchstone of that will-and so, whether unintentionally or
intentionally, it would absorb elements of the lower music. Some of this shows
in the old custom of parody, of setting spiritual texts to profane melodies.
Bach did not shrink from borrowing from below even in his instrumental works,
as in the Quodlibet of the "Goldberg Variations," and neither Haydn
nor the Mozart of The Magic Flute or
Beethoven would be conceivable without an interaction of what by then were
separated spheres. The last instance of their reconciliation, utterly stylized
and teetering as on a narrow mountain by pass, was The Magic Flute-an instant still mourned and longed for in such
structures as Strauss and Hofmannsthal's Ariadne
auf Naxos. There were times far into the nineteenth century when it was
possible to write decent popular music. Its esthetic decay is as one with the
irrevocable and irrelative dissociation of the two realms.
...
page 26
... The higher music's
relation to its historical form is dialectical. It catches fire on those forms,
melts them down, makes them vanish and return in vanishing. Popular music, on the other hand, uses the
types as empty cans into which the material is pressed without interacting with
the forms. Unrelated to the forms, the substance withers and at the same time
belies the forms, which no longer serve for compositional organization.
[emphasis added]
If in the realm “above” the realm of “higher music” was art for the sake
of art, Adorno leveled a charge that in modern era “lower music” had devolved
into formula for the sake of formula. Popular music, of which jazz was merely a
subset, was mass produced technocratic formula wielded for the sake of social
control, a new variation on older opiates for the masses. Such was Adorno’s claim in the 1960s, but in
an earlier work, a project dealing with radio programs that was eventually
published as Current of Music and
also in Essays on Music, Adorno made
a more detailed argument as to what he meant.
Adorno’s arguments from what was originally Current of Music are so
extensive and explanatory it seems best to quote Adorno at length:
Essays on Music: Selected,
with introduction, commentary and notes by Richard Leppert; new translations by
Susan H. Gillespie
Theodore Adorno
University of California
Press
ISBN 0-520-22672-0
ISBN 0-520-23159-7
(c) 2002 by Regents of
University of California
ON POPULAR MUSIC (from
Current of Music)
pages 439-440
Serious music, for
comparative purposes, may be thus characterized: Every detail derives its musical sense from
the concrete totality of the piece which, in turn, consists of the life
relationship of the details and never of a mere enforcement of a musical
scheme. For example, in the introduction of the first movement of Beethoven's
Seventh Symphony the second theme (in C major) gets its true meaning only from
the context. Only through the whole does it acquire its particular lyrical and
expressive quality--that is, a whole built up of its very contrast with the cantus firmus-like character of the
first theme. Taken in isolation the second theme would be disrobed to
insignificance. Another example may be found in the beginning of the
recapitulation over the pedal point of the first movement of Beethoven's Apassionata. By following the preceding
outburst it achieves the utmost dramatic momentum. By omitting the exposition
and development and starting with this repetition, all is lost.
Nothing corresponding to
this can happen in popular music. It would not affect the musical sense if any
detail were taken out of the context; the listener can supply the
"framework" automatically, since it is a mere musical automatism
itself. The beginning of the chorus is replaceable by the beginning of innumerable
other choruses. The interrelationship among the elements or the relationship of
the elements to the whole would be unaffected.
In Beethoven, position is important only in a living relation between a
concrete totality and its concrete parts. In popular music, position is
absolute. Every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog
in a machine.
...
page 441
To sum up the difference: in
Beethoven and in good serious music in
general--we are not concerned here with bad serious music which may be as rigid
and mechanical as popular music--the detail virtually contains the whole and
leads to the exposition of the whole, while, at the same time, it is produced
out of the conception of the whole. In popular music the relationship is fortuitous.
The detail has no bearing on a whole, which appears as an extraneous framework.
Thus, the whole is never altered by the individual event and therefore remains,
as it were, aloof, imperturbable, and unnoticed throughout the piece. At the
same time, the detail is mutilated by a device which it can never influence and
alter, so that the detail remains inconsequential. A musical detail which is
not permitted to develop becomes a caricature of its own potentialities.
For those who have not read Adorno for themselves, it’s necessary to
point out that he stopped to make a point about what was not in his
argument. He was not claiming the
Viennese classicists in the era of Haydn had more sophisticated rhythms or
harmonies. The opposite could often be
the case:
pages 441-443
The previous discussion
shows that the difference between popular and serious music can be grasped in
more precise terms than those referring to musical levels such as "lowbrow
and highbrow," "simple and complex," "naive and sophisticated."
For example, the differences between the spheres cannot be adequately expressed
in terms of complexity and simplicity.
All works of the earlier Viennese classicism are, without exception,
rhythmically simpler than stock arrangements in jazz. Melodically, the wide intervals of a good
many hits such as "Deep Purple" or "Sunrise Serenade" are
more difficult to follow per se than
most melodies of, for example, Haydn, which consist mainly of circumscriptions
of tonic triads, and second steps. Harmonically, the supply of chords of the
so-called classics is invariably more limited than that of any current Tin Pan
Alley composer who draws from Debussy, Ravel, and even later sources. Standardization and non-standardization are
the key contrast terms for the difference. [emphasis added]
Structural standardization aims at standard reactions. [emphasis original] Listening to popular music is
manipulated not only by its promotors but, as it were, by the inherent nature
of this music itself, into a system of response mechanisms wholly antagonistic
to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society. This has nothing to
do with simplicity and complexity. In serious music, each musical element, even
the simplest one, is "itself," and the more highly organized the work
is, the less possibility there is of substitution among the details. In hit
music, however, the structure underlying the piece is abstract, existing
independent of the specific course of the music. This is basic to the illusion that certain
complex harmonies are more easily understandable in popular music than the same
harmonies in serious music. For the
complicated in popular music never functions as "itself" but only as
a disguise or embellishment behind which the scheme can always be perceived. In
jazz the amateur listener is capable of replacing complicated rhythmical or
harmonic formulas by the schematic ones which they represent and which they
still suggest, however adventurous they appear. The ear deals with the
difficulties of hit music by achieving slight substitutions derived from the
knowledge of the patterns. The listener, when faced with the complicated,
actually hears only the simple which it represents and perceives the
complicated only as a parodistic distortion of the simple. [emphasis
added]
No such mechanical
substitution by stereotyped patterns is possible in serious music. Here even the simplest event necessitates an
effort to grasp it immediately instead of summarizing it vaguely according to
institutionalized prescriptions capable of producing only institutionalized
effects. Otherwise the music is not "understood." Popular music, however, is composed in such a
way that the process of translation of the unique into the norm is already
planned and, to a certain extent, achieved within the composition itself.
The composition hears for the listener. This is how
popular music divests the listener of his spontaneity and promotes conditioned
reflexes. Not only does it not require his effort to follow its concrete
stream; it actually gives him models under which anything concrete still
remaining may be subsumed. The schematic
build-up dictates the way in which he must listen while, at the same time, it
makes any effort in listening unnecessary.
Popular music is "predigested" in a way strongly resembling
the fad of "digests" of printed material. It is this structure of
contemporary popular music, which in the last analysis, accounts for those
changes of listening habits we shall later discuss. [emphasis added]
Now there are several counter-arguments that can be given to all of
this. If serious music lacks (or lacked) the formulaic aspects
that Adorno imputes to popular music and badly made serious music, how could
music educators have ever settled on describing sonata forms as having
expositions, developments, and recapitulations?
Wasn’t one of the signal developments of nineteenth era music pedagogy
reducing the myriad formal possibilities of first movement form into a
“textbook” sonata form? Conversely,
could not a music theorist take a popular song such as Stevie Wonder’s “Living
for the City” and demonstrate that the shift from a circle of fifths based
blues verse and chorus to a chain of minor thirds bridge gives us an example of
a popular song in which the constituent structural parts are not only not
interchangeable but use different approaches to tonal organization?
Nevertheless, Adorno’s charge that popular music is a set of formulas
is worth taking seriously even if we can argue that formulas can be found even
in “serious music”. One of the crises of
the later Romantic era was that the formulas for the musical sublime had become
predictable enough that even with expanded chromaticism, and even with what
Leonard B. Meyer described as disguising schemata through sheer size, the law
of diminishing returns on the late Romantic style seemed to be in play. As the microtonal composer Ben Johnston put
it, it was by the time equal temperament had finally become standardized in
Western music that someone like Arnold Schoenberg could believe there was a
crisis of tonality being “used up”, a verdict with which Adorno famously
agreed.
As famous as he was for advocating twelve-tone music and atonality,
Adorno would by the 1950s conclude that integral serialism and the
counter-movement of aleatoric music were both dead ends. I’ll get to that topic later. Adorno argued that the dream factories of the
culture industry manufactured illusions of freedom and agency that could be
purchased, consumed and experienced vicariously as freedom and agency. This was what made the culture industry
pernicious:
page 462
Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley
may be dream factories. But they do not merely supply categorical
wish-fulfillment for the girl behind the counter. She does not immediately identify herself
with Ginger Rogers marrying. What does occur may be expressed as follows: when
the audience at a sentimental film or [hearing] sentimental music become aware
of the overwhelming possibility of happiness, they dare to confess to
themselves what the whole order of contemporary life ordinarily forbids them to
admit, namely, that they actually have no part in happiness. What is supposed
to be wish-fulfillment is only the scant liberation that occurs with the
realization that at last one need not deny oneself the happiness of knowing
that one is unhappy and that one could be happy. The experience of the shop
girl is related to that of the old woman who weeps at the wedding services of
others, blissfully becoming aware of the wretchedness of her own life. Not even
the most gullible individuals believe that eventually everyone will win the
sweepstakes. The actual function of sentimental music lies rather in the
temporary release given to the awareness that one has missed fulfillment.
The emotional listener listens
to everything in terms of late romanticism and of the musical commodities
derived from it which are already fashioned to fit the needs of emotional
listening. They consume music in order to be allowed to weep. They are taken in
by the musical expression of frustration rather than by that of happiness. The influence of the standard Slavic
melancholy typified by Tchaikovsky and Dvorak is by far greater than that of
the most "fulfilled" moments of Mozart or of the young
Beethoven. The so-called releasing
element of music is simply the opportunity to feel something. But the actual
content of this emotion can only be frustration. Emotional music has become the
image of the mother who says, "Come and weep, my child." It is
catharsis for the masses, but catharsis which keeps them all the more firmly in
line. One who weeps does not resist any more than one who marches. Music that permits its listeners the
confession of their unhappiness reconciles them, by means of this
"release", to their social dependence.
page 468
... we cannot content
ourselves with merely stating that spontaneity has been replaced by blinded
acceptance of the enforced material. Even the belief that people today react
like insects and are degenerating into mere centers of socially conditioned
reflexes, still belongs to the facade. Too well does it serve the purpose of
those who prate about the New Mythos and the irrational powers of community.
Rather, spontaneity is consumed by the tremendous effort which each individual
has to make in order to accept what is enforced upon him--an effort which has
developed for the very reason that the veneer veiling the controlling
mechanisms has become so thin. In order
to become a jitterbug or simply to "like" popular music, it does not
by any means suffice to give oneself up and to fall in line passively. To
become transformed into an insect, man needs that energy which might possibly
achieve his transformation into a man. [emphasis added]
By the end of his life Adorno saw a crisis in the arts. The problem was not simply that popular music
was popular, the problem in the arts was more foundational and existential:
Aesthetic Theory
Theodore Adorno
Copyright (c) 1997 by the
Regents of the University of Minnesota
Continuum
ISBN 0-8264-6757-1
page 1
It is self-evident that
nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its
relation to the world, not even its right to exist. ...
page 2
...
As a result of its
inevitable withdrawal from theology, from the unqualified claim to the truth of
salvation, a secularization without which art would never have developed, art
is condemned to provide the world as it exists with a consolation that—shorn of
any hope of a world beyond—strengthens the spell of that from which the
autonomy of art wants to free itself. ...
Adorno went so far as to declare that the absolute work of art
converged with the absolute commodity I Aesthetic
Theory. While he set himself against a bourgeois art religion of uplift
Adorno himself seemed smitten with an art religion himself, one in which
Beethoven still had a place but which needed a Schoenberg, or maybe in the wake
of Schoenberg’s passing a Beckett or a Ligeti.
If the entire realm of art had a crisis of legitimacy in Adorno’s
estimation it was not going to be saved “from below”. Adorno had cast his
verdict on popular musics and would not retract it for anything, even if he had
granted that it was possible even into the nineteenth century to write actually
good popular music:
pages 319-320
The demise of art, which is
today being proclaimed with as much glibness as resentment, would be false, a
gesture of conformism. The desublimation, the immediate and momentary gain of
pleasure that is demanded of art, is inner-aesthetically beneath art; in real
terms, however, that momentary pleasure is unable to grant what is expected of
it. The recently adopted insistence on culturing uncultivation, the enthusiasm
for the beauty of street battles, is a reprise of futurist and dadaist actions.
The cheap aestheticism of short-winded politics is reciprocal with the
faltering of aesthetic power. Recommending
jazz and rock-and-roll instead of Beethoven does not demolish the affirmative
lie of culture but rather furnishes barbarism and the profit interest of the
culture industry with a subterfuge. The allegedly vital and uncorrupted nature
of such products is synthetically processed by precisely those powers that are
supposedly the target of the Great Refusal: These products are the truly
corrupt. [emphasis added]
page 340
... The absence of
theological meaning, however modified, culminates in art as the crisis of its
own meaning. The more ruthlessly artworks draw the consequences from the
contemporary condition of consciousness, the more closely they themselves
approximate meaninglessness. The more ruthlessly artworks draw the consequences
from the contemporary condition of consciousness, the more closely they
themselves approximate meaninglessness. They thereby achieve a historically
requisite truth, which, if art disowned it, would condemn art to doling out
powerless consolation and to complicity with the status quo. At the same time,
however, meaningless art has begun to forfeit its right to exist; in any case,
there is no longer any art that has remained inviolable. ...
In his work The Empire of
Non-Sense Jacques Ellul wrote
that Adorno’s realization was that in a technocratic age art was compelled by
the ideology of technique toward two dead ends—art as obvious propaganda and
art as a rarified and impenetrable blank slate upon which a coterie of arts
critics, scholars and journalists imposed their own theories. Art either had a
meaning so obvious nobody needed a critic to explain it or art had meaning only
once a critic explained that it had
meaning. Art for the sake of art was no
longer plausible, the powers behind arts patronage became too easy to see, but
once seen, art as the servant of powers ripped away any illusion that art was
more than a servant of a state or an industry.
Adorno died well before Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” could
become the formula of Hollywood. He had
already inveighed against Hollywood, as we’ve seen, but had Adorno lived long
enough to see Star Wars, and hear or read George Lucas’ use of Campbell’s idea,
Adorno might have said that the Star Wars franchise was the apotheosis of the
aesthetic of the philistine. So what was
Adorno’s definition of a philistine?
page 346
... Aesthetic experience
first of all places the observer at a distance from the object. This resonates
in the idea of disinterested observation. Philistines are those whose relation
to artworks is ruled by whether and to what degree they can, for example, put
themselves in the place of the actors as they come forth; this is what all
parts of the culture industry are based on and they foster it insistently in
their customers. ...
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