That's a vey good post, I suppose it had to be that long. After having read much Adorno on music, I see him as representing the high modernists in a very dogmatic way. Adorno is an interesting form of penitentiary to go through--and should be required for anyone who really wants to understand music and be intellectual as well. This means also that some actual musicians need to read him and some don't need to be bothered with him at all. Ultimately, I am glad he is behind me, as I find him the most hateful and humorless philosopher of the 20th century. He is simply inhuman, joyless. But, like other joyless types-say, Freud or Marx--he makes you think and then try to figure out ways to put them out of business.

Philip Glass is actually just pop and always has been. He is almost precisely between the purely rock-oriented audiences and the classical musicians, and would like to appeal to both. He does do this by appealing to the worst in both. Choreographers have made the stupidest works to his pieces--whether Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp or Lar Lubovitch. It's almost about 'today's inhuman' world--and it is more to such music as this, in fact much more so than to jazz or the popular song--that Adorno's critique actually makes some real sense. You could never say that Glass did any kind of socially-mediated thing like the modernists did, preventing them from deteriorating with the rotting things they dealt with, he just gave more musical pictures of the rot, but without a single one of them being anything but patterns, and without a single one of them being even as memorable as a jingle for MacDonald's, much less good popular song of the last r4 decades, which would include Broadway, Sinatra/Streisand, etc., as well as Bowie and even all sorts or rock that I may not personally care about.

Some may need Adorno in order to do certain kinds of musical creation, but you cannot really create at all with an oppressive old bore like that always trying to make sure you never have any fun.

Off-topic, I also hate his critiques of Heidegger, Hegel and Kant. I hate his discussions of Auschwitz too, except they are understandable even if they could be meaningful only if everybody immediately stopped doing everything, perished, or turned into stone like Adorno's brain did. I'm so glad he didn't live any longer than he did--the discussion of 'the light popular cinema' and such things as 'enjoying spending the money only that you spent going to hear a Toscanini concert and not the pure 'use-value' of the music' are among his most hateful productions; and that's saying a lot.
patrick | 01.27.07 - 5:13 pm | #

dialectic of enlightenment is awesome.
will | 01.27.07 - 6:56 pm | #

I like Philip Glass. Do you want to gather the stones or should I?
Anthony Paul Smith | 01.27.07 - 6:56 pm | #

I agree with Patrick. Adorno ideologized everything, and his very considerable intellectual power was moblized behind a dogmatic philosophy. He had terrible blindspots about music. He hated jazz, which in his day I think meant early-Louis-Armstong-type-stuff. He made condescending remarks about Duke Ellington, as though Ellington were a second-rate follower of Delius (who was himself second rate). He had no idea what it was that made jazz different and interesting; if Schoenberg wasn't doing something, it didn't exist. He even slighted Bartok, whom Schoenberg admired, because bartok didn't sign on to the whole atonal program.

Adorno's work about music is so bad that I could never trust anything he did about anything.

He did have some interesting things to say about the culture biz, but it was so terribly monomaniacal.
John J Emerson | Homepage | 01.27.07 - 8:40 pm | #

Yeah, I really think it is ironic that Adorno does in fact seem to be fairly dogmatic about music when his philosophy is supposed to be an example of a Kantian "awakening from dogmatic slumber." Also, I really think you're right, Patrick, about Philip Glass (I used him intentionally to imply that so-called "classical music"--and thus what some aesthetes want to consider "serious"--is not immune to this at all). I also really think you're right John--though he has a point about what he calls "commercial jazz" (aka "new age" jazz, or "elevator" jazz). Take this passage for instance: "Pseudo-individualization is what fools us about predigestion. Extremes of it are the improvisations in commercial jazz, which jazz journalism feeds upon. They stress instantaneous invention even though the metric and harmonic schema keeps them in such narrow bounds that they in turn might be reduced to a minimum of basic forms. In fact, the chances are that most of what is served up as improvisation outside the innermost circles of jazz experts will have been rehearsed" (31, emphasis mine). He is absolutely right about the restriction of the forms of "pop" jazz...this is of course completely foreign to any REAL jazz though--such as the Dave Holland Quintet, or Jon Scofield (where the artists are completley interacting with and transforming the forms). And I especially appreciate your comment about Bartok...he was just flat out wrong about him.

So, new question: Is there any "popular" music today like a David Bowie that cannot be so easily reduced to Adorno's categorization? I throw my vote out for Sufjan Stevens--he is incredibly popular right now (here, just for fun, go to iTunes, look at his album "Enjoy your Rabbit" and read some of the reviews..at least for a laugh, if not for a demonstration of what "popular" means for us today), and yet there seem to be no bounds to his musical creativity...thanks for all the comments.

Oh, by the way Patrick, isn't his critique of Kant fairly similar to Hegel's? Is it Hegel's critique you miss, or am I misinformed? I'm still pretty much a newbie to Adorno's work on the whole. Peace.
Dave Belcher | 01.27.07 - 9:05 pm | #

Except the 'new age jazz' that such a critique would be applicable to, and to which Glass might as well be victim as well, didn't exist in Adorno's time. Even Muzak would have been relatively novel during the last years of his life. I've never read a formal study, but New Age Music seems to start in the 70's as part of the back-to-nature movements which were less interesting when they began to work: in the 60s they were a total mess, and could be documented and then dismantled; by the 70's and early 80's, enormous tedium had set in and the ashrams were using Shirley MacLaine for K.P. duty if she went to one. You still can go into the spiritualist 'east/west' type bookstores and get the combination of incense and droning syrup-sounds, which sounds like they are trying to do that Pasadena-Hindu business, but imitating only the tambura drone sound and half the time just using electronic means even so. At some point, New Age Jazz began to converge with real music, as with Chick Corea and others (his Scientology is not important here), at about the same time health food store products began to go mainstream. This is just my informal perception of it over the years. Usually, this was accompanied by a greater desire to be 'cool' among the old New Age set and things like dread coffee, for example, were no longer forbidden except among diehards, and Celeb Buddhism which allowed every possible license overtook too much Veda-reading and 'Om'-intoning. This is just stuff thrown out there, because the real music that comes under the label 'New Age' is later, but actually much less diseased than the 70s organic-food-store stuff (which also had some really tiresome waterfall/birdsong/ocean wave recordings that were supposed to pass as some sort of 'musique concrete.'

Adorno was still writing at a time when many American intellectuals were still suffering from 'Europe envy' (lesser the artists themselves, who couldn't have cared less what Adorno thought of them. Can you imagine anything more unimaginable then Duke Ellington worrying about Adorno's putrescent nonsense about his own supernal music?) and while there is still some of this, it becomes less and less relevant. But it's obvious enough why people would have paid a lot of attention to Adorno, and he did have an understanding of the tough-as-nails music of that one period--with such things as Boulez's 'Le marteau sans Maitre'. (By now, you can find reactions which are even far more infuriating than some of Adorno's, as when Kyle Gann wrote in the Village Voice in the late 90's of 'Le Marteau' as being 'a useless work', and trying to mount quite semi-literate polemics on Boulez. He's the sort of critic that makes you appreciate at least some of Adorno.)
patrick | 01.27.07 - 9:37 pm | #

Your newly posed question is very good, and not one I can contribute anything to, since I cannot keep up with pop music. Living in New York, I have seen the total decline of the American musical comedy, in which there is never now a score written that contains a song that becomes popular. The advent of Andrew Lloyd Webber's hugely popular tourist extravaganzas explains all that.

As for the critiques of the other philosophers, I'm not going to go into it because I'm not really equipped to do so, having only read them through once; and that was in 1999. My negative reaction, though, had to do with, in some cases, personal hatreds of the philosophers in question and for reasons having to do with some of their anti-semitism (not just Heidegger's). This is understandable, but not very interesting.

One thing Adorno is very good at, once you don't care that his personal preferences are precisely what determine what 'great music' is, is describing what the 'artwork' is as a phenomenon itself which the 'artist' is closest to, but is not identical with. His essays on 'nature beauty' and 'art beauty' are both worth reading. But Nietzsche's mess with Wagner, no matter that he can't do everything the way he wants to (I mean I think Nietzsche doesn't like it that he can't be both Nietzsche and Wagner too), is more interesting than what Adorno says. Much better still to read some of Boulez's writings on all these composers, whether Wagner, 'Schoenberg is Dead', Webern, Debussy, than Adorno.

I think, though, that what we react against most strongly in Adorno's writing about music and the Arts in general, is that he had no understanding of
American culture in any way worth paying attention to.
patrick | 01.27.07 - 9:50 pm | #

He hated jazz, which in his day I think meant early-Louis-Armstong-type-stuff.

If you include among his days all his living days, the jazz of his day also included Interstellar Space and Joseph Holbrooke (the band with Bailey, Oxley and Bryars).

I'm not sure it's possible to say anything interesting about Adorno on pop music. Surely it's obvious that the circumstances of reception are as important as, if not more i. than, those of creation, nor did we need Badiou to point this out (nor, afaict, does reference to Badiou clarify anything); surely, too, it's obvious that anything Adorno wants to say about popular music can be turned right around and applied to whatever unpopular music he or anyone wants to adduce in contradistinction (Glass, ha ha, but Schönberg as well). (Obviously specifically musical comments about the structure of compositions won't apply, but the sociological/commercial/etc critiques surely will.)

You want someone popular, in certain circles, as well as creative and uncompromising? Mick Barr, or the guys in Wolf Eyes, or Anthony Braxton (circles will differ). And hey, For Alto was recorded in 1969, the year of Adorno's death.

But then, I think Kyle Gann is quite interesting and intelligent.

... Enjoy Your Rabbit is, as far as I can tell, the exception in Stevens' opera, the rest of which is fairly self-similar. He's unusual on the current pop scene, but he's not boundlessly creative. Nor ought he be.
ben wolfson | Homepage | 01.27.07 - 10:56 pm | #

Patrick,

The way his personal preferences intrude in such ways as denouncing someone for their anti-semitism, for instance, reminded me of Vladimir Jankelevitch--who I enjoy reading infinitely more than Adorno--who would not even talk about German music...thanks again for the clarifications--especially to my mistaken anachronism.

Ben,

Sorry this was all a bit too transparent--just thinking out loud, really. My references to Badiou were less trying to clarify than give a context for some of what Adorno was intending, since I know folks have read Badiou here, while A.'s writings on music sociology might be foreign to some.

Yeah, I perhaps stepped over the line saying that Sufjan's creativity seems to have no bounds...but, at the same time, even within the "self-similar" nature of most of his work, it is unusual, but unusual in the way in which it interacts with the forms, as Adorno puts it. I find this to be interesting...you might think it's boring. But, maybe I'm just not an aesthete.
Dave Belcher | Homepage | 01.28.07 - 7:45 am | #

The weird thing is that a lot of Adorno's stuff would be persuasive if he had been writing about Britney Spears instead of Louis Armstrong. I had a big making-strange event once when realized exactly what Adorno had been saying; I'd been agreeing with him.

They stress instantaneous invention even though the metric and harmonic schema keeps them in such narrow bounds that they in turn might be reduced to a minimum of basic forms.

This is an example of deafness. As soon as he was able to see that someone was playing 4/4 C major I II V I (etc.), he lost interest. He wasn't able to figure out what he should be listening for.
John J Emerson | Homepage | 01.28.07 - 12:54 pm | #

I don't follow pop music attentively, but a lot of Bjork's stuff seems be making a musical space of its own (in a very good way).
John J Emerson | Homepage | 01.28.07 - 12:55 pm | #

Oh, I like Stevens' music a lot.
ben wolfson | Homepage | 01.28.07 - 1:05 pm | #

Thanks John. Yeah, as I was reading this essay I constantly found myself forgetting that he was writing in a much earlier period than I was thinking (and thus to different styles, etc.)--hence the comment about "new-age jazz" that Patrick had to clear up for us. In that sense he is helpful for us...which is why I keep pointing back at pop music.

Ben, good to hear. There are times when I am listening to his music--like for more than a half hour--that it tends to get a bit monotonous...I just haven't heard too many other people who play guitar, banjo and glackenspiel all at the same time. But, while we're at it, let's throw out some more: Neutral Milk Hotel doesn't really fit into any specific genre--perhaps that's why they aren't that popular...or what the hell about Tom Waits...I mean Jesus that guy listens to three radios at the same time--and hears each one! But, again, he's not all that popular. I suppose we need to rethink first of all what "popular" really means for us today, but while recognizing the severe poverty of Adorno's categories altogether.
Dave Belcher | Homepage | 01.28.07 - 1:52 pm | #

Zizek on Adorno:

"Let me give you an interesting anecdote, which may amuse you. Officially, for the youth generation the standard position is "Adorno is bad; he hated jazz. Marcuse is good; solidarity with the students and so on." I know people in Germany who knew Adorno and I know people, such as Fred[ric] Jameson, who knew Marcuse. Marcuse was much nastier. To make a long story short, Marcuse was a conscious manipulator. Marcuse wanted to be popular with students, so he superficially flirted with them. Privately, he despised them. Jameson was Marcuse's student in San Diego, and he told me how he brought Marcuse a Rolling Stones album. Marcuse's reaction: Total aggressive dismissal; he despised it. With Adorno, interestingly enough, you always have this margin of curiosity. He was tempted, but how does something become a hit? Is it really true that the hitmaking process is totally manipulated. For example, if you look in the Introduction to Music Sociology, in the chapter on popular music, Adorno argues that a hit cannot be totally planned. There are some magic explosions of quality here and there. Adorno was much more refined and much more open at this level."

http://www.electronicbookreview....n/ desublimation
marcegoodman | 01.28.07 - 6:05 pm | #

Marcuse also thought that motorcycles were fascist.

He was right on that one, though, you fucking biker Nazis.
John J Emerson | Homepage | 01.28.07 - 6:11 pm | #

What does it matter if Marcuse was 'nastier'? Everybody is 'nastier' than somebody. Anyway, I should put the link up from Lenin's Tomb today, of Adorno's Zionism and the Adorno/Marcuse correspondence.
patrick | 01.28.07 - 7:10 pm | #

http://leninology.blogspot.com/ 2...ntolerance.html

et voila. and just coincidence that it popped up the same day Dave posted his, I think.
patrick | 01.28.07 - 7:12 pm | #

Incidentally lenin also links to the documentary I mentioned. Almost made me buy his big book.
Anthony Paul Smith | 01.28.07 - 7:17 pm | #

I do regret that this anecdote was so disparaging of Marcuse. I did love the part about Jameson bringing Marcuse a Rolling Stones record regardless of Marcuse's reaction. And I also liked the idea of Adorno acknowledging, at least in Z's understanding, the mystery involved in what becomes a hit.
Anonymous | 01.28.07 - 7:30 pm | #

That was me, anonymously.
marcegoodman | 01.28.07 - 7:33 pm | #

In my dotage, I have come to loathe popular culture. Maybe the same thing happened to Adorno.
The ephemera of popular culture, the logrolling, the gee-whizness of it all, really turns me off.
I don't hate people for wasting their time on popular culture, but I don't see why I have to approve of their taste or even care about what they think of this or that film or band or whatever it is.
Hattie | Homepage | 01.29.07 - 2:25 am | #

Marc,

Thanks for the Zizek quote...I couldn't remember him saying anything about Adorno--outside of A and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. This is mostly right, and worth mentioning. After he goes through showing the way in which a hit is produced to cater to "salability," he says that we can only go so far with popular music as a mass product--the way he puts it is, it must not be too "literally conceived." The point he's making is to distinguish popular music from strict industrial mass production--it's still a "craftsmanship," of sorts. And this corresponds to the quote from my post beginning with, "On the other hand..." I don't know that I would say "explosions" of "magic," but there is room for quality in Adorno. No doubt he was analytic about his approach, but I wouldn't at all say he was "open," as Zizek seems to be (somewhat) suggesting. But, maybe he is much more open than Marcuse--don't know much about Marcuse.
Dave Belcher | Homepage | 01.29.07 - 8:30 am | #

Sorry,

"room for quality in popular music, for Adorno.
Dave Belcher | Homepage | 01.29.07 - 8:31 am | #

In fairness to Marcuse, here is a relevant counter-anecdote from the late Ellen Willis' remembrance upon Marcuse's passing:

I met Marcuse once; a friend and I were in La Jolla, so we went to see the great man. I liked him. The main thing I remember is that at one point he demanded , "Tell me-is there a way to define the difference between art and nonart?" I felt like a student being tested; anyway, I suspected him of thinking rock-and-roll was trash. With trepidation, I said "No." He nodded and looked pleased. "I agree with you!"
marcegoodman | 01.29.07 - 8:54 am | #