Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Constellations: towards a critical method
- 2 The development of a theory of musical material
- 3 The problem of mediation
- 4 A material theory of form
- 5 Social content and social function
- 6 The historical dialectic of musical material
- 7 The disintegration of musical material
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index of names
- Subject index
6 - The historical dialectic of musical material
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Constellations: towards a critical method
- 2 The development of a theory of musical material
- 3 The problem of mediation
- 4 A material theory of form
- 5 Social content and social function
- 6 The historical dialectic of musical material
- 7 The disintegration of musical material
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index of names
- Subject index
Summary
The historical moment is constitutive of art works. The authentic ones are those which surrender themselves unconditionally to the material content [Stoffgehalt] of their time, without the presumption of timelessness. They are the unconscious historiography of their epoch; this, in the end, is what constitutes their mediation as a form of cognition.
Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (1970)‘The forms of art record the history of mankind more impartially than do documents’, writes Adorno in Philosophie der neuen Musik. As we have seen, Adorno argues that the truth and authenticity of art works is not to do with the amount of ‘historical relevance’ or ‘social commitment’ consciously invested in them by their creators. It has instead to do with the extent to which the artist responds to the demands of the material ‘in itself’ – demands which are historical and social in character because the material is already historically pre-formed. Thus, the philosophical interpretation of musical works involves the deciphering of their historical and social content through tracing the mediating links between autonomous works and the heteronomy of empirical reality – links which are embedded, however, in the material and structure of the works themselves.
Although predicated on the music of Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School and viewed from the perspective of the avant-garde, Adorno's concept of musical material does not simply represent the progressive and ideological view of music history characterized by continuity which is suggested by certain commentators (for instance de la Fontaine and others, including Dahlhaus).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Adorno's Aesthetics of Music , pp. 218 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993