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
2 - The development of a theory 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 assumption of an historical tendency in musical material contradicts the traditional conception of the material of music. This material is traditionally defined … as the sum of all sounds at the disposal of the composer. The actual compositional material, however, is as different from this sum as is language from its total supply of sounds. … All its specific characteristics are indications of the historical process … Music recognizes no natural law …
Adorno, Philosophy of New Music (1949)In Adorno's very early writings the idea of ‘musical material’ itself remains as yet rather unfocused. It is only later that the concept receives its most comprehensive formulation - that is, in Philosophie der neuen Musik. Indeed, the whole argument of that book is predicated on the idea that it is not what ‘musical sounds’ are in themselves – their natural, physical qualities – that is significant, but rather what they have become in any particular instance. Adorno maintains that it is in the relationships of sounds one to another, which are historical in character, that social relations are sedimented, albeit in purely musical terms. Nevertheless, although Philosophie der neuen Musik offers a version of the concept in its apparently most complete form, it is argued here that a clearer understanding of what is meant by ‘musical material’ is to be gained from a careful examination of how the idea of the mediation of music and society unfolds in Adorno's work from the late 1920s up to the period of his exile from Germany in the mid-1930s.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Adorno's Aesthetics of Music , pp. 65 - 107Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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