Essays on Music

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by Theodor Adorno,

Introduction by Richard Leppert,

Translated by Susan H. Gillespie Selected, Notes and Commentary by Richard Leppert

University of California Press

Due/Published August 2002, 752 pages, paper

ISBN 0520231597

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.

"The developing variations of Adorno's life-long involvement with musical themes are fully audible in this remarkable collection. What might be called his 'literature on notes' brilliantly complements the 'notes to literature' he devoted to the written word. Richard Leppert's superb commentaries constitute a book-length contribution in their own right, which will enlighten and challenge even the most learned of Adorno scholars."--Martin Jay

"This book is both a major achievement by its author-editor and a remarkable act of scholarly generosity for the rest of us. Until now, English translations of Adorno's major essays on music have been scattered and often unreliable. Until now, there has been no comprehensive scholarly treatment of Adorno's musical thinking. This volume remedies both problems at a single stroke. It will be read equally--and eagerly--for Adorno's texts and for Richard Leppert's commentary on them, both of which will continue to be essential resources as musical scholarship seeks increasingly to come to grips with the social contexts and effects of music. No one knows Adorno better than Leppert, and no one is better equipped to clarify the complex interweaving of sociology, philosophy, and musical aesthetics that is central to Adorno's work. From now on, everyone who reads Adorno on music, whether a beginner or an expert, is in Richard Leppert's debt for devoting his exceptional gifts of learning and lucidity to this project."--Lawrence Kramer

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