Beethoven

The Philosophy of Music

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by Theodor Adorno,

Edited by Rolf Tiedemann,

Translated by Edmund Jephcott

Stanford University Press

Due/Published July 2002, 268 pages, paper

ISBN 0804747113

New in paper (F02)

When Theodor W. Adorno died in 1969, he left behind an unfinished work on Beethoven, which had occupied him fitfully for more than thirty years. His notes and texts, which remain in fragmented form, were described by Adorno as a "diary of his experiences of Beethoven."

Adorno originally conceived the idea of a major study of Beethoven in 1937, although his writings on the composer go back several years earlier. Sketches and jottings for the project accumulated through the years, although he succeeded in producing only a handful of completed articles out of this mass of material. Adorno said that he could never find the time to take the material a stage further, to extend and structure it, but it is also likely that he felt incapable of bringing the fragments to a sense of completion in terms of the philosophical interpretation he felt they demanded.

The segments analyze compositions ranging from the Bagatelles for Piano (op. 126) to the Missa Solemnis, and they address such subjects as Beethoven's use of form and tonality and the division of his work into early, "classical," and late styles. The editor has organized the segments to bring out their inherent logic and relatedness, and has incorporated those few texts on Beethoven that Adorno managed to complete, as well as extracts from larger published works that came out of the project. He has added copious explanatory notes and an appendix that serves as an invaluable elaboration of Adorno's frequently cryptic aphorisms.

"Great works of art, Adorno knew, always resist the attempt to subsume them under theoretical categories. In the case of a supreme artist like Beethoven, a lifetime of futile efforts by Adorno to complete a major philosophical study bore ironic witness to this insight. The struggle to write his impossible book left behind a wealth of tantalizing fragments, however, which have the added value of revealing Adorno's own process of intellectual production. Masterfully reconstructed and annotated by Rolf Tiedemann, they are now available in Edmund Jephcott's elegant translation. In their very 'failure' they demonstrate the abiding power of Adorno's claim that the dialectic of art and philosophy must remain unreconciled and negative."--Martin Jay

"Many of the entries are very brief, but even the more substantial ones possess an intimacy and spontaneity that a finished book would undoubtedly lack. . . . Just as Beethoven's sketches reveal aspects of his compositional thinking, Adorno's notes take us into the process of a mind at work. . . . Tiedemann's editorial notes are voluminous and very enlightening, as is his foreword. Edmund Jephcott has done an exemplary job of translating Adorno's complex ideas and literary style. . . . For Beethoven scholars as well as readers interested in the work of one of the most important writers on music in this century, it is an indispensable contribution." --Notes

"With remarkable skill and erudition, Tiedemann has marshaled these fragments into a coherent volume. . . . The reader is able to follow and appreciate the acuteness and force of Adorno's lines of argument on both Beethoven's compositions and music in general." --Philosophy in Review