Philosophy of

­Modern Music
 TITLES IN THE BLOOMSBURY REVELATIONS SERIES

The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol J. Adams

Aesthetic Theory, Theodor W. Adorno
Philosophy of Modern Music, Theodor W. Adorno
The Oresteia, Aeschylus
Being and Event, Alain Badiou
Infinite Thought, Alain Badiou
Theoretical Writings, Alain Badiou
On Religion, Karl Barth
The Language of Fashion, Roland Barthes
The Intelligence of Evil, Jean Baudrillard
Key Writings, Henri Bergson
I and Thou, Martin Buber
The Tomb of Tutankhamun: Volumes 1–3, Howard Carter
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: Volumes I–IV,
Sir Winston S. Churchill
Never Give In!, Sir Winston S. Churchill
The Boer War, Sir Winston S. Churchill
The Second World War, Sir Winston S. Churchill
The World Crisis: Volumes I–V, Sir Winston S. Churchill
In Defence of Politics, Bernard Crick
Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel DeLanda
Cinema I, Gilles Deleuze
Cinema II, Gilles Deleuze
Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze
Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze
A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Anti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Dissemination, Jacques Derrida
Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Michael Dummett
Taking Rights Seriously, Ronald Dworkin
Discourse on Free Will, Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther
The Theatre of the Absurd, Martin Esslin
Education for Critical Consciousness, Paulo Freire
Pedagogy in Process, Paulo Freire
Pedagogy of Hope, Paulo Freire
Pedagogy of the Heart, Paulo Freire
Marx’s Concept of Man, Erich Fromm
To Have or To Be?, Erich Fromm
 The Beginning of Knowledge, Hans-Georg Gadamer
The Beginning of Philosophy, Hans-Georg Gadamer
Truth and Method, Hans-Georg Gadamer
All Men Are Brothers, Mohandas K. Gandhi
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, René Girard
Violence and the Sacred, René Girard
Among the Dead Cities, A.C. Grayling
Towards the Light, A.C. Grayling
The Three Ecologies, Félix Guattari
Mindfulness, Martin Heidegger
The Essence of Truth, Martin Heidegger
The Odyssey, Homer
Eclipse of Reason, Max Horkheimer
The Nazi Dictatorship, Ian Kershaw
Language of the Third Reich, Victor Klemperer
Everyday Life in the Modern World, Henri Lefebvre
Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre
Modes of Modern Writing, David Lodge
Libidinal Economy, Jean-François Lyotard
After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre
Time for Revolution, Antonio Negri
Apologia Pro Vita Sua, John Henry Newman
Film Fables, Jacques Rancière
The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Rancière
Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure
Philosophy, Roger Scruton
Understanding Music, Roger Scruton
The Five Senses, Michel Serres
The Precariat, Guy Standing
An Actor Prepares, Constantin Stanislavski
Building A Character, Constantin Stanislavski
Creating A Role, Constantin Stanislavski
My Life In Art, Constantin Stanislavski
States and Markets, Susan Strange
What is Art?, Leo Tolstoy
Interrogating the Real, Slavoj Žižek
The Universal Exception, Slavoj Žižek

Some titles are not available in North America.

iv
Philosophy of
­Modern Music

Theodor W. Adorno
Translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
 Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA

www.bloomsbury.com

BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in 1947 by Oxford University Press, New York

Theodor W. Adorno Philosophie der neuen Musik © Europäische,

Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt a. M. 1958

This edition © Continuum 2007

Bloomsbury Revelations edition first published 2016 by Bloomsbury Academic

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or

refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted
by Bloomsbury or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: PB: 978-1-4742-8886-6

eBook: 978-1-3502-2520-6
ePDF: 978-1-3502-2521-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Cover design: clareturner.co.uk

Cover image: © Michael Kurtz/Getty Images

Series: Bloomsbury Revelations

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

 Contents

Translators’ Introduction ix
Preface xiii

Introduction 1
Choice of subject matter 1
New conformism 2
False musical consciousness 4
‘Intellectualism’ 7
Modern music unprotected 10
The antinomy of modern music 12
Growing indifferentism 13
On method 16

Schoenberg and Progress 19

Disturbance of the work 19
Inherent tendency of musical material 21
Schoenberg’s criticism of illusion and play 24
Dialectics of loneliness 27
Loneliness as style 30
Expressionism as objectivity 32
Total organization of the elements of music 34
Total development 36
The concept of twelve-tone technique 41
Musical domination of nature 43
Loss of freedom 45
Twelve-tone melos and rhythm 48
Differentiation and coarsening 52
Harmony 54
Instrumental timbre 59
Twelve-tone counterpoint 61
viii Contents

Function of counterpoint 65
Form 66
The composers 72
Avant-garde and theory 78
The renunciation of material 82
Cognitive character 87
Attitude towards society 91

Stravinsky and Restoration 95

Authenticity 95
Sacrifice and the absence of intention 97
The hand organ as a primeval phenomenon 100
Sacre and African sculpture 101
Technical elements in Sacre 103
‘Rhythm’ 106
Identification with the collective 108
Archaism, modernism, infantilism 110
Permanent regression and musical form 114
The psychotic aspect 116
Ritual 117
Alienation as objectivity 118
Fetishism of the means 119
Depersonalization 120
Hebephrenia 121
Catatonia 123
Music about music 125
Denaturation and simplification 127
Dissociation of time 129
Music – a pseudomorphism of painting 132
Theory of ballet music 133
Modes of listening 135
The deception of objectivism 138
The final trick 139
Neoclassicism 142
Experiments in expansion 144
Schoenberg and Stravinsky 146

Note to the Third Edition 151

Notes 153
Index 177
Translators’ Introduction

This book, published for the first time in 1948 in Germany, is a product of
the years of exile which Theodor Adorno spent in the United States while
National Socialism triumphed and fell in his European homeland. It is an
irony of the modern historical process that this book, written in America,
only now becomes accessible to the English-speaking reader.
The Philosophy of Modern Music is a pioneer effort in a unique direction.
Adorno is among the first to work upon the design of a sociology of music.
Even that designation, however, is too narrow to categorize accurately the
text which here follows. The book is of most direct concern to the reader
with a thorough understanding of music, but it is of equally valid importance
to the philosopher, the sociologist, and the man of literature.
The significance of the book – and this particularly for the American
reader – can perhaps be indicated by viewing it as somewhat of a companion
piece to another German work created in the United States: the novel Doctor
Faustus by Thomas Mann, completed in California in 1947. Both Mann and
Adorno resided in the Los Angeles vicinity at this time. Mann had already
undertaken his composition when Adorno brought him the manuscript of
the Philosophy, thinking it might well be of interest to the novelist. In his diary
Mann recalled: ‘Here indeed was something important. The manuscript
dealt with modern music both on an artistic and on a sociological plane.
Its spirit was remarkably forward-looking, subtle, and deep, and the whole
thing had the strangest affinity to the idea of my book, to the “composition”
in which I lived and moved and had my being. The decision was made of
itself: this was my man.’1
Adorno was to remain ‘his man’ through the years spent on the novel,
serving the author as a regular consultant. Mann made record of evenings
during which he read his work to Adorno, repeatedly expressing his gratitude
to him and his realm of thought. This is perhaps as broad a testimony to the
importance of the Philosophy of Modern Music as is to be found.
Translators’ Introduction

Mann offered a brief biographical sketch of Adorno, emphasizing those

qualities and characteristics in the man which are most obviously present in
the following text:

Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno was born in 1903 in Frankfurt-am-

Main. His father was a German Jew; his mother, herself a singer,
was the daughter of a French army officer of Corsican – originally
Genoese – descent and of a German singer. He is a cousin of Walter
Benjamin. . . . Adorno – he has taken his mother’s maiden name – is
a person of similar mental cast, uncompromising, tragically brilliant,
operating on the highest level. Having grown up in an atmosphere
entirely dominated by theory (political theory as well) and artistic,
primarily musical interests, he studied philosophy and music. In 1931
he assumed the post of lecturer at Frankfurt University and taught
philosophy there until he was expelled by the Nazis. Since 1941 he has
been living in Los Angeles, so close to us as to be almost a neighbor.
All his life this man of remarkable intellect has refused to choose
between the professions of philosophy and music. He felt that he
was actually pursuing the same thing in both divergent realms. His
dialectic turn of mind and bent towards social history is interlinked
with a passion for music. The phenomenon is no longer unique
nowadays and is doubtless connected with the whole complex
of problems of our time. In pursuit of this passion, he studied
composition and piano, at first with music instructors in Frankfurt,
then with Alban Berg and Eduard Steuermann in Vienna. From
1928 to 1931 he was editor of the Vienna Anbruch, and was active in
promoting radical modern music.2

In the Philosophy of Modern Music Adorno has singled out two

composers who, for him, represent the two mainstreams in Western musical
composition dominant thus far in the twentieth century. The composers
are Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. The study on Schoenberg was
written in 1941; the essay on Stravinsky in 1948. The introduction, intended
to relate the two studies, was actually written following the completion of
the Stravinsky study.
The mainstreams which Schoenberg and Stravinsky represent are
inextricably bound up with the social forces which produced them and are
intrinsically in dialectical opposition to one another. In essence, Schoenberg
represents the more progressive forces; Stravinsky the more reactionary.

x
 Translators’ Introduction

Adorno’s point of departure is the socio-historical context within which

all human endeavors – in this case, particularly art, and specifically music –
are to be viewed. He states that forms of art reflect the history of man even
more truthfully than do documents.
Music, therefore, does not manifest the machinations of natural laws.
Adorno’s Hegelian outlook is evident in his assumption that there are
only historical tendencies present within the musical subject matter itself.
It is Schoenberg who has most uncompromisingly developed the logical
consequences of these tendencies in this century. According to Adorno,
Stravinsky’s failure is that he does not develop but, rather, acquiesces to
collective tendencies of the times. He clings to outmoded sounds and to the
obsolete shells of forms. It is important to realize at the outset, however, that
the directions taken by Schoenberg and Stravinsky do not represent totally
unrelated and hostile camps. For Adorno they manifest two extremes within
a single context.
It can also easily be anticipated that Adorno views the twelve-tone
system as a product of historical necessity, as it was seen by its founder,
Schoenberg. Its origin was the next logical step following late-nineteenth-
century chromaticism. This perspective gives Schoenberg his unique socio-
historical position.
Adorno expounds at length on the basic principles of twelve-tone technique:
the basic presentations of the row and its various possible permutations and
derivations. He believes that Schoenberg’s uncompromising consistency is
illustrated by two important aspects of his technique: that none of the twelve
tones may dominate another and that, essentially, none of the tones is to be
repeated before the other eleven have been heard.
The difficulty of Adorno’s German is a matter of legend to those familiar
with his works in the original language. The intensity of his thought results
in a hard-wrought syntax, often of esoteric vocabulary, which at times defies
comprehension upon first sight and makes translation seem impossible.
A negative view of this particular type of idiom might well employ a term
used by Adorno to characterize the language of others: jargon. Adorno is
often guilty of falling into a jargon which is detrimental to whatever he
would hope to express. In so doing, he takes a place in a long, though not
necessarily enviable or admirable, German tradition.
Adorno, however, is to be praised for the honesty with which he
admitted to this tendency in the Philosophy of Modern Music. In 1964 he
wrote a particularly well-defined attack upon the language of the German
philosopher Martin Heidegger. In a footnote to that work Adorno pointed

xi
Translators’ Introduction

out that he was totally unaware of his own inclination towards jargon at the
time of the Philosophy and came to realize it only when a German critic
pointed it out to him. He concluded: ‘Even he who despises jargon is by no
means secure from infection by it – consequently all the more reason to be
afraid of it.’3
Anne G. Mitchell
Wesley V. Blomster
Boulder, Colorado

xii
Preface

This book attempts, with the help of an Introduction, to combine two studies
originally separated by a period of seven years. The structure and character
of the entire book warrant a note of explanation.
In 1938 the author published an essay ‘On the Fetish Character in Music
and the Regression of Hearing’ in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung.1 The
intention at that time was to portray the change in function of music in
today’s world, to point out the inner fluctuations suffered by musical
phenomena through their integration into commercialized mass production,
and to illustrate, at the same time, how certain anthropological shiftings in
standardized society extend deeply into the structure of musical hearing. At
that time, the author was already making plans to include in his dialectical
treatment the state of composition itself, which is at all times the decisive
factor influencing the state of music. He clearly perceived the force of the
sociological totality even in apparently derivative fields such as music. He
could not deceive himself into thinking that this art – in which he had
been schooled – was even in its pure and uncompromising form excluded
from such an all-dominating materialization. For precisely in its endeavor
to defend its integrity, music produces from within itself traits of that very
nature against which it struggles. It was his concern, therefore, to recognize
the objective antinomies in which art, truly remaining faithful to its own
demands, without regard for effect, is unavoidably caught up in the midst
of heteronomous reality. The antinomies can be overcome only if they are
pursued without illusion to their final conclusion.
These ideas gave rise to the study on Schoenberg, which was not written
down until 1940–41. It was not published at that time, however, and, except
for a very small circle at the New School for Social Research in New York,
was accessible only to a few people. It now appears in its original form with
several additional comments on works by Schoenberg composed after 1941.
After the war, when the author decided upon publication in German,
it seemed necessary to accompany the essay on Schoenberg with a study
on Stravinsky. For if the book were really to make a statement regarding
modern music as a whole, then its method, unreceptive to all generalization
and classification, would have to extend beyond the treatment of one
Preface

particular school. This would be necessary even if this were the only school
which does justice to the present objective possibilities of the elements
of music and stands up to the difficulties involved without compromise.
The diametrically opposed procedure practiced by Stravinsky offered a
contrasting viewpoint, not only because of its wide popular recognition
and its compositional niveau – for the concept of niveau cannot be assumed
dogmatically and is always open to discussion as a matter of ‘taste’ – but,
above all, it underscores the need to prevent the comfortable evasion that,
if the consequent progress of music leads to antinomies, then anything is
to be hoped for from the restoration of the past, or from the self-conscious
revocation of musical logic. There is no legitimate criticism of progress save
that which designates the reactionary moment in the prevailing absence of
freedom, and thereby inexorably excludes every misuse in the service of the
status quo. The seemingly positive return to the outmoded reveals itself as
a more fundamental conspiracy with the destructive tendencies of the age
than that which is branded outrightly as destructive. Any order which is
self-proclaimed is nothing but a disguise for chaos. A critical investigation
of Schoenberg, a radical composer inspired by a drive for expression, can be
conducted on the plane of musical objectivity. Any treatment of Stravinsky,
the anti-psychologist, on the other hand, raises the question of damage to
the subject which forms the basis of his composition. Here again a dialectical
motive asserts itself.
The author would not wish to gloss over the provocative features of his
study. In view of what has happened in Europe and what further threatens
the world, it will appear cynical to squander time and creative energy on
the solution to esoteric questions of modern compositional techniques.
Furthermore, obstinate artistic arguments appear often enough in the text;
they would seem to be immediately concerned with a pragmatic reality
which has long since lost interest in them. From an eccentric beginning,
however, some light is shed upon a condition whose familiar manifestations
are now only fit to disguise it. The protest inherent in this condition finds
expression only when the public suspects departure from the beaten track.
This discussion concerns itself, rather, exclusively with music. How is a total
world to be structured in which mere questions of counterpoint give rise
to unresolvable conflicts? How disordered is life today at its very roots if its
shuddering and rigidity are reflected even in a field no longer affected by
empirical necessity, a field in which human beings hope to find a sanctuary
from the pressure of horrifying norms, but which fulfills its promise to them
only by denying to them what they expect of it.

xiv
 Preface

The introduction presents considerations upon which both parts of the

book are based. Although it attempts to emphasize the unity of the entire
work, the differences between the older and the newer sections – particularly
those which are matters of language and style – remain evident.
In the time separating the two parts, a common philosophy has evolved
out of the author’s work with Max Horkheimer, which extends over a period
of more than twenty years. The author is, to be sure, solely responsible for
matters pertaining concretely to music. However, it would be impossible to
distinguish whose property this or that theoretical insight is. More properly,
this book should be regarded as an extended appendix to Horkheimer’s
Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of the Enlightenment).2 I would like to
express my gratitude to Horkheimer for his intellectual and human integrity,
and for everything in this study which exhibits steadfastness and faith in the
helping strength of concrete negation.

xv
xvi
Introduction

For in human Art we are not merely dealing with playthings, however
pleasant or useful they may be, but . . . with a revelation of truth.1

Choice of subject matter

‘The history of philosophy viewed as the science of origins is that process

which, from opposing extremes, and from the apparent excesses of
development, permits the emergence of the configuration of an idea as a
totality characterized by the possibility of a meaningful juxtaposition of such
antitheses inherent in these opposing extremes.’ This principle, adhered to
by Walter Benjamin as the basis of cognitive criticism in his treatise on the
German tragedy, can also serve as the basis for a philosophically oriented
consideration of new music.2 Such an investigation, restricting itself
essentially to two independent protagonists, can even be founded within
the subject of music itself. For only in such extremes can the essence of this
music be defined; they alone permit the perception of its content of truth.
‘The middle road,’ according to Schoenberg in his Foreword to the Three
Satires for Mixed Chorus [opus 28, nos. 1–3], ‘is the only one which does not
lead to Rome.’ It is for this reason and not in the illusion of grand personality
that only these two composers – Schoenberg and Stravinsky – are to be
discussed. For if the total product of new music – as defined by its inner
qualities rather than by chronology – were to be scrutinized in its entirety,
including all transitions and compromises, these same extremes would
again be encountered. The basic concern, after all, is not simply a matter
of description or professional evaluation. Nor are we thereby necessarily
passing judgment on the value or even on the representative importance
of what lies between the extremes. The best works of Béla Bartók, who
in many respects attempted to reconcile Schoenberg and Stravinsky, are
probably superior to those of Stravinsky in density and richness.3 The
second neo-classic generation – names such as Hindemith and Milhaud –
has acquiesced to the collective tendency of the times even less consciously
than has Stravinsky himself. In so doing, they at least seem to reflect this
tendency with greater fidelity than the master of the school of absurdity.
Philosophy of Modern Music

But a study of this intermediate generation would necessarily lead to an

analysis of the two innovators – not simply because they are deserving of
historical priority and because the second generation is derivative – but
because the innovators by virtue of their uncompromising consistency have
driven forward to the point that the impulses present in their works have
become legible as concepts of the object of investigation itself. This came
about in the specific configurations resulting from their compositional
procedures, not in the general outline of styles. While these styles are
heralded by loudly resounding cultural watchwords, they permit, in their
generality, falsifying ameliorations which prevent the consequence of
the unprogrammatic concept inherent in the object. The philosophical
investigation of art, however, is concerned precisely with this concept and
not with ideas on style, regardless of the degree to which the two may be
connected. Truth or untruth – whether Schoenberg’s or Stravinsky’s – cannot
be determined by a mere discussion of categories, such as atonality, twelve-
tone technique, or neo-classicism; but only in the concrete crystallization of
such categories in the structure of music itself. The predetermined stylistic
categories pay for their accessibility not by revealing the true nature of
form, but by hovering meaninglessly over the surface of aesthetic form.
If neo-classicism, on the other hand, is to be treated in connection with
the question of what necessity inherent in the composition forces it into
this style, or of what the relationship is between the stylistic ideal to the
material of the composition and its structural totality, then the problem of
the stylistic legitimacy is also virtually determinable.

New conformism

Whatever resides between the extremes is today actually no longer in need

of an interpretative relationship to those extremes. Rather, in fact, its very
indifference makes speculation superfluous. The history of modern music
no longer tolerates a ‘meaningful juxtaposition of antitheses.’ Viewed in its
totality since the heroic decade – the years surrounding the First World War –
it has been nothing more than the history of decline, a retrogression into the
traditional. The liberation of modern painting from objectivity, which was
to art the break that atonality was to music, was determined by the defensive
against the mechanized art commodity – above all, photography. Radical
music, from its inception, reacted similarly to the commercial depravity
of the traditional idiom. It formulated an antithesis against the extension

2
 Introduction

of the culture industry into its own domain. To be sure, the transition to
the calculated manufacture of music as a mass-produced article has taken
longer than has the analogous process in literature or the fine arts. The non-
conceptual and non-objective element in music which, since Schopenhauer,
has accounted for music’s appeal to irrational philosophy, has served
only to harden it against the market-place mentality. Not until the era of
the sound film, the radio, and the singing commercial began was its very
irrationality expropriated by the logic of the business world. Just as soon as
the industrial management of all cultural goods had established itself as a
totality, it also gained power over whatever did not aesthetically conform.
Because the monopolistic means of distributing music stood almost entirely
at the disposal of artistic trash and compromised cultural values, and catered
to the socially determined predisposition of the listener, radical music was
forced into complete isolation during the final stages of industrialism.
For those composers who want to survive, such isolation becomes
a moral-social pretense for a false peace. This has given rise to a type of
musical composition – feigning unabashed pretensions of ‘modernity’ and
‘seriousness’ – which has adjusted to mass culture by means of calculated
feeble-mindedness. Hindemith’s generation still had talent and skill to offer.
Their moderation confirmed itself above all in its intellectual submissiveness,
which committed itself to nothing, composing according to the whims of the
times; and liquidating in their compositions, as in their despicable artistic
credo, everything which was musically uncomfortable. All they achieved
was a respectably routined neo-academicism. This accusation cannot be
leveled at the third generation. Such conciliation to the listener, masking
as humaneness, began to undermine the technical standards attained
by progressive composition. That which was valid before the break – the
structure of musical relationships through tonality – has been irretrievably
lost. The third generation does not believe in the academic triads which its
exponents so fleetingly write, nor have their threadbare means the power to
produce anything but a shallow sound. They prefer to withdraw themselves
from the consequences of the new idiom which rewards with gross failure on
the market the most sincere effort of artistic conscience. This has been proven
unsuccessful; historical force, the ‘rage and fury of destruction,’ prohibits an
aesthetic compromise, just as it would prohibit compromise in the political
sphere.4 On the one hand, these exponents seek refuge in the traditional
and time-tested, claiming to have their fill of what the language of non-
comprehension called experimentation; on the other hand, they senselessly
surrender themselves to what seems most terrifying of all – anarchy.

3
Philosophy of Modern Music

The search for times past does not simply bring them home, but deprives
them, rather, of every consistency. Arbitrary preservation of the antiquated
endangers that which it wishes to maintain, and, with a bad conscience,
opposes everything new. These impotent late heirs to a traditional hostility
towards true originality resemble one another everywhere in their feeble
mixture of compositional facility and helplessness. Shostakovich, unjustly
reprimanded as a cultural Bolshevist by the authorities of his home country;
the facile pupils of Stravinsky’s pedagogical supervision; the triumphant
meagerness of Benjamin Britten – all these have in common a taste for
tastelessness, a simplicity resulting from ignorance, an immaturity which
masks as enlightenment, and a dearth of technical means. In Germany the
National Socialist Chamber of Music (Reichsmusikkammer) has left behind
a total rubbish heap. The commonplace, everyday style following the Second
WorId War has become the eclecticism of a destroyed and shattered nation.

False musical consciousness

Stravinsky also asserts his right to an extreme position in the modern

music movement. The capitulation of this movement can be measured in
his compositions both in terms of their specific individual character and
the progression from work to work. Today, however, an aspect has become
evident for which he cannot directly be blamed, and which is only latently
indicated in the changes in his compositional procedures: the collapse of all
criteria for good or bad music, as they had been codified during the early days
of the bourgeois era. For the first time, dilettantes everywhere are launched
as great composers. Musical life, which is now by and large economically
centralized, forces the public to recognize them. Twenty years ago the
trumped-up glory surrounding Elgar seemed a local phenomenon and the
fame of Sibelius an exceptional case of critical ignorance. Phenomena of such
a niveau, even if they are at times more liberal in their use of dissonances,
are the norm today. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, good
music has renounced commercialism altogether. The consequence of its
further development has come into conflict with the manipulated and, at
the same time, self-satisfied needs of the bourgeois public. The pathetically
small number of connoisseurs was gradually replaced by all those who
could afford the price of a ticket and wished to demonstrate their culture to
others. An abyss developed between public taste and compositional quality.
Works of quality established themselves in the repertoire only through

4
 Introduction

the strategy of the composer – in itself not always in the best interest of
his work – or through the enthusiasm of competent musicians and critics.
Radically modern music could no longer count on this support. Quality may
be determined according to the same standards in advanced works as well
as in traditional works – perhaps even more easily – despite the limitations
of these standards. The prevailing musical language no longer removes the
burden of accuracy and integrity from the shoulders of the composer. At
the same time, the self-appointed mediators have sacrificed their capacity to
make such judgments. Since the compositional procedure is gauged simply
according to the inherent form of every work – not according to tacitly
accepted, general demands – it is no longer possible to ‘learn’ definitively
what constitutes good or bad music. Whoever would pass judgment must
face squarely the immutable questions and antagonisms of the individual
compositional structure, about which no general music history can teach. No
one could be better suited to this task than the progressive composer, whom
discursive reasoning most eludes. He can no longer depend upon mediators
between himself and the public. Critics live literally according to the ‘high
reason’ expressed in the song by Gustav Mahler: they evaluate according to
what they do and do not understand.5 Performing musicians, however –
particularly conductors – allow themselves to be guided altogether by those
characteristics which are the most obviously effective and comprehensible
in the composition to be performed. Consequently, the opinion that
Beethoven is comprehensible and Schoenberg incomprehensible is an
objective deception. The general public, totally cut off from the production
of new music, is alienated by the outward characteristics of such music. The
deepest currents present in this music proceed, however, from exactly those
sociological and anthropological foundations peculiar to that public. The
dissonances which horrify them testify to their own conditions; for that
reason alone do they find them unbearable. Exactly the opposite is the case
of the all-too-familiar, which is so far removed from the dominant forces
of life today that the public’s own experience scarcely still communicates
with that for which traditional music bore witness. Whenever they believe
to understand, they perceive really only a dead mould which they guard
tenaciously as their unquestionable possession and which is lost precisely
in that moment that it becomes a possession: an indifferent show piece,
neutralized and robbed of its own critical substance. Actually, it is only
the coarsest vulgarities and easily remembered fragments – ominously
beautiful passages, moods, and associations – which find their way into the
comprehension of the public. Musical continuity, the true basis of meaning

5
Philosophy of Modern Music

in the composition, is no less hidden from the radio-trained listener in

an early Beethoven sonata than in a Schoenberg quartet, which at least
reminds him that his sky does not consist entirely of clouds with silver
linings upon whose radiance he can forever feast his eyes. This is not to
say, by any means, that a work may be immediately accessible only in its
own epoch and after that time must necessarily fall victim to depravity and
historicism. There is a sociological collective tendency which has burned
out of the consciousness and unconsciousness of men that humanity which
once lay at the foundations of today’s residue of commercial musical supply.
This tendency permits only an irresponsible echo of the idea of humanity in
the empty ritual of the concert, whereas the philosophical heritage of good
music has become the province of those forces scorned by the heirs of this
heritage. The music industry, which further degrades this musical supply by
galvanizing it into a shrine, merely confirms the state of consciousness of the
listener, for whom the harmony of Viennese classicism – attained through
bitter sacrifice – and the bursting longing of Romanticism have both been
placed upon the market as household ornaments. In actuality, much more
effort is required to listen adequately to a piece by Beethoven, whose themes
the average man in the street might whistle to himself, than to a piece of
the most advanced music: but to achieve this, the concert hall performance
veneer of false interpretations and stereotyped audience reaction patterns
must be destroyed. Since the culture industry has educated its victims to avoid
straining themselves during the free time allotted to them for intellectual
consumption, they cling just that much more stubbornly to the external
framework of a work of art which conceals its essence. The prevailing,
highly polished style of interpretation, even in the field of chamber music,
willingly makes concessions in that direction. It is not only that the ears of
the public are so flooded with light music that any other form of musical
expression strikes them as ‘classical’ – an arbitrary category existing only
as a contrast to the other. And it is not only that the perceptive faculty has
been so dulled by the omnipresent hit tune that the concentration necessary
for responsible listening has become permeated by traces of recollection of
this musical rubbish, and thereby impossible. Rather, sacrosanct traditional
music has come to resemble commercial mass production in the character
of its performances and in its role in the life of the listener and its substance
has not escaped this influence. Music is inextricably bound up with what
Clement Greenberg called the division of all art into kitsch and the avant-
garde, and this kitsch – with its dictate of profit over culture – has long
since conquered the social sphere. Therefore, considerations concerning the

6
 Introduction

revelation of truth in aesthetic objectivity make reference only to the avant-

garde, which is cut off from official culture. The philosophy of music is today
possible only as the philosophy of modern music. The only hope is that this
culture will herald its own demise: it only contributes to the advancement of
barbarism, about which it in turn becomes enraged. There is a temptation to
regard the most educated listeners as the worst: those who promptly react to
Schoenberg with ‘I do not understand’ – an utterance whose modesty masks
anger as expertise.

‘Intellectualism’

Among the reproaches most obstinately repeated by these critics, the most
widely spread is that of intellectualism: modern music has its origins in the
brain, not in the heart or the ear; it is in no way conceived by the senses, but
rather worked out on paper. The inadequacy of these clichés is evident. The
critics present their arguments as though the tonal idiom of the last 350 years
had been derived from nature, and that to go beyond these firmly established
theoretical principles were a violation thereof; whereas these ossified
principles themselves are actually the very evidence of social pressure. The
idea that the tonal system is exclusively of natural origin is an illusion rooted
in history. This ‘second nature’ owes the dignity of its closed and exclusive
system to mercantile society, whose own dynamics stress totality and
demand that the elements of tonality correspond to these dynamics on the
most basic functional level. The stimulus inherent in the older forms of
expression has given rise to the new language of music; yet at the same time,
a significant qualitative distinction is also to be noted. The feeling that, in
contrast to traditional music, the conception of modern composition is
more intellectual than sensory is nothing but evidence of incomprehension.
Schoenberg and Berg surpassed the orgies of the impressionists in lush
harmonic color whenever it was demanded, as in the chamber ensemble
Pierrot Lunaire [op. 21], and in the orchestration of Lulu. What is labelled as
emotion by musical anti-intellectualism – the necessary complement in
art to the business-world rationality – yields without resistance to the
mainstream of current social logic: how absurd that the ever-popular
Tchaikovsky, who portrays despondency with hit tunes, should be considered
an expression of emotion superior to the seismograph of Schoenberg’s
Erwartung [op. 17].6 On the other hand, the objective consequence of the
basic musical concept, which alone lends dignity to good music, has always

7
Philosophy of Modern Music

demanded alert control via the subjective compositional conscience. The

cultivation of such logical consequence, at the expense of passive perception
of sensual sound, alone defines the stature of this perception, in contrast
to mere ‘culinary enjoyment.’ Insofar as modern music as an intellectual
conception contemplates anew the logic of consequence, it falls into the
tradition of the art of the fugue, as practiced by Bach and even by Beethoven
and Brahms. In any discussion of intellectualism, the first person to be
accused would be that moderate modernist constantly in search of the
proper mixture of enticement and banality. He is far more guilty of
intellectualism than the composer who obeys the integral laws of musical
structure, from the single pitch to the drive inherent in the total form, even
if – and precisely if – the automatic perception of the individual moments is
hindered in so doing. In spite of everything, the accusation of intellectualism
is so stubbornly meted out that more ground is gained by including the
circumstances upon which it is based in the total perspective. Certainly,
nothing is achieved by any resigned attempt to counter stupid arguments
with more clever ones. On the conceptual level, the most questionable and
least unarticulate ideas of the common mind harbor – alongside the lie –
that trace of negativity concealed in the thing itself which the definition of
the object cannot dispense with. Today art in its entirety, and music in
particular, feels the shattering effects of that very process of enlightenment
in which it participates and upon which its own progress depends. Hegel
demands of the artist ‘a liberal education . . . in which every kind of
superstition and belief which remains restricted to certain forms of
observation and presentation should receive their proper subordination as
merely aspects or phasal moments of a larger process; aspects which the free
human spirit has already mastered when it once and for all sees that they can
furnish it with no conditions of exposition and creative effort which are,
independently for their own sake, sacrosanct.’7 In this light, anger over the
alleged intellectualism of the spirit liberated from the self-evident premise
of its object, as well as from the absolute truth of traditional forms, places
upon the artist the burden – viewed as misfortune or guilt – for whatever
happens objectively and out of necessity. ‘We have, however, no reason to
regard this simply as a misfortune which the chances of events has made
inevitable, one, that is to say, by which art has been overtaken through the
pressure of the times, the prosaic outlook and the dearth of genuine interest.
Rather it is the realization and progress of art itself, which, by envisaging for
present life the material in which it actually dwells, itself materially assists
on this very path, in each step of its advance, to make itself free of the content

8
 Introduction

which is presented.’8 The advice that artists would do better not to think too
much – though precisely their freedom indicates the irrevocable necessity of
such thought – is nothing more than commercialized mourning for the loss
of naïveté, as designed by mass culture. In the present age this arch-romantic
motive results in the command to avoid all critical reflection and thus
humble oneself before the subject matter and the formal categories
prescribed by tradition, even if they belong hopelessly to the past. For it is by
no means a one-sided decadence (curable through organization – in itself a
rational approach) that is being lamented, but rather only the shadow of
progress. The negative aspect of progress is so visibly dominant in the
current phase of development that art is summoned against it, even though
they both stand under the same sign. Fury over the avant-garde is so
immoderate and extends so far beyond its role in the late stage of industrial
society – indeed, far beyond its role in the drama of cultural ostentation –
because in modern art the intimidated conscience, seeking to escape from
total enlightenment, finds the door bolted. Art today, insofar as it is at all
deserving of substantiality, reflects without concessions everything that
society prefers to forget, bringing it clearly thereby into conscious focus.
From this relevant source, modern art designs irrelevance – offering nothing
more to society. The compact majority appropriates for its own use Hegel’s
tremendously sober interpretation of an historical current: ‘In the very fact
that we have an object set before our ocular or spiritual vision, whether it be
by Art or the Medium of Thought, with a completeness which practically
exhausts it, so that we have emptied it, and nothing further remains for our
eyes to discover or our souls to explore, in that alone the vital interest
disappears.’9 It was precisely this kind of absolute interest which had
confiscated art in the nineteenth century, when the total claim of
philosophical systems had followed the demands of religion into Hades:
Wagner’s Bayreuth is the most outspoken testimony of such a hubris born
of necessity. The more significant exponents of modern art have freed them­
selves from this conception, avoiding that mystic obscurity about whose
permanance Hegel – himself thoroughly at home in this realm – felt such
anxiety. For such obscurity, defeated by the progress of the intellect in ever-
renewed attacks, has always succeeded in re-establishing itself in constantly
changing form down to the present day. This results from the pressure which
the tyrannical spirit exercises over all forms of nature – human and
otherwise. Moreover, such obscurity is not simple being-in-and-for-itself as
can be found, for example, in Hegel’s aesthetics. But the doctrine of the
phenomenology of the mind is to be applied to art; and according to this

9
Philosophy of Modern Music

doctrine, all immediacy already represents a mediation in itself. In other

words, it is only a product of domination. When the immediate self-certainty
of unquestioningly accepted materials and forms has vanished from the
foundations of art, then at least one region of obscurity will have healed
over, will have relieved that boundless suffering whereby the substance of
intellectual conception is brought to consciousness.10 This will be not
merely an episode interrupting an already perfected enlightenment, but it
does obscure its most recent phase and, to be sure, its actual power
makes concrete representation almost impossible. The all-powerful culture
industry appropriates the enlightening principle and, in its relationship
with human beings, defaces it for the benefit of prevailing obscurity. Art
vehemently opposes this tendency; it offers an ever-sharper contrast to
such false clarity. The configurations of that deposed obscurity are held up
in opposition to the prevailing neon-light style of the times. Art is able to
aid enlightenment only by relating the clarity of the world consciously to its
own darkness.11 Only in a society which had achieved satisfaction would the
death of art be possible. Its demise today, which appears immanent, would
only signify the triumphs of base existence over the penetrating eye of
consciousness which would presume to assert itself against it.

Modern music unprotected

Nonetheless, this threat hovers over the few intransigent works of art which
are still produced. Through a realization of their own intrinsic principles
of enlightenment, and without regard for the crafty naïveté of the culture
industry, they become antithetical – repulsive because of their truth – to
the total control aimed for by industry. Yet they also assume a similarity
to the essential structure of this industry and thus come into conflict with
their own interests. The loss of ‘absolute interest’ in principles inherent in the
individual work concerns not only their momentary fate in society, which
by now can spare itself the usual indignation – a shrug of the shoulders,
dismissing such music as foolishness at best. Rather it shares the fate of
political sects, which, though they would like to adhere to the progressive
manifestations of theory, are driven into untruth by the disparity between
the ideal and the power of the established order. Even upon achieving
complete autonomy, upon renouncing any role as entertainment, the integral
essence of such works is still hardly indifferent to public reception. Social
isolation, a problem that cannot be overcome by art alone, is yet a mortal

10
 Introduction

danger to art’s success. Hegel, perhaps as a direct result of his isolation from
absolute music – the most significant products of which have always been
esoteric – and as a consequence of his negation of Kantian aesthetics, has
cautiously stated something that is a matter of grave concern to the life of
music. At the core of his argument, which is by no means free of inartistic
naïveté, is the designation of music’s reliance upon its own pure immanence
as the decisive factor – as it is forced to do by its own law of development
and by the loss of social reaction. The composer, says Hegel in the chapter
where he treats of music within the ‘System of Individual Arts,’ can, ‘in
complete indifference to such a scheme, devote himself to musical structure
simply and the assertion of his genius in such architectonics. Composition,
however, of this character readily tends to become defective both in the
range of its conception and emotional quality, and as a rule does not imply
any profound cultivation of mind or taste in other respects. And by reason
of the fact that such a content is not necessary, it frequently happens that the
gift of musical composition not merely will show considerable development
in very early age, but composers of eminence remain their life long men of
the poorest and most impoverished intellectual faculty in other directions.
More penetration of character may be assumed where the composer even in
instrumental music is equally attentive to both aspects of composition; in
other words, the expression of a content, if necessarily less defined than
in our previous mode, no less than its musical structure, by which means
it will be in his power at one time to emphasize the melody, at another the
depth and colour of the harmony, or finally to fuse each with the other.’12
Except that one cannot make up for ‘lack of thought and sensitivity’ with
rhythmical variations or additional content. It is an historical fact that
lack of thought and sensitivity – by causing the actual decline of the idea
of expression – has come to undermine music. At the same time, however,
Hegel has the last word against himself; historical force extends still further
than his aesthetic would proclaim. At the present level of development the
artist is incomparably much less free than Hegel could ever have believed at
the beginning of the liberal era. The dissolution of everything traditionally
taken for granted has not resulted in the possibility of disposing all materials
and technical means according to discretion – only impotent syncretism
could have such ideas, and even such a magnificent conception as Mahler’s
Eighth Symphony ran aground in the illusion that such a thing was possible.
But the artist has become the mere executor of his own intentions, which
appear before him as strangers – inexorable demands of the compositions
upon which he is working.13 That type of freedom which Hegel ascribes to the

11
Philosophy of Modern Music

composer and which found its utmost realization in Beethoven – of whom

he hardly took notice – is, as always, necessarily related to the traditionally
pre-established, within which framework there are manifold possibilities.
On the other hand, what is simply of itself and for itself cannot be other than
it is and excludes the conciliatory acts by which Hegel promised himself the
salvation of instrumental music. The elimination of everything traditionally
pre-established – the corresponding reduction of music to the absolute
monad – causes it to ossify and affects its innermost content. As a self-
sufficient domain it justifies the organization of society divided into various
branches: the obstinate domination of one-sided interest, perceptible behind
the disinterested manifestation of the monad.

The antinomy of modern music

The fact that music as a whole, and polyphony in particular – the necessary
medium of modern music – have their source in the collective practices of
cult and dance is not to be written off as a mere ‘point of departure’ due to its
further progress towards freedom. Rather this historical source remains the
unique sensory subjective impulse of music, even if it has long since broken
with every collective practice. Polyphonic music says ‘we’ even when it lives
as a conception only in the mind of the composer, otherwise reaching no
living being. The ideal collectivity still contained within music, even though
it has lost its relationship to the empirical collectivity, leads inevitably to
conflict because of its unavoidable social isolation. Collective perception is
the basis of musical objectification itself, and when this latter is no longer
possible, it is necessarily degraded almost to a fiction – to the arrogance
of the aesthetic subject, which says ‘we,’ while in reality it is still only ‘I’ –
and this ‘I’ can say nothing at all without positing the ‘we.’ The discrepancy
contained in a solipsistic piece for large orchestra lies not only in the
disproportion between the number of performers on the platform and the
empty seats before which they perform, but rather offers evidence that form
as such necessarily extends beyond the mere ‘I,’ the perspective from which it
is projected. Actually, music has its origin in this perspective and, portraying
it in turn, cannot go beyond it in any positive sense. This antinomy detracts
from the powers of modern music. Its paralysis manifests the anxiety of the
composition in the face of its despondent untruth. This form convulsively
attempts to escape such anxiety by submersion into its own law, which at the
same time, however, consistently heightens its untruth. To be sure, significant

12
 Introduction

absolute music today – namely, that of Schoenberg’s school – is the opposite

of that ‘lack of thought and sensitivity’ which Hegel feared, perhaps with a
side-glance at that instrumental virtuosity which had been unleashed in his
day for the first time. Here there is a type of vacuity of a higher order – not
completely dissimilar to Hegel’s ‘unhappy self-consciousness’: ‘But this self
has freed content by means of its emptiness.’14 The material transformation
of those elements responsible for expression in music, which – according to
Schoenberg – has taken place uninterruptedly throughout the entire history
of music, has today become so radical that the possibility of expression itself
comes into question. In the process of pursuing its own inner logic, music
is transformed more and more from something significant into something
obscure – even to itself. No music today, for example, could possibly speak
in the accents of ‘reward.’ Not only has the mere idea of humanity, or of
a better world no longer any sway over mankind – though it is precisely
this which lies at the heart of Beethoven’s opera.15 Rather the strictness
of musical structure, wherein alone music can assert itself against the
ubiquity of commercialism, has hardened music to the point that it is no
longer affected by those external factors which caused absolute music to
become what it is. Various devious attempts to regain this content (devious
because the musical structure as such withdraws in the face of such
attempts) resort mainly to the most superficial and disconnected topicality
in subject matter; only Schoenberg’s most recent works, which exhaustively
construct modes of expression and various forms of the row according to
these modes, pose again the question of ‘content’ regarding subject matter,
without pretending to achieve the organic unity of this content with purely
musical procedures. Advanced music has no recourse but to insist upon
its own ossification without concession to that would-be humanitarianism
which it sees through, in all its attractive and alluring guises, as the mask of
inhumanity. Its truth appears guaranteed more by its denial of any meaning
in organized society, of which it will have no part – accomplished by its
own organized vacuity – than by any capability of positive meaning within
itself. Under the present circumstances it is restricted to definitive negation.

Growing indifferentism

Music today, like all other expressions of the objective spirit, is accused of
creating a schism between the intellectual and the physical, between the work
of the mind and that of the hands: the guilt of privilege – Hegel’s dialectic

13
Philosophy of Modern Music

of master and servant – is extended, in the final analysis, to the sovereign

spirit dominant over nature. The further this creative spirit advances
towards autonomy, the more it alienates itself from a concrete relationship
to everything dominated by it – human beings as well as materials. As soon
as it has come to terms with the last heteronomous and material factors of
its own most particular realm – that of free artistic production – it begins
to circle aimlessly, imprisoned within itself, released from every element
of resistance, upon whose permeation it was solely dependent for its
meaning. The fulfillment of freedom of mind occurs simultaneously with
the emasculation of the mind. Its fetish character, its hypostatization as that
of a mere form of reflection, becomes evident when it frees itself from its
last dependence upon things which are not themselves mind, but which as
the implicit content of all intellectual form lends ‘mind’ its substance. Non-
conforming music has no defense against the indifferentism of the mind,
that of means without purpose. Undoubtedly, such music preserves its
social truth through the isolation resulting from its antithesis to society. The
indifference of society, however, allows this truth to wither. It is as though
music were deprived of its creative stimulus, its very raison d’être. For even
the loneliest language of the artist lives from the paradox of speaking to
men precisely by virtue of its isolation, and of its renunciation of the power
of communication once inherent in this language. Otherwise a crippling
and destructive element enters into the creative process – no matter how
courageous the attitude of the artist as such might be. Among the symptoms
of such crippling, perhaps the strangest is that progressive music – repudiated
through its autonomy by precisely that democratically broad public which
it had once conquered through its autonomy – now recalls the institution of
composition by commission. This institution, common in the era before the
bourgeois revolution, by its very essence excludes such autonomy. The new
ethic, however, dating back to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and Stravinsky’s
compositions for Diaghilev, is related to it. Almost all compositions which
ever achieve completion and find their way into a performance are not
marketable but are paid for by patrons or institutions.16 The conflict between
commission and autonomy results in a reluctant and scanty production. For
today, far more than in the age of absolutism, the patron, and the artist –
whose relationship was always precarious – are alienated. The patron has
no relation at all to the work, but places his order for it as an exceptional
example of that ‘cultural obligation’ which itself proclaims the neutralization
of culture. For the artist, however, being tied down to deadlines and specific
occasions is sufficient to kill off that instinctive spontaneity upon which the

14
 Introduction

emancipated capacity for expression depends. A historically pre-established

correlation prevails between the material reliance upon commissioned
compositions which are otherwise unsaleable, and a weakening of inner
tension. To be sure, this enables the composer to fulfill heteronomous tasks
with the technique of the autonomous work, and these tasks are achieved
with indescribable effort. But this weakening, in turn, detracts from the
autonomous work. The tension, resolved in the work of art, is that between
subject and object, from within and from without. Today both subject and
object have been integrated into false identity under the pressure of total
economic organization, along with mass acceptance of the machinery of
domination. Consequently, not only tension but the productive drive of the
composer disappears hand in hand with the gravitational force of his work –
upon which his relationship to the work once depended. Historical force
no longer stands at the service of the composer. The work has by means of
total enlightenment now been purified by the ‘idea’ – which appears as a
mere ideological decoration, as the private Weltanschauung of the composer.
As a result of its absolute intellectualization, the work is condemned to a
blind existence, in glaring contrast to the unavoidable designation of every
work of art as a matter of spirit. When survival offers nothing more than
an example of heroic struggle, it has become worthless. There is validity
in the suspicion, once expressed by Eduard Steuermann, that the concept
of great music, which has today been passed on to radical music, belongs
itself only to a moment in history; that man in the age of the omnipresent
radio and joke box has forgotten the experience of music altogether. Once
music has been refined to an end in itself, its purposelessness, or a pragmatic
concern with the consumer market, causes it to atrophy. The social division
of labor, concerned not with socially useful work but rather with the
demand for utility – its own major interest – shows signs of questionable
irrationality.17 This is the direct result of the detachment of music not only
from the critical ear, but from all internal communication with ideas, with
the discipline of philosophy per se. Such irrationality becomes unmistakable
at the moment that new music begins to concern itself with the mind –
with philosophical and social subjects – and then not only shows itself to
be hopelessly disoriented, but rather denies, through its ideology, those
opposing drives present within it. The literary quality of Wagner’s Ring
was dubious as a crudely patched-together allegory of Schopenhauer’s
denial of the will to life. It is, however, beyond all doubt that the libretto
of the Ring – its music was already considered esoteric – treats the central
underlying concerns of impending bourgeois decline, offering an example

15
Philosophy of Modern Music

of the highly fertile relationship between musical form and the nature of the
ideas which objectively determine this relationship. Schoenberg’s musical
substance will probably some day be proven superior to that of Wagner. Not
only are his texts private and casual when compared to those of Wagner
(which go to extremes in both their good and bad aspects); stylistically as
well they set themselves apart from the music and become mere slogans –
even if only out of defiance. Such sloganeering exhibits a guilelessness which
is negated by every note in the composition: for example, the triumph of
love over convention. It has never been possible for the quality of music to
be indifferent to the quality of the text with which it is associated: works
such as Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte and Weber’s Euryanthe try to overcome
the weaknesses of their libretti through music but nevertheless are not to
be salvaged by any literary or theatrical means. Any stage-work in which
the conflict between extreme musical intellectualization and the crudity
of its subject matter is exaggerated ad infinitum – the only hope there is
for a reconciliation between the two factors – will hardly fare better in the
theater than did Cosi fan Tutte. It is possible, in other words, for even the
best modern music to sink into oblivion without necessarily justifying itself
wholly through such absolute renunciation of mediocre success.

On method

It is tempting to deduce all of this in social terms directly out of the decline
of the bourgeoisie, whose most unique artistic medium has always been
music. Such an approach, however, is compromised by the inclination
to throw an all-too-rapid glance at the total picture, thereby overlooking
and devaluating the individual moment present in this totality of social
forces, which is determined by it and, in turn, resolved by it. This view
becomes entangled with the inclination to take sides with the totality, or the
mainstream, and to condemn anything which does not fit into the over-all
picture. In this way, art becomes the mere exponent of society, rather than a
catalyst for change in society. It thus gives official approval to that tendency
of the bourgeois consciousness to degrade all intellectual formulations to a
simple function, an object which can be substituted for some other object,
or – in the final analysis – an article of consumption. The work of art is
deduced from a society which is denied by art’s own immanent logic. This
derivation attempts to break through the fetishism of the work of art, that is,
the ideology of its being-in-itself-and to a certain degree actually does break

16
 Introduction

through it. In doing so, such deduction silently accepts the hypostatization
of all matters of the mind in consumer society. The standards of consumer
goods are the basis upon which the right to existence of the work of art
is determined; this standard is regarded as the absolute criterion of social
truth. Thus, unawares, such a process works in the service of conformism
and inverts the meaning of the theory (which itself warns against applying
theory in the same manner that the species would be applied to the specimen).
In our totally organized bourgeois society, which has forcibly been made
over into a totality, the spiritual potential of another society could lie only
in that which bears no resemblance to the prevailing society. Furthermore,
the reduction of advanced music to its social origins and its social function
hardly ever rises above the hostilely uncritical designation that it is bourgeois,
decadent, and a luxury. This is the language of philistine suppression on
the level of management. The more sovereignly advanced music attaches its
intellectual formulations to its own social roots, the more helplessly it recoils
from these roots. The dialectical method, and it is precisely the one which is
placed squarely upon its feet, cannot simply treat the separate phenomena
as illustrations or examples of something in the already firmly established
social structure and consequently ignore the kinetic force of a concept; in
this way dialectic declined to a state religion. It is rather demanded that the
force of the general concept be transformed into the self-development of
the concrete object and that it resolve the social enigma of this object with the
powers of its own individuation. In so doing the central concern is not social
justification, but the establishment of social theory by virtue of explication
of aesthetic right or wrong lying at the very heart of the objects which are
property. The concept must submerge itself in the monad until the social
essence of its own dynamics becomes evident. This accomplishes more than
does the classification of the monad as a special example of the macrocosm,
or as Husserl said, disposing of it ‘from above.’ A philosophical analysis
of the extremes of modern music – which takes its historical situation as
well as its chemistry into account – deprives itself in its very intentions of
sociological responsibility just as fundamentally as from an autonomously
applied aesthetic, consisting of traditional philosophical relationships.
Certainly not the least among the obligations of the continuing dialectical
method is that one come to terms with Hegel’s statement: ‘Consequently,
we do not require to bring standards with us, nor to apply our fancies and
thoughts in the inquiry; and just by our leaving these aside we are enabled
to treat and discuss the subject as it actually is in itself and for itself, as it is
in its complete reality.’18 At the same time, the method distinguishes itself

17
Philosophy of Modern Music

from the functions for which the subject is traditionally reserved. These
functions are descriptive technical analysis, apologetic commentary, and
criticism. Technical analysis is assumed at all times and often disclosed,
but it needs to be supplemented by detailed interpretation if it is to go
beyond mere humanistic stock-taking and to express the relationship of
the subject to truth. Apologetics, more relevant than ever as an antithesis
to industrialization, limits itself to the positive. Criticism, finally, limits
itself to the task of deciding the worth or worthlessness of works of art. The
conclusions of criticism enter into philosophical treatment only sporadically,
as the means of theoretical stimulus to overcome negativity, revealing the
necessity for occasional aesthetic failure. The idea of works of art and their
relationship is to be philosophically conceived, even if this at times were to
lie beyond that which is realized by the work of art. The method reveals the
implications of procedures and works in terms of factors within the works.19
Thus it attempts to determine the idea behind each of two groups of musical
phenomena individually, and to pursue it until the inherent consequence of
the objects is transformed into their own criticism. The process is immanent:
the internal consistency of the phenomenon – in the sense that this is to be
developed within the phenomenon itself – becomes proof of its truth and
the ferment of its untruth. The guiding category of contradiction itself is
twofold in nature: that the works formulate the contradiction and, in turn,
through such formulation reveal it in the markings of its imperfections; this
category is the measure of its success, while at the same time the force of
contradiction mocks the formulation and destroys the works. To be sure, an
immanent method of such nature assumes at all times as its opposite pole
that philosophical knowledge which transcends the object. This method
cannot rely – as does Hegel – upon ‘pure observation’ which promises
truth simply because the conception of the identity of subject and object
supports the entire process. In so doing, the observing consciousness is all
the more sure of itself the more completely it submerges itself in the object.
In an historical hour, when the reconciliation of subject and object has been
perverted to a satanic parody – to the liquidation of the subject in objective
presentation – the only philosophy which still serves this reconciliation is
one which despises this illusion of reconciliation and – against universal
self-alienation – establishes the validity of the hopelessly alienated, for
which a ‘subject itself ’ scarcely any longer speaks. This is the limit of the
immanent process, for it can as little support itself dogmatically by means of
positive transcendence as could Hegel in his time. Knowledge, like its object,
remains bound to the contradiction defined.

18
Schoenberg and Progress

Pure insight, however, is in the first instance without any content; it is

rather the sheer disappearance of content; but by its negative attitude
towards what it excludes it will make itself real and give itself a content.1

Disturbance of the work

The changes encountered in music during the last thirty years have yet to
be comprehended in their full breadth. More is involved than the much
discussed crisis – a condition of chaotic fermentation, that is, the end of
which could be foreseen and which would restore order after disorder. The
concept of some future renewal – whether in significant and highly polished
works of art, or in the blissful harmony of music with society – simply denies
events of the past and elements that can be suppressed, but not eradicated.
Under the coercion of its own objective consequences music has critically
invalidated the idea of the polished work and disrupted the collective
continuity of its effect. To be sure, no crisis has been able to put a stop to
public musical life – neither the economic crisis nor the cultural crisis, in
whose concept the idea of prevailing reconstruction is already contained.
Even in music the concept of the monopoly of the fittest has survived.
Even in the face of highly cacophonous sound, which flees from the web of
organized culture and its consumers, the fraud of today’s culture becomes
obvious. Its management suppresses the emergence of a more valid culture,
placing the blame for this situation on the lack of ‘achievement.’ All those
outside the sphere of management are path-finders, trailblazers, and – above
all – tragic figures. Those who come after them are to have a better lot; if
they conform, they are granted entry. But these outsiders are in no sense
the pioneers of future works. They challenge the concept of production
and the works produced. The apologist of actual radical music – who would
support his arguments by pointing to the prolific output of the Schoenberg
school – already denies precisely what he wishes to support. Today the only
works which really count are those which are no longer works at all. This
is to be recognized from the relationship of the current accomplishments
Philosophy of Modern Music

of the school with the achievements of their early period. The monodrama
Erwartung [opus 17], which develops the eternity of the second in four
hundred bars, and the rapidly revolving pictures of Die glückliche Hand
[opus 18], which takes back a life unto itself before it has a chance to find its
place in time – are the sources of Berg’s great opera Wozzeck. And to be sure,
it is a great opera. It resembles Erwartung in detail as well as in conception –
as the portrayal of anxiety; it resembles Die glückliche Hand in the insatiable
successive strata of harmonic complexes, and the allegory of the multilateral
character of its psychological subject. But Berg would have been uneasy at
the thought that he had fulfilled in Wozzeck that which was indicated as
a mere possibility in Schoenberg’s Expressionistic works. The composed
tragedy has to pay the price for its extensive depth and contemplative wisdom
of its structure. The fleeting sketches of the Expressionistic Schoenberg are
here in Berg transformed into new pictures of affects. The security of form
establishes itself as a medium for shock absorption. The suffering of the
helpless soldier Wozzeck in the machinery of injustice attains a composure
upon which the style of the opera is based. This suffering is encompassed
and assuaged. The erupting anxiety becomes a suitable subject for the music
drama and the music which reflects this anxiety finds its way back into the
scheme of transfiguration in resigned agreement.2 Wozzeck is a masterpiece –
a work of traditional art. That startling thirty-second note motiv, so very
reminiscent of Erwartung, becomes a leit-motiv which is both repeatable
and repeated. The more openly it appears in the course of the opera, the
more willingly does it renounce its claim to be taken literally: it establishes
itself as a vehicle of expression, and repetition softens its effect. Those who
praise Wozzeck as the first lasting product of modern music do not know
the extent to which their praise compromises a composition which in turn
suffers from such sophistry. With experimental boldness, Berg before any
other composer tried out such modern means over long periods of time. The
richly varied supply of musical figures is inexhaustible and the greatness of
the architectual dispositions proves to be equal to this supply. Courageous
defeatism triumphs in the restrained sympathy of the sound. Nevertheless,
Wozzeck negates its own point of departure precisely in those moments in
which it is developed. The impulses of the composition – alive in its musical
atoms – rebel against the work proceeding from them. These impulses do
not permit lasting resolution. The dream of permanent artistic possessions
is not only destroyed from the outside by the threatening social condition;
the historical tendency present in musical means renounces this dream.
The procedural method of modern music questions what many progressives

20
 Schoenberg and Progress

expect of it: structures perfected within themselves which might be exhibited

for all time in museums of opera and concert.

Inherent tendency of musical material

The assumption of an historical tendency in musical material contradicts

the traditional conception of the material of music. This material is
traditionally defined – in terms of physics, or possibly in terms of the
psychology of sound – 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. It is not simply a
matter of the increase and decrease of this supply in the course of history.
All its specific characteristics are indications of the historical process. The
higher the degree of historical necessity present within these specific
characteristics, the less directly legible they become as historical indications.
In that very moment when the historical expression of a chord can no longer
be aurally perceived, it demands that the sounds which surround it give a
conclusive account of its historical implications. These implications have
determined the nature of this expression. The meaning of musical material
is not absorbed in the genesis of music, and yet this meaning cannot be
separated from it. Music recognizes no natural law; therefore, all psychology
of music is questionable. Such psychology – in its efforts to establish an
invariant ‘understanding’ of the music of all times – assumes a constancy of
musical subject. Such an assumption is more closely related to the constancy
of the material of nature than psychological differentiation might indicate.
What this psychology inadequately and noncommitally describes is to be
sought in the perception3 of the kinetic laws of matter. According to these
laws, not all things are possible at all times. To be sure, a unique ontological
law is by no means to be ascribed either to the material of tones itself or to
tonal material which has been filtered through the tempered system. This,
for example, is the typical argumentation of those who – either from
relationships of harmonic tones or from the psychology of the ear – attempt
to deduce that the triad is the necessary and universally valid condition of all
possible comprehension and that, therefore, all music must be dependent
upon it. This argumentation, which even Hindemith has appropriated for
himself, is nothing but a superstructure for reactionary compositional
tendencies. Its deception is revealed by the observation that the trained ear
is able to perceive harmonically the most complicated overtone relationships

21
Philosophy of Modern Music

as well as less complex relationships. The listener, thereby, feels no particular

urgency for a ‘resolution’ of the alleged dissonances, but rather spontaneously
resists resolutions as a retrogression into less sophisticated modes of
listening. Similarly, in the thorough-bass era, the progression by fifths was
suspected to be a type of archaic regression. The demands made upon the
subject by the material are conditioned much more by the fact that the
‘material’ is itself a crystallization of the creative impulse, an element
socially predetermined through the consciousness of man. As a previous
subjectivity – now forgetful of itself – such an objectified impulse of the
material has its own kinetic laws. That which seems to be the mere self-
locomotion of the material is of the same origin as is the social process, by
whose traces it is continually permeated. This energy pursues its course in
the same sense as does actual society, even when energy and society have
become totally unaware of each other and have come into conflict with each
other. Therefore, the altercation of the composer with his material is the
same as an altercation with society, precisely to the extent that it finds
expression in his work, and does not simply face his product as consumer or
opponent – a mere external and heteronomous factor. The instructions
directed to the composer by the material and, in turn, transformed by his
obedience to them are formulated in the inherent interplay of this altercation.
It is clear, of course, that in the earlier stages of a technique, its later
developments cannot be anticipated but at best subjectively envisioned. The
reverse is also true. All the tonal combinations employed in the past by no
means stand indiscriminately at the disposal of the composer today. Even
the more insensitive ear detects the shabbiness and exhaustion of the
diminished seventh chord and certain chromatic modulatory tones in the
salon music of the nineteenth century. For the technically trained ear, such
vague discomfort is transformed into a prohibitive canon. If all is not
deception, this canon today excludes even the medium of tonality – that is
to say, the means of all traditional music. It is not simply that these sounds
are antiquated and untimely, but that they are false. They no longer fulfill
their function. The most progressive level of technical procedures designs
tasks before which traditional sounds reveal themselves as impotent clichés.
There are modern compositions which occasionally scatter tonal sounds in
their own context. It is precisely the triads which, in such context, are
cacophonous and not the dissonances! As a substitute for dissonances, these
triads at times might even be justified. Impure style is, however, not alone
responsible for the impropriety of their employment. Rather the technical
horizon, against which the tonal sounds are glaringly conspicuous, today

22
 Schoenberg and Progress

encompasses all music. If a contemporary composer restricts himself

exclusively to tonal sounds – in the manner of Sibelius – these sound just as
false as if they were enclaves within the atonal field. This statement, to be
sure, must be qualified. The isolated appearance of chords does not in itself
decide their correctness or incorrectness. These are to be judged only from
the perspective of the level of technique adhered to at a given time. The
diminished seventh chord, which rings false in salon pieces, is correct and
full of every possible expression at the beginning of Beethoven’s Sonata
[opus 111].4 This chord is not just superimposed and merely a result of the
structural disposition of the movement. Rather it is the total niveau of
Beethoven’s technique which gives the chord its specific weight. The
components of this technique include the tension between the most extreme
dissonance possible for him and consonance, the harmonic perspective
which includes all melodic events, and the dynamic conception of tonality
as a whole. But the historical process, through which this weight has been
lost, is irreversible.5 This chord itself, as an obsolete form, represents in its
dissolution a state of technique contradictory as a whole to the state of
technique actually in practice. Even if, therefore, the truth or falsity of all
musical detail is dependent upon such a total state of technique, this level
will be evident only in the specific configurations of the compositional tasks.
No chord is false ‘in itself,’ simply because there is no such thing as a chord
in itself and because each chord is a vehicle of the total context – indeed, for
the total direction. But precisely for this reason, the faculty of the ear to
perceive what is right or wrong is unequivocally dependent upon this single
chord and not upon abstract reflection regarding the total niveau of
technique. But at this point the picture of the composer is also transformed.
He loses that freedom on a grand scale which idealistic aesthetics is
accustomed to grant to the artist. He is no longer a creator. It is not that the
times and society impose external restrictions upon him; it is rather the
rigid demand for compositional accuracy made upon him by his structure
which limits him. The state of technique appears as a problem in every
measure which he dares to conceive: with every measure technique as a
whole demands of him that he do it justice and that he give the single correct
answer permitted by technique at any given moment. The compositions
themselves are nothing but such answers – nothing but the solution of
technical picture puzzles – and the composer is the only one who is capable
of reading his compositions and understanding his own music. He works on
an infinitely small scale. His efforts find fulfillment in the execution of that
which his music objectively demands of him. But such obedience demands

23
Philosophy of Modern Music

of the composer all possible disobedience, independence, and spontaneity.

This is the dialectical nature revealed in the unfolding of the musical
material.

Schoenberg’s criticism of illusion and play

Today this process has turned against the self-sufficient work of art and
everything determined thereby. The illness which has befallen the idea of the
work might well have its roots in a social condition which reflects nothing
binding and affirmative enough to guarantee the internal harmony of the
work sufficient unto itself. The prohibitive difficulties of the work are, how-
ever, evident not only in the reflection upon it, but in the dark interior of the
work itself. If one thinks of the most conspicuous symptom – namely, the
shrinking of the expansion in time – which in music is only an external fac-
tor of the work, then it must be stated that only individual impotence, inca-
pacity for structural formulation – not sparseness – is to be made responsible
for the lack of success of a given work. No works could exhibit greater con-
centration and consistency of formal structure than Schoenberg’s and
Webern’s shortest movements. Their brevity is a direct result of the demand
for the greatest consistency. This demand precludes the superfluous. In so
doing this consistency opposes expansion in time, which has been the basis
for the conception of the musical work since the eighteenth century, cer-
tainly since Beethoven. The work, the age, and illusion are all struck by a
single blow. Criticism of the extensive scheme is interlocked with criticism
of the content, in terms of phrase and ideology. Music, compressed into a
moment, is valid as an eruptive revelation of negative experience. It is
closely related to actual suffering.6 In this spirit of compression modern
music destroys all decorative elements and, therewith, symmetrically
extended works. Among the arguments which would attempt to relegate the
disquieting phenomenon of Schoenberg into the past of Romanticism and
individualism (in order to be able to serve the operations of modern collec-
tives with a better conscience), the most widely spread is the one which
brands him as an ‘espressivo composer’ and his music as an ‘exaggeration’ of
a decayed mode of expression. It is neither necessary to deny his origin in
the Wagnerian espressivo style nor to overlook the traditional espressivo ele-
ments in his earlier works. These compositions, nonetheless, prove their
ability to come to terms with this barren emptiness. At the same time, Sch-
oenberg’s espressivo style since the break – if not from the very beginning, at

24
 Schoenberg and Progress

least since the Piano Pieces [opus 11] and the George songs, Das Buch der
hängenden Gärten [opus 15] – differs in quality from Romantic expression
precisely by means of that intensification which thinks this espressivo though
to its logical conclusion. The expressive music of the West, since the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century, assumed an expressiveness which the com-
poser allotted to his musical structures in much the same way as the
dramatist did to his theatrical figures, without the expressed emotions
claiming to have immediate presence and reality within the work. Dramatic
music, just as true musica ficta, from Monteverdi to Verdi presented expres-
sion as stylized communication – as the representation of passions.7 When-
ever this music extended beyond this, laying claim to a substantiality beyond
the appearance of expressed feelings, this claim hardly restricted itself to
specific musical emotions, reflecting in turn such emotions of the soul. This
claim was validated only by the totality of the form, which exercises control
over the musical characters and their correlation. The process is totally dif-
ferent in the case of Schoenberg. The actual revolutionary moment for him
is the change in function of musical expression. Passions are no longer simu-
lated, but rather genuine emotions of the unconscious shock, of trauma – are
registered without disguise through the medium of music. These emotions
attack the taboos of form because these taboos subject such emotions to
their own censure, rationalizing them and transforming them into images.
Schoenberg’s formal innovations were closely related to the change in the
content of expression. These innovations serve the breakthrough of the real-
ity of this content. The first atonal works are case studies in the sense of
psychoanalytical dream case studies.8 In the very first publication on Sch-
oenberg, Vassily Kandinsky called the composer’s paintings ‘acts of the
mind.’ The scars of this revolution of expression, however, are the blotches
which have become fixed in his music as well as in his pictures, as the her-
alds of the id against the compositional will.9 They destroy the surface and
are as little to be removed by subsequent correction as are the traces of
blood in a fairy tale. Authentic suffering has implanted these in the work of
art as a sign that the autonomy of the work is no longer recognized by this
suffering. The heteronomy of the scars – and the blotches – challenges
music’s façade of self-sufficiency. This façade is based on the fact that in all
traditional music the formally defined elements are employed as if they
were the inviolable necessity of this one individual case; or that this façade
appears as though it were identical with the alleged language of form. Since
the beginning of the bourgeois era, all great music has founded its suffi-
ciency in the illusion that it has achieved an unbroken unity and justified

25
Philosophy of Modern Music

through its own individuation the conventional universal legality to which

it is subject. This is contradicted by modern music. The criticism directed
towards decorative elements, towards convention, and towards abstract uni-
versality of musical language are all of one mind. If music is privileged above
all other forms by the absence of illusive imagery – the fact that it does not
paint a picture – then it nonetheless has participated energetically in the
illusory character of the bourgeois work of art; this it does by means of its
specific interests with the domination of conventions. Schoenberg declared
his independence from this type of art by seriously heeding precisely that
expression whose inclusion in the universal trend towards conciliation
determines the most basic principle of musical illusion. His music officially
denies the claim that the universal and the specific have been reconciled.
Regardless of the indebtedness of this music in its origins to parallel princi-
ples exhibited in nature, and regardless of the similarity of its formal irregu-
larities to organic forms – in no way does it present an organic totality. Even
Nietzsche in one of his occasional remarks has pointed out that the essence
of the great work of art lies in the fact that it might be totally different in any
of its given moments. The definition of the work of art in terms of its free-
dom assumes that conventions are binding. Only at the outset where such
conventions guarantee totality beyond all question could everything in
actuality be different: precisely because nothing would be different. Most
compositions by Mozart would offer the composer far-reaching alternatives
without forfeiting anything. The positive position taken by Nietzsche on
aesthetic conventions is consistent with this possibility of constant change
and his highest wisdom is the ironic play with forms whose substantiality
has diminished. Anything which does not lend itself to this play was in his
eyes suspect as plebian and protestant: a strong touch of this flavor is defi-
nitely discernible in his polemic against Wagner. But not until Schoenberg
has music accepted Nietzsche’s challenge.10 Schoenberg’s compositions are
the first in which nothing actually can be different: they are case studies and
construction in one. There is in them no trace of convention which guaran-
tees any freedom of play. Schoenberg’s attitude towards play is just as
polemic as is his attitude towards illusion. He turns just as sharply against
the New Objectivity music-makers and their collective retinue as he does
against the decorative elements of Romanticism.11 He has formulated both
attitudes in his theoretical writings: ‘Music is not to be decorative; it is to be
true,’ and ‘Art does not arise out of ability but rather out of necessity.’12 With
the negation of illusion and play music tends towards the direction of
knowledge.

26
 Schoenberg and Progress

Dialectics of loneliness

This knowledge is founded upon the expressive substance of music itself.

What radical music perceives is the untransfigured suffering of man. His
impotence has increased to the point that it no longer permits illusion and
play. The conflicting drives, about whose sexual genesis Schoenberg’s music
leaves no doubt, have assumed a force in that music which has the character
of a case study – a force which prohibits music from offering comforting
consolation. In the expression of anxiety as ‘forebodings,’ the music of
Schoenberg’s Expressionistic phase offers evidence of this impotence. The
monodrama Erwartung has as its heroine a woman looking for her lover at
night. She is subjected to all the terrors of darkness and in the end comes
upon his murdered corpse. She is consigned to music in the very same way
as a patient is to analysis. The admission of hatred and desire, jealousy and
forgiveness, and – beyond all this – the entire symbolism of the unconscious
is wrung from her; it is only in the moment that the heroine becomes insane
that the music recalls its right to utter a consoling protest. The seismographic
registration of traumatic shock becomes, at the same time, the technical
structural law of music. It forbids continuity and development. Musical
language is polarized according to its extremes: towards gestures of shock
resembling bodily convulsions on the one hand, and on the other towards a
crystalline standstill of a human being whom anxiety causes to freeze in her
tracks. It is this polarization upon which the total world of form of the
mature Schoenberg – and of Webern as well – depends. The intensification
of musical ‘communication’ – not even suspected by this school in the
beginning – the difference between theme and development, the constancy
of harmonic flow, and the unbroken melodic line are destroyed by this
polarization. There is not one of Schoenberg’s technical innovations which
cannot be traced back to that polarization of expression, and which does not
reveal traces of this polarization even beyond the sphere of influence of
expression. This might well offer insight into the interdependency of form
and content in all music. For one thing, it is foolish to proscribe exaggerated
technical articulation as formalistic. All forms of music, not just those of
Expressionism, are realizations of content. In them there survives what is
otherwise forgotten and is no longer capable of speaking directly. What once
sought refuge in form now exists without definition in the constancy of
form. The forms of art reflect the history of man more truthfully than do
documents themselves. Every ossification of form insists that it be interpreted
as the negation of the severity of life. That the anxiety of the lonely becomes

27
Philosophy of Modern Music

the law of aesthetic formal language, however, betrays something of the

secret of that loneliness. The reproach against the individualism of art in its
later stages of development is so pathetically wretched simply because it
overlooks the social nature of this individualism. ‘Lonely discourse’ reveals
more about social tendencies than does communicative discourse. Schoen­
berg hit upon the social character of loneliness by developing this lonely
discourse to its ultimate extreme. From the musical perspective, his ‘drama
with music’ Die glückliche Hand is perhaps his most significant work: the
dream of a totality, all the more valid because the dream is never realized as
a total symphony. The text – inadequate expedient that it might be – cannot
be separated from the music. It is precisely the coarse compactness of this
text which gives the music its compressed form and, therewith, its depth and
effectiveness. Consequently, the criticism of just this coarseness of the text
strikes at the very core of Expressionistic music. The subject of the drama is
Strindberg’s lonely man who experiences the same failures in his erotic life
as in his work. Schoenberg disdains the interpretation which sees this
subject as the ‘social-psychological’ product of industrial society. But he has
noted how subjects and industrial society relate to each other in a perennial
contradiction, which communicates through anxiety. The third scene of the
drama takes place in a workshop. ‘Several workers at their jobs in realistic
dress’ are seen. ‘One is filing, another sits at the machine, a third is
hammering.’ The hero enters the workshop. With the words ‘That can be
done more simply’ (measures 101ff., Scene III) – a symbolic criticism of the
superfluous – he produces with a single magic blow from a piece of gold the
piece of jewelry for the manufacture of which the other workers needed
complicated procedures dictated by the division of labor. ‘Before he raises
his hammer to strike, the workers jump up, preparing to attack him. In the
meantime he observes his raised left hand, without noticing the threat. . . .
As the hammer falls, the faces of the workers freeze in astonishment: the
anvil splits in the middle and the gold falls into the resulting crevice. The
man bends over and picks it up with his left hand. Slowly he raises it up. It is
a diadem, richly decorated with precious jewels.’ The man sings, ‘That’s how
jewelry is made.’ – He declaims this ‘simply, without emotion.’ ‘The faces of
the workers becoming threatening, then contemptuous. They start talking
with each other and seem to be planning a new attack on the man. With a
laugh the man throws them the jewelry. They are about to attack him. He has
turned away and does not see them.’ Thereupon the scene changes. The
objective naïveté of these procedures is no other than that of the man who
‘does not see the workers.’ He is alienated from the actual process of

28
 Schoenberg and Progress

production in society and is no longer able to recognize any relationship

between labor and economic system. The phenomenon of labor strikes
him as an absolute. The realistic appearance of laborers in stylized drama
corresponds to the anxiety of the individual alienated by material production
in the very face of it. It is the anxiety of being forced to awaken – the fear
which totally dominated the Expressionistic conflict of dream-theatre and
reality. Because the individual caught in this dream-state is above viewing
the laborers realistically, he thinks that this threat of conflict comes from
them and not from the total system, which has driven him and the worker
apart. The chaotic anarchy in human labor relationships, which results from
the system itself, finds expression by placing the burden of guilt upon the
victims. In reality, however, the workers’ threat is not their offense, but rather
their answer to the universal injustice which threatens their existence with
every new invention. The masking of this injustice, which does not permit
the subject to ‘see,’ is itself of an objective nature; it is the ideology of the
class. In this respect, the chaotic aspect of Die glückliche Hand – allowing the
obscure to remain obscured – affirms that upright intellectual honesty which
Schoenberg represents in opposition to illusion and play. But the reality of
chaos is not the total reality. Chaos defines the law according to which
market-society blindly reproduces, with no consideration for the individual.
It includes the continuing growth of power in the hands of those in command
over all others. The world is chaotic in the eyes of the victims of the law of
market value and industrial concentration. But the world is not chaotic ‘in
itself.’ It is the individual – oppressed inexorably by the principles of this
world – who considers it such. The forces which make the world chaotic
in the eyes of the individual in the end assume responsibility for the
reorganization of chaos because the world is at the mercy of these forces.
Chaos is the function of the cosmos – disorder before order. Chaos and
system belong together, in society as well as in philosophy. The world of
values, conceived in the midst of Expressionistic chaos, bears traits of a new
force of domination on the horizon. The man in Die glückliche Hand sees the
woman he loves as little as he sees the workers around him. He elevates his
self-pity to a secret realm of the mind. He is a leader. The music depicts his
strength – the text, his weakness. The criticism of hypostatization which he
represents is reactionary in the same sense as was the criticism of Wagner
in his own day. This criticism is directed not against the social conditions
of production, but rather against the division of labor. Schoenberg’s
compositions suffer from his own application of such division of labor
between music and text. They are encumbered by poetic experiments with

29
Philosophy of Modern Music

which he supplements the highest measure of specialized skill in music.

Here also, a Wagnerian tendency collapses. What was still unified and
progressive in Wagner’s composite work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) – unified
by the rational organization of the artistic processes of production – is
broken up into disparate entities in Schoenberg’s compositions. He, as a
competitor, remains true to the existing order. ‘That can be done more
simply’ than the others do it. Schoenberg’s man has ‘a rope around his waist
as a belt upon which two Turksheads hang,’ and holds ‘an unsheathed bloody
sword in his hand.’ No matter how poorly he fares in the world, he is
nonetheless the man of power. But the mythical animal of anxiety, which
buries its teeth in the back of his neck, forces him to obedience. This helpless
man learns to live with his helplessness, doing to others precisely that
injustice which is done unto him. Nothing could more vividly underscore
his historical ambiguity than the stage direction according to which the
scene ‘represents something between a mechanic’s shop and a goldsmith’s
studio.’ The hero, prophet of the New Objectivity, is, as an artisan craftsman,
supposed to save the magic of old means of production. His one simple
gesture, in opposition to the superfluous, is sufficient to produce a diadem.
Siegfried, his model, had at least forged a sword. ‘Music is not to be
decorative, but rather to be true.’ But then again the work of art has only art
as its object. It cannot aesthetically escape the context of deception to which
it socially belongs. The radically alienated and absolute work of art, in its
blindness, relates tautologically only to itself. Its symbolic nucleus is the
realm of art. And thus this work of art becomes hollow. The emptiness that
is manifested in the New Objectivity permeates this nucleus at the height of
Expressionism. What Expressionism anticipates of the New Objectivity, it
shares with Art Nouveau (‘Jugendstil’) at the same time and with the
development of commercial art, both of which preceded it. To these two
movements Die glückliche Hand is indebted in its use of color symbolism.
The return to illusion becomes so easy for the Expressionistic protest because
the movement originated in illusion – in the illusion of individuality itself.
Expressionism remains – against its will – that which art had openly
professed around 1900: loneliness as style.

Loneliness as style

Erwartung contains a musical quotation towards the end at one of its most
celebrated spots, accompanying the words ‘thousands of people march

30
 Schoenberg and Progress

past’ (measures 411f., cf. 401f.). Schoenberg has taken this quotation from
an earlier tonal song, whose theme and counterpoint are woven into the
freely moving vocal texture of Erwartung with greatest artistry, and without
destroying its atonality. The song is entitled ‘Am Wegrand’ and belongs to
the group of opus 6, number 6, all of which are based upon poems from the
Art Nouveau movement. The words are by John Henry Mackay, who wrote
the biography of Max Stirner.13 The words define the point of intersection
between Art Nouveau and Expressionism, as does the composition of this
song itself, which, in the use of Brahmsian technique of piano composition,
disturbs tonality by independent chromatic auxiliary tones and contrapunctal
conflicts. The text reads:

Thousands of people march past,

The one for whom I long,
He is not among them!
Restless glances fly past
And ask the one in haste,
Whether it is he. . . .
But they ask and ask in vain.
No one answers:
‘Here I am. Be still.’
Longing fills the realms of life,
Left empty by fulfillment,
And so I stand at the edge of the road,
While the crowd flows past,
Until – blinded by the burning sun
My tired eyes close.

Herein lies the formula of the style of loneliness. This loneliness is a common
one: that of city dwellers who are totally unaware of each other. The gesture
of the lonely person offers a basis for comparison. And consequently, this
gesture can be quoted: the Expressionist reveals loneliness as universal.14
He continues to quote even where the quote is not a literal one: the spot
‘Beloved, beloved, morning is coming’ (Erwartung, measures 389f.) can
be traced back to ‘Hark, beloved’ from the second act of Tristan following
Brangäne’s warning to the lovers. As in all other areas of knowledge, the
quotation represents authority. The anxiety of the lonely person who is
quoting seeks support in what is currently valid. Anxiety has emancipated
itself from the bourgeois taboos on expression in its Expressionistic case

31
Philosophy of Modern Music

studies. In its emancipated state it is no longer prevented from aligning itself

with the stronger party. The position of the absolute monad in art is twofold:
resistance to association with bad company and a readiness to association
with still worse.

Expressionism as objectivity

The sudden transformation necessarily takes place. This arises from the fact
that the content of Expressionism – the absolute subject – is not absolute.
Society is reflected in the isolation of the Expressionist movement. The last of
Schoenberg’s six pieces for male chorus [opus 35] offers simple proof thereof.
‘Deny that you also belong to this – you are not alone – .’ Such a ‘bond,’
however, reveals itself in that pure expressions in their state of isolation
liberate those elements of the intra-subjective and therewith the elements
of aesthetic objectivity. Every Expressionistic consequence which challenges
the traditional category of the work brings new demands of organization –
demands of a consistency in terms of being-thus-and-not-being-able-
to-be-otherwise. Expression polarizes musical continuity according to its
extremes; this results in turn in the determination of continuity according
to the succession of the extremes. Contrast, as a law of form, is no less
binding than was transition in traditional music. It would even be possible
to define twelve-tone technique in its later stages as a system of contrasts,
as the integration of those elements which are unconnected. As long as art
preserves its distance from the immediacy of life, it is not able to step beyond
the shadow of its autonomy and its immanence of form. Expressionism, in
itself hostile to the concept of the work, is able to do this even less precisely
because of this hostility. Precisely in its renunciation of communication, the
movement insists upon its autonomy, guaranteed only by consistency within
works of art. It is this unavoidable contradiction which makes it impossible
to continue steadfastly according to the principles of Expressionism. In
that the aesthetic object is to be designated as pure here-and-now, it goes
beyond the pure here-and-now – by virtue of this negative designation –
renouncing all that extends beyond it, under whose law the aesthetic object
falls. The absolute liberation of the particular from the universal renders it
universal through the polemic and principal relationship of the universal to
the particular. What has once been defined is, by force of its own definition,
more than the mere result of individuation as it is delineated as being.
Even the gestures of shock in Erwartung take on a certain resemblance to

32
 Schoenberg and Progress

this formula – as soon as they have made their first reappearance – and
therewith give contour to the form which encompasses them: the final
chorus is a true finale. If the drive towards well-integrated construction is to
be called objectivity, then objectivity is not simply a counter-movement to
Expressionism. It is the other side of the Expressionistic coin. Expressionistic
music had interpreted so literally the principle of expression contained in
traditionally Romantic music that it assumed the character of a case study. In
so doing, a sudden change takes place. Music, as a case study in expression,
is no longer ‘expressive.’ What is no longer expressed hovers over music at
an undefined distance, and consequently music is deprived of that reflected
splendor of infinity. As soon as music has clearly and sharply defined what it
wishes to express – its subjective content – this content becomes rigid under
the force of the composition, manifesting precisely that objective quality the
existence of which is denied by the purely expressive character of music. In
its case-study disposition towards its object, music itself becomes ‘matter-
of-fact.’ With its expressive outbursts the dream of subjectivity explodes,
and along with it all conventions. These chords – reflecting the character of
the case study – blast the subjective illusion. Thereby, however, these chords
invalidate their unique expressive function. What they portray as their
object – no matter how precisely this might be done – becomes a matter
of indifference: it is, after all, the same subjectivity, whose magic dissolves
before the exactness of the penetrating eye cast upon it by the work. Thus
the case study chords become the material of construction. This happens in
Die glückliche Hand. It is at one and the same time a document of orthodox
Expressionistic theory and a concrete work of art. It professes architectural
form through its employment of a reprise with ostinato, reposing harmonies,
and lapidary thematic trombone chords in the final scene (measures 214f.,
248 and 252). Such architecture negates musical psychologism, which
nevertheless finds its perfection in this architecture. In so doing music does
not – like the text – simply drop below the Expressionist level of knowledge,
but simultaneously surpasses this level. The categorization of the work
as a flawless and cohesive totality is not bound up in that illusion which
Expressionism brands as a lie. The category itself is of a double nature. If the
work reveals itself to the isolated and totally alienated subject as a deception
of harmony (a deception of reconciliation within itself and with other works),
then it is at the same time that instance which puts this false individuality
back into its proper bounds – an individuality which has its proper place
in bad company. If this individuality takes a critical stand upon the work,
the work in turn becomes critical of this individuality. If the contingency of

33
Philosophy of Modern Music

individuality protests against the repudiated social law which once gave rise
to this individuality, then the work designs schemata intended to overcome
this very contingency. The work represents the truth of society against the
individual, who recognizes its untruth and is himself this untruth. Only
works of art manifest that which transcends limitations of subject and object
to the same degree. As illusory reconciliation, these works are the reflection
of actual reconciliation. In its Expressionistic phase music rescinded any
claim to totality. But Expressionistic music did remain ‘organic’; it was a
language; it was subjective and psychological.15 These factors drove music
again in the direction of totality. Perhaps Expressionism was not sufficiently
radical in its position on superstitions regarding the organic. Nevertheless,
the elimination of the organic resulted in a renewed crystallization of
the concept of the work of art; the works necessarily become heirs to the
Expressionistic heritage.

Total organization of the elements of music

The possibilities indicated above would seem to be without limitation.

All restricting principles of selection in tonality have been discarded.
Traditional music had to content itself with a highly limited number of tonal
combinations, particularly with regard to their vertical applications. It had
further to content itself with rendering the specific continuously by means
of configurations of the general, which these configurations paradoxically
present as identical with the unique. Beethoven’s entire work is an exegesis
of this paradox. Today, in contrast, chords are tailored to the non-changeable
demands of their concrete usage. No conventions prevent the composer from
using the sound which he needs in a specific spot. No convention forces
him to acquiesce to traditionally universal principles. With the liberation of
musical material, there arose the possibility of mastering it technically. It is
as if music had thrown off that last alleged force of nature which its subject
matter exercises upon it, and would now be able to assume command over this
subject matter freely, consciously, and openly. The composer has emancipated
himself along with his sounds. The various dimensions of Western tonal
music – melody, harmony, counterpoint, form, and instrumentation – have
for the most part developed historically apart from one another, without
design, and, in that regard, according to the ‘laws of nature.’ Even in those
instances where the one assumed the function of the others – as did melody,
for example, that of harmony during the Romantic period – the one did not

34
 Schoenberg and Progress

actually proceed out of the other; they simply came to resemble one another.
Melody ‘circumscribed’ the harmonic function; harmony differentiated itself
in the service of melodic valor. But melody itself, in its liberation from its old
triadic character by means of the Romantic art song – the Lied – remains
within the framework of harmonic common practice. The blindness with
which the development of the productive forces of music has proceeded,
particularly since Beethoven, has resulted in incongruities. Whenever an
isolated aspect of artistic material has developed within an historical span,
other aspects of this material have been left behind. With regard to the unity
of the work, these more progressive aspects have been accused of deception
by the more regressive elements. During the Romantic era this was, above
all, valid for counterpoint. It was only a decoration upon the homophonic
composition. It confined itself either to the superficial combination of
homophonically worked-out themes, or to a simple embellishing decoration
of a harmonic ‘chorale,’ the seeming contrapuntal nature of which is only an
illusion. From this perspective Wagner, Strauss, and Reger resemble each
other. At the same time, however, all counterpoint by its own definition
insists upon the simultaneity of independent voices. If this is ignored, then
inferior counterpoint results. Drastic examples thereof are to be found in the
‘all-too-good’ contrapuntal works of late Romanticism. They are melodically
and harmonically conceived. In such cases the given voices would appear
to function as leading voices where they at best might function as motivic
fragments in the total structuring of the voices. Consequently, they obscure
the progression of voices and disavow the construction through obtrusively
song-like pretensions. Such incongruities do not, however, remain restricted
to technical details. They become the historical forces of the whole. For the
further the individual aspects of musical material are developed, the more
that many of them are blended together – as, for example instrumental
sound and harmony in Romanticism – and the more clearly does the idea
of rational total organization of the total musical material define itself. This
idea eliminates those incongruities. It already was an important element in
the Wagnerian composite work of art; but its full realization comes with
Schoenberg. In his music it is not only that all dimensions are developed
to an equal degree, but further that all of them evolve out of one another
to such an extent that they all converge. Schoenberg has visions of such a
convergence even in his Expressionistic phase; an example of this is to be
found in his concept of the ‘Klangfarbe’ melody.16 He implies that the mere
instrumental change of coloration of identical sounds can assume melodic
force, without alteration of the melodic realm in the old sense. In a later

35
Philosophy of Modern Music

development a common denominator is sought for all musical dimensions.

This is the origin of the twelve-tone technique, which finds its culmination
in the will towards the suspension of that fundamental contrast upon which
all Western music is built – the contrast between polyphonic fugal structure
and homophonic sonata-form. This was Webern’s point of departure in his
last string quartet [opus 28]. Schoenberg was once viewed as a synthesis of
Brahms and Wagner. In the later works of Schoenberg and Webern still higher
goals are sought. The alchemy of these works would appear to seek to unite
the most fundamental impulses of Bach and Beethoven. This is the direction
taken by the restitution of counterpoint. But such a restitution vanishes, in
turn, in the utopia of that synthesis. The specific essence of counterpoint, its
derivation from traditional cantus firmus, becomes untenable. The concept
of counterpoint is at any rate no longer to be found in Webern’s late chamber
music: his sparse sounds are precisely those remnants which the fusion of
the vertical and the horizontal have left behind – that is to say, they are the
monuments of music which have grown mute in indifference.

Total development

It is the contrast to the idea of the rational total organization of the work,
the contrast to the ‘indifference’ of the material dimensions towards each
other in the work, which reveal the reactionary nature of the compositional
procedures of Stravinsky and Hindemith. And to be sure, these procedures
are technically reactionary, regardless of the position in society of these two
composers. This pseudo-musicianship is a clever manipulation involving
one isolated aspect of musical material in place of a constructive con­
sequential procedure which subjects all aspects of this material to the same
law. Such cleverness, in its hard-headed naïveté, has today become aggressive.
The integral organization of the work of art, which is in opposition to the
work itself – the only possible objectivity for the work of art today –
is precisely the product of that subjectivity denounced by this pseudo-
musicianship for what they term its ‘accidental nature.’ To be sure, the
conventions destroyed today were not always of such superficial significance
in their relationship to music. Experiences which were once vital have
imprinted themselves in these conventions and have thus fulfilled a certain
function fairly well. This function was essentially organizational. Conven­
tions were deprived of this function, however, by autonomous aesthetic
subjectivity, which strove to organize the work freely from within itself.

36
 Schoenberg and Progress

The transition of musical organization to autonomous subjectivity is

completed by virtue of the technical principle of the development. It was at
the beginning, in the eighteenth century, a minor element in sonata-form.
Experimentation with subjective illumination and dynamics were conducted
with the themes once they had been stated and their existence could be
presumed. In Beethoven, however, the development – subjective reflection
upon the theme which decides the fate of the theme – becomes the focal
point of the entire form. It justifies the form by engendering it anew and
spontaneously, even in such cases where the form is nothing more than an
assumption of convention. Of assistance in this regeneration of form is an
older, likewise residual, means which has revealed its latent possibilities only
in this later phase. It often happens in music that remnants of the past
surpass the state of technique which it currently manifests. Development
recalls the procedure of variation. In music before Beethoven – with very
few exceptions – the procedure of variation was considered to be among the
more superficial technical procedures, a mere masking of thematic material
which otherwise retained its essential identity. Now, in association with
development, variation serves the establishment of universal, concretely
unschematic relationships. The procedure of variation becomes dynamically
charged with newly gained dynamic qualities. In variation, as developed up
to this point, the identity of the thematic material remains firmly established –
Schoenberg calls this material the ‘model.’ It is all ‘the same thing.’ But the
meaning of this identity reveals itself as nonidentity. The thematic material
is of such a nature that to attempt to secure it is tantamount to varying it. It
really does not in any way exist ‘in itself ’ but only in view of the possibility
of the entirety.17 Fidelity to the demands of the theme signifies a constantly
intervening alteration in all its given moments. By virtue of such non-
identity of identity music achieves a completely new relationship to the time
within which a given work takes place. Music is no longer indifferent to
time, since it no longer functions on the level of repetition in time, but rather
on that of alteration. However, music does not simply surrender to time,
because in its constant alteration it retains its thematic identity. The concept
of the classic in music is defined by this paradoxical relationship to time.
This relationship involves at the same time, however, the limitation of the
principle of development. Music through its powers of evocation is able to
hold the pure force of time at a distance only as long as the development is
not absolute, only as long as it is something not totally subjected to music,
but rather – in Kantian terms – an a priori musical ‘Ding an sich’ (an object
‘in and for itself ’). Therefore this intervening variation, in the most tightly

37
Philosophy of Modern Music

constructed works of Beethoven’s ‘classicism’ – as, for example, the Eroica –

contents itself with the sonata-development as only a ‘portion’ of the totality,
respecting therein the exposition and reprise. At a later stage, however, the
empty passage of time becomes more and more threatening to music,
precisely due to the increasing preponderance of the dynamic forces of
subjective expression, which destroy conventional remnants. The subjective
moments of expression liberate themselves from the continuum of time.
They can no longer be held in check. To counter this, the variational
development is extended over the entire sonata. The problematic totality
of the sonata is to be reconstructed by the all-encompassing function
of development. In Brahms the development – as the execution and
transformation of the thematic material – took possession of the sonata
as a whole. Subjectification and objectification are intertwined. Brahms’
technique unites both tendencies, forcing the lyric intermezzo and academic
structure into meaningful union. While still composing within the total
framework of tonality, Brahms by and large rejects conventional formulae
and fundamentals, producing a unity of the work which – out of freedom –
is constantly renewed at every moment. He consequently becomes the
advocate of universal economy, refuting all coincidental moments of music,
and yet developing the most extreme multiplicity – the result from thematic
materials the identity of which has been preserved. This indeed is his great
accomplishment. There is no longer anything which is unthematic; nothing
which cannot be understood as the derivative of the thematic material, no
matter how latent it may have become. Schoenberg develops the tendencies
of Beethoven and Brahms; in so doing he can lay claim to the heritage of
classic bourgeois music – in a sense very similar to that in which dialectical
materialism is related to Hegel. The epistemological energy of modern music
finds its legitimacy not in that it relates back to the ‘great bourgeois past’ – to
the heroic classicism of the revolutionary period – but rather in that it
neutralizes in itself romantic differentiation in terms of technique and,
thereby, according to its substantiality. The subject of modern music, upon
which the music itself presents a case study, is the emancipated, isolated,
concrete subject of the late bourgeois phase. This concrete subjectivity and
the material which is radically and thoroughly formulated by it furnishes
Schoenberg with the canon of aesthetic objectivism. The depth of his work
is thereby discernible. In Beethoven and still more completely in Brahms the
unity of the motivic–thematic manipulation is achieved in a type of balance
between subjective dynamics and traditional – ‘tonal’ – language. The
subjective approach to composition forces the conventional language to

38
 Schoenberg and Progress

speak again, without varying it by means of its intervention as language. The

alteration of language was accomplished along Romantic-Wagnerian lines at
the expense of objectivity and the binding force of the music itself. This
alteration has shattered motivic-thematic unity in the art song and
substituted for them leitmotiv and programmatic content. Schoenberg was
the first to reveal the principles of universal unity and economy of material
which Wagner had discovered as new, subjective, and emancipated. His
works offer definite proof that the more consequently adhered to the
nominalism of musical language inaugurated by Wagner, the more perfectly
this language is to be mastered by rational means. It is to be mastered by the
force of tendencies dwelling within the language itself, not by means of
counterbalancing tact and taste. This is most clearly recognizable in the
relationship between harmony and polyphony. Polyphony is the means best
suited for the organization of emancipated music. In the era of homophony,
organization was perfected by chordal conventions.18 However, once these
conventions have disappeared – and, along with them, tonality – then every
sound which merely serves to form a chord becomes subject to coincidence,
so long as it is not validated by the course of voice leading – that is to say, by
polyphonic means. Late Beethoven, Brahms, and, in a certain sense, even
Wagner have paid their respects to polyphony, if only to compensate for the
fact that tonality has sacrificed its constructional force and grown rigid as an
empty formula. Schoenberg, finally, asserts the principle of polyphony no
longer simply as a heteronomous principle of emancipated harmony, which
for the moment awaits reconciliation with harmony. He reveals it as the
essence of emancipated harmony itself. The inherent properties of a single
chord – which in the classic-Romantic tradition, as the subjective vehicle of
expression, represented the opposite pole to polyphonic objectivity – are
discerned in its own polyphony. The means by which this is accomplished is
no other than that extreme means of Romantic subjectification: dissonance.
The more dissonant a chord, the more sounds contained – sounds effective
by virtue of their differentiation from each other and in the quality of the
differentiation itself – the more ‘polyphonic’ is this chord; or, as Erwin Stein
once stated, the more each individual sound assumes the character of ‘voice’
in the simultaneity of the accord. The predominance of dissonance seems to
destroy the rationally ‘logical’ relationships. Dissonance is nevertheless still
more rational than consonance, insofar as it articulates with great clarity the
relationship of the sounds occurring within it – no matter how complex –
instead of achieving a dubious unity through the destruction of those partial
moments present in dissonance, through ‘homogenous’ sound. Dissonance

39
Philosophy of Modern Music

and its related categories of melodic construction by means of ‘dissonant’

intervals are, however, the actual vehicles of expressive character which
again manifest the nature of a case study. Consequently, the subjective drive
and the longing for self-proclamation without illusion become the technical
organ of the objective work. On the other hand, the reverse is true as well; it
is the rationality and the unification of the material which makes the
subjected material tractable to the forces of subjectivity. In any music, in
which every single tone is transparently determined by the construction of
the whole work, the difference between the essential and the coincidental
disappears. Such music maintains in all its moments the same distance from
a central point. In so doing, the conventions of form, which had once
regulated the proximity and distance from this central point, lose their
meaning. There is no longer any unessential transition between the essential
moments, between the ‘themes’; consequently, there are no longer themes at
all and, in the strictest sense, not even a ‘development.’ This has already been
observed in works in disjunct atonal style. ‘In the instrumental music of the
nineteenth century, one may trace everywhere a tendency to construct the
form of the music out of the means afforded by the symphony. Beethoven, as
one of the pioneers, knew how to rise with the help of small figures to a
powerful climax which grew out of one germ-motive, the stimulus of the
idea. The principle of contrast, which is dominant in all art, first comes into
its own when the effect of the idea of the germ-motive has ceased. The period
before Beethoven knew nothing of such construction in the symphony. The
themes of Mozart, for example, often contained within themselves the
principle of contrast; they are compact first sections followed by freer second
sections. This principle of a direct effect of contrast, and of a juxtaposition of
contrasting figures in the course of the theme, is revived by Schoenberg in
the works of his later style.’19 This process of thematic formation originated
in the case study character of music. The moments in the course of events
of music are placed disjointedly alongside one another, similarly to
psychological impulses – first of all as shocks and secondly as contrasting
figures. The continuum of subjective time–experience is no longer entrusted
with the power of collecting musical events, functioning as a unity, and
thereby imparting meaning to them. The resulting discontinuity destroys
musical dynamics, to which it owes its very being. Once again music subdues
time, but no longer by substituting music in its perfection for time, but by
negating time through the inhibition of all musical moments by means of an
omnipresent construction. Nowhere does the secret agreement between
incidental and progressive music prove itself more conclusively than here.

40
 Schoenberg and Progress

Late Schoenberg shares with jazz – and moreover with Stravinsky – the
dissociation of musical time.20 Music formulates a design of the world,
which – for better or for worse – no longer recognizes history.

The concept of twelve-tone technique

The sudden transition from musical dynamics to statics – the dynamics of

musical structure (not simply a change in the degree of intensity) which
naturally continues to recognize crescendo and decrescendo – explains
the uniquely determined systematic character which Schoenberg’s com­
positional technique assumed in its later phase, as a result of the twelve-
tone technique. The tool of compositional dynamics – the procedure of
variation – becomes absolute. In assuming this position variation frees
itself from any dependence upon dynamics. The musical phenomenon no
longer presents itself involved in its own self-development. The working
out of thematic materials is reduced to the level of a preliminary study
by the composer. Variation, as such, no longer appears. Everything, yet
nothing, is variation; the procedure of variation is again relegated to the
material, preforming it before the actual composition begins. Schoenberg
hints at this when he refers to the twelve-tone structure of his late works
as his own private affair. Music becomes the result of processes to which
the materials of music have been subjected and the perception of which in
themselves is blocked by the music. Thus music becomes static.21 Twelve-
tone technique must not be misunderstood as a ‘technique of composition’
as was, for example, the technique of Impressionism. All efforts to employ
it as such result in absurdity. It can be more correctly compared to the
arrangement of colors on a palette than to the actual painting of a picture.
The compositional process actually begins only when the ordering of the
twelve tones is established. Therefore, this ordering has made composition
not simpler but, rather, more difficult. The twelve-tone technique demands
that every composition be derived from such a ‘fundamental structure’ or
‘row,’ no matter whether it is a single phrase or a work consisting of several
movements. This refers to an arbitrarily designated ordering of the twelve
tones available to the composer in the tempered half-tone system, as, for
example, c#-a-b-g-a flat-f#-b flat-d-e-e flat-c-f in the first of Schoenberg’s
published twelve-tone compositions.22 Every tone of the composition is
determined by this row: there is no longer a single ‘free’ note. This does
not mean, however – with the exception of a few very early cases as they

41
Philosophy of Modern Music

appeared in the earliest days of the technique – that this particular row
runs its course unaltered throughout the entire composition, revealing only
minor alterations of the row and of rhythmic figures. The Austrian composer
Josef Hauer developed such a procedure independently of Schoenberg.23
The results were of the most barren meagerness.24 In contrast to Hauer, in a
radical gesture Schoenberg absorbs the classic and, to a still larger degree,
archaic techniques of variation into the twelve-tone materials. For the most
part he employs the row in four ways: as the basic row; as the inversion
thereof, that is to say, by substituting for each interval of the row the same
interval but in the reverse direction (according to the pattern of the ‘fugue
at the inversion’ – for example the one in G major from the first volume of
the Well-Tempered Clavier); as a ‘crab’ in the sense of earlier contrapuntal
practice, so that the row begins with the final tone and ends with the first;
and as the inversion of the crab. These four procedures can then, for their
own part, be transposed, beginning with each of the twelve tones of the
chromatic scale, so that the row offers itself in forty-eight different forms for
a given composition. Furthermore, ‘derivations’ may be formulated out of
the rows by means of symmetrical arrangements of specific pitches, resulting
in new, independent rows, which at the same time retain their relationship
to the basic row. Berg employed this procedure extensively in Lulu. On the
other hand, a concentration of tonal relationships can be accomplished by
subdividing the row into partitions which in turn are related to each other.
Finally, a composition, instead of basing itself only upon a single row, may
use two or more as a point of departure, by analogy with the double and
triple fugue (for example, Schoenberg’s Third String Quartet, opus 30). The
row is by no means presented only melodically, but harmonically as well, and
every tone of the composition, without exception, has its positional value
in the row, or in one of its derivatives. This guarantees the ‘indifference’ of
harmony and melody. In simple cases the row is distributed among vertical
and horizontal structures and, as soon as the twelve tones have appeared, the
row is repeated or replaced by one of its derivations; in more complicated
cases the row is employed ‘contrapuntally’ – that is to say, simultaneously
in various transformations or transpositions. As a rule, in the case of
Schoenberg, the compositions in a simpler style – as, for example, the
Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene [opus 34], are in their twelve-
tone structure less complicated than those composed in a more complex
style. Thus the Variations for Orchestra [opus 31] is inexhaustible in its row
combinations. In twelve-tone technique octave registrations are also ‘free’;
whether the second tone of the basic set of the waltz, a, appears a minor sixth

42
 Schoenberg and Progress

above or a major third below the first tone, c-sharp, is determined by the
demands of the composition. Furthermore, the total rhythmic configuration
is liberated, as a matter of principle, from the individual motive to the total
structure. The rules are not arbitrarily designed. They are configurations of
the historical force present in the material. At the same time, these rules are
formulae by which they adjust themselves to this force. In them consciousness
undertakes to purify music of the decayed organic residue. These rules
fiercely wage the battle against musical illusion. However, even the boldest
manipulations of the twelve-tone system are a reflection of the technical
level of material. This is true not only for the integral principle of variation
of the whole, but even for the row – the microcosmic matter of twelve-
tone itself. The row rationalizes what is instinctive in every conscientious
composer: sensivitity towards the too-early recurrence of the same pitch,
except for cases in which it is immediately repeated. The contrapuntal
prohibitions against a double climax and the feeling of weakness in view
of the bass voice leading in a harmonic setting – which arrive again too
quickly at the same note – underscore this experience. The composer’s sense
of urgency increases, however, once the system of tonality has vanished,
validating the preponderance of individual tones over other tones. Anyone
who has worked with free atonality is familiar with the diverting force of
a melodic or bass tone which appears a second time before all others have
appeared. Such a tone threatens to disrupt the melodic-harmonic flow. Static
twelve-tone technique actualizes the sensitivity of musical dynamics in the
face of the unconscious recurrence of the same.25 This technique makes such
a sensitivity sacrosanct. The tone which recurs too early, as well as the tone
which is ‘free’ or coincidental in the face of the totality, becomes taboo.

Musical domination of nature

A system by which music dominates nature results. It reflects a longing

present since the beginnings of the bourgeois era: to ‘grasp’ and to place
all sounds into an order, and to reduce the magic essence of music to
human logic. Luther calls Josquin des Pres, who died in 1521, ‘the master
of notes who compelled the notes to bend to his will, in contrast to other
composers, who bent to the will of the notes.’26 The conscious disposition
over the material of nature is two-sided: the emancipation of the human
being from the musical force of nature and the subjection of nature
to human purposes. In Spengler’s philosophy of history the principle of

43
Philosophy of Modern Music

blatant domination breaks through at the end of the bourgeois era. This
principle was inaugurated by the bourgeoisie itself. Spengler has an affinitive
feeling for the terror of domination and for the relationship between its
dispositional rights of both the aesthetic and political fields: ‘The means of
the present are, and will be for many years, parliamentary – elections and
the press. He may think what he pleases about them, he may respect them
or despise them, but he must command them. Bach and Mozart commanded
the musical means of their times. This is the hallmark of mastery in any and
every field, and statecraft is no exception.’27 When Spengler prophesies about
the late-stage of Western science that it would ‘. . . bear all the marks of the
great art of counterpoint . . . ,’ and when he calls the ‘. . . infinitesimal music
of the boundless world-space . . . the deep unresting longing . . .’ of Western
culture,28 there twelve-tone technique, retrogressive in itself, infinitely static
by virtue of its total independence of any historical forces, approaches that
ideal more closely than Spengler or even Schoenberg ever imagined to be
possible.29
At the same time, however, this technique further approaches the ideal of
mastery as domination, the infinity of which resides in the fact that nothing
heteronomous remains which is not absorbed into the continuum of this
technique. Infinity is its pure identity. It is, however, the suppressing moment
in the domination of nature, which suddenly turns against the subjective
autonomy and freedom itself, in the name of which this domination found its
fulfillment. The number game of twelve-tone technique and the force which
it exercises borders on astrology and it is not merely a fad of those adept in
the technique who have succumbed to its appeal.30 Twelve-tone rationality
approaches superstition per se in that it is a closed system – one which is
opaque even unto itself – in which the configuration of means is directly
hypostatized as goal and as law. The legitimacy of the procedure in which the
technique fulfills itself is at the same time merely something imposed upon
the material, by which the legitimacy is determined. This determination
itself does not actually serve a purpose. Accuracy or correctness, as a
mathematical hypothesis, takes the place of that element called ‘the idea’
in traditional art. This ‘idea,’ to be sure, degenerated to an ideology in late
Romantic art, to the assertion of metaphysical substantiality by means of the
crude and material preoccupation of music with the eschatological – with
last and final things – even if this concern did not manifest itself concretely
in the pure structure of the work of art. Schoenberg – whose music secretly
contains an element of that positivism upon which the essence of his
counterpart Stravinsky is based – has, as a consequence of the availability

44
 Schoenberg and Progress

of music for case-study expression, extirpated ‘meaning’ insofar as meaning,

in the tradition of Viennese classicism, lays claim to being present purely
in the context of the technical structure. Structure as such is to be correct
rather than meaningful. The question which twelve-tone music asks of the
composer is not how musical meaning is to be organized, but, rather, how
organization is to become meaningful. What Schoenberg has produced
during the last twenty-five years are progressive attempts to answer this
question. In the final analysis the intention is imbedded – almost with the
fragmentary force of allegory – in an emptiness which extends into the
innermost cells of the work of art. The dominating quality of such a late
gesture, however, is a reflection of that dominating essence of the system
inherent in its origins. Twelve-tone precision treats music according to the
schema of fate, divesting itself of any implication of meaning present in the
musical object itself, as if such meaning were a matter of illusion. Fate and
the domination of nature are not to be separated. The concept of fate might
well be patterned after the experience of domination, proceeding directly
from the superiority of nature over man. The concrete is stronger than the
abstract. Man has thereby learned to become stronger himself and to master
nature, and in the process fate has reproduced itself. Fate develops inevitably
in steps: inevitably, because the previous superiority of nature dictates every
step of the way. Fate is domination reduced to its pure abstraction, and the
measure of its destruction is equal to that of its domination; fate is disaster.

Loss of freedom

Music, in its surrender to historical dialectics, has played its role in this
process. Twelve-tone technique is truly the fate of music. It enchains music
by liberating it. The subject dominates music through the rationality of the
system, only in order to succumb to the rational system itself. In twelve-tone
technique the actual process of composition – the productivity of variation –
is returned to the basic realm of musical material. On the whole, the freedom
of the composer undergoes the same experience. This technique is realized
in its ability to manipulate the material. Thus the technique becomes the
designation of the material, establishing itself as alien to the subject and
finally subduing the subject by its own force. If the imagination of the
composer has once made this material pliable to the constructive will, then
the constructive material cripples the imagination. The New Objectivity
submissiveness, a remnant of the Expressionistic subject, remains below the

45
Philosophy of Modern Music

level of this technique. This subject denies its own spontaneity by projecting
rational experiences, out of its altercation with historical content, upon
this content itself. From the procedures which broke the blind domination
of tonal material there evolves a second blind nature by means of this
regulatory system. The subject subordinates itself to this blind nature,
seeking protection and security, which it indicates in its despair over the
impossibility of fulfilling music out of itself. The Wagnerian hypothesis
upon the rule which one establishes for oneself and then follows reveals its
fateful aspect. No rule proves itself more repressive than the self-determined
one. It is precisely its subjective origin which, as soon as it establishes itself
in a positive way with regard to the subject, exercising a regulatory function,
results in the coincidental nature of any arbitrary assumption. The force to
which man is subjected by mass-music continues to live on as a socially
opposite pole in that music which totally withdraws from man. To be sure,
among the rules of twelve-tone technique there is not one which does not
proceed necessarily out of compositional experience – out of the progressive
illumination of the natural material of music. But this experience had
assumed a defensive character by virtue of its subjective sensibility that no
note appear which does not fulfill its motivic function within the structure
of the entire work; that no harmony be employed which is not conclusively
identified at a specific spot. The truth of all these desiderata rests in their
incessant confrontation with the concrete form of music to which they are
applied.
These desiderata indicate a factor to be approached with caution, but do
not indicate how this factor is to be approached. Disaster ensues as soon as
the desiderata are elevated to the level of norms and are dispensed from that
confrontation. The content of the norm is identical with that of spontaneous
experience. However, once this content becomes concrete, it is transformed
into a self-contradiction. What once found a highly perceptive ear has been
distorted to a concocted system wherein musical correctness supposedly
can be gauged in the abstract. This explains the readiness of so many young
musicians – particularly in America where the empirical roots of the twelve-
tone technique are totally lacking – to compose in the ‘twelve-tone system,’
and it also explains the jubilation over having found a substitution for tonality,
as though it were not even possible to survive aesthetically in this freedom
and that it were necessary underhandedly to substitute a new compliance
for tonality. The total rationality of music is its total organization. By means
of organization, liberated music seeks to reconstitute the lost totality – the
lost power and the responsibly binding force of Beethoven. Music succeeds

46
 Schoenberg and Progress

in so doing only at the price of its freedom, and thereby it fails. Beethoven
reproduced the meaning of tonality out of subjective freedom. The new
ordering of twelve-tone technique virtually extinguishes the subject. The
truly great moments in late Schoenberg have been attained despite the
twelve-tone technique as well as by means of it – by means of it because
music becomes capable of restraining itself coldly and inexorably, and this is
the only fitting position for music following its decline; and despite twelve-
tone technique because the spirit which thought it out remains sufficiently
in self-control to penetrate repeatedly the structure of its technical
components and to cause them to come to life, as though the spirit were
ready, in the end, to destroy catastrophically the technical work of art. The
failure of the technical work of art, however, is not only a failure in terms of
the aesthetic ideal behind such a work, but a technical failure as well. In the
final analysis the radicalism with which the technical work of art destroys
aesthetic illusion makes illusion responsible for the technical work of art.
Twelve-tone music has a streamlined aspect. In reality, technique should
serve purposes which lie beyond its own context. Where such purposes
are absent, it becomes an end unto itself and substitutes a superficial
‘merging’ for the substantial unity of the work of art. Such a displacement
of gravitational center is responsible for the fact that the fetish-character of
mass music has suddenly affected even advanced and ‘critical’ production.
In spite of any and all material justification, one cannot overlook the distant
relationship of this movement with those theatrical productions which
incessantly present mechanical works – indeed, tendentiously attempt to
resemble machines without fulfilling their function, simply standing there
as an allegory of the ‘technical age.’ All New Objectivity secretly threatens
to fall into the hands of that which it most bitterly opposes: the ornament.
The interior-design charlatans, sitting in full view in their streamlined club
chairs, publicly confess what the loneliness of constructivist painting and
twelve-tone music grasped as a matter of necessity. Illusion vanishes from
the work of art as soon as the work begins to define itself in its battle against
the ornament; in the process the position of the work of art in general
gradually becomes untenable. Everything having no function in the work of
art – and therefore everything transcending the law of mere existence – is
withdrawn. The function of the work of art lies precisely in its transcendence
beyond mere existence. Thus the height of justice becomes the height of
injustice: the consummately functional work of art becomes consummately
functionless. Since the work, after all, cannot be reality, the elimination of
all illusory features accentuates all the more glaringly the illusory character

47
Philosophy of Modern Music

of its existence. This process is inescapable. The dissolution of the illusory

features in the work of art is demanded by its very consistency. But the
process of dissolution – ordained by the meaning of the totality – makes the
totality meaningless. The integral work of art is that work which is absolutely
paradoxical. The common view projects Schoenberg and Stravinsky as being
diametrically opposed. Stravinsky’s masks and Schoenberg’s constructions
actually present a slight similarity. Yet it can very well be imagined that some
day Stravinsky’s unrelated juxtaposed chords and the succession of twelve-
tone sounds – the connecting threads of which are severed, as it were, by the
command of his system – will some day no longer strike the ear as so distinct
from one another as they do today. It is rather that they designate different
levels of consequence within the same realm. Common to both, by virtue
of their command over atomized minutiae, is their claim to responsibility
and necessity. The aporia of unconscious subjectivity becomes apparent to
both and assumes the form of an unconfirmed norm which is nonetheless
dominant. In the works of both men objectivity is represented subjectively –
though, to be sure, on totally different levels of formulation and with unequal
powers of realization. In the works of both, music threatens to ossify in
space. In the works of both, all musical minutiae are predetermined by the
totality, and there is no longer any interaction between the whole and the
part. The commanding disposition over the totality banishes the spontaneity
of the moment.

Twelve-tone melos and rhythm

The failure of the technical work of art is evident in all dimensions of

composition. Enchaining music by virtue of unchaining it – a liberation
which grants it unlimited domination over natural material – is a universal
process. The definition of the row in terms of the twelve tones of the
chromatic scale is proof of this process. There is no apparent reason why
such a basic formulation should contain all twelve tones without omission
and only these twelve, without repeating one more frequently than another.
As Schoenberg was developing the row technique in Serenade [opus 24], he
was actually operating with rows of even fewer than twelve tones. There is
good reason for the fact that he later uses all twelve tones consistently.
The limitation of the entire piece to the intervals presented in the row
recommends that these be comprehensively deployed so that the tonal space
be narrowed as little as possible, and that the greatest possible number of

48
 Schoenberg and Progress

combinations be realized. However, that the row uses no more than twelve
tones is a result of the endeavor to give to none of the tones, by means of
greater frequency, any emphasis which might render it a ‘fundamental tone’
and thereby evoke tonal relationships. Although there may be a tendency
towards the number twelve, its binding force can in no way be derived from
the number itself. The hypostatization of the number is partially responsible
for the difficulties to which twelve-tone technique leads. Twelve-tone melody
is indebted to this hypostatization for its liberation not only from the
preponderance of the single pitch, but also from the false natural force of the
effect of the leading tone and of an automated cadence. Free atonality had
preserved chromaticism and that which is implicit therein – the moment of
dissonance – by virtue of the predominance of the minor second and its
derivative intervals – the major seventh and the minor ninth. These intervals
no longer have any priority over the others, unless the composer wishes to
design such a priority retrospectively via the construction of the row. The
melodic form itself assumes a validity which it hardly possessed in traditional
music, and which it had to borrow from traditional music through the
circumscription of harmony. The more closely melody approaches the end
of the row, the more unified it becomes – assuming that it coincides with the
row, as it does in most of Schoenberg’s themes. With every new pitch the
choice of remaining pitches diminishes, and when the last one is reached,
there is no longer any choice at all. The force exerted by this process is
unmistakable. It is exerted not only by calculation, but the ear participates
spontaneously in its perfection. At the same time, however, it is a crippling
exertion. The compactness of melody makes it too dense. Every twelve-tone
theme – though this might be something of an exaggeration – has an element
of a rondo, of a refrain. It is significant that in Schoenberg’s twelve-
tone compositions the antiquated and non-dynamic rondo form and an
emphatically harmless alla-breve figure – related in essence to the rondo
form – is quoted with such pleasure, either literally or figuratively. The
melody is too complete, and the terminal force present in the twelfth tone
can be overcome by the energy of rhythm, but hardly by the gravitation of
the intervals themselves. The recollection of the traditional rondo functions
as a stop-gap for the immanent flow which has been cut off. Schoenberg
pointed out that the traditional theory of composition has essentially treated
only beginnings and closings but never once the logic of continuation.
Twelve-tone melody exhibits a similar shortcoming. Each of its continuations
reveals a moment of arbitrariness. It is only necessary to compare at the
beginning of Schoenberg’s Fourth String Quartet [opus 37], the continuation

49
Philosophy of Modern Music

of the main theme through its inversion (measure six, second violin) and
crab (measure ten, first violin) with the sharply delineated entrance of the
first theme, to become aware of the necessity of this continuation. It intimates
that the continuation has no desire within itself whatever to proceed further
with the twelve-tone row once it has been concluded, and that it is driven on
only by the external configurations of the row. The necessity for continuation
is all the greater since the continuation itself is dependent upon the basic
row which has exhausted itself as such, and for the most part, only insofar as
its first appearance actually coincides with the theme constructed from it. As
mere derivation, continuation disavows the inescapable claim of twelve-
tone music that it is equidistant in all its moments from a central point. In
the majority of the existing twelve-tone compositions the continuation sets
itself apart from the thesis of the basic row just as fundamentally as
consequence of inspiration in late Romantic music sets itself apart from
inspiration itself.31 Meanwhile, the pressure of the row engages in far worse
disaster. Mechanical patterns befall the melos.32 The true quality of a melody
is always to be measured by whether or not it succeeds in transforming the
spatial relations of intervals into time. Twelve-tone technique destroys this
relationship at its very roots. Time and interval diverge. All intervallic
relationships are absolutely determined by the basic row and its derivatives.
No new material is introduced into the progression of intervals, and
the omnipresence of the row makes it unfit in itself for the construction
of temporal relationships, for this type of relationship is based upon
differentiations and not simply upon identity. Consequently, however, the
melodic relationship is relegated to a non-melodic means – autonomous
rhythmics. The row is non-specific by its very omnipresence, and the
melodic specification falls to established and characteristic rhythmic figures.
Definite and constantly recurring rhythmic configurations assume the role
of themes.33 Since the melodic space of these rhythmic themes is determined
in each case by the row, and since they must content themselves at all costs
with those tones at their disposal, they take on an obstinate rigidity. In the
final analysis, melos is the victim of thematic rhythm. The thematic and
motivic rhythms return, totally unconcerned about the content of the row.
In Schoenberg’s rondos it is evident how he brings into the thematic
rhythmic pattern, with every statement of the rondo theme, a different
melodic form of the row, thereby accomplishing variation – like effects. The
concrete event in music, however, is a matter of rhythm, and of rhythm
alone. Whether emphatic and overly precise rhythm includes this or that
interval is a matter of little concern. At best, the most that can be understood

50
 Schoenberg and Progress

is that the intervals now stand in relationship to the thematic rhythmic

patterns in a way different from their first presentation; melodic modification,
however, no longer gives the barest indication of meaning. Consequently,
the specifically melodic factor in rhythm is devaluated. In traditional music
a minimal intervallic deviation not only had a decisive effect upon the
expression of a specific spot, but even upon the formalistic meaning of an
entire movement. Twelve-tone music, by contrast, manifests total crudity
and impoverishment. At one time, all musical meaning was unequivocally
determined by intervals: the not-yet, the now, and the afterward; the
promise, the fulfillment, and the omission; moderation and squander; and
the permanence of form and transcendence of musical subjectivity. Now
intervals have become nothing more than building stones, and all experiences
which are encompassed in their differentiation are seemingly lost. To be
sure, means of emancipation from step-progression by seconds and the
uniformity of musical consonances have been found; to be sure, the tritone,
the major seventh, and those intervals which extend beyond the octave have
gained equal rights, but at the price of being placed upon the same level as
the older intervals. In traditional music it might well be difficult for the ear –
restricted by tonality – to understand extreme intervals as melodic moments.
Today there are no longer any such difficulties – those which have been
overcome merely share the monotonous fate of others which have long since
been accepted. Melodic detail, however, sinks to the level of mere
consequence of the total construction, without having the slightest power
over it. This detail is the image of that type of technical progress with which
the world abounds. And even that which might still thrive melodically –
Schoenberg’s creative power again and again renders the impossible
possible – is destroyed in the recurrence of a once-heard melody. In such
recurrence, the melody relentlessly presents the same rhythmic patterns
with different intervals – intervals frequently lacking not only any connection
to the fundamental intervals, but even to the rhythm itself. A certain type of
melodic approximation in this process is highly suspect. The outlines of the
old melody are preserved; an interval of like proportions is made to
correspond to a large or small leap at the analogous rhythmic spot, but only
in categories of the large or small interval. Whether the characteristic leap is
a major ninth or a tenth is of no concern whatever. In Schoenberg’s middle
period such questions were totally irrelevant, because all repetition was
excluded. The restoration of repetition, however, goes hand in hand with the
lack of regard for what is repeated. To be sure, even from this perspective
twelve-tone technique is by no means the rationalistic source of disaster, but

51
Philosophy of Modern Music

is much more the executor of a tendency stemming from Romanticism. The

manner in which Wagner interpolates motives – which are so defined that
they contradict the procedure of variation – is a precursor of Schoenberg’s
compositional procedure. It leads to the decisive technical antagonism of
music since Beethoven: the antagonism between traditional tonality – which
is in constant need of reconfirmation – and the substantiality of the
individual. If Beethoven developed a musical essence out of nothingness in
order to be able to redefine it as a process of becoming, then Schoenberg in
his later works destroys it as something completed.

Differentiation and coarsening

If musical nominalism – the elimination of all recurrent formulae – is carried

through to its logical conclusion, then differentiation itself crumbles. In
traditional music the here-and-now of the composition in all its elements is
continually in conflict with the tonal scheme. The specification was limited
by a matter of convention which was, to a large degree, external. The specific
was liberated by the solution to the problem: right down to the restorative
counter-attack of Stravinsky, musical progress was a matter of progressive
differentiation. Deviations from the prescribed scheme of traditional music,
however, exerted a meaningful and decisive influence. The more binding the
scheme, the more refined does the possibility of modification become. That
which gave the initial impulse could no longer be detected in emancipated
music. Consequently, traditional music permitted far subtler nuances than
when every musical event exists of and for itself. Refinement, in the final
analysis, is paid for with coarsening. This is to be traced to the tangible
phenomena of harmonic perception. When in tonal music the Neapolitan
sixth chord in C major with d-flat in the soprano part is followed by the
dominant seventh chord with b in the soprano part, then, by virtue of the
force of the harmonic schema, the step from d-flat to b – which is called a
‘diminished third’ – by abstract measurement represents the interval of a
second: it is understood as a third, particularly in relation to the omitted C
which lies between them equidistantly. Such an immediate perception of an
‘objective’ interval of a second is impossible beyond tonality: it assumes a
coordinate system, and defines itself by its differentiation from this system.
That which is valid up to the point where acoustic phenomena become
almost material attains true validity only when applied to higher, musical
organization. In the subordinate theme of Weber’s Der Freischütz overture –

52
 Schoenberg and Progress

taken from Agatha’s aria – the interval which leads to the climactic g in the
third measure is a third. In the coda of the total composition this interval
is expanded first to a fifth and finally to a sixth, and in relation to the initial
tone of the theme – upon which an understanding of this interval must be
based – the sixth actually forms a ninth. By extending beyond the range of
the octave this ninth attains an expression of superabundant jubilation. This
is possible only through the comprehension of the interval of the octave as a
unit of measure – a concept inherent in tonality. If this range is exceeded, its
significance is thereby enhanced to an extreme, suspending the balance of
the system. In twelve-tone music, however, the octave has lost the organizing
force which it once had by virtue of its identity with the root of the triad. A
quantitative, but not a qualitative difference allegedly prevails between those
intervals which are larger or smaller than the octave. Therefore, the effects of
melodic variation are no longer possible, as in the example from Weber and
in numerous other cases, and above all in Beethoven and Brahms. Expression
itself, which necessitated this process, is threatened because it can no longer
be conceptualized after the disappearance of all ingrained relationships and
all qualitative distinctions between intervals, sounds, and form fragments.
What once attained its meaning from the difference in the schema was
devalued and levelled in the collective dimensions of composition – not only
in melody and harmony. Within the traditional schema of modulation, form
had above all a normative system according to which it could be developed
through the most minute alterations – in the case of Mozart, at times,
even through a single indication of transposition. If larger forms are to be
articulated today, it will be necessary to resort to far cruder means: drastic
contrasts of register, dynamics, compositional procedures, and timbre. And
finally, the formulation of themes becomes dependent upon ever more
striking qualities. The foolish reproach of the layman against the monotony
of modern music contains, in contrast to the wisdom of the expert, a grain
of truth: whenever the composer scorns brutal contrasts such as those
between high and low, loud and soft, to any great degree, the result is a
certain monotony. Differentiation is only of any force when it distinguishes
itself from that which is already implicitly established, while the more highly
differentiated means themselves – simply placed alongside one another –
come to resemble each other and become indistinguishable. It was one
of the greatest accomplishments of Mozart and Beethoven that they were
able to avoid simple contrasts and achieve multiplicity in the most subtle
transitions, often only by means of modulation. This achievement was already
endangered during the Romantic era. The themes of Romanticism – gauged

53
Philosophy of Modern Music

according to the ideal of integral form in Viennese classicism – were for the
most part all too lacking in a direct relationship, thus threatening to dissolve
the form into episodes. Precisely in the most serious and responsible music
of today, the means of most minute contrast have been lost. Even Schoenberg
can salvage this means only as an illusion, to the extent that once again he
provides the themes with that course of progression – for example, in the
first movement of the Fourth Quartet – which in Viennese Classicism was
called main theme, transition, and second-theme group. Schoenberg does
not permit the evaluation of these characteristics – which still fluctuated in
Beethoven and Mozart – according to the total harmonic construction. Thus
these characteristics assume an impotent and noncommittal cast, as if they
were the death masks of the profiles of instrumental music, perfected by
Viennese Classicism. If the composer foregoes such rescue attempts as are
indicated by the force present in the material, he becomes dependent upon
exaggerated contrasts inherent in the raw material of sound. The nuance
results in the act of violence – symptomatic perhaps for the historical changes
inevitably taking place today in all categories of individuation. If tonality
were to be restored today or replaced by other systems of relationships, such
as that formulated by Scriabin – in order to regain with this footing the lost
wealth of differentiation – then such maneuvers would be frustrated by the
same isolated subjectivity which it would hope to conquer. Tonality would
be, as with Stravinsky, nothing but a game with tonality, and schemata,
such as Scriabin’s, are limited to chordal types of a dominant function,
to such an extent that they are totally without effective contrast. Twelve-
tone technique, as the mere pre-formation of material, is wisely on guard
against manifestation as a system of relationships; although such reservation
excludes the concept of nuance. In so doing, however, it thereby carries out
the sentence passed upon it by liberated, unchained subjectivity.

Harmony

There are objections against the arbitrariness of twelve-tone music which

are of greater immediacy: for example, that in spite of all rationality, it
relegates harmonics – and, to be sure, not just the individual chord – as well
as the succession of sounds to coincidence; that it regulates succession
abstractly, but is totally unaware of any forceful harmonic necessity. The
objection is too superficial, however. For nowhere does the order of twelve-
tone technique proceed more rigorously out of historical tendencies of the

54
 Schoenberg and Progress

material than in harmony, and if schemata of twelve-tone harmony were to

be worked out, the beginning of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan could probably
be viewed more simply in this perspective than in the function of a-minor.
The law of vertical dimension of twelve-tone music might well be called
the law of complementary harmony. Precursory forms of complementary
harmony are found less in Schoenberg’s middle period than in Debussy and
Stravinsky. They are to be found above all where there is no harmonic
progress in terms of the rules of thorough bass, but rather static levels of
sound which permit only a selection from the twelve tones and then
suddenly change into new levels of sound which provide for the remaining
tones. In complementary harmony every sound is complexly constructed: it
contains its individual pitches as independent and differing moments of the
whole, without causing their differences to disappear, as would be the case
in triadic harmony. Within the range of the twelve tones the experimenting
ear cannot withdraw from the chroma of experience, whereby each complex
sound fundamentally demands for completion those pitches of the chromatic
scale which are not present in the sound itself. This demand can be fulfilled
simultaneously or successively. Tension and release in twelve-tone music are
always to be understood in the perspective of the individual sounds of the
twelve tones viewed comprehensively. The single complex chord becomes
capable of attracting musical forces unto itself which formerly had meaning
only within entire melodic lines or harmonic structures. At the same time,
complementary harmony, through sudden transformation, is able to cause
these chords to radiate in such a manner that all their latent power is
revealed. The change from one harmonic stratum, defined by chord, to the
next complementary stratum, produces harmonic effects of depth – a type
of perspective that traditional music has often sought, and attempted, for
example, in Bruckner; but hardly ever achieved.34 If one is to take Lulu’s
twelve-tone death chord as the integral totality of complementary harmony,
then Berg’s allegorical genius proves itself within a historical perspective
which makes the brain reel: just as Lulu in the world of total illusion longs
for nothing but her murderer and finally finds him in that sound, so does all
harmony of unrequited happiness long for its fatal chord as the cipher of
fulfillment – twelve-tone music is not to be separated from dissonance.
Fatal: because all dynamics come to a standstill within it without finding
release. The law of complementary harmony already implies the end of the
musical experience of time, as this was heralded in the dissociation of time
according to Expressionistic extremes. This law proclaims, even more
vehemently than any other symptoms, that condition characterized by a loss

55
Philosophy of Modern Music

of historical perspective in music. Today it is still undecided whether this

condition is dictated by the horrible fixation of society within the present
structures of domination or whether it points to the end of antagonistic
society, which finds its historical basic precisely in the pre-production of its
antagonisms. However, this law of complementary harmony is actually valid
only in harmonic terms. It is paralyzed by the indifference between the
horizontal and the vertical. The supplementary pitches are the desiderata
of ‘voice-leading’ within the complexly constructed chords, which are
delineated according to their voices, just as all harmonic problems – even in
tonal music – proceed from the demands of voice-leading. On the other
hand, all contrapuntal problems result from demands of harmony. Thereby
the actual harmonic principle is simultaneously destroyed at its very
foundation. In twelve-tone polyphony the chords actually constructed
hardly ever stand in a complementary relationship. They are rather ‘results’
of voice-leading. Due to the influence of Kurth’s book on linear counterpoint,
there was a widely accepted opinion that harmony in modern music is a
matter of indifference and that the vertical, in contrast to polyphony, is no
longer of any value.35 This assumption was dilettante: the unification of
various musical dimensions does not simply imply the disappearance of one
of them. Thus in twelve-tone music it can gradually be seen that even this
unification threatens to devalue each single material dimension and thereby,
to be sure, the harmonic dimension as well. Passages constructed according
to complementary harmony are the exception – as a matter of necessity. For
the compositional principle, whereby the row ‘collapses’ into simultaneous
sounds, demands that each individual tone identify itself as a segment of the
row horizontally as well as vertically. This makes the pure complementary
relationship between the vertical sounds a matter of rare good fortune. The
actual identity of dimensions is not as much guaranteed by the twelve-tone
schema as hypothesized by it. This identity remains hidden in every moment
of the composition, and the arithmetical ‘correctness’ is no proof whatever
whether identity has been achieved – whether, that is, the ‘result’ is
harmonically justified by the tendency of the sounds. The majority of all
twelve-tone compositions simulates that coincidence simply by numerical
accuracy. To a large extent harmonies allegedly result from that which takes
place in the voices, and result in absolutely no specifically harmonic
meaning. It is necessary only to compare arbitrary chords or even har­
monic progressions from twelve-tone compositions (a crass example of
harmonic breakdown is found in the slow movements of Schoenberg’s
Fourth Quartet, measures 636–637), with a truly harmonically perceptible

56
 Schoenberg and Progress

spot of free atonality (Erwartung, measures 196ff., for example) to become

aware of the coincidental nature of twelve-tone harmony, the way things
simply fit together. The ‘basic drives of the sounds’ are suppressed. It is not
only that the pitches are numbered at the outset; the primacy of the lines
permits the sounds to atrophy. The suspicion cannot be totally avoided that
the entire principle of the indifference between melody and harmony is an
illusion as soon as it is seriously tested. The origin of such rows in themes –
their melodic meaning – resists harmonic reinterpretation, which can be
done only at the price of their specifically harmonic relationship. While
complementary harmony, in its pure form, binds the successive chords more
closely to one another than ever before, these chords become alienated from
each other through the totality of twelve-tone technique. This is the reason
that Schoenberg, in one of his most magnificent twelve-tone compositions
thus far – the first movement of the Third Quartet – employs the technique
of ostinato which he had carefully excluded up to that time. This technique
is intended to create a relationship which no longer exists from sound to
sound, nor hardly in the individual sound. The elimination of the tendency
of the leading tone, which continued into free atonality as a tonal residue,
leads to a loss of relationship and to a rigidity of the successive moment –
which not only penetrates Wagner’s ‘Treibhaus,’ the third of the Wesendonck
Songs, as a frigid corrective – but also contains the threat of specifically
musical meaninglessness, of the liquidation of continuity. This meaning­
lessness is not to be confused with the difficulty of understanding that which
has not yet been subsumed. It should rather be ascribed to the new
subsumption. Twelve-tone technique replaces the drive-like character of the
leading tone – the ‘transition’ viewed as ‘mediation’ – with conscious
construction. The atomization of sounds is the terribly high price paid for
such construction. The freeplay of forces in traditional music, in which the
totality is produced from sound to sound without pre-formation, is replaced
by the ‘deployment’ of sounds alienated from one another. There is no longer
any anarchistic desire for union on the parts of sound, there is only the
absence of any monadic relationship between them and a calculating
domination over them all. It is at this point that coincidence truly results. If
a totality had previously found its realization behind the scene of single
events, it now becomes fully conscious. The individual events, however – the
concrete relationships – are sacrificed to this totality. Even the sounds as
such are defeated by coincidence. The sharpest dissonance, the minor
second, which was used with the greatest caution in free atonality, is now
employed as though it meant nothing at all – in choruses, often, to the

57
Philosophy of Modern Music

disadvantage of the movement.36 On the other hand, open sounds of the

fourth and fifth – and their urgent need for mere existence is quite clear –
push their way more and more into the foreground: dull chords, lacking in
tension, hardly different from those loved by the neo-classicists, Hindemith
above all. Neither the frictions nor the open sounds are sufficient for the
compositional purpose: both demonstrate the sacrifice of the music to
the row. Tonality suggestions crop up everywhere; apart from the will of the
composer – alert criticism could eliminate this phenomenon in free
atonality. They are understood not according to twelve-tone, but according
to tonality. There is nothing within the force of composition which allows
the historical implications of the material to be forgotten. Free atonality
spread dissonance universally throughout music with its taboo triadic
harmony. Consequently, only dissonance prevailed. The restorative moment
of twelve-tone technique is perhaps nowhere more strongly manifested than
in the tentative re-admission of the consonance. It might be argued that the
very universality of dissonance has suspended the concept itself, that
dissonance was possible only in tension leading to consonance, and now
dissonance is simply transformed into a multi-toned complex as soon as
it is no longer contrasted with consonance. This, however, simplifies the
circumstances, for in a sound consisting of several tones, dissonance is
suspended only in the sense of an Hegelian double meaning. The new
sounds are not the harmless successors of old consonances, that is, new
syntheses arising from old antitheses. Rather, they are distinguished from
these by the fact that their unity is totally articulated within the sounds
themselves; by the fact that the individual pitches of the accords are brought
together in the chord-figure, but within the chord-figure each of them is
differentiated from all the others. Thus they continue to ‘dissonate’; to be
sure, not in contrast to the consonances which have been eliminated, but
within themselves. In so doing, however, they retain the historical picture of
dissonance. Dissonances arose as the expression of tension, contradiction,
and pain. They take on fixed contours and became ‘material.’ They are no
longer the media of subjective expression. For this reason, however, they by
no means deny their origin. They become characters of objective protest.
It is the mysterious good fortune of these sounds that they have come to
master the suffering which they once proclaimed, precisely by means of
their transformation into material – and, thus, by the retention of suffering.
Their negativity is true to utopia: it includes within itself the concealed
consonance. Hence the passionate sensitivity of modern music against the
resemblance of sound to consonance. Schoenberg’s jest, that the ‘Moon

58
 Schoenberg and Progress

Spot’ in Pierrot was written according to the rules of strict counterpoint – he

permitted consonances only in passing and at that only in unaccented
beats – reflects almost directly the fundamental experience. Twelve-tone
technique evades this experience. Dissonances become mere quantities,
without quality, without differentiation, and therefore suitable for use
wherever the schema demands. These are what Hindemith designated with
the horrifying expression ‘raw material’ in his Craft of Composition.37 Thus
the material regresses to mere nature, back to physical tone relationships,
and it is precisely this regression which subjects twelve-tone music to the
force of nature. Not only does the attracting force of the material disappear;
its resisting force vanishes as well. The sounds incline only as slightly towards
the totality represented by the world as they incline towards each other. In
the ordering of the sounds, that musical spatial depth disappears which
complementary harmony seemed at the very point of revealing. They have
become so totally indifferent that the consonantal environment no longer
disturbs them. The triads at the end of Pierrot made dissonances aware, with
a shock, of their unattained goal, and their hesitant contradiction resembled
that green horizon faintly dawning in the east. In the theme of the slow
movement of the Third Quartet, consonances and dissonances stand
disinterestedly beside each other. They no longer even sound out-of-tune.

Instrumental timbre

The decline of harmony is not to be attributed to the lack of harmonic

consciousness, but to the gravitational force of twelve-tone technique. This
may be deduced from that dimension which was ever closely related to the
harmonic dimension and which exhibits as well now as in Wagner’s time the
same symptoms as harmony: the decline of instrumental timbre. The total
construction of music permits constructive instrumentation to a surprising
degree. The Bach arrangements by Schoenberg and Webern, which convert
the most minute motivic relationships of the composition into relationships
of color – thus realizing them for the first time – would not have been possible
without twelve-tone technique.38 The postulate of clarity in instrumentation,
as stated by Mahler, becomes capable of realization only thanks to the
achievements of twelve-tone; that is, without reliance upon doublings and
sustained horn pedals. Just as the dissonant chord absorbs each sound
contained within it and thereby retains its differentiated character, the
instrumental timbre now makes possible the realization of the balance of

59
Philosophy of Modern Music

all voices in relationship to one another and, at the same time, the retention
of the contour of each. Twelve-tone technique absorbs the entire wealth of
compositional structure and transforms it into the structure of color. Such a
technique, however, never places itself despotically before the composition,
as had the technique of late Romanticism. It becomes the obedient servant
of the composition. Yet in the final analysis, this restricts technique to the
point that it contributes less and less to the composition, and the dimension
of timbre – as the productive dimension of composition, as it had been
defined by the Expressionistic phase – disappears. In the compositional
theory of Schoenberg’s middle period, Klangfarbe melody had its definitive
function. It was thereby intended that the changes of color were to become
a compositional event in themselves and to determine the course of the
composition. Instrumental timbre appeared as the yet-untouched level
which the compositional imagination now approached. The third of the
Five Pieces for Orchestra [opus 16], as well as the music for the light-storm
of Die glückliche Hand, are examples of such a tendency. Twelve-tone music
has achieved nothing of this sort and it is to be seriously doubted whether
it ever could. This orchestral piece, after all, with its ‘changing chord,’
presumes a substantiality of harmonic event which is negated by twelve-
tone techniques. The latter technique regards as outrageous the concept of
a color fantasy as contributing to the composition from its own resources.
The timidity before doublings of color, excluding everything which does not
narrowly depict the composition, confirms not only a hatred towards the
evil realm of late Romantic coloration but also the ascetic will to strangle
everything which penetrates the defined space of twelve-tone composition.
This simply no longer allows colors merely to ‘occur.’ Timbre, no matter how
differentiated, approaches again that which it once was, before subjectivity
took hold of it: a simple matter of registration. Once again the early day
of twelve-tone technique is exemplary: Schoenberg’s Woodwind Quintet
[opus 26] resembles an organ score, and the fact that it is scored precisely
for woodwinds might well be related to the concept of organ registration. It
is no longer specifically scored like Schoenberg’s earlier chamber music. In
the Third Quartet, furthermore, all the colors which Schoenberg extracted
from the strings in the first two quartets are sacrificed. The quartet’s timbre
becomes solely a function of compositional scoring, intensified to the
utmost, particularly in the exploitation of wide ranges. Later, beginning
with the Variations for Orchestra [opus 31], Schoenberg began to revise his
position and allowed coloration a wider range. The priority of clarinets in
particular, which had demonstrated this particular registrational tendency

60
 Schoenberg and Progress

most decisively, is no longer asserted. But the coloristic palette of the late
works shows traces of concession. This is founded less in the structure
of twelve-tone itself than in the ‘hypothesis’ – that is, in the concern for
clarity. This interest itself is, however, of a double nature. It excludes all the
musical levels in which, according to the requirement of the compositions,
it is not clarity which is demanded, but rather the opposite. This interest
unconditionally takes possession of the New Matter-of-Fact postulate,
namely, ‘impartiality towards material.’ Twelve-tone technique itself, in
its relationship to the row, approaches the material fetish character of
such a postulate. While the colors of Schoenberg’s orchestration in his
later works illuminate the compositional structure – just as the sharply
defined photograph illuminates its objects – these colors themselves are
prevented from ‘composing.’ The result is a dazzlingly hermetic sound with
unrelentingly changing lights and shadows, bearing a certain similarity to
a highly complicated machine, which remains firmly fixed in one place in
spite of the dizzying movement of all its parts. The sound becomes as clear
and polished as positivistic logic. It reveals the moderation concealed by the
severity of twelve-tone technique. The colorfulness and the secure balance
of this timbre anxiously denies the chaotic outburst from which twelve-tone
fought its way forth; and offers an image of a new order, contradicted by
all the genuine impulses of modern music, yet which, by force, it has to
prepare. The case study of the dream formulates itself as the hypothesis of
a case study.

Twelve-tone counterpoint

Counterpoint is unquestionably the actual beneficiary of twelve-tone

technique. It has attained primacy in composition. Contrapuntal logic is
superior to harmonic-homophonic logic because it has always liberated the
vertical from the blind force of harmonic convention. It never really lost
respect for the latter. However, it indicated to all simultaneous musical
events the basis of their meaning in the uniqueness of the composition, by
defining the other voices completely in terms of their relationship to the
melodic leading voice. By virtue of the universality of the relationships
between rows, twelve-tone technique is contrapuntal in origin – for in it all
simultaneous sounds are equally independent, because all are integral
components of the row – and its precedence over the arbitrariness of
traditional ‘free composition’ is also contrapuntal in nature. Since the

61
Philosophy of Modern Music

establishment of homophonic music in the thoroughbass era, the most

searching experiences of composers have indicated the inadequacy of
homophony for the cohesive constitution of concrete forms. Bach’s recourse
to older polyphonic forms (for example, the most structurally advanced
fugues, such as that in c-sharp minor from the first volume of the Well-
Tempered Clavier, the six-voiced fugue from the Musical Offering, and the
later ones from the Art of the Fugue, come to resemble the ricercare) and the
polyphonic sections in Beethoven’s last works are the greatest monuments
to such experience. For the first time, however, since the waning of the
Middle Ages – and in an incomparably more rational disposition over the
means – twelve-tone technique has crystallized into a genuine polyphonic
style. This has swept aside not only the external symbiosis of polyphonic
schemata and harmonic logic, but also the impurity which results from the
contrasting effects of harmonic and polyphonic forces, tolerated by free
atonality in disparate co-existence. In the polyphonic advances of Bach and
Beethoven there was an earnest seeking after a balance between thorough-
bass chorale and true polyphony. This was to represent a balance between
subjective dynamics and concrete objectivity. Schoenberg proved his
abilities as an exponent of the most mysterious tendencies in music in that
he no longer imposed polyphonic organization upon the material but rather
derived it from the material itself. This alone placed him among the great
composers. It is not just that he worked out a purity of style equal to
those stylistic models once unconsciously prescribed in composition. The
legitimacy of a stylistic ideal had, after all, become the subject of grave
doubt. But, in the present day, something bordering on counterpoint again
exists. Twelve-tone technique has taught the composer to design several
independent voices simultaneously and to organize them into a unity
without reliance upon harmonic logic. It has definitely put an end to the
disorganized and irresponsible use of counterpoint by many composers of
the era following the First World War and to neo-German ornamental
counterpoint as well. The new polyphony is ‘actual.’ In Bach, tonality
answers the question how is polyphony possible as harmonic polyphony?
For this reason, Bach is actually what Goethe considered him to be: a
harmonist. With Schoenberg, tonality has renounced the validity of that
answer. Schoenberg directs his question regarding the polyphonic tendency
of the chord to the ruins of tonality. Thus he is a counterpuntist. The
unperfected aspect of Schoenberg’s work with the twelve-tone technique is
harmony; exactly the reverse is the case in Bach, where the harmonic
scheme of independent voices marks the boundary which was transcended

62
 Schoenberg and Progress

only by the speculation of the Art of the Fugue. In twelve-tone technique,

however, harmonic aporia effects counterpoint as well. Composers have
always found it a gigantic feat to overcome contrapuntal problems, as
accomplished in the notorious ‘arts’ of the Netherlands school and the later
intermittent return to them. And rightly so, for contrapuntal acrobatics
always proclaim the victory of the composition over the sluggishness of
harmony. The most abstract designs of crab and mirror canons are schemata
which enable music to outwit the purely formal elements of harmony by
using common chords to disguise the total predetermination of the course
of the voices. The importance of this accomplishment diminishes, however,
when the harmonic stumbling block is removed; when the formation of
‘correct’ chords is no longer the basic test of counterpoint. The only valid
standard is now the row. It is responsible for the closest possible
interrelationship of the voices, the relationship of contrast. Twelve-tone
technique literally realizes the desideratum to place note against note. The
heteronomy of the harmonic principle regarding the horizontal was
withdrawn from this wish. Now that the external pressure of prescribed
harmonies is broken, the unity of voices can be developed strictly out of
their differentiation, without the connecting link of ‘relationship.’ In truth,
therefore, twelve-tone counterpoint actually resists imitation and canonic
treatment. The use of such means by Schoenberg, in his twelve-tone phase,
has the effect of over-definition, of tautology. They organize anew a
continuity already pre-established by twelve-tone technique. The principle
which forced the rudimentary foundation for all imitation and canonic
treatment is developed to its extreme. This explains the heterogeneous and
alien element in the techniques developed out of traditional contrapuntal
practice. Webern knew quite well why he attempted in his late works to
derive a canonic principle out of the structure of the row itself, while
Schoenberg apparently demonstrated anew a sensitivity towards all such
ingenuity. The old connecting means of polyphony functioned only in the
harmonic realm of tonality. These means strive to connect the voices with
one another with the result that one line reflects another and that the force
of conscious harmonic progression – in itself alien to the voices – is
neutralized beyond the actual level of the voices. Imitation and canon
presume a consciousness of progression or at least a tonal ‘modus’ with
which the twelve-tone row – operating behind the scenes – is not to be
confused. For only the apparent tonal or modal order, in the hierarchy of
which every step assumes its position once and for all, allows repetition.
Such repetition is possible only in an articulated system of relationships.

63
Philosophy of Modern Music

Such a system defines the events within a pervasive generality above

and beyond the unrepeatable individual case. The relationships of this
system – steps and cadences – imply at the outset a continuation, a certain
dynamic force. Repetition within such relationships does not, however,
automatically imply arrival at a standstill. At the same time, they relieve the
work from the responsibility for continuation. Twelve-tone technique is
unsuited for this responsibility. In no way is it a substitute for tonality.
A row, valid only for one specific work, does not possess that pervasive
generality which is assigned a function to the repeated event by means of a
schema. The event does not fulfill this function solely through the repetition
of its individual features. Furthermore, the interval succession of the row
does not influence repetition to the extent that the repeated element
undergoes any significant change of meaning. If, by the same token, twelve-
tone counterpoint – particularly in Schoenberg’s earlier twelve-tone pieces
and throughout Webern’s works – makes use of imitation and canon in the
broadest measure; this usage contradicts, rather, the specific ideal of the
twelve-tone procedure. The return to archaic-polyphonic means is, to be
sure, no mere display of bravado on the part of these combinatorial elements.
Such inherently tonal procedures were excavated precisely because twelve-
tone technique as such does not accomplish what is expected of it and is
achieved, in the final analysis, only through recourse to the tonal tradition.
The loss of the specifically harmonic as a structural element evidently
becomes suspiciously perceptible, that the pure twelve-tone counterpoint as
such is no longer sufficient as organizational compensation. Indeed, it is not
even sufficient contrapuntally. The principle of contrast collapses. To be
sure, one voice is never freely added to another, but it appears, rather, only
as a ‘derivation’ of an earlier voice. Events in one voice are left totally void in
the other voice, which thus becomes the negation of the first. The voices are
thereby brought into a reflective relationship, in which the tendency latently
dwells, to suspend the independence of the voices from each other
and thereby to suspend the entire counterpoint to an extreme completely
in the total complex of the twelve sounds. Imitation might well appear
as a counteractive force. Its discipline wishes to preserve that freedom
endangered by its own consequence – pure contrast. The voices, brought
into total accord with each other, are identical as products of the row; they
are, however, totally alien to each other and, in their accordance, actually
hostile to each other. They have nothing in common with each other, yet
everything in common with a third force. Imitation is unconsciously evoked
in order to reconcile the alienation of the all-obedient voices.

64
 Schoenberg and Progress

Function of counterpoint

In light of all this, the most recent polyphonic achievements reveal a

questionable aspect. The unity of the twelve-tone voices, inherent in the row,
contradicts probably the deepest impulse of more recent counterpoint. What
schools of composition call good counterpoint – smooth, independently
meaningful voices which, however, do not aggressively obscure the
leading voice; harmonically flawless progression; the skilled joining of
heterogeneous lines by means of a cleverly contrived added part – gives only
the barest glimmer of the idea by misusing it as a formula. The concern of
counterpoint was not the successful and supplemental addition of voices,
but the organization of music in such a way that is had an absolute need of
each voice contained within it – that each voice and each note fulfill a precise
function within the texture. The structure must be so conceived that the
relationship of the voices to each other determines the progression of the
entire composition and, ultimately, its form. It is the skillful manipulation
of such relationships, and not the fact that he wrote such good counterpoint
in the traditional sense of the word, that constitutes Bach’s true superiority
in the realm of polyphonic music. It is not the linear aspect as such, but
rather its integration into the totality of harmony and form. From this
perspective, The Art of the Fugue knows no equal. This concern is renewed in
Schoenberg’s emancipation of counterpoint. However, it is questionable as to
whether twelve-tone technique – to the extent that it carries the contrapuntal
idea of integration to an absolute – does not actually abolish the principle
of counterpoint by means of its own totality. In twelve-tone technique
there is no longer anything which is differentiated from the texture of the
voice, neither a prescribed cantus firmus nor specific harmonic weight. In
Western music, counterpoint itself could be understood as the expression
of the differentiation of dimensions. Counterpoint strives to overcome
this differentiation by giving it formation. In the case of total organization,
counterpoint in the narrower sense would have to disappear and be replaced
by the simple addition of one independent voice to another. It has its right
to existence only in the overcoming of something not absorbed within it,
and thus resisting it, to which it is ‘added.’ Where there is no longer any
such priority of a musical essence per se by which counterpoint can be
measured, it becomes a futile struggle and vanishes in an undifferentiated
continuum. Counterpoint shares to a degree the lot of an all-contrasting
rhythmic structure which forms the basis of every part of a given measure
in differentiated voices which supplement each other. Precisely therein,

65
Philosophy of Modern Music

rhythmic monotony results. Webern’s most recent works are consequent in

that they designate the liquidation of counterpoint. The contrasting tones
are grouped into monody.

Form

The inappropriateness of all repetition in the structure of twelve-tone music,

as this becomes evident in the intimacy of imitative detail, defines the major
difficulty of twelve-tone form – form in the specific sense of the musical
theory of form, not in the comprehensive aesthetic sense. The desire in
Expressionism to reconstruct the large form above and beyond the criticism
of aesthetic totality is as questionable as is the ‘integration’ of a society in
which the economic basis of alienation continues to exist unchanged while
the justification of antagonisms is denied by suppression.39 An element of
this paradox is inherent in integral twelve-tone technique. Only that, in the
technique, the antagonisms cannot be so convincingly shaken off as in a
society which is not only reflected by modern art but at the same time
cognitively perceived and thus criticized by it. This is perhaps true in all
cultural phenomena which assume a completely new gravity in an age of
total planning of substructure. The phenomena achieve this by denouncing
such planning. The reconstruction of the large form by twelve-tone technique
is not merely questionable as an ideal, but also in terms of its own success. It
has often been noted – and particularly by musical reactionaries – that the
forms of twelve-tone composition resort eclectically to the ‘pre-critical’ large
forms of instrumental music. Sonata form, rondo, and variation appear
either literally or figuratively: for example – as in the finale of the Third
Quartet – with great effort to harmlessly and naïvely forget not only the
genetic implications of meaning in this music but, further, glaringly to
distinguish itself from the complicatedness of each individual rhythmic and
contrapuntal factor by the simplicity of its total disposition. The inconsistency
is readily apparent, and Schoenberg’s most recent instrumental works are,
above all, attempts to overcome it.40 It has not been seen with equal clarity,
however, how that inconsistency necessarily has its origin in the very nature
of twelve-tone music itself. Twelve-tone music has not produced any type of
large form unique to itself; this is by no means coincidental, but rather the
immanent revenge of a critical phase now forgotten. The construction of
truly free forms, delineating the unique nature of a composition, is prevented
by a lack of freedom ordained by the row technique – by the continual

66
 Schoenberg and Progress

reappearance of the same elements. Consequently, the need to make

rhythmic figures thematic and to provide them, in each case, with a content
of various row figures might well result in a compulsion towards symmetry.
Whenever such rhythmic formulae appear, they herald corresponding
formal components, and it is these correspondences which evoke the spirits
of pre-critical forms. And, to be sure, they are evoked only as spirits. For
twelve-tone symmetries are without essence, without depth. The result is
that these symmetries are produced by force, but are no longer of any
purpose. Traditional symmetries are based upon symmetrical harmonic
relationships which they either articulate or create. The function of the
classic sonata-reprise is inseparable from the schema of modulations in the
exposition and from the harmonic digressions of the development: it serves
to confirm the major key area which was only ‘stated’ in the exposition – a
consequence of that process inaugurated in the exposition. In any case, it
can be imagined that the sonata form retains something of this function
in free atonality – after the elimination of the modulatory basis of
correspondence – when, that is, the driving force of the sounds develops
such powerful tendencies and counter-tendencies that the idea of the ‘goal’
is affirmed, and that the arrival of the reprise in symmetry with the exposi­
tion does justice to the concept present in this function. This is totally out of
the question in twelve-tone technique. On the other hand, such a technique
– in light of its incessant permutations – is incapable of justifying any
architecturally static symmetry of pre-classic structural forms. Obviously,
the demand for symmetry in twelve-tone technique is as urgently voiced as
it is inexorably denied. The problem of symmetry might perhaps best be
solved in compositions such as the first movement of the Third Quartet.
Such pieces renounce not only the illusion of the dynamics of form but even
the barest trace of such form, whose symmetry indicates harmonic
relationships. These pieces operate instead with very rigid, pure, and, to a
certain extent, geometric symmetries. These symmetries require no binding
system of relationships of the form and serve not the idea of a goal, but
rather the idea of unique balance. It is compositions of this type which most
closely fulfill the objective possibility of twelve-tone technique. This quartet
movement keeps the idea of development totally at a distance through its
stubborn eighth-note figure, and, at the same time, produces a musical
cubism through the juxtaposition of symmetrical but nonetheless distorted
surfaces. The contrived row-complexes of Stravinsky merely simulate this.
Schoenberg, however, does not stop at this point. If this total production in
all its transitions and extremes is to be understood as a dialectical process

67
Philosophy of Modern Music

between expression and construction, then this process has not been
resolved in the New Matter-of-Factness.41 The actual experiences of
Schoenberg’s generation had to shatter his ideal of the objective work of
art – even its positivistically disenchanted form; likewise, the blatant
emptiness of the integral composition could not escape his musical ingenuity.
The most recent works pose the question: How is structure to become
expression without plaintively giving in to lamenting subjectivity? The slow
movement of the Fourth Quartet – its disposition, the double succession of
disrupted recitative, its song-like refrain in closed form – resembles
Entrückung, Schoenberg’s first composition, which contains no key signature
and opens the Expressionistic phase.42 This movement, along with the march
finale of the Violin Concerto [opus 36], is of almost exaggeratedly clear
expression. No one can resist the force of such expression. It leaves the
private subject far behind. But even this power is not able to close the gap –
and how should it be? These works are magnificent in their failure. It is not
the composer who fails in the work; history, rather, denies the work in itself.
Schoenberg’s more recent compositions are dynamic. Twelve-tone technique
contradicts dynamics. The technique neutralizes the dynamic impulse of the
work from one sound to another; thus it does not permit any dynamic
impulse of the totality to emerge. It devaluates the concepts of melos and
theme, and thus eliminates the actually dynamic-formal categories of
motivic development, thematic development and transition. If Schoenberg
in his earlier period perceived that no ‘consequences’ were to be drawn, in a
traditional sense, from the main theme of the First Chamber Symphony
[opus 9], then the prohibition contained in that perception remains valid for
twelve-tone technique. Every tone is as valid a row tone as any other. But how
is transition to be accomplished without detaching the dynamic categories
from compositional substance? Each form of the row is ‘the’ row with the
same validity as the previous row; no row is more and no row is less. Even
the form upon which the set-complex is based is a matter of coincidence.
In this regard, of what possible relevance is ‘development’? Every tone is
thematically exhausted through its relationship in the row and no tone is
‘free’; the various segments might produce combinations to a greater or
lesser degree, but no segment can ally itself more closely with the material
than does the first statement of the row. The totality of thematic working-out
in the pre-formation of material makes a tautology of all visible thematic
working-out in the composition itself. For this reason, development, in the
final analysis, becomes illusory in the sense of strict construction; and Berg
had reason to omit development in the introductory allegretto of the Lyric

68
 Schoenberg and Progress

Suite, his first twelve-tone work.43 It is only in the most recent works
of Schoenberg that such questions of form become critical. In these
compositions the disposition of surface elements is much further removed
from traditional forms than it is in the earlier twelve-tone compositions. The
Woodwind Quintet was, to be sure, a sonata, but one which was ‘constructed
to death,’44 which in a certain respect simply flowed into the twelve-tone
technique and in which the ‘dynamic’ formal elements are actually markings
of the past. In the early days of twelve-tone technique – most openly in the
works entitled ‘Suite’ but to a degree also in the rondo of the Third Quartet –
Schoenberg engaged in pensive games with traditional forms. The subtle
detachment with which they were employed kept their demands – along
with the demands of the material itself in a state of artificial suspension. In
his more recent works solutions of this type are prevented by the gravity
of expression. For this reason, traditional forms are no longer evoked
literally but, on the other hand, the dynamic demands of traditional forms
are considered with all possible seriousness. The sonata is no longer
‘constructed to death,’ but is actually to be reconstructed without any claim
to its schematic exterior. This impulse is motivated not only by stylistic
considerations, but further by extremely important compositional bases. Up
to this very day, official musical theory has made no attempt to offer a precise
definition of the concept of continuation as a formal category. This has been
ignored, although the large forms of traditional music – and those of
Schoenberg as well – cannot possibly be understood without the contrast
of ‘event’ and continuation. A decisive quality regarding the value of
compositions and even regarding entire formal types is dependent upon the
depth, extent, and penetration of the continuational figures. Music proves its
greatness in that moment of its progression in which a piece really becomes
a composition – in which it is animated by its own inner weight, transcending
the here-and-now of thematic definition from which it proceeds. In older
music mere rhythmic movement assumed the task of that moment, depriving
it naturally of its joy as well. For Beethoven, in turn, this idea was the source
of energy from which he sketched every measure of his compositions. In
Romanticism, however, the question of this moment is faced squarely for the
first time, and, consequently, at the same time it becomes unanswerable. It is
the true superiority of the ‘great forms’ that only they are able to create this
moment in which music is crystallized in the composition. This moment is
alien to song as a matter of principle, and therefore, according to the most
rigid standard, songs are inferior. They remain caught up in that instant of
creative revelation, while great music constitutes itself precisely through the

69
Philosophy of Modern Music

liquidation of this moment of inspiration. This liquidation is accomplished

in retrospect, however, and only through the animation of continuation.
Schoenberg’s ability in this direction is his great strength. Transitional
themes, consequently – such as the one beginning at measure 25 in the
Fourth Quartet, and transitions such as the melody of the second violin
(measures 42f.) – do not simply cast heterogenous glances through
conventional formal masks. They manifest actually a will to continuation
and transition. Indeed, twelve-tone technique itself, which in fact prevents
dynamic form, induces a dynamic element. The impossibility of remaining
in every moment at the same distance from the central point is now revealed
by twelve-tone technique as the possibility of formal articulation. On the
one hand, the technique contradicts the categories of theme, continuation,
and mediation; on the other hand, it summons them to its aid. The contrast
inherent in all twelve-tone music according to precise row expositions
divides it into primary and secondary events, as was the case in traditional
music. Their formation strongly resembles the relationship between theme
and ‘working-out.’ At this point, however, a conflict arises. For it is obvious
that the specific ‘figures’ of the resurrected themes – which are so drastically
differentiated from the pattern of earlier twelve-tone music in which they
were almost indifferent – and their intentions in general, did not simply
arise autonomously out of twelve-tone technique. These figures have, rather,
been imposed upon the technique by the relentless will of the composer, as
though with highly critical insight. There is a deep relationship between the
necessary exterior of this connection and the totality of the technique itself.
The inexorable hermetic quality of the technique renders difficult the
definition of an exact boundary. In the definitive diversity of the technique,
everything which transcends it – everything which is constitutively new – is
despised, and this is precisely the impassioned goal of Schoenberg’s most
recent works. Twelve-tone technique proceeded from the genuinely
dialectical principle of variation. Its postulate was that insistence in the face
of the recurrence of the same and the continual analysis of this factor in
composition – all motivic working-out is analysis, for it atomizes its
material – result in that which is unremittingly new. By means of variation,
that which has been defined in terms of music – the ‘theme’ in the strictest
sense of the word – transcends itself. Twelve-tone technique elevated the
principle of variation to the level of a totality, of an absolute; in so doing it
eliminated the principle in one final transformation of the concept. As soon
as this principle becomes total, the possibility of musical transcendence
disappears; as soon as everything is absorbed to the same degree into

70
 Schoenberg and Progress

variation, not one theme remains behind, and all musical phenomena define
themselves without distinction as permutations of the row. In the totality
of transmutation there is no longer anything which undergoes change.
Everything remains as it was and twelve-tone technique approaches the
paraphrase, the form of variation prior to Beethoven, which engaged in
circumscription without any particular goal. This brings the tendency of the
total history of European music since Haydn – and it was very closely
interrelated to German philosophy of that time – to a standstill. Composition
per se, however, is also brought to a standstill. The concept of the theme itself
has been absorbed by the concept of the row; there is little hope for the
rescue of the theme from the domination of the row. It is the objective
program of twelve-tone composition to construct that which is new – all
contours within the form – as a second level upon the row-like pre-formation
of that material. But it is precisely here that it fails: the introduction of the
new into twelve-tone construction is coincidental, arbitrary, and, where it
counts most, decisively antagonistic. Twelve-tone technique does not permit
a choice. Either it retains its formal immanence or new elements are
meaninglessly superimposed upon it. Thus the dynamic features of the most
recent works are by no means new. They are present in the very roots of
music; they have been derived from abstractions out of pre-twelve-tone
music, and, for the most part, from music which is older than free atonality.
These features in the first movement of the Fourth Quartet recall the First
Chamber Symphony. Of the ‘themes’ in Schoenberg’s final tonal works – and
these were the last in which it is possible to speak of themes at all – only the
gesture of those themes has survived, and even then, they have been detached
from the material prerequisites of the gesture. This gesticulatory force is
allegorically charged with the realization of that which is denied them within
the tonal structure: stress and direction, the very image of eruption. This is
indicated in the designations ‘schwungvoll,’ ‘energico,’ ‘impetuoso,’ and
‘amabile.’ The paradox of this compositional procedure is that in it the image
of the new becomes surrepetitiously tantamount to the achievement of old
effects with new means. A further result is that the rigid apparatus of twelve-
tone technique strives for that which once arose more freely and at the same
time with still greater necessity out of the decay of tonality.45 The new will to
expression finds its reward through the expression of the old. The figures
sound like quotations and the designations employed for them reveal a
secret pride that this is again possible. Nonetheless, whether this really is still
possible remains open to question. The quarrel between alienated objectivity
and limited subjectivity remains unsettled, and the very irreconcilability

71
Philosophy of Modern Music

thereof reveals the fundamental truth involved. It is conceivable, however,

that the inappropriateness of expression, the break between it and the
construction, can still be defined as an inadequacy of the latter, as the
irrationality of rational technique. For the very sake of its blind unique law
this technique denies itself expression, transposing it into the sphere of past
memories, thinking to find there the dream-image of the future. Faced by
the gravity of this dream the constructivism of twelve-tone technique reveals
its constructive weakness. This constructivism is capable only of ordering
the moments, without revealing their essence in any penetrating way to
each other. The newness prevented thereby is, however, nothing but the
reconciliation of those moments which twelve-tone constructivism has
failed to achieve.

The composers

The spontaneity of progressive composers is handicapped along with

spontaneity of the composition itself. Composers find themselves faced by
tasks which are as impossible as is the dilemma of a writer who is called
upon to create a unique vocabulary and syntax for every sentence he writes.46
The triumph of subjectivity over heteronomous tradition – the freedom of
allowing every musical moment to stand for itself without imputation – is
achieved at a very high cost. The difficulties involved in the necessary
creation of the new idiom are prohibitive. In the first place, the composer is
now burdened with a task which was previously accomplished for him, to a
large degree, by the intersubjective language of music. Furthermore, he
must – if his ear is sufficiently sharp – perceive in this self-created language
those characteristics of the external and the mechanical which mark the
termination of the musical domination of nature. In the act of composing he
must admit to himself the fragility and irresponsibility of this idiom. His
problems do not end with the creation of a new language upon which he can
rely, and with the contradiction which from the very beginning marks a
language of absolute alienation. Above and beyond all this, the composer
has untiringly to perform acrobatic stunts to minimize the pretentiousness
of a self-made language to a point where it becomes bearable. The better he
speaks this language, the more obvious does this pretentiousness become.
He is responsible for the delicate balance of the irreconcilable postulates of
his procedure. Anything not included in these efforts is lost. Rattling idiotic
systems lie in wait to devour any composer who might innocently pretend

72
 Schoenberg and Progress

that this self-invented language had already found confirmation. The fact
that the subject does not grow with them makes these difficulties all the more
disastrous. The atomization of fragmentary musical moments, presumed by
the self-made language, closely parallels the state of the subject. It is broken
by total impotence. ‘That is what struck us as so new and unprecedented in
Schoenberg’s music: this fabulously sure course through a chaos of new
sounds.’47 An anxiety is engraved in this exuberant metaphor which is
expressed verbally in the title of one of Ravel’s piano works which belongs to
this same tradition:48 ‘Une barque sur l’océan.’ The surface possibilities would
be horrifying even to a person who might be equal to them on the objective
plane, even if the communication-branch of official musical life were to
permit him to make use of this possibility in material terms and did not
drown it out with the familiar outcry against the return of the same. No
artist is able to overcome, through his own individual resources, the
contradiction of enchained art within an enchained society. The most which
he can hope to accomplish is the contradiction of such a society through
emancipated art, and even in this attempt he might well be the victim of
despair. It would be inexplicable if all the intentionless raw materials and
levels – laid open by the energy of modern music in such a way that they
seem to wait unclaimed for someone to reach out for them – were not to
succeed in luring the curious. It would be even stranger if those in whom a
natural affinity might have been expected – who would have surrendered
themselves to the joys of the unrealized, had not most of them been so
fundamentally gripped thereby that they had to forbid themselves such
happiness from the very outset – had not been attracted either. For this
reason, they are only resentful of this possibility. They close themselves off,
not because they do not understand the new, but precisely because they do
understand it. The new exposes not only the deception of their culture, but
also their incapacity for truth, which is by no means their only private
incompetence. They are too weak to venture into the realm of the forbidden.
If they were to follow the seductive powers of the waves of untamed sounds,
these waves would simply close over them. The folkloristic neo-classic and
collectivistic schools all have but one desire: to remain in the haven of safety
and herald the pre-formed, which they have been able to comprehend and
realize, as the new. Their taboos are directed against musical eruption, and
their modernity is nothing but an attempt to tame the eruptive forces and,
wherever possible, to resettle them into the pre-individualistic era of music,
which as a stylish dress fits the present social phase so well. Proud of the
discovery that what is interesting has begun to become boring, they convince

73
Philosophy of Modern Music

themselves and others that boredom is interesting for this very reason. Their
involvement, however, is so superficial that they do not even notice the
repressive tendencies inherent in musical emancipation itself. They seem
timely and applicable precisely because they are not at all interested in
emancipating themselves. But even the inaugurators of modern music, who
draw the necessary consequences, are struck down by that same type of
helplessness and show symptoms of the same collective infection which they
are forced to recognize in the hostile reaction against them. The number
of compositions which can be seriously taken into consideration has
diminished, and even what is composed nonetheless bears marks not only of
indescribable effort but often enough also of listless fatigue. The quantitative
decrease has obvious social bases. Demand has ceased to exist. Even in his
Expressionistic phase Schoenberg, who composed frantically, was a radical
opponent of the market. This fatigue is a result of the difficulties involved in
composition itself; these stand in a pre-established relationship to the
external difficulties. In the five years before World War I, Schoenberg
traversed the total realm of musical material – from totally constructed
tonality via free atonality, down to the beginnings of row technique. The
twenty years which he has devoted to twelve-tone technique hardly bear
comparison with these five. These two decades have been more concerned
with disposition over the material than with works, the compositions
themselves, the totality of which is to be reconstructed by the new technique.
On the other hand, there certainly has been no lack of works envisaged on a
grand scale. Just as the twelve-tone technique seems to instruct the composer,
so there is a uniquely didactic moment present in twelve-tone works.
Many of them – such as the Woodwind Quintet and the Variations for
Orchestra – resemble patterns. The preponderance of doctrinal teaching
offers magnificent proof of the manner in which the developmental tendency
of the technique leaves the traditional concept of the work far behind.
Productive interest is distracted from the individual composition and
concentrated, rather, upon the typical possibilities of composition. This
results in the transformation of the composition into nothing more than a
mere means for the manufacture of the pure language of music. The concrete
works are forced to pay the price for such a transformation. Clairaudient
composers – not only the practical ones – can no longer completely trust
their autonomy: it collapses. This can be clearly perceived even in works
such as Berg’s concert aria Der Wein and his violin concerto. The simplicity
of the violin concerto by no means signifies a clarification of Berg’s style.
This simplicity is rather born of the necessity of haste and the need for

74
 Schoenberg and Progress

understanding. The transparency is much too comfortable and the sim­

ple substance is over-determined by its exterior twelve-tone procedure.
Dissonance as a symbol of disaster and consonance as a symbol of
reconciliation are neo-romantic relics. There is no opposing voice which is
strong enough to close the stylistic gap between the quotation from a chorale
by Bach and all else. Only Berg’s extra-musical power was capable of
transcending this abyss. Prior to Berg it was only in the works of Mahler that
the proclamation had touched upon the shaken work; in like manner, Berg
transformed the insufficiency of the work into the expression of boundless
melancholy. Lulu, however, is another matter. In this opera, Berg’s mastery
reaches its highest development in composition for the stage. The music is as
rich as it is economical. In its lyric tone – particularly in the role of Alwa and
in the finale – the opera is superior to any other work by Berg. Schumann’s
‘Der Dichter spricht’ (the final piece from the Kinderszenen) is transformed
into the extravagant gesture of the entire opera. The orchestra sounds so
seductive and colorful that absolutely any accomplishment of Impressionism
or neo-Romanticism pales by comparison. If the instrumentation of the
third act were ever completed, the dramatic effect would be beyond
description. The work employs twelve-tone technique. But what was true of
all of Berg’s works since the Lyric Suite is doubly true of Lulu: every effort in
the composition is aimed at rendering the technique unnoticeable. Precisely
those finest parts of Lulu are obviously conceived in dominant functions and
chromatic steps. The essential rigidity of twelve-tone construction has been
softened to the point that it is unrecognizable. Also, the only factor which
makes the row procedure perceptible is that Berg’s insatiety, at times, did not
have at its disposal the infinite supply of notes that it needed. The rigidity of
the system now finds validity only in such limitations; otherwise it has
been totally overcome. This is accomplished, however, rather by adjusting
the twelve-tone technique to traditional music than by eliminating its
antagonistic moments. Along with other means of a totally different origin –
such as the leitmotiv and the compilation of large orchestral forms – the
twelve-tone in Lulu aids in securing the consistency of the structure. It is
employed largely as a protective measure and it is seldom followed through
according to its own unique demands. It would be possible to conceive of
Lulu, in its totality, completely without regard for the virtuoso twelve-tone
manipulations involved, and still not require any decisive change in it. The
triumph of the composer lies in his ability – along with many other qualities –
to do one thing: to overlook the fact that the critical impulse of twelve-tone
technique in truth precludes all the other factors which he has employed.

75
Philosophy of Modern Music

It is Berg’s weakness that he can renounce nothing at his disposal, whereas

the power of all new music lies precisely in renunciation. The unreconciled
in Schoenberg’s later works (not simply in terms of intransigence, but also in
terms of the antagonisms inherent in the music) is superior to the premature
reconciliation in Berg’s works, as Schoenberg’s inhuman coldness is superior
to Berg’s magnanimous warmth. The intense inner beauty of Berg’s late
works is indebted for its success less to the hermetic surface structure of his
works than to the basic impossibility which they embody: the hopelessness
of the undertaking which is indicated in the surface of the work; and to the
morbidly mournful sacrifice of the future to the past. It is for this reason that
his works are opera and to be understood only through the formal laws of
opera. Webern’s position lies at the opposite pole. Berg attempted to break
the spell of twelve-tone technique by bewitching it. Webern’s desire is to
force the technique to speak. All of his late works underscore his effort to
lure, from the alienated, rigidified material of the rows, that ultimate
secret which the alienated subject is no longer able to impart to the rows.
His earliest twelve-tone compositions – particularly the String Trio – are
undoubtedly to this very day the most successful experiment aimed at
transforming the external rules of the row into concrete musical structure
without displacing the row in any traditionalistic fashion or offering
retrogressive substitution for it. This did not suffice for Webern. In practical
composition Schoenberg actually regards the twelve-tone technique as the
mere pre-formation of material. He ‘composes’ with twelve-tone rows; he
moves them about; from his lofty vantage point he moves them about as if
nothing had changed. Yet there are constant conflicts between the nature of
the material and the compositional procedure superimposed upon it.
Webern’s recent compositions demonstrate a critical consciousness of these
conflicts. It is his goal to conceal the demand made by the rows with
the demand of the work itself. He strives to bridge the abyss between
the autonomous composition and the material which demands treatment
according to the rules. In actuality, however, this signifies renunciation at
the point of greatest engagement: composing subjects the very existence of
the composition itself to question. Schoenberg does violence to the row. He
composes twelve-tone music as though there were no such thing as the
twelve-tone technique. Webern realizes twelve-tone technique and thus no
longer composes: silence is the rest of his mastery. In contrast to these two
approaches the irreconcilability of contradictions has become a music in
which twelve-tone technique unavoidably becomes enmeshed. In his late
works Webern shies away from the formulation of new musical forms. It is

76
 Schoenberg and Progress

anticipated that such forms would be external to the pure essence of the row.
His final works are schemata of the rows translated into notes. He expresses
his concern for the indifference between the row and the work through his
particularly artistic selection of rows. The rows are structured as if they were
already a composition – for example, in such a way that one row is divided
into four groups of triads whose interrelationship, in turn, is definable in
terms of the basic presentation of the row, its inversion, its crab, and the crab
of inversion. An unparalleled density of relationships is guaranteed by this
process. The ripest fruits of canonic imitation fall, as it were, of their own
will into the lap of the composition, without the necessity of further efforts
in this direction. At an early point, however, Berg had found fault with this
technique because it questioned the possibility of large forms – a possibility
which is a matter of programmatic demand. Through the subdivision of the
row all relationships are forced into such a narrow framework that the
possibilities of development are immediately exhausted. Most of Webern’s
twelve-tone compositions are restricted to the size of Expressionistic
miniatures, and it might well be asked why such excessive organization was
needed in cases where there was hardly anything to organize. The function
of twelve-tone technique in Webern is hardly less problematic than in Berg.
Thematic working-out extends itself over such minimal units that it virtually
cancels itself out. The mere interval – functioning as a motivic unit – is so
utterly without individual character that it no longer accomplishes the
synthesis expected of it. There is a threat of disintegration into disparate
tones, without this disintegration as such becoming articulate. Through a
peculiarly infantile musical belief in nature, the material is vested with the
power of determining musical meaning from within itself. It is precisely here
that the astrological confusion reveals itself: the interval relationships,
according to which the twelve-tones are ordered, are dismally honored as
cosmic formulae. The self-determined law of the row truthfully becomes a
fetish at that point when the conductor relies upon it as the source of
meaning. The fetishism of the row is striking in Webern’s Piano Variations
[opus 27], and in the String Quartet [opus 28]. These compositions offer
nothing more than uniform symmetrical presentations of the miraculous
row; they even approach the parody of an intermezzo by Brahms as, for
example, in such compositions as the first movement of Webern’s Piano
Variations. The mysteries of the row are hardly in a position to offer any
consolation about half-wittedness in music: grandiose intentions – such as
the blending of genuine polyphony and genuine sonata form – are to no
avail even if they are successfully constructed, as long as they limit themselves

77
Philosophy of Modern Music

to the mathematical relations of the material and are not borne out in the
musical form itself. Performance, if it is to give even a shadow of meaning to
the monotonous groupings of tones, must go far beyond rigid notation –
and particularly notation of rhythm. The barrenness of this rhythmic
notation is dictated by a belief in the natural force of the row; that is to say,
it is a property of the thing itself. This excessive demand upon performance
passes judgment on the music. In Webern, however, the fetishism of the row
is not merely a matter of simple sectarianism – rather the dialectical force is
still at work. It was the most binding critical experience, which drove this
significant composer towards the cult of pure proportions. He perceived the
derivative, exhausted, insignificant essence of all those subjective elements
which music would wish to fulfill here-and-now – that is, the insufficiency
of the subject itself. One aspect of the situation is that twelve-tone music, by
force of its mere correctness, resists subjective expression. The other
important aspect is that the right of the subject itself to expression declines,
evoking a condition which no longer exists. In its present phase the subject
seems so fixed, that what it might be able to say is already said. Horror has
cast its spell upon the subject and it is no longer able to say anything which
might be worth saying. In the face of reality it is so impotent that the very
claim to expression already touches upon vanity and, of course, there is
hardly another claim to which this subject might still raise. It has become so
isolated that it can hardly seriously hope for anyone who may still understand
it. In Webern the musical subject grows silent and abdicates; it delivers itself
up to the material which, however, can guarantee it – at most – an echo of its
loss of speech. Its melancholy disappearance is the purest expression of its
terrified and distrustful withdrawal before the traces of consumer goods
which threaten it. However, it remains incapable of expressing the
inexpressible as truth. What might be possible is not possible.

Avant-garde and theory

The possibility of music itself has become uncertain. It is not threatened, as

the reactionaries claim, by its decadent, individualistic, and asocial character.
It is actually too little threatened by these factors. That certain freedom, into
which it undertook to transform its anarchistic condition, was converted in
the very hands of this music into a metaphor of the world against which it
raises its protest. It flees forward into order. However, success is denied it. It
is obedient to the historical tendency of its own material – blindly and

78
 Schoenberg and Progress

without contradiction. To a certain degree it places itself at the disposal of

the world-spirit which is, after all, not world-logic. In so doing its innocence
accelerates the catastrophe, in the preparation of which the history of all art
is engaged. Music affirms the historical process and therefore history would
like to reap the benefits thereof. Music is doomed, but this historical process
in turn restores it to a position of justice and paradoxically grants it a chance
to continue its existence. The decline of art in a false order is itself false. Its
truth is the denial of the submissiveness into which its central principle –
that of consistent correctness – has driven it. As long as an art, which is
constituted according to the categories of mass production, contributes to
this ideology, and as long as artistic technique is a technique of repression,
that other, functionless art has its own function. This art alone – in its most
recent and most consequent works – designs a picture of total repression
but, by no means, the ideology thereof. By presenting the unreconciled
picture of reality, it becomes incommensurable with this reality. In this way
it expresses opposition to the injustice of the just verdict. The technical
procedures of composition, which objectively make music into a picture of
repressive society, are more advanced than the procedures of mass
production which march beyond modern music in the fashion of the times,
willfully serving repressive society. The institution of mass production and
the product fashioned by it are modern in their adoption of industrial
schemata – particularly in terms of distribution and expansion. However,
such modernity has no effect upon the products. These products manipulate
their listeners with the most modern methods of psycho-technology and
propaganda. They are propagandistically constructed, but precisely for this
reason they are bound to the immutability of a tradition which has become
fragile and ossified. The innocent endeavors of twelve-tone composers are
totally ignorant of the streamlined statistical procedures in use in the offices
of the hit-tune industry. For this very reason, however, the rationality of
the structures, as produced by their old-fashioned effort, is all the more
advanced. The contradiction between productive forces and the conditions
of production is manifested further as a contradiction between the conditions
of production and the products themselves. The antagonisms have increased
to such an extent that progress and reaction have lost their unequivocal
meaning. Painting a picture or composing a quartet today might well be far
behind the division of labor and experiments with technical arrangement in
the film; but the objective technical structure of the picture and the quartet
secures the possibility of the film, a possibility which today is frustrated only
by the social convention behind film production. The ‘rationality’ of the

79
Philosophy of Modern Music

structure – no matter how chimerically it might be isolated within itself and

how problematic it might be in its isolation – is nonetheless of a higher level
than the rationalization of the film industry. The film operates with objects
which it assumes but which actually have long since ceased to be. In its
treatment of those objects, it only intermittently penetrates beneath their
surface; otherwise it resigns itself to superficial portrayal. Picasso, however,
constructs his objects out of the reflexes which photography helplessly
showers upon the objects depicted. Picasso’s objects challenge those reflexes.
Exactly the same is true of twelve-tone compositions. Whatever escapes
from the impending ice age might well survive in their labyrinth. Forty years
ago in his Expressionistic period Schoenberg wrote: ‘The work of art is a
labyrinth, at every point of which the initiate knows the entrance and the
exit, without the help of guidelines. The more finely meshed and interlaced
the veins, the more certainly will he soar above every path towards his goal.
False paths, if there were such in a work of art, would set him back on his
proper course, and every digressing turn of the road would still place him in
relationship to the direction of the essential content.’49 However, if the
labyrinth is to be made a comfortable place of residence, the guidelines
followed by the enemy would have to be removed. For the ‘initiate’ realizes
‘that the labyrinth is marked’ and he unmasks ‘the clarity offered by sign-
posts as nothing more than an expedient of peasant-like cleverness. The only
thing which this shopkeeper-arithmetic has in common with the work of art
are the formulae. . . . The initiate turns quietly away and beholds how this
matter reveals itself before a higher justice: it is a mathematical error.’50 If
mathematical errors are not alien to twelve-tone composition, it becomes
the subject of a higher justice in those factors where it is most correct. In
other words, the survival of music can be anticipated only if it is able to
emancipate itself from twelve-tone technique as well. This is not to be
accomplished, however, by a retrogression to the irrationality which
preceded twelve-tone technique and which would have to be denied today
by the postulates of strict composition – by those who have been responsible
for the formulation of twelve-tone technique. It is rather to be achieved
through the amalgamation and absorption of twelve-tone technique by free
composition – by the assumption of its rules through the spontaneity of the
critical ear. Only from twelve-tone technique alone can music learn to
remain responsible for itself; this can be done, however, only if music does
not become the victim of the technique. The didactic exemplary character of
Schoenberg’s more recent works was derived from the nature of the
technique. That which appears as the range of norms in these compositions

80
 Schoenberg and Progress

is nothing more than the narrow passageway of discipline through which

all music must pass, hoping to escape the curse of contingency; however,
it is far from being the highly promised land of its objectivity. Ernst
Krenek correctly compared twelve-tone technique to those rules of strict
counterpoint abstracted by the Palestrina school, which even today remains
the very best school of composition. The denial of any normative claim is
present in such a comparison. The distinction between didactic rules and
aesthetic norms lies in the impossibility of consistently doing justice to these
rules. This impossibility is the motivating force behind the attempt to learn.
It must fail and the rules, in turn, must be forgotten, if they are to bear fruit.
The didactic system of strict counterpoint offers in actuality the most precise
analogy to the antinomies of twelve-tone composition. Its problems –
particularly those of the so-called third species – are, from the perspective of
principle, insoluble for the modern ear: they are to be solved only by tricks.
For the rules of this school were the product of polyphonic thought, a type
of thought to which progression by means of harmonic steps was unknown
and which had to content itself with the analysis of a harmonic space
defined by a very few continually recurring chords. Three hundred and fifty
years of specifically harmonic experience is not to be ignored, however.
Today the music student who undertakes problems in strict composition
necessarily applies harmonic logic at the same time: for example, in a
meaningful progression of chords. Harmonic and contrapuntal logic remain
incompatible, and satisfying solutions apparently are to be found only where
harmonic contraband has successfully been smuggled through the gate of
prohibitions. Bach ignored those same prohibitions and, instead of adhering
to them, forcefully brought about the validation of polyphony by means of
thorough-bass. In like manner, the genuine indifference of the vertical and
the horizontal is accomplished only when the composition, in critical
alertness, establishes at every moment the unity of the two dimensions. This
cannot be achieved until the composition rejects the prescriptions of rows
and rules and persistently insists upon freedom of action. It is precisely for
this freedom that music is being trained by twelve-tone technique – not so
much by means of what the technique determines in compositions, but
rather through what is prohibited by it. The didactic justice of twelve-tone
technique – its terrible discipline as an instrument of freedom – is revealed
in full measure by comparison with any other type of contemporary music
which ignores such discipline. Twelve-tone technique is no less polemic
than it is didactic. It is by no means any longer concerned with questions
first posed by modern music in opposition to post-Wagnerian music –

81
Philosophy of Modern Music

questions as to whether music is genuine or false, pathetic or objective,

programmatic or ‘absolute’ – but rather with the handing-down of technical
standards in the face of impending barbarism. If twelve-tone technique sets
up a barrier against this, then it has already accomplished enough, even if it
has not yet gained entry for itself into the realm of freedom. It has at hand its
instructions not to participate in this movement, even though these very
instructions could possibly support its participation – such is the agreement
within these instructions. With a firm grasp – merciless samaritan that
twelve-tone technique is – it supports nonetheless that musical experience
which threatens to collapse.

The renunciation of material

The technique, however, does not exhaust itself in this process. It reduces the
tonal material, before it is structured via the rows, to an amorphous
substratum, totally undetermined within itself. Thereupon the commanding
compositional subject imposes its system of rules and regulations. The
abstractness not only of these rules, but of their substratum as well, has its
origin in the fact that the historical subject is able to achieve agreement with
the historical element of the material only in the region of most general
definitions. Therefore, this abstractness eliminates all the qualities of the
material which in any way extend beyond this region. Only in the
mathematical determination through the row do the compositional will and
the claim to continual permutation, which appears historically in the
material of the chromatic scale – that is to say, the resistance to the repetition
of tones – concur in the total musical domination of nature as the thorough
organization of material. It is this abstract reconciliation which, in the final
analysis, places in opposition to the subject the self-contained system of
rules in the subjugated material as an alienated, hostile, and dominating
power. This degrades the subject, making of it a slave of the ‘material,’ as of
an empty concept of rules, at that moment in which the subject completely
subdues the material, indenturing it to its mathematical logic. At this point,
however, contradiction once again reproduces itself in the static condition of
music which has been achieved. The subject cannot be content with its
subjugation to its abstract identity in the material. For in twelve-tone
technique, the rationality of the material – as the objective rationality of
events – asserts itself blindly over the will of the subjects, triumphing thereby

82
 Schoenberg and Progress

as irrationality. In other words, the objective rationality of the system cannot

be concretely perfected in the sensory phenomenon of music – the only
concrete manifestation which is possible for it. The correctness of twelve-
tone music cannot be directly ‘heard’ – this is the simplest name for that
moment of meaninglessness in it. Only the force of the system rules; only
this is perceptible. This system, however, does not become transparent in the
concrete logic of the individual elements of music, nor does it permit these
elements to pursue an arbitrary course of development from within
themselves. All of this encourages the subject to liberate itself from its
material, and this liberation conditions the innermost tendency of
Schoenberg’s later styles. It is evident that this growing indifference of the
material, which the row technique now attacks by force, involves precisely
that negative abstractness experienced in turn as self-alienation by the
musical subject. At the same time, it is this indifferentiation, by virtue of
which the subject escapes the suffocation in natural matter – that is to say,
the domination of nature – which had until now been the basis of musical
history. In its total alienation through twelve-tone technique the subject,
against its will, is deprived of the aesthetic totality against which it had
rebelled in vain during the Expressionistic phase, in order to reconstruct it
in vain through twelve-tone technique. Musical language dissociates itself
into fragments. In these fragments, however, the subject is able to appear
directly – ‘in its significance,’ as Goethe might have said – while the
parentheses of the material totality hold it in their spell. The subject –
trembling before the alienated language of music which is no longer its own
language – regains its self-determination, not organic self-determination
but that of superimposed intentions. Music becomes conscious of itself as
the means of perception, which great music has always been. Schoenberg
once spoke out against the animalian warmth of music and its plaintiveness.
In the most recent phase of music the subject succeeds in communication
over and beyond the abyss of silence, which marks the boundaries of its
isolation. It is precisely this phase which justifies that coldness, which as a
hermetic system of mechanical function would only bring about ruin. At the
same time, it justifies Schoenberg’s sovereign disposition over the row in
contrast to the cautious manner in which Webern submerges himself in the
row for the sake of the unity of the structure. Schoenberg carefully preserves
a distance between himself and the material. His coldness is that of one who
has run away, glorified as ‘the air from other planets’ at the climax of the
Second Quartet.51 The sovereignty with which it capriciously treats the

83
Philosophy of Modern Music

material manifests not only traits of the administrative attitude, it further

contains the renunciation of aesthetic necessity, the renunciation of that
totality installed in complete externality with twelve-tone technique. Indeed,
it is this very externality which serves as the means for renunciation.
Precisely because this externalized material no longer expresses anything for
him, the composer forces it to mean what he wishes; and the discrepancies –
particularly the astonishing contradiction between twelve-tone mechanics
and expression – become the ciphers of such meaning. Even in so doing,
however, the composer remains within a tradition. This is responsible for a
similarity between the late works of great composers. ‘The caesurae . . . , the
sudden interruption, which characterizes Beethoven’s late works more than
any other factor – are those eruptive moments; the work is silent when it has
been deserted and turns its hollow interior outward. Only then does the next
fragment fit itself into place, fixed in its place by order of this eruptive
subjectivity and dependent for its very existence upon that which preceded
it; for the secret lies between them and can be evoked only in the figure
which the two of them form in union. This illuminates the contradiction
involved in labeling Beethoven in his late works as being both subjective and
objective. The fragmented landscape of the work is objective; the light which
alone causes it to radiate is subjective. Beethoven does not bring about a
harmonious synthesis of these extremes. Rather, he tears them apart as the
force of dissociation, in time – in order, perhaps, to preserve them for
eternity. In the history of art late works have always been catastrophic.’52 That
which Goethe commended in his old age – the step-by-step withdrawal
from the phenomenon – can be understood in artistic concepts as the
process by which material becomes no more than a matter of indifference. In
Beethoven’s last works barren conventions – through which the compositional
stream flows only hesitantly – play approximately the same role as the one
performed by the twelve-tone system in Schoenberg’s most recent works.
Since the beginning of twelve-tone technique, this growing in differentiation
of material has manifested itself as a tendency towards dissociation. As long
as twelve-tone technique has been in existence there has been a long list of
‘secondary works’ – arrangements or compositions which do not employ
twelve-tone technique, or which employ it as a means to an end, thus making
it functional. Schoenberg’s iron-clad twelve-tone compositions – from the
Woodwind Quintet down to the Violin Concerto – are offset by his smaller
pieces, whose only significance lies in their large number. Schoenberg
orchestrated works by Bach and Brahms and reworked to a large degree the

84
 Schoenberg and Progress

B-flat major concerto of Handel.53 The Suite for String Orchestra [Kol
Nidre, opus 39] and the Second Chamber Symphony [opus 38] – along with
several choral compositions – are all ‘tonal.’ The ‘Accompaniment
to a Cinematographic Scene’ is well-suited for commercial purposes; the
opera Von heute auf morgen, and several choral compositions, manifest at
least a tendency in this direction. This gives rise to the assumption that
Schoenberg throughout his life had a secret pleasure in heresies against
‘style,’ the inexorable nature of which was rooted in the man himself. The
chronology of his works is rich in overlappings. The tonal Gurrelieder were
not completed until 1911 – the time of Die glückliche Hand. It was precisely
his grandiose conceptions such as Die Jakobsleiter and Moses und Aron
which accompanied him throughout decades: the urge to bring a work to a
conclusion was totally alien to him.54 In an artist’s production there is a
rhythm probably more obvious in literature than it is in music, except
perhaps in the late works of Beethoven and Wagner. It is common knowledge
that Schoenberg in his earlier years was forced to earn his living through the
orchestration of operettas. The investigation of these forgotten scores might
well be worth the effort, not only because it can safely be assumed that
therein he was not able completely to suppress himself as a composer but,
above all, because they might possibly give evidence of that counter-
tendency which emerges more and more clearly in the ‘secondary works’ of
his later years, precisely at that point in his career when he gained total
command over his material. It is hardly a matter of coincidence that all of
these secondary works of his later years have one thing in common: a more
conciliatory attitude towards the public. There is a deep relationship between
Schoenberg’s inexorability and his particular manner of conciliation. His
inexorable music represents social truth against society. His conciliatory
music recognizes the right to music which, in spite of everything, is still
valid even in a false society – in the very same way that a false society
reproduces itself and thus by virtue of its very survival objectively establishes
elements of its own truth. As a representative of the most progressive
aesthetic perception Schoenberg approaches the very boundaries thereof,
namely, that the right of the truth contained in this perception shatters that
right which is nothing more than a matter of negative necessity. This
perception determines the substance of his secondary works. The growing
indifference of material permits the intermittent union of both claims. Even
tonality bows to the demands of total construction, and, for Schoenberg in
recent years, that for which he composes is no longer totally decisive. An

85
Philosophy of Modern Music

artist, for whom the compositional procedure means everything – and the
subject matter, on the other hand, nothing – is able to make use of what has
disappeared and what even the enchained consciousness of the consumer
still has an ear for. On the other hand, this enchained consciousness is, to be
sure, perceptive enough to close itself off as soon as this worn-out material
has been overtaken by compositional attack. This consciousness is not at all
concerned with the material as such but, rather, only with the traces left
behind in it by the economic market. However, it is precisely these traces
which are destroyed in Schoenberg’s secondary works. He accomplishes this
by reducing the material in these works to the blatant vehicle of meaning
which he infuses into the material. It is his ability to forget – this unique
‘sovereignty’ – which enables him to do this. There is perhaps no single
factor which distinguishes Schoenberg so basically from all other composers
as his ability to discard and reject what he has previously possessed. He is
able to do this at any point; he has done it repeatedly and particularly at
every turning point in his compositional procedure. The rebellion against
the possessive character of experience can be detected among the deepest
impulses of his Expressionism. The First Chamber Symphony [opus 9] – with
the preponderance of the woodwinds, the excessive demands made upon
the string soloists, and the compressed linear figures – sounds as if
Schoenberg had never advanced beyond the lush and radiant Wagnerian
orchestra, which was still so successfully employed in the Six Orchestral
Songs [opus 8]. The compositions which open a new phase – the Piano Pieces
[opus 11], as the herald of atonality, for example, and later the waltz from
opus 23 as the very model of twelve-tone – offer an absolute display of the
most magnificent clumsiness. Such compositions take an aggressive stand
against routine and against that ominous solid music-making which the
more responsible composers in Germany have repeatedly fallen victim to
ever since Mendelssohn. The spontaneity of musical observation obscures
everything traditional, denounces everything once learned, and recognizes
only the force of imagination. This force of forgetfulness is related to that
barbaric moment of hostility towards art which, by means of the immediacy
of reaction at every moment, questions the intermediary role of musical
culture. It is this force alone which offers a counter-balance to the masterly
command over technique, thus preserving tradition as a basis for technique.
For tradition is that which is forgotten for the moment, and Schoenberg’s
alertness is so vast that it still designs for itself a technique of forgetfulness.
Thereby Schoenberg is enabled repeatedly to employ twelve-tone rows

86
 Schoenberg and Progress

in powerfully progressive compositions or to make use of tonality for

constructions patterned after the row technique. It is necessary only to
compare such related works as Schoenberg’s Piano Pieces [opus 19] and
Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet [opus 5] to become aware of
Schoenberg’s sovereignty. Whereas Webern binds Expressionistic miniatures
together by means of the most highly subtle motivic development,
Schoenberg – who had fully developed every possible motivic device –
ignores them and follows, with eyes closed, that direction indicated to him
by the progression of tones. In forgetfulness, subjectivity finally extends
incommensurably beyond the consequence and correctness of the structure
which depends upon the omnipresent recollection of itself. Schoenberg has
succeeded in preserving this force of forgetfulness in his most recent works.
He denounces his fidelity to the sole domination of material – that very
fidelity which he had once designed. He breaks with the concept of the
hermetic clarity of the structure which had become absolute at this time –
that clarity which classic aesthetics had come to call ‘symbolic’ and which in
truth did not correspond to a single measure which he had composed. An
artist, he wins back for mankind freedom from art, a dialectical composer,
he brings dialectics to a halt.

Cognitive character

Through hostility towards art, the work of art approaches knowledge. From
the beginning, Schoenberg’s music has hovered in the vicinity of cognition.
This – and not dissonance – has been the basis upon which he has been
rejected by so many: this has given rise to the strident outcry against
intellectualism. The hermetic work of art was not interested in perception,
but rather allowed perception to vanish within itself. It designed itself as the
object of mere ‘observation,’ obscuring every loophole through which
thought might evade the direct actuality of the aesthetic object. In so doing,
the traditional work of art refrained from thought, renouncing its binding
relationship to that which it cannot be in itself. The work of art was as ‘blind’
as (according to Kant’s doctrine) non-conceptual observation is ‘blind.’ The
idea that the work of art should manifest observable clarity leads to the
illusion that the dichotomy between subject and object has been overcome.
Perception is based upon the articulation of this conciliation: the clarity of
art itself is its illusory appearance. It is only when the work of art has been

87
Philosophy of Modern Music

thrown into confusion that it throws off the clarity of its hermetic character,
discarding the illusion of its appearance at the same time. It is established as
the object of thought and participates in thought itself: it becomes the vehicle
of the subject, whose intentions it communicates and defines; whereas in the
hermetic work of art, the subject – by intention – is simply submerged.
The hermetic work of art upholds the identity of subject and object. In the
decline of the hermetic work this identity reveals itself as an illusion,
underscoring the right of perception, which contrasts subject and object
with each other as the greater and moral right of the work of art. Modern
music absorbs the contradiction evident in its relationship to reality into its
own consciousness and form. Through such action it refines itself as a means
of perception. Even traditional art perceives all the more, the more deeply it
expresses the contradictions present in its own material – thereby offering
evidence of the contradictions in the world in which it dwells. Its depth is
that of a judgment pronounced against the negative aspects of the world.
The basis for judgment in music, as a cognitive force, is aesthetic form. It is
only in measuring this contradiction according to the possibility of its
arbitration that the contradiction is actually perceived and not merely
registered. In the cognitive act performed by art, the artistic form represents
a criticism of the contradiction by indicating the possibility of reconciliation
and thereby emphasizing the non-absolute aspect of the contradiction – its
contingency and the fact that it can be overcome. In such a process, to be
sure, the aesthetic form is also transformed into the moment in which the
act of perception ceases. Art, as the realization of the possible, has always
denied the reality of the contradiction upon which it is based. Its cognitive
character becomes radical in that moment in which art is no longer content
with the role of perception. This is the threshold of modern art, which grasps
its own contradictions with such depth that they can no longer be arbitrated.
Modern art infuses the concept of form with such tension that the aesthetic
product is forced to confess its insolvency before it. Modern art permits the
contradiction to remain, revealing the original foundation of its categories
of judgment – that is, of form. It discards the dignity of the judge and
descends to the level of the plaintiff, the only position for which reality
provides a conciliation. It is only in a fragmentary work that has renounced
itself that the critical substance is liberated.55 This happens, to be sure, only
in the decline of the hermetic work of art and not in the undifferentiated
superimposition of doctrine and image, as represented by archaic art works.
For it is only in the realm of necessity – manifested monadologically by

88
 Schoenberg and Progress

hermetic works of art – that art is able to acquire that power of objectivity
which finally makes it capable of perception. The basis of such objectivity is
that the discipline, imposed upon the subject by the hermetic work of art,
mediates the objective demand of the entire society, about which society
knows just as little as does the subject. It is critically elevated to the position
of evidence in the same moment in which the subject destroys discipline.
This is an act of truth only when it includes the social demand which it
negates. The subject evasively leaves the vacuity of the work at the mercy of
that which is socially possible. Indications of this are to be found in
Schoenberg’s most recent works. The liquidation of art – of the hermetic
work of art – becomes an aesthetic question, and the growing indifference of
material itself brings about the renunciation of the identity of substance and
phenomenon in which the traditional idea of art terminated. The role of the
chorus in Schoenberg’s recent works is the visible sign of such concession to
knowledge. The subject sacrifices the clarity of the work, forces it to become
doctrine and epigram, conceiving of itself as the representative of a non-
existent fellowship. The canons of late Beethoven are an analogy, and this
fact in turn sheds light upon the canonic practices of Schoenberg’s choral
works. The choral texts are of a reflective and bluntly conceptual nature
throughout. Eccentric characteristics – such as the use of anti-poetic foreign
words or the inclusion of literary quotations in the Jakobsleiter – are most
instructive about the tendency which belongs to the music itself. The
condensation of meaning within the structure itself – a process conditioned
by twelve-tone technique – corresponds to this. The ‘meaning’ of music,
even in free atonality, is determined solely by its inner relationships.
Schoenberg went so far as to define the theory of composition as simply the
theory of musical relationships, and everything in music which for any
reason can be called meaningful may lay claim to this theory, because as a
matter of detail it can be extended to relate to the totality. The same is true in
reverse: the totality assumes within itself a definite demand upon the
individual detail. Such an extension of the aesthetic partial moments beyond
themselves – while they at the same time remain completely within the
space of the work of art – is interpreted as the meaning of the work of art. It
is understood in its aesthetic meaning to be more than a phenomenon, and
at the same time to be no more than this – in other words, as the totality of
the phenomenon. If technical analysis reveals that the emergent moment of
meaninglessness is constituent for twelve-tone technique, it formulates
thereby not only its criticism of twelve-tone technique, based on the fact that

89
Philosophy of Modern Music

the totally constructed work of art (that is to say, the completely ‘integrated’
work) falls into conflict with its own idea, but rather, by virtue of this
incipient meaninglessness, the immanent hermetic quality of the work is
discarded. This hermetic quality is based upon precisely that integration
which determines meaning. After the elimination of this integration, music
is transformed into protest. In these technological configurations an element
is unmistakably perceptible which had been proclaimed in the era of free
atonality with the force of an explosion. This force – closely related to
Dadaism – is particularly evident in the truly incommensurable youthful
works of Ernst Krenek – above all, in his Second Symphony. This signifies the
rebellion of music against its own meaning. The relationships in these works
are the negation of relationships. Their triumph lies in the fact that music
reveals itself in the antipode of verbal language, in that it is able to speak
with no precise obligation towards meaning, whereas all hermetic musical
works of art stand with verbal language under the sign of pseudo-morphosis.
All organic music proceeded out of the stile recitativo.56 From the very
beginning this was patterned after speech. The emancipation of music today
is tantamount to its emancipation from verbal language, and it is this
emancipation which flashes during the destruction of ‘meaning.’ Above all,
however, this concerns expression. The theoreticians of New Objectivity
considered as the essential concern the restitution of ‘absolute’ music and its
purification of the Romantic-subjective element of expression. What actually
takes place is the dissociation of meaning and expression. Just as the
meaninglessness of Krenek’s early compositions grants them their most
powerful expression – the expression of objective catastrophe – so do the
superimposed characters of expression in the most recent twelve-tone
compositions indicate the liberation of expression from the consistency of
language. Subjectivity – the vehicle of expression in traditional music – is by
no means the last substratum thereof. It is this as little as the ‘subject’ – the
substratum of all art down to the present day – is actually man himself.
The beginning of music, in the same manner as its end, extends beyond the
realm of intentions – the realm of meaning and subjectivity. The origin is
gesticulative in nature and closely related to the origin of tears. It is the
gesture of release. The tension of the face muscles relaxes; the tension which
closes the face off from the surrounding world by directing the face actively
at this world disappears. Music and tears open the lips and set the arrested
human being free. The sentimentality of inferior music indicates in its
distorted figure that which higher music, at the very border of insanity, is yet

90
 Schoenberg and Progress

able to design in the validity of its form: reconciliation. The human being
who surrenders himself to tears and to a music which no longer resembles
him in any way permits that current of which he is not part and which lies
behind the dam restraining the world of phenomena to flow back into itself.
In weeping and in singing he enters into alienated reality. ‘Tears dim my
eyes: earth’s child I am again’ – this line from Goethe’s Faust defines the
position of music.57 Thus earth claims Eurydice again. The gesture of return –
not the sensation of expectancy – characterizes the expression of all music,
even if it finds itself in a world worthy of death.

Attitude towards society

The potentiality of the most recent phase of music indicates a change in

position. It is no longer the statement and image of an inner factor, but
rather an attitude towards reality, perceived by music, but no longer glossed
over in the images presented by music. In the extreme isolation resulting
therefrom, the social character of music changes. In establishing the
independence of its tasks and techniques, traditional music removed itself
from its social basis and became ‘autonomous.’ (That the autonomous
development of music reflected social development could never be deduced
so simply, unquestioningly, as it could, for example, in the development of
the novel.) It is not only that music per se lacks that unequivocal objective
content, but rather that the more clearly music defines its formal laws and
entrusts itself to them, the more, for the moment, it closes itself off against
the manifest portrayal of society in which it has its enclaves. Music owes its
social popularity to this process of isolation. Music is an ideology insofar as
it asserts itself as an ontological being-in-itself beyond social tensions. Even
Beethoven’s music – bourgeois music at its very height – echoed the turmoil
and the ideal of the heroic years of the middle class in merely the same way
that a morning dream echoes the noise of beginning day. It is not actual
sensory listening but only the conceptually mediated perception of the
elements and their configuration which assures the social substance of great
music. The crude division into classes and groups is nothing more than an
attempt to prove an assertion and runs the risk of becoming a puerile prank
of instigation against a formalism which brands, as bourgeois decadence,
everything which refuses to engage in the games of existing society. This
same formalism ascribes to the remnants of bourgeois composition –

91
Philosophy of Modern Music

enthroned upon the plush sofa of pseudo-Romantic pathos – the dignity of

popular democracy. Music down to this very day has existed only as a
product of the bourgeois class, a product which, both in the success and
failure of its attempts at formulation, embodies this society and gives
aesthetic documentation of it. In so doing, traditional and emancipated
music are of the same nature. Feudalists hardly ever succeeded in producing
their ‘own’ music, but rather had it composed for them by the urban
bourgeois. The proletariat was never permitted to constitute itself as a music
subject; such a creative function was made impossible both in terms of its
position within the system – where it was nothing more than an object of
domination – and through the repressive factors which formed its own
nature. Only in the realization of freedom and not under any system of
domination did the proletariat achieve a creative function. Within the
existing order there must be grave doubts regarding the existence of any type
of music other than bourgeois. In contrast, the class membership of
individual composers – or even their categorization as high or petty
bourgeois – is as totally a matter of indifference as would be the attempt to
derive the essence of modern music from its social reception. This reception
scarcely indicates any differentiation in attitudes towards such highly
divergent composers as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Hindemith. For the
most part there is only the most coincidental and insignificant relationship
between the private political attitudes of composers and the substance of
their works. The displacement of social substance in radical modern music –
evident in the reception of this music as nothing more than seeking refuge
in the concert hall – cannot be ascribed to the commitment of this music to
any particular cause. It is rather that this music – as the unmistakable
microcosm of antagonistic human disposition – is today engaged in breaking
down from within those walls which aesthetic autonomy had so carefully
constructed. It was the class-orientation of traditional music – by means of
its consistent formal immanence as well as the pleasantry of its façade –
which led to the proclamation that essentially there were no classes. Modern
music cannot voluntarily involve itself in this struggle without injury to its
own consistency. Consequently – as the enemies of this music well know – it
occupies a position in this struggle by surrendering the deception of
harmony, a position which has become untenable in the face of a reality
rapidly moving towards catastrophe. The basis of the isolation of radical
modern music is not its asocial, but precisely its social substance. It expresses
its concern through its pure quality, doing so all the more emphatically, the

92
 Schoenberg and Progress

more purely this quality is revealed; it points out the ills of society, rather
than sublimating those ills into a deceptive humanitarianism which would
pretend that humanitarianism had already been achieved in the present.
This music is no longer an ideology. In such a role of pseudo-isolation, music
begins to correspond to a momentous social change. In the present phase, in
which the apparatus of production and domination are merged, the question
of mediation between superstructure and substructure – like all other social
mediation – begins to grow obsolete. Works of art – like all precipitates of
the objective spirit – are the object itself. They are the concealed social
essence quoted as the phenomenon. It might well be asked whether art has
ever really been that mediated image of reality, as it attempts to validate itself
before the power of the world. Was the attitude towards the world not,
rather, founded in resistance against this power? This might help to explain
the fact that in spite of all autonomy the dialectic of art is not hermetic and
that the history of this dialectic is not simply a succession of questions and
answers. The intense desire of the work of art to withdraw itself from the
dialectic which it obeys might be viewed as its central concern. The works
react to the suffering resulting from dialectical pressure. For art, this
represents an incurable disease caused by necessity. At the same time,
however, the formal validity of the work, which has its origin in material
dialectics, establishes a defense against this necessity. Dialectics is
interrupted – interrupted, however, by no force other than the reality to
which it is related – that is to say, to society itself. While works of art hardly
ever attempt to imitate society and their creators need know nothing of it,
the gestures of the works of art are objective answers to objective social
configurations. They have often been designed to meet the needs of the
consumer; more frequently, they stand in a contradiction to his need. In no
case, however, have they ever been sufficiently redesigned by this need.
Every interruption in the creative process – every forgetfulness, every new
beginning – designates a type of reaction to society. Yet the more precisely
the work of art gives answer to the heteronomy of society, the more it
becomes estranged from the world. The work of art does not have society in
mind in terms of answering its questions, nor even necessarily in terms of
the actual choice of those questions. However, it assumes a tense position
against the horrors of history. At one point it is insistent, at another it forgets.
It relents and grows hard. It endures or it renounces itself, hoping to outwit
its doom. The objectivity of art lies in the fixation of such moments. Works
of art are similar to those childish grimaces which the striking of the clock

93
Philosophy of Modern Music

causes to become permanently fixed. The integral technique of the

composition arose neither in the concept of the integral state nor in the
concept of its eradication. It is, however, an attempt to hold ground in
the face of reality and to absorb that universal anxiety to which the integral
state corresponded. The inhumanity of art must triumph over the inhumanity
of the world for the sake of the humane. Works of art attempt to solve the
riddles designed by the world to devour man. The world is a sphynx, the
artist is blinded Oedipus, and it is works of art of the type resembling his
wise answer which plunged the sphynx into the abyss. Thus all art stands in
opposition to mythology. In the elemental ‘material’ of art, the ‘answer’ – the
only possible and correct answer – is ever present, but not yet defined. To
give this answer, to express what is there, and to fulfill the commandment of
ambiguity through a singularity which has always been present in the
commandment, is at the same time the new which extends beyond the old,
precisely by virtue of being sufficient to it. For this reason the total seriousness
of artistic technique lies in continually designing schemata of the familiar
for that which has already existed. This seriousness is today so much greater,
since the alienation present in the consistency of artistic technique forms the
very substance of the work of art. The shocks of incomprehension, emitted
by artistic technique in the age of its meaninglessness, undergo a sudden
change. They illuminate the meaningless world. Modern music sacrifices
itself to this effort. It has taken upon itself all the darkness and guilt of the
world. Its fortune lies in the perception of misfortune; all of its beauty is in
denying itself the illusion of beauty. No one wishes to become involved with
art – individuals as little as collectives. It dies away unheard, without even an
echo. If time crystallizes around that music which has been heard, revealing
its radiant quintessence, music which has not been heard falls into empty
time like an impotent bullet. Modern music spontaneously aims towards
this last experience, evidenced hourly in mechanical music. Modern music
sees absolute oblivion as its goal. It is the surviving message of despair from
the shipwrecked.

94
Stravinsky and Restoration

Nor is it of any real assistance to him that he further appropriates, so to

speak, with his soul and substance a view of the world that belongs to
the past, in other words tries to root himself in one of such and, let us
say, turns Roman Catholic, as not a few have done in recent times for
Art’s sake, in order to give their soul some secure foundation, and so
enable the definite lines of their artistic product to become themselves
some thing which shall appear to have an independently valid growth.1

Authenticity

The historical innervation of Stravinsky and his disciples succumbed to

the temptation of imagining that the responsible essence of music could
be restored through stylistic procedures. The process by which music was
rationalized – the establishment of integral domination over its material –
coincided with its subjectification. The latter process, which Stravinsky,
with his penchant for organizational mastery, has critically emphasized,
appears to be a moment of arbitrariness. According to the standards of the
existing order, the progress of music towards total freedom of the subject
would appear to be completely irrational insofar as (along with the more
all-encompassing musical language) it by-and-large dissolves the easily
comprehensible logic of superficial organization. The aged philosophical
aporia maintains that the subject – as the vehicle of objective rationality –
remains inseparable from the individual in his coincidental character. The
markings of such coincidence, however, distort the accomplishment of such
rationality, and consequently music is charged with complete responsibility
for such aporia. Yet music, of course, has never attained to pure logic. The
mind of a composer such as Stravinsky reacts vehemently against any impulse
not visibly determined by society – actually against the trace of anything
which has not been socially comprehended. Their intention is emphatically
to reconstruct the authenticity of music – to impose upon it the character
of outside confirmation, to fortify it with the power of being-so-and-not-
being-able-to-be-otherwise. The music of the new Viennese school would
Philosophy of Modern Music

hope to partake of the same power by means of infinite submersion within

itself – by means of total organization: such force, however, is missing in
its jagged physiognomy. Consummate unto itself, its intention is that the
listener should share in the experience of this consummation, not simply
reactively re-experience it. Since this music does not engage the listener,
Stravinsky’s consciousness denounces it as impotent and coincidental.
He renounces the strict self-development of essence in favor of the strict
contour of the phenomenon – in favor, that is, of his powers of conversion.
The demeanour of music should not tolerate any contradiction. Once in his
youth, Hindemith offered a brave definition of this concept: he envisioned a
style in which everyone would have to compose in much the same manner,
as was the case in the time of Bach or Mozart. As a teacher he still pursues
today a similar program of conformism. Stravinsky’s acrobatic cleverness
and crafty mastery have been essentially free of such naïveté since the very
beginning. He undertook his attempt at restoration without resentment
against any drive towards levelling, and fully conscious of the dubious
and delusive aspects of his experiment. Such urbane consciousness is the
absolute determining force behind his efforts. This is still true, even if these
efforts seem to have fallen into oblivion in the face of the sterile scores which
he serves up to the public today. Stravinsky’s objectivism is of so much
greater value than that of all those who seek orientation in his style because,
in his case, the factor of his own negativity is essentially included within
this objectivism. Yet, despite all of this, it cannot be doubted that his dream-
hostile work is inspired by the dream of authenticity, by a fear of emptiness –
that anxiety before frustrated efforts which no longer find social resonance
and are chained to the ephemeral fate of the individual. In Stravinsky, the
desire of the adolescent is ever stubbornly at work; it is the struggle of the
youth to become a valid, proven classicist – not a mere modernist – whose
substance is consumed in the controversy of artistic party lines; and who is
soon forgotten. It would be impossible to overlook the naive aspect present in
such a manner of reaction and the impotence of hopes associated with it for
no artist can exercise an influence upon that which survives in the aesthetic
realm. It is just as unquestionable, however, that this attitude is based upon
an experience which can be denied, least of all, by anyone aware of the
impossibility of restoration. Even the most perfect song of Anton Webern
remains far behind the simplest piece from Schubert’s Die Winterreise from
the perspective of authenticity. Even in the case of its most extreme success,
this sort of attitude designates a state of consciousness which, as it were, has
simply been accepted as absolute. And it is precisely such a consciousness

96
 Stravinsky and Restoration

that finds objectification appropriate in such a work. But this subjectification

does not pass judgment on the objectivity of substance – on the truth or
untruth of the state of consciousness itself. This state of objectification
is Stravinsky’s most immediate goal; he is not concerned with success in
expressing a situation which he would much rather overlook than express.
Even for his ear the most progressive music cannot sound as though it had
been present since the beginning of time; yet this is precisely how he wants
music to sound. Our criticism of such a goal will result in an insight into
various steps towards its realization.

Sacrifice and the absence of intention

Stravinsky despised the easy way to authenticity. That would have been the
academic way, the restriction to the approved inventory of the musical idiom
which had developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and
which, for the bourgeois consciousness to which it belongs, had taken on the
seal of matter-of-factness and ‘naturalness.’ Stravinsky was a student of
Rimsky-Korsakov, who had corrected Mussorgsky’s harmony according to
conservatory rules; now he rebelled against his teacher’s studio as only a
Fauvist could do against the rules of painting.2 His sense of binding
responsibility found the demands made upon him intolerable – namely,
when he contradicted himself by replacing the vital force exercised by
tonality in the heroic age of the bourgeoisie with a mere convention which
he had learned in school. The engraved precision of musical language – the
permeation of each of its formulae by intentions – struck him not as a
guarantee of authenticity, but as the erosion thereof.3 If its principle is to
be effective, slackened authenticity should be eradicated. This is brought
about by the demolition of intentions. From this – and from the direct
contemplation of primeval musical matter as well – he expects to find
the binding responsibility. The relationship to concurrent philosophical
phenomenology is unmistakable. The renunciation of all psychologism – the
reduction to the pure phenomenon, as the process reveals itself – opens up
a region of ‘authentic’ being which is beyond all doubt. In both cases, distrust
of the unoriginal (at its utmost depth the suspicion of the contradiction
between actual society and its ideology) results in the misleading hypo­
statization of the ‘remains,’ or what is left over after the removal of that which
has allegedly been superimposed as truth. In both cases, the mind is caught
up in the deception that within its own circle – the realm of thought and

97
Philosophy of Modern Music

art – it might be able to escape the curse of being only mind and reflection,
but by no means essence itself. In both cases, the unmediated contrast
between the ‘thing’ and mental reflection is absolutized, and for this reason
the product arising from the subject is invested with the dignity of the
natural. In both cases, it is a matter of the chimerical rebellion of culture
against its own essence as culture. Stravinsky undertakes such a rebellion
not only in the familiar aesthetic game with barbarism, but furthermore in
the fierce suspension of that element in music which is called culture – the
suspension, that is, of the humanly eloquent work of art. He is drawn in that
direction where music – in its retarded state, far behind the fully developed
bourgeois subject – functions as an element lacking intention, arousing only
bodily animation instead of offering meaning. He is attracted to that sphere
in which meaning has become so ritualized that it cannot be experienced
as the specific meaning of the musical act. The aesthetic ideal is that of
unquestioned fulfillment. For Stravinsky – as for Frank Wedekind in his
circus plays – ‘bodily art’ becomes the watch-word. Stravinsky begins
as the staff composer of the Russian ballet. Since Petrouchka, his scores
prefigure gesture and step, thus assuming a constantly increasing distance
from empathy with the dramatic figure. They restrict themselves in their
specialization, offering the most extreme contrast to the encompassing
demands expressed by the Schoenberg school in its most outspoken
formulations, and as had once been stated by Beethoven in the Eroica.
Stravinsky slyly pays tribute to the division of labor – denounced as ideology
by Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand. Stravinsky is fully aware of the futility
of any such attempt to transcend, by means of intellectualization, the
boundaries of a competence defined in artisan terms. Present in this effort-
alongside the timely attitude of the specialist – is an anti-ideological factor:
the prime concern lies in the precise completion of an assigned task, not in
the construction of a world with all means of technology – as Mahler was
wont to call it. As a cure for the division of labor, he suggests driving it to an
extreme, and thus knocking the props out from under a culture based
upon such a division. Out of this world of over-specialization he designs the
specialty of music hall, vaudeville, and circus. This accomplishment is
glorified in the Parade of Cocteau and Satie, but Petrouchka is already a
preconception of it.4 The aesthetic accomplishment becomes a complete tour
de force – the beginnings of which were already to be found in Impressionism;
it is further a breaking of gravitational force, the pretense of the impossible
through the extreme intensification of special training. Actually, Stravinsky’s
harmony always remains in a state of suspension, thus evading the gravitation

98
 Stravinsky and Restoration

of the step-by-step progression of chords. Madness and the insignificant

perception of the acrobat, the lack of freedom of the individual who
continually repeats the same performance until the break-neck attempt
succeeds – all of these factors give an objective picture of sovereignty,
freedom from the force of nature, and a mastery which, although fully
developed, is without intention. At the same time, it is all denounced as
ideology as soon as these factors assert themselves individually. The blindly
infinite success of the acrobatic act, formed with aesthetic antinomies, is
celebrated as the sudden utopia of something which has far surpassed the
bourgeois boundaries through the division of labor and hypostatization. The
absence of intention is considered to be the promise of the fulfillment of all
intention. Petrouchka – ‘neo-Impressionistic’ in style – is pieced together
from innumerable artistic fragments, from the minutely detailed whirring of
the fair-ground down to the mocking imitation of all music rejected by
official culture. Petrouchka has its origins in the atmosphere of the cabaret,
embodying a mixture of literature and commercial art. While Stravinsky,
on the one hand, remained faithful to the apocryphal aspects of the
cabaret, on the other he rebelled against the elements of narcissistic elation
and harlequin-like animation and he succeeded in asserting, against
the Bohemian atmosphere, the destruction of everything intrinsically
inaugurated by the cabaret number. This tendency leads from commercial
art – which readied the soul for sale as a commercial good – to the negation
of the soul in protest against the character of consumer goods: to music’s
declaration of loyalty to its physical basis, to its reduction to the phenomenon,
which assumes objective meaning in that it renounces, of its own accord,
any claim to meaning. Egon Wellsez was not entirely wrong in comparing
Petrouchka to Schoenberg’s Pierrot – both are continuous in their idea; the
neo-Romantic transfiguration of the clown, even in those days, had already
grown somewhat stale. The tragic art of the clown heralds at the same time
the fact that this condemned subjectivity ironically retains its primacy.
Pierrot and Petrouchka – as well as Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel, who is heard so
clearly several times in Stravinsky’s ballet – survive their own demise. But in
the treatment of the tragic clown, the historical lines of modern music
separate.5 In Schoenberg, everything is based upon that lonely subjectivity
which withdraws into itself. The entire third part of Pierrot designs a ‘voyage
home’ to a vitreous no-man’s-land in whose crystalline-lifeless air the
seemingly transcendent subject – liberated from the entanglements of the
empirical – finds himself again on an imaginary plane. In this case,
the subject benefits as much from the complexion of the music as it does

99
Philosophy of Modern Music

from the text. The texture of the composition designs the image of hope
beyond hopelessness with the expression of shelter and security in desolation.
Such pathos is totally alien to Stravinsky’s Petrouchka. The latter work is by
no means without subjectivistic traits, but the music tends to take the part of
those who ridicule the maltreated hero, rather than come to his defense.
Consequently, the immortality of the clown at the end of the work cannot be
interpreted as appeasement for the collective, but rather as the threat of evil
to it. In Stravinsky’s case, subjectivity assumes the character of sacrifice,
but – and this is where he sneers at the tradition of humanistic art – the
music does not identify with the victim, but rather with the destructive
element. Through the liquidation of the victim it rids itself of all intentions –
that is, of its own subjectivity.

The hand organ as a primeval phenomenon

Under the guise of neo-Romanticism, such a turning against the subject has
already taken place in Petrouchka. Lengthy passages of the work – with the
exception of the second scene, almost the whole work – are simplified in their
musical substance, in contrast to the intricate psychological ornamentation
of the puppet who has been summoned into deceptive life. The technical
simplicity of the work is to be observed particularly in the extremely subtle
treatment of the orchestra. This simplicity corresponds to the position taken
by the music towards its theme: it is the position of the highly entertained
observer of fair-ground scenes, the portrayal of a stylized impression of
hurly-burly, with the undertone of provocative joy which the individual,
tired of differentiation, finds in that which he scorns. This is analogous to
the position of the intellectual who enjoys films and detective novels with
well-mannered naïveté, thus preparing himself for his own function within
mass culture. The self-annihilation of the observer is implied for an instant
in the vain suffering under knowledge. He is submerged into the tumult as
a child in order to free himself from the burden of rational everyday life
and, at the same time, of his own psychology. He thus escapes his own ego,
seeking happiness in identification with that unarticulated mob of Le Bon-
like nature whose imago of this crowd is contained within the clamour of
the work.6 In so doing, however, he takes the side of those who laugh: the
concentration of the music on Petrouchka as its aesthetic subject unmasks
his worthless existence as comic. The fundamental category of Petrouchka is
that of the grotesque – as the term is frequently used as a dynamic marking

100
 Stravinsky and Restoration

in the score for the wind soli: the category of the distorted conspicuous
individual delivered up to others. The impending disintegration of the subject
itself is evident in this situation. Everything characteristic of Petrouchka is
grotesque: the melismata which are misappropriated and restrained to the
point of dullness. These are the only elements which are sharply defined
against the giant harmonica of the acoustic whole – the photographic
negative of the neo-Romantic giant harp. Wherever the subjective element
is encountered, it is depraved: it is sickeningly over-sentimentalized or
trodden to death. It is evoked as something which in itself is already
mechanical, hypostatized, and – to a certain extent – already lifeless. The
wind instruments in which this is expressed sound like the components of a
hand organ: the apotheosis of mere piping. The strings are perverted into a
joke and deprived of their soulful sound.7 The images of mechanical music
produce the shock of a modernity which is already past and degraded to a
childish level. It becomes the gate to the most original and ancient past, as it
is later to serve the Surrealists. The hand organ, once heard, functions – as
an acoustical déjà vu – as remembrance. Suddenly – as upon the command
of a magician – the imago of the shabby, fallen individual is to transform
itself into a remedy against decay. The basic phenomenon in the spiritual
movement perfected by Stravinsky is his substitution of the hand organ
for the Bach organ. In so doing, the metaphysical joke is supported by the
similarity of the two instruments. This joke actually concerns the price of
life, which sound is forced to pay for its purification from intentions. All
music – right down to the present day – has had to pay for the sound of
collective responsibility with an act of violence against the subject with the
enthronement of a mechanical factor as authority.

Sacre and African sculpture

Le Sacre du printemps – Stravinsky’s most famous work and, from the

standpoint of material, his most progressive composition – was conceived,
according to his autobiography, during his work on Petrouchka. This is
scarcely coincidental. In spite of the stylistic contrast between Petrouchka,
the masterpiece of almost culinary design, and the tumultuous ballet, both
have a common nucleus: the anti-humanistic sacrifice to the collective –
sacrifice without tragedy, made not in the name of a renewed image of man,
but only in the blind affirmation of a situation recognized by the victim.
This insight can find expression either through self-mockery or through

101
Philosophy of Modern Music

self-annihilation. Such a motif, which completely determines the manner

of conduct of the music, steps forth from the frivolous mask of Petrouchka
and appears in sanguinary gravity in Sacre. This belongs to the years when
wild men came to be called primitives, to the sphere of Frazer and Lévy-
Bruhl, and further of Freud’s Totem and Taboo.8 This is by no means to
say – and particularly not in France – that the primeval world is played off
against civilization. It is much more a matter of ‘research’ in a positivistic
detachment well suited to the distance maintained by Stravinsky’s music
from the atrocities on stage which this music accompanies without comment.
Speaking of the prehistoric youthful generation of Sacre, Cocteau stated in
somewhat condescending but well-intended tones of enlightenment: ‘These
credulous men imagine that the sacrifice of a young girl, chosen above all
others, is absolutely essential to the rebirth of Spring.’9 At first the music
states: this is the situation as it was and the music is as far removed from
assuming a position as was Flaubert in Madame Bovary. Atrocity is observed
with a certain satisfaction, but it is not transformed. It is, rather, presented
without mitigation. In the case of Schoenberg it has become, as a matter of
principle, an accepted practice not to resolve dissonances. This determines
the culturally bolshevistic aspect of the ‘Scenes from Pagan Russia’ (as
Stravinsky subtitled Sacre). When the avant-garde embraced African
sculpture, the reactionary telos of the movement was totally concealed: this
reaching out for primitive history seemed, rather, to serve the liberation
of strangulated art rather than its regimentation. Still today, the difference
between those culturally hostile manifestos of cultural fascism must be
made clear if the dialectical double meaning of Stravinsky’s experiment is
not to be overlooked. This double meaning – as with Nietzsche – has its
roots in liberalism. Cultural criticism presumes a certain substantiality in
culture; it thrives under the protection of this substantiality and receives
from it the right to ruthless pronouncement as a spiritual entity unto itself –
even if, in the final analysis, it turns against this entity. Human sacrifice, in
which the impending domination of the collective is proclaimed, is evoked
out of the insufficiency of the individualistic condition in itself. The wild
portrayal of the primitive – as the philistine reproachfully maintains – no
longer only satisfies the romantically civilizing need for stimulus. It further
gratifies the longing for the end of social illusion, the drive towards truth
which lies beneath the bourgeois machinations and maskings of power. It
is the very heritage of the bourgeois revolution which is present in such an
attitude. Fascism, which literally sets out to liquidate liberal culture – along
with its supporting critics – is for this very reason unable to bear up under

102
 Stravinsky and Restoration

the expression of barbarism. Not for nothing did Hitler and his cultural
minister, Alfred Rosenberg, decide the cultural conflicts within their party
against the nationally bolshevistic intellectual wing and in favor of the petty
bourgeois dream of temple columns, noble simplicity, and quiet greatness.
In the Third Reich – with its astronomical sacrifice of human beings – Le
Sacre du printemps. could never have been performed. Whoever dared to
acknowledge the barbarism directly in practice within the ideology of the
movement fell from grace. German barbarism – and this is perhaps an idea
which Nietzsche had in mind – might thereby have eradicated barbarism
without the lie of National Socialism. In spite of all this, the affinity is
unmistakable between Sacre and the reproach of a Gauguin-like character.
It recalls the sympathies of the man who – as Cocteau reports – shocked the
gamblers at Monte Carlo by donning the jewelry of a negro king. It is not
only that the work actually resounds with the noise of the impending war,
but it further reveals its undisguised joy at the vulgar splendor of it all. Such
joy, to be sure, was easily comprehended in the Paris of Ravel’s Valses Nobles
et Sentimentales. The force of hypostatized bourgeois culture drives man to
seek refuge in the phantasm of nature, which in the final analysis reveals
itself as the herald of absolute suppression. The aesthetic nerves tremble
with the desire to regress to the Stone Age.

Technical elements in Sacre

Le Sacre du printemps – as the virtuoso composition of regression – is

an attempt to gain control over regression by offering an image thereof;
the composition by no means intends to abandon itself to regression. This
impulse to assume a position of command has played a large role in its
indescribably vast effect on successive generations of musicians. Not only did
it assert that the retrogression of musical language and its appropriate state
of consciousness were up to date, but it further promised to hold its ground
against the anticipated liquidation of the subject. This was accomplished by
making such a threatened liquidation a concern of the music itself, or at least
by registering it artistically from the vantage point of an impartial observer.
The imitation of the primitive should serve as a miraculous, yet objective,
magic means to avoid falling into the hands of the feared forces. During
the early stages of such art – in Petrouchka, for example – the montage
of various fragments is based upon wittily organizational procedure; in
every instance it is achieved through technical trickery. In similar manner,

103
Philosophy of Modern Music

Stravinsky manipulates every regression in his work, treating it as an image

which does not lose sight of aesthetic self-control for a single moment.
In Sacre, a ruthlessly applied artistic principle of selection and stylization
achieves the effect of the primeval world.10 Around 1910 the more sensitive
artists must have rebelled against neo-Romantic melodizing, against the
saccharin of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Through such refutation, this kind
of melody, and in particular lengthy, drawn-out melody, and eventually
anything musical which developed subjectively, fell victim to taboo.11 Thus
in Impressionism the material is restricted to a rudimentary succession
of tones. But the atomization of the motif – so typical of Debussy – is
transformed from uninterrupted passages of continually merging color –
splashes into a disintegration of the organic progress. All of the scattered
infinitesimal remnants are intended to represent the heritage of the primeval
age – now without a master and totally lacking in subject – in other words,
phylogenetic traces of recollection – ‘. . . little melodies out of the roots of
centuries.’12 The melodic particles out of which any particular section of
Sacre is constructed are for the most part diatonic in nature, their accent
is folkloristic – or they are simply taken from the chromatic scale, as are
the quintuplets of the final dance. These particles are never ‘atonal’ – never
a totally free succession of intervals without reference to a previously
established scale. At times it is a matter of a limited selection of the twelve
tones – as in the pentatonic scale – as if the other tones were taboo and
not to be touched. In Sacre, it is possible to think of that deliriousness at a
mere touch which Freud traces back to the prohibition of incest. The most
elementary principle of rhythmic variation – which is the basis of repetition –
is that the motif be constructed in such a way that, if it immediately
reappears, the accents of their own accord fall upon notes other than they
had upon first appearance (for example, ‘Jeu de Rapt’ in Sacre). Frequently,
not only are accents shifted, but length and brevity are interchanged as well.
In all cases, the differentiations derived from the motivic model appear to be
the result of a simple game of chance. In this perspective, the melodic cells
seems to be under a spell: they are not condensed, rather they are thwarted
in their development. For this reason, even in those works of Stravinsky
which are most radical from the standpoint of surface sound, there is a
contradiction between the moderated horizontal and the insolent vertical.
Such a contradiction already implies the conditions for a re-employment
of tonality as a system of relationships, whose structure is better suited to
the melismata than are chords constructed of several sounds. Such chords
function coloristically, not constructively. In Schoenberg, on the other hand,

104
 Stravinsky and Restoration

the emancipation of harmony, from the very beginning, affected melody as

well. In the latter’s melodic structures, the major seventh and the minor
ninth are treated as equals with the customary intervals. However, Sacre
shows no lack of tonal infusion, particularly in its harmonic make-up. One
such example is the antiquated modal entrance of the brass in the ‘Danse
des Adolescentes.’ On the whole, harmony as such is most closely related to
what the group The Six after the First World War called polytonality.13 The
Impressionistic model of polytonality consists of the interlaced sounds of
varying and spacially separated musics, as at a fair. This concept is common
to Stravinsky and Debussy: in French music around 1910 it plays a role
similar to that of the mandolin and the guitar in Cubism. At the same time,
it belongs to the treasure of Russian motifs: one of Mussorgsky’s operas even
has a fair as its setting. Fairs continue to exist apocryphally in the midst of
cultural order, recalling a vagrant way of life – not a fixed, stationary form
of existence, but rather a pre-bourgeois state, the rudiments of which now
serve economic exchange. In Impressionism this becomes the penetration
of the uncomprehended into bourgeois civilization – its very ‘life.’ Later,
however, this factor is reinterpreted as archaic impulses which threaten the
very life of the bourgeois principle of individuation. Such a functional shift
takes place in Stravinsky, but not in Debussy. The passage in Sacre which is
harmonically most frightening – the dissonant transformation of the modal
theme in the winds in the ‘Rondes Printanières,’ measures 53–54 – is an
hysterically intensified fair effect and offers no liberation of the ‘basic drives
of the sounds.’ Consequently, harmonic progression disappears along with
harmonic development. Pedal points had already played a major role in
Petrouchka as a means of representing a somewhat timelessly hovering roar.
They are now dissolved throughout into ostinato rhythms and become the
exclusive principle of harmony. The cohesive force of harmonic-rhythmic
ostinato makes it possible, from the very beginning, to follow the music
easily, in spite of all raw dissonance. In the final analysis, this is the source
of the boredom which has become the norm for music performed at
typical music festivals since the First World War – insofar as such music
even feigns modernity. The specialist has always lacked any meaningful
interest in counterpoint; it is sufficiently characteristic that the few modest
combinations of themes in Petrouchka are composed in such a way that
they can hardly be detected. Now it assaults all polyphony – except for
multi-toned chords as such. Contrapuntal statements are encountered only
seldom and then, for the most part, with oblique overlappings of thematic
fragments. Questions of form as progressive totality are completely absent

105
Philosophy of Modern Music

and the construction of the whole reveals little concern for the structure.
Consequently, the three rapid movements – ‘Jeu du Rapt,’ ‘Danse de la Terre,’
and ‘Glorification d l’Élue’ with the fragmentary principal voices in the high
woodwinds – are all awkwardly similar. The concept of speciality finds its
musical formula: of all the elements of music, only two are still permissible:
first, the accentuating articulation of succession which is acceptable only
in a highly specialized sense: The second is instrumental color, either as an
expansive or resounding tutti, or as a special coloristic effect. One among
many possible compositional procedures – the joining together of complexes
defined by a pattern – is elevated hereafter to the level of exclusiveness.

‘Rhythm’

Stravinsky’s imitators remained far behind their model, because they did
not possess his power of renunciation, that perverse joy in self-denial. The
modern aspect in Stravinsky is that element which he himself can no longer
bear: his aversion, actually, to the total syntax of music. All of his followers
with the possible exception of Edgar Varèse – are completely void of this
sensitivity. The greater breadth of musical means in which they indulge –
harmless as this might be in origin – deprives them of that very air of
authenticity, for the sake of which they chose Stravinsky as their model. The
comparison of an imitation of Sacre – such as Claude Devincourt’s Offrande
à Shiva – with the original might be instructive. The Impressionistic tonal
voluptuousness of the work functions as a caustic into which the victim is
placed in order that his sense of taste be destroyed. An analogous relationship,
incidentally, existed earlier between Debussy and his adept followers, such
as Dukas. To a very large degree taste coincides with the ability to refrain
from tempting artistic means. The truth of taste as the truth of historical
innervation is based upon this negativity, which, however, manifests at the
same time an element of finality as a private concern.14 The tradition of
German music – as it includes Schoenberg – has been characterized since
Beethoven, both in the positive and the negative sense, by the absence of
taste. In Stravinsky the primacy of taste collides with the ‘thing.’ The archaic
effect of Sacre is a product of musical censorship, a self-denial of all impulses
which do not agree with the basic stylistic principle. Artistically produced
regression then leads, however, to the regression of composition itself – to
the progressive deterioration of compositional procedures, to the ruin of
technique. Stravinsky’s admirers have grown accustomed to living with the

106
 Stravinsky and Restoration

resulting discomfort, by declaring him a rhythmist and testifying that he

has restored the rhythmic dimension of music – which had been overgrown
by melodic-harmonic thinking – again to honor. In so doing, they assert,
he has excavated the buried origins of music; as, for example, the events
of Sacre might well evoke the simultaneously complex and, at the same
time, strictly disciplined rhythms of primitive rites. In contrast it has been
rightly asserted by the Schoenberg school that the rhythmic concept – for
the most part manipulated much too abstractly – is constricted even in
Stravinsky. Rhythmic structure is, to be sure, blatantly prominent, but this
is achieved at the expense of all other aspects of rhythmic organization. Not
only is any subjectively expressive flexibility of the beat absent – which is
always rigidly carried out in Stravinsky from Sacre on – but furthermore
all rhythmic relations associated with the construction, and the internal
compositional organization – the ‘rhythm of the whole’ – are absent as well.
Rhythm is underscored, but split off from musical content.15 This results
not in more, but rather in less rhythm than in compositions in which there
is no fetish made of rhythm; in other words, there are only fluctuations of
something always constant and totally static – a stepping aside – in which the
irregularity of recurrence replaces the new. This is evident in the final dance
of the chosen victim – in the ‘sacrificial dance,’ where the most complicated
rhythmic patterns restrain the conductor to puppet-like motions.16 Such
rhythmic patterns alternate in the smallest possible units of beat for the sole
purpose of impressing upon the ballerina and the listeners the immutable
rigidity of convulsive blows and shocks for which they are not prepared
through any anticipation of anxiety. The concept of shock is one aspect of
the unifying principle of the epoch. It belongs to the fundamental level of all
modern music, even of that which stands at extremes: the significance of this
concept for Schoenberg in his Expressionist phase was discussed earlier. The
social origin of shock can be presumed in the overpoweringly intensified
disproportion in modern industrialism between the body of the individual
and the things and forces in technical civilization over which shock has power.
The sensory capacity – the possibility for experience – present in shock,
however, was in no way the equal of the unchained excesses of such disparity
so long as the individualistic form of social organization excluded collective
relationships – which perhaps might have been a match for the objectively
technical forces of production. Through such shocks the individual becomes
conscious of his nothingness in the face of the gigantic machine of the entire
system. Since the nineteenth century, shock has left its traces in works of
art; in music Berlioz may well have been the first for whose work they were

107
Philosophy of Modern Music

of particular essence.17 However, everything depends upon the manner in

which music deals with the experience of shock. The works of Schoenberg’s
middle years take up a defensive position by portraying such experiences.
In Erwartung – which can be traced from ‘Lockung’ [opus 6] all the way to
the second of the Five Pieces for Piano [opus 23] – the gesticulation recalls a
man gripped by wild anxiety. Psychologically speaking, however, the man is
saved by his anticipation of anxiety: while shock overcomes him, dissociating
the continuous duration of traditional style, he retains his self-control. He
remains the subject and, consequently, is able to assert his own constant life
above the consequence of shock experiences which he heroically reshapes as
elements of his own language. In Stravinsky, there is neither the anticipation
of anxiety nor the resisting ego; it is rather simply assumed that shock cannot
be appropriated by the individual for himself. The musical subject makes no
attempt to assert itself, and contents itself with the reflexive absorption of
the blows. The subject behaves literally like a critically injured victim of an
accident which he cannot absorb and which, therefore, he repeats in the
hopeless tension of dreams. What appears as the complete absorption of
shock – the submission of music to the rhythmic blows dealt it from an
external source – is in truth the obvious sign that the attempt at absorption
has failed. This is the innermost deception of objectivism: the destruction
of the subject through shock is transformed into the victory of the subject
in the aesthetic complexion of the work; at the same time this destruction
results in the overcoming of the subject by being-in-itself.

Identification with the collective

The choreographic idea of sacrifice determines the musical invoice itself.

What distinguishes the individualized from the collective is already
eliminated in the idea – not only upon the stage. Stravinsky’s polemic
force has become more intense with the increasing refinement of his style.
In Petrouchka, the element of individuation appeared under the form of
the grotesque and was condemned by it.18 In Sacre, there is no longer any
basis for laughter. There is perhaps no single factor which demonstrates
so clearly the extent to which modernism and archaism are two facets
of the same thing in Stravinsky. With the elimination of the harmlessly
grotesque, the work takes the side of the avant-garde – particularly of
Cubism. This modernity, however, is achieved by means of an archaism of
a totally different type from that pseudo-archaism which was so popular

108
 Stravinsky and Restoration

at the same time in Max Reger, for example – the beloved archaism of his
‘Im Alten Stil’.19 The interweaving of music and civilization is to be rent
apart. Music, however, provokingly designs itself as a parable of a condition
which is enjoyed precisely in the stimulus it provides as a contradiction to
civilization. By means of its totemistic bearing, it offers the pretense of an
undivided phylogenetically determined unity of man and nature. At the
same time, however, the system reveals its central principle – the principle
of sacrifice – as a system of domination, a system again consequently rent by
inner antagonisms. The denial of antagonisms, however, is the ideological
trick upon which Sacre is based. Just as the magician on the stage of the
vaudeville theatre causes the beautiful girl to disappear, so the subject in
Sacre vanishes – the subject which has to bear the burden of the religion of
nature. In other words, there is no development of an aesthetic antithesis
between the sacrificial victims and the tribe. Yet their dance completes the
unopposed, direct identification with the tribe. The subject is as far removed
from exposing a conflict as is the structure of the music in presenting it. The
chosen girl dances herself to death, in somewhat the same way as – according
to reports of anthropologists – primitives who have unknowingly violated a
taboo actually die away thereafter. As an individual, she reflects nothing but
the unconscious and coincidental reflex of pain: her solo dance – like all
the others, in its inner organization a collective dance, a round dance – is
void of any dialectics of the general and the specific. Authenticity is gained
surreptitiously through the denial of the subjective pole. The collective
standpoint is suddenly seized as though by attack; this results in the
renunciation of comfortable conformity with individualistic society. But at
the very point where this is achieved, a secondary and, to be sure, highly
uncomfortable conformity results: the conformity of a blind and integral
society – a society, as it were, of eunuchs and headless men. The individual
stimulus, activated by such art, permits the survival only of self-negation
and the destruction of individuation; this indeed was the secret goal of the
humor in Petrouchka – actually of all bourgeois humor in general – but now
this obscure drive becomes a shattering fanfare. The pleasure in a condition
that is void of subject and harnessed by music is sado-masochistic. If the
liquidation of the young girl is not simplistically enjoyed by the individual
in the audience, he feels his way into the collective, thinking (as the
potential victim of the collective) to participate thereby in collective power
in a state of magic regression. The sado-masochistic element accompanies
Stravinsky’s music through all its phases. Sacre, by unique contrast to this
pleasure, has a certain gloomy melancholy in its total coloration as well as in

109
Philosophy of Modern Music

its individual musical figures. However, this is intended less as an expression

of mourning for the ritual of murder, which is in truth insane, than as the
expression of the mood of the enchained and the unfree – the outcry of
creatural incarceration. This tone of objective mourning in Sacre is achieved
technically through the predominance of dissonance, but often by means
of condensed orchestral technique. The tone portrays the only counter-
instant against the cultic gesture, which the horrible act of violence by the
mysterious medicine man – along with the round dance of the young girls –
would like to consecrate as a holy morning.20 At the same time, however, it is
the tone which imprints a type of dull and ill-humored submissiveness upon
this monstrosity of shocks which nonetheless remains weak in contrast,
in spite of all the color lavished upon it. This submissiveness, in the final
analysis, consigns what was previously sensational to a boredom which
is in no way greatly different from the boredom which Stravinsky later
methodically developed. But this very fact, at such an early point, makes it
difficult to understand the desire for imitation which Sacre once inspired.
The primitivism of yesterday is the naïveté of today.

Archaism, modernism, infantilism

However, it was by no means the insufficiency of his highly stylized

impoverishment which drove the Stravinsky of Sacre further. He must
rather have become aware of a Romantic-historical element in anti-
Romantic pre-history – of the domesticated desire, that is, for an objective
state of the spirit, which can be evoked here and now only through costume.
The aboriginal Russians bear an uncanny resemblance to Wagner’s ancient
Germanic figures – the stage settings for Sacre recall the rocks of the
Valkyries. The configuration of the mythically monumental, as well as
the nervous tension of the ballet, are also Wagnerian, as Thomas Mann
emphasized in his essay in 1933, ‘The Sufferings and Greatness of Richard
Wagner.’21 The sound of the work in particular – the idea, for example, of
suggesting obsolete wind instruments through the unique coloration of the
modern orchestra, is of Romantic origin. Examples of this are the basoon,
which offers an effect of ‘depth’ in its high register; the rasping English horn
and the reed-like alto flute; and the exposed tubas of the medicine man.
Such effects are as much a manifestation of musical exoticism as is the
pentatonic in a work stylistically so opposed to it as was Mahler’s Das Lied
von der Erde. The tutti sound of the orchestra also has at times a touch of

110
 Stravinsky and Restoration

Strauss-like excessive luxury, an element totally detached from the

compositional substance. The style of accompanying design, conceived
purely in color, against which repeated melodic fragments appear, is directly
rooted in Debussy, in spite of the difference in sound itself and in the
harmonic inventory. Regardless of all theoretical anti-subjectivism, the
effect of the whole work is largely a matter of mood, of anxious excitement.
Often the music itself seems psychologically excited, in the ‘Danses des
Adolescentes,’ from measure 30, for example, or in the ‘Cercles Mystérieux’
of the second scene, from measure 193. With this almost historicizing
evocation of primeval times – from which he basically, nevertheless, keeps a
playful distance – Stravinsky soon finds himself unable to satisfy the most
objective drive. His attempt to evoke the spiritual landscape of Strauss’s
Elektra fails. He designs the tension of the archaic and the modern in such a
way that, for the sake of the authenticity of the archaic, he rejects the
primeval world as a stylistic principle. Les Noces is the only one of his later
major works which concerns itself with formulations which are far more
unrelenting than those in Sacre. Stravinsky searches for authenticity in the
organization and decline of the world of imagery in modernity. Freud
defined the similarity between the spiritual life of primitives and neurotics.
The composer now despises the primitives and clings to that upon which
the experience of the modern can rely: to that archaism which determines
the basic stratum of the individual and which reappears directly and without
disguise in the decomposition of the individual. The works between Sacre
and the turn to neoclassicism imitate the gesture of regression, as it belongs
to the dissolution of individual identity. Through this attitude, these works
would appear to achieve collective authenticity. The thoroughly close
relationship between this ambition and the theories of Carl Gustav Jung,
with which Stravinsky could hardly have been familiar, is as striking as is the
reactionary potential indicated by it. The search for musical equivalents of
the ‘collective unconscious’ prepares the transition to the installation of a
regressive collective as a positive accomplishment. At first, however, this
appears audaciously avant-garde. The compositions grouped around
Histoire du Soldat and belonging to the period of the First World War could
easily be labeled infantile; traces of this development, incidentally, go all the
way back to Petrouchka. Stravinsky was always prone to exploit children’s
songs as messengers of the primeval to the individual. In an article on
Renard, published in 1926, Else Kolliner – who otherwise hardly wrote
about music – offers the first critical evaluation of such infantilism; though
it was also, to be sure, thoroughly apologetical.22 Miss Kolliner states that

111
Philosophy of Modern Music

Stravinsky moved ‘in a new realm of phantasy . . ., which every individual

once in his childhood enters with closed eyes.’ The composer does not
portray this moment with idyllic praise, nor does he design it episodically as
did Mussorgsky, ‘but as the only scene which for the duration of the
performance is totally closed off from all other real or unreal worlds.’
Stravinsky creates an inner stage which to a certain degree is hermetically
sealed off from the conscious ego. This stage is the scene of pre-individual
experiences which are common to all and now through shock again become
accessible. The establishment of this scene of action results in a ‘collective
phantasy’ which reveals itself through ‘an understanding with the audience
which is accomplished with lightning speed’ – in the anamnesis of rites as
they survive in play. ‘The continual change of beat; the stubborn repetition
of individual motives – as well as the disassembling and totally new
recomposition of their elements; this pantomimic character, strikingly
expressed in the passages of sevenths which are then expanded into ninths;
the ninths which then contract into sevenths; the drum rolls as the most
precise form of the frenzy of the rooster – all of these factors are
instrumentally accurate translations of child-like gestures’ of play into
music.’ The exciting aspect is that the listener – due to the unfixed fluctuation
of the repetitions – ‘thinks to see the process of origination before his very
eyes.’ In other words, he experiences this because the musical gesture avoids
every singularity of meaning, thereby designing a non-alienated state, the
roots of which stem from childhood. The process of genesis which is thus
envisioned has nothing to do with musical dynamics, and even less to do
with the origin of large, continually progressing musical forms out of
nothingness. This latter concept conditioned one of Beethoven’s fundamental
ideas all the way to the first movement of the Ninth Symphony. Through
misunderstanding, this idea has more recently been attributed to Stravinsky.
Behind this idea lies the conviction that clearly defined musical models –
motives which have been set down once and for all – do not yet exist; but
rather that there is a latent, implied motivic nucleus around which the work
hovers. This is the case in all of Stravinsky’s compositions and it explains
their metrical irregularities. He has not, however, arrived at a conclusive
definition. In Beethoven the motives are definitive and reveal a specific
identity, even if they are in themselves no more than meaningless formulae of
basic tonal relationships. Stravinsky’s technique of archaic-musical images
views the circumvention of such identity as one of its primary concerns.
Nevertheless, precisely because the motif itself is not yet ‘there,’ the displaced
complexes are continually repeated, instead of drawing the consequences,

112
 Stravinsky and Restoration

as Schoenberg’s terminology so designates. The concept of dynamic

musical form which dominates Western music from the Mannheim school
down to the present Viennese school assumes this motif as a prerequisite
in a firmly defined identity, even if it is minutely small. The dissolution and
variation of the motif is possible only if it is firmly preserved in the memory
of its original identity. Music permits only that degree of development
which any firmly constituted element allows. Stravinsky’s regression,
reaching back beyond this, for this very reason replaces progress with
repetition. Philosophically, this leads to the very core of music. In music,
generally speaking – or prototypically according to Kant’s epistemological
theory – subjective dynamics and hypostatization beyond together as poles
of the same total attitude. The subjectification and objectification of music
are the same thing. This aspect is perfected in twelve-tone technique.
Stravinsky is distinguished from the subjectively dynamic principle of the
variation of an element unequivocally determined by a technique of
permanent beginnings which reach out in vain, as it were, for what in truth
they can neither reach nor retain. His music is devoid of recollection and
consequently lacking in any time continuum of permanence. Its course lies
in reflexes. The fateful error of his apologists is their interpretation of the
absence of anything firmly defined in his music as their guarantee of life.
This lack in Stravinsky’s music is, in the narrowest sense, a lack of thematic
material, a lack which actually excludes the breath of form, the continuity
of the process – indeed, it excludes ‘life’ itself from his music. The
amorphous is totally without freedom, but comes to resemble the coercive
force of mere nature: there is nothing more rigid than the ‘process of
genesis.’ This process, however, is glorified as that which is not alienated.
Stravinsky’s admirers state that individual identity is suspended, by and
large, through the principle of the ego. They find his aesthetic game similar
to play ‘as the child experiences it.’ It has no need of effective invisibility; it
moves figures in its imagination back and forth between reality and
unreality without rational inhibition. (It lies, according to educators.)
Children dissimulate in self-invented games; they love to eradicate all
traces – they slip into masks and unexpectedly out of them again; they
assign several roles to one player with no rebellion of logic; and – once in
the game – they recognize no other logic other than keeping their
movement continually fluid. In like manner, Stravinsky separates portrayal
and song; he does not bind the figure to a specific voice, nor the voices to a
specific figure. In Renard, there is singing from the orchestra pit which
accompanies the action on the stage.

113
Philosophy of Modern Music

Permanent regression and musical form

Regarding a Berlin performance of Renard, a critic raises the objection that

‘it takes a primitive fable and dresses it up as a circus act.’ This objection
was based upon Stravinsky’s concept of ‘folk’ as a ‘collectively experiencing
community related by clan – the primeval womb of all symbols and myths,
the metaphysical forces of which religion is constructed.’ This interpretation,
the tone of which later appeared in Germany in a sinister context, is far too
loyal to Stravinsky and, at the same time, does him an injustice. It interprets
modern archaism in a literal sense, as though only the artistically redeeming
word were needed to reconstruct, directly and happily, the desired primeval
world – a world filled with terror in its own age – as though the heedful
recollection of the musician could cancel out history. However, this is the
manner in which an affirmative ideology is read into Stravinsky’s infantilism.
The absence of any such ideology designates the substance of truth in every
phase of his work. Psychology has proven that the individual passes through
archaic stages of development in early childhood. In like manner, Stravinsky’s
anti-psychological rage, on the whole, cannot possibly be separated from the
psychological conception of the unconscious as a principal prerequisite of
individuation. His effort to fashion an organ of the pre-ego out of the non-
conceptual language of music falls into the very same tradition proscribed
by him as a stylistic technician and cultural politician – the tradition, that is,
of Schopenhauer and Wagner. There is an historical solution to the paradox.
It has often been pointed out that Debussy, the first productive exponent of
hostility towards Wagner in the West, is inconceivable without Wagner: in
short, Pelléas et Melisande is a music drama. Wagner, whose music reveals
a close relationship to German philosophy of the early nineteenth century,
in more than a mere literary sense, had in mind a dialectics between the
archaic – that is, the ‘will’ and the individualized. In Wagner, however, this
dialectics – from every perspective – pursues a course which is detrimental
to the principle of individuation; indeed, from the very beginning it takes a
position against individuation in musical and poetic structure. In Wagner,
the musical vehicles, intended to convey the meaning of the individual,
reveal an impotent, feeble character, as though they were already historically
condemned. His work disintegrates into fragments as soon as individuated
moments appear in substantial form, while the moments themselves are
already decadent clichés. Stravinsky takes this into account: his music, as
permanent regression, gives answer to the situation in which the principle
of individuation degenerated into an ideology. According to the philosophy

114
 Stravinsky and Restoration

implied, he belongs to the positivism of Ernst Mach: ‘The ego is not to

be saved.’ According to his attitude, he belongs to a type of Western art
the highest summit of which lies in the work of Baudelaire, in which the
individual – through the force of emotional sensation – enjoys his own
annihilation. Therefore, the mythologizing tendency of Sacre continues
where Wagner left off, negating the tendency at the same time. Stravinsky’s
positivism clings to the primeval world as though it were a matter of proven
actuality. He constructs an imaginary ethnological model of the pre-
individualized, which he would like to distill with precision in his works. In
Wagner, the myth is intended as a symbolic presentation of general human
relationships, in which the subject is reflected; for these relationships are
the unique concern of the subject. Stravinsky’s pre-history – in its scholarly
representation – seems by comparison much older than that of Wagner’s
which, in spite of all the archaic drives and impulses which it expresses,
does not extend beyond bourgeois formal bases. The more modern this
pre-history is made, the earlier are the stages to which it regresses. Early
Romanticism became deeply involved in the Middle Ages; Wagner with
Germanic polytheism; and Stravinsky with the totem clan. However, there
are for Stravinsky no communicative symbols for that abyss between the
regressive impulse and its musical materialization; for this reason he is no
less dependent upon psychology than is Wagner – indeed, his dependence
is perhaps even greater. The outspoken sado-masochistic pleasure in self-
annihilation – an element so clearly perceptible in his anti-psychologism –
is determined by the dynamics of the basic drives and not by the demands
of musical objectivity. This characterizes the type of human being whose
external measurements are taken by Stravinsky’s works; he is to tolerate
no introspection or self-contemplation. The obstinate health, which clings
to the external and denies the spiritual – as though this were already an
illness of the soul – is the product of defense mechanisms in the Freudian
sense. Convulsive stubbornness, along with the exclusion of any inspiration
from music, betrays the unconscious presentiment of something incurable
which otherwise would manifest itself disastrously. Music resigns itself
all the less willfully to the conflict of psychic forces the more obstinately
it withholds itself from the manifestations of the conflict. Musical form
is eventually crippled by all of this. By virtue of his willingness to engage
in psychological case studies, Schoenberg hit upon objectively musical
validities. In Stravinsky – whose works are in no sense to be understood
as the organ of an inner force – the immanently musical validity is, as a
consequence, almost impotent: the structure is externally superimposed by

115
Philosophy of Modern Music

the composer’s will which determines the nature of his formulations and,
further, those elements which they are expected to renounce.

The psychotic aspect

As a result of all of this, however, that easy road back to the origins – which
Else Kolliner perceived in works such as Renard – is out of the question.
In this regard, psychology teaches that, between the archaic level in the
individual and his ego there are walls erected which can be broken down
only by the most powerfully explosive forces. The belief that the archaic
simply lies at the aesthetic disposal of the ego – in order that the ego might
regenerate itself through it – is superficial; it is nothing more than a wish
fantasy. The force of the historical process, which has crystallized the firm
contours of the ego, has objectified itself in the individual, holding him
together and separating him from the primeval world contained within
him. Obvious archaic impulses cannot be reconciled with civilization. The
painful operation of psychoanalysis – as it was originally conceived – had,
among its primary tasks and difficulties, the break-through of this wall. The
archaic can be revealed without censorship only through the explosion to
which the ego has succumbed: this takes place in the disintegration of the
integral individual being. Stravinsky’s infantilism is well aware of the price
to be paid. He scorns the sentimental illusion of the Brahmsian ‘O, if I could
only turn back’ and constructs a perspective of mental illness in order to
manifest the primeval world as it permeates the present.23 The bourgeois
accuse Schoenberg’s school of insanity because it does not engage in their
games. At the same time they find Stravinsky clever and normal. In truth,
however, the make-up of his music is an aping of obsession and, even more
so, of schizophrenia – the psychotic intensification of obsession. It appears
as a strict system which is ceremonially invulnerable, without the pretended
regularity being transparent or rational in itself by force of any inherent
logic. This is the attire of an illusory system. At the same time, it makes
it possible to encounter anything which is not caught up in the system in
an authoritarian manner. Thus the archaic is transformed into modernity.
Musical infantilism belongs to a movement which designed schizophrenic
models everywhere as a mimetic defense against the insanity of war: around
1918, Stravinsky was attacked as a Dadaist, for the Histoire du Soldat and
Renard shattered all individual unity in order to startle the bourgeois
philistines.24

116
 Stravinsky and Restoration

Ritual

Stravinsky’s fundamental impulse was to develop a disciplined command

over regression; this impulse determines his infantile phase perhaps
more decisively than any other phase of his work. To prescribe physical
gestures and – beyond these – even attitudes lies in the nature of ballet
music. Stravinsky’s infantilism remains true to this nature. It is not that
schizophrenia is directly expressed therein, but the music imprints upon
itself an attitude similar to that of the mentally ill. The individual brings
about his own disintegration. From such imitation he promises himself a
chance to survive his own demise. He imagines the fulfillment of the promise
through magic, but nonetheless within the realm of immediate actuality.
This bespeaks an effect which can hardly be explained in specifically musical
terms, but only anthropologically. Stravinsky designed schemata of human
forms of reaction, which then became inescapable under the pressure of
late industrial society. The concern was everything which – according to
its own drives and by its own nature – wanted to pursue the course along
which society forced its defenseless members: self-elimination, unconscious
dexterity, and adjustment to the blind totality. The sacrifice of the self,
expected of every individual by the new form of organization, attracts as
a residue of the primeval past, and at the same time is filled with horror
before a future in which the individual must cast aside everything which
made him and for whose sake, after all, the machinery of adjustment is
meant to function. Reflection in the aesthetic image assuages this anxiety
and strengthens the attraction. Every moment of soothing comfort, of the
harmonious, of the displacement of horror in art – the aesthetic heir of the
magic practice, against which all Expressionism, down to the revolutionary
works of Schoenberg, protested – this harmoniousness triumphs in
Stravinsky’s scornful and cutting tone as the herald of the Iron Age. He is
the yeasayer of music. Such sentences by Brecht as ‘It can be done otherwise,
but it can be done this way too’ or ‘I don’t even want to be human’ might
serve as the motto of the soldier’s story or of the animal opera Renard. The
composer insisted that the Concertino for String Quartet should hum along
like a sewing machine. This he demanded of that combination of instruments
once more purely suited to musical humanism, to the absolute spiritual
penetration of the instrumental. The Piano Rag Music evokes the sound
of a player piano. Anxiety before dehumanization is recast into the joys of
revealing such dehumanization and, in the final analysis, into the pleasures
of that same death wish whose symbolism was prepared by the much-hated

117
Philosophy of Modern Music

Tristan. Sensitivity to the exhaustion of expressive characters, intensified to

an aversion towards all unrefined expression (the only type of expression
suited to the entire streamlined epoch of civilization) admits its pride in the
negation of the concept of the human being through agreement with the
dehumanized system. The supreme irony is that this could be accomplished
without the actual death of the system. The schizophrenic demeanor of
Stravinsky’s music is a ritual which attempts to overcome the coldness of the
world. His work goes vehemently to battle against the insanity of the objective
spirit. By expressing the insanity which kills all expression, such sanity is not
only reduced by provoking reaction-as psychology views the process – but
the insanity itself is subjected to the organizing force of reason.25

Alienation as objectivity

Nothing would be more false than to interpret Stravinsky’s music analogously

to what a German fascist once called the sculpting of the mentally ill.
Rather its concern is to dominate schizophrenic traits through the aesthetic
consciousness. In so doing, it would hope to vindicate insanity as true
health. A certain aspect of this idea has always been present in the bourgeois
concepts of normality. This concept demands feats of self-preservation to
the point of absurdity, to the very disintegration of the subject; for the sake
of the unlimited justice of reality, which permits self-preservation only by
victimizing that which is preserved. There is also a corresponding illusory
realism: on the one hand, the principle of reality alone is decisive; on the
other, this reality grows empty for him who unconditionally follows it. In
terms of its own substance, such reality is unattainable and removed from
the striving individual through an abyss of meaning. Stravinsky’s objectivity
rings with such illusory realism. The totally shrewd and illusionless ego
elevates the non-ego to the level of an idol, but in its eagerness it severs the
threads that connect subject and object. The shell of the objective – now
abandoned with no relationship whatsoever – is now offered as truth, as
a super-subjective objectivity, all for the sake of such externalization. This
is the formula not only for Stravinsky’s metaphysical maneuver, but for his
double social character as well. The physiognomy of his work combines
that of the clown with the physiognomy of an upper-level civil servant. His
work plays the fool, thus offering its own grimace for practical purposes.
It bows mischievously before the audience, removes the mask, and shows
that there is no face under it, but only an amorphous knob. The conceited

118
 Stravinsky and Restoration

dandy of aestheticism from the good old days, who has now had his fill of
emotions, turns out to be a tailor’s dummy: the pathological outsider as the
model of innumerable normal men, all of whom resemble each other. The
challenging shock of dehumanization by its own will and effort becomes
the original phenomenon of standardization. The macabre elegance and
courtesy of the eccentric, who places his hand where his heart once was, in
so doing expresses the gesture of capitulation – the recommendation of that
which is without subject to omnipotent macabre existence, which he had
only recently mocked.

Fetishism of the means

The realism of the façade manifests itself musically in the overrated effort to
orient oneself according to established media. In his technique, Stravinsky
does justice to reality. The primacy of speciality over intention, the cult of
the clever feat, the joy in agile manipulations such as those of the percussion
in L’Histoire du Soldat – all these play off the means against the end. The
means in the most literal sense – namely, the instrument – is hypostatized:
it takes precedence over the music. The composition expresses only one
fundamental concern: to find the sounds which will best suit its particular
nature and result in the most overwhelming effect. There is no longer any
interest in instrumental values per se which will – as Mahler demanded –
serve the clarification of continuity or the revelation of purely musical
structures. This has brought to Stravinsky the fame of a man who knows
his material – of the unerring craftsman – and the admiration of all those
listeners who worship mere skill. In so doing he perfects an old tendency.
The intensification of ‘effect’ had always been associated with the progressive
differentiation of musical means for the sake of expression: Wagner is not
only the composer who knew how to manipulate the impulses of the psyche
by finding for them the most penetrating technical correlates, but further he
is the heir of Meyerbeer, the showman of opera. In Stravinsky, finally, what
had reached priority in Strauss has now become independent. The goal of
musical effects is no longer stimulation, but rather the ‘doing’ per se. This
is carried out, as it were, in abstraction and enjoyed as a salto mortale – a
fatal leap – totally without aesthetic purpose. In the emancipation from the
meaning of the whole, the effects assume a physically material character,
becoming evident and almost athletic. The animosity against the anima,
which runs throughout Stravinsky’s work, is of the same essence as is the

119
Philosophy of Modern Music

desexualized relationship of his music to the body. The body is treated by

this music as a means – an object which reacts precisely, it drives the body to
its highest attainments, as manifested drastically on the stage in the robbery
and in the competition of the tribes in Sacre. The rigidity of Sacre makes it
insensitive to all subjective impulses, as does ritual against pain in initiations
and sacrifices. At the same time, this rigidity is the commanding force which
trains the body – forbidding it the expression of pain through its permanent
threat – for the impossible, just as it conditions the body for ballet, the
most important traditional element in Stravinsky. Such rigidity – the ritual
exorcising of spirits – contributes to the impression that the product is
nothing subjectively produced, thus reflecting the human being, but rather
something which exists per se. In an interview for which he was later taken
to task because of his supposed arrogance, but which nevertheless accurately
characterizes his driving force, Stravinsky said of one of his later works
that it was unnecessary to discuss its quality, for it was simply there – one
aspect among all others. The air of the authentic is attained with emphatic
lifelessness. Its sole concern is its mere existence, and the concealing of the
role of the subject beneath its emphatic muteness. In so doing, it promises
the subject an ontological footing, which it had lost through the same
alienation chosen by music as a stylistic principle. The lack of relationship
between subject and object is driven to an extreme, which is substituted for
the relationship. It is precisely the insanity and obsession of this process –
the crass contrast to the work of art organized from within itself – which has
undoubtedly attracted countless composers.

Depersonalization

The relative value of the schizophrenic elements in Stravinsky’s music

are defined within this system. During his infantile phase, schizophrenia
assumes near thematic character. L’Histoire du Soldat ruthlessly weaves
psychotic attitudes and behavior into musical configurations. The organic-
aesthetic unity is dissociated. The narrator, the events on stage, and the
visible chamber orchestra are juxtaposed; this challenges the identity of
the supporting aesthetic subject itself. The anorganic aspect blocks every
empathy and identification. The score itself formulates this aspect. The score
arouses an impression of consternation, which has been formulated with
the utmost mastery: in particular, through the sound which blasts the usual
proportions of balance, placing immoderate demands upon the trombone,

120
 Stravinsky and Restoration

percussion, and contrabass. The result is a one-sided sound bereft of acoustic

balance, comparable to the perspective of a small child to whom the trouser
legs of a man seem huge and powerful and his head, by comparison, minute.
The melodic-harmonic inventory is distinguished by a duplicity of error
and unyielding control, which grants the external arbitrariness an aspect of
determination – an element of inescapable, irrepressible logic of defect. This
logic displaces the logic of the matter per se. It is as though decomposition
were completely in charge of designing its own composition. L’Histoire is
Stravinsky’s pivotal work, but at the same time it scorns the concept of a
chef d’oeuvre as Sacre still had hopes of being. L’Histoire sheds light upon
Stravinsky’s total production. There is hardly a schizophrenic mechanism –
as defined in psychoanalysis by Otto Fenichel, for example26 – which
does not find therein a highly valid equivalent. The negative objectivity
of the work of art recalls in itself the phenomenon of regression. In the
psychiatric theory of schizophrenia, this is known as ‘depersonalization’
according to Fenichel, it is a defensive reaction against the omnipotence
of narcissism.27 The alienation of music from the subject and, at the same
time, its relationship to physical sensations find a pathological analogy in
the illusory physical sensations of those who are conscious of their own
body as an alien object. The division of Stravinsky’s production into ballet
and objectivistic music might well document physical sensations which are
at the same time pathologically intensified and alienated from the subject.
The physical feeling of the ego would then be a projection upon a medium
which in reality is alien to the ego, namely, upon the dancers. In themselves,
the dancers inhabit a sphere ‘unique to the ego’ and totally dominated by it.
The music, however, remains alienated; it stands in contrast to the subject
as being-in-itself. The schizoid dispersion of aesthetic functions in L’Histoire
might well have been formally anticipated in the ballet music which was
without expression but at the same time found a continuity of meaning in
a transcendent factor. This factor was, in turn, relegated to the world of the
physical. Even in Stravinsky’s earlier ballets there is no lack of passages in
which the ‘melody’ is by-passed, in order that it might appear in the actual
leading voice – in bodily movement on the stage.28

Hebephrenia

The rejection of expression – the most conspicuous moment of deper­

sonalization in Stravinsky – has in schizophrenia, its clinical counterpart in

121
Philosophy of Modern Music

hebephrenia, or the indifference of the sick individual towards the external.

Frigidity of feeling and emotional ‘shallowness’ – as they are observed by
and large in schizophrenics – are not in themselves the impoverishment of
alleged inwardness. This impoverishment results from the lack of a libidinal
possession of the objective world – in alienation itself – which hinders the
development of the inner resources. It rather externalizes the realm of the
psyche in rigidity and immobility. Stravinsky’s music converts this to its
advantage: expression, which has always proceeded from the suffering of the
subject and the object, is scorned because a contact is no longer established.
The impassibility of the aesthetic program is a stratagem of reason over
hebephrenia. Hebephrenia is now recast as superiority and artistic purity.
It can no longer be disturbed by impulses, but behaves as though it were
operating in the realm of ideas. Truth and untruth therein, however, mutually
condition each other. The negation of expression is not – as might suit the
more naive variety of humanism – simply regression into evil inhumanity.
Expression reaps what it has earned. It is not only that the civilizing taboos
are perfected beyond expression in the music which, up to now, as a
medium of expression has remained far behind civilization.29 At the same
time, an account is given indicating that the substratum of expression – the
individual – is socially condemned, because this very substratum gave rise
to the destructive basic principle of that society, which today threatens to
perish as a result of its own antagonistic nature. Busoni, in his day, accused
the Expressionistic Schoenberg school of new sentimentalism; in so doing,
however, he did not offer the modernistic excuse of a person who had
not been able to keep up with musical development. Rather he felt that
in expression itself there remained a residue of the injustice of bourgeois
individualism – something of that lie which is, in reality, nothing more than
a social agent although it would pretend to being-in-and-for-itself. Busoni
intones the meaningless lament that the world has been overtaken by the
principle of self-preservation, which had only recently been represented
as individuation itself and reflected as such in expression. All responsible
music today has in common a critical relationship to expression. The
Schoenberg school and Stravinsky have attained to it by diverging courses,
although Schoenberg and his disciples did not dogmatize it, even after the
introduction of twelve-tone technique. There are passages in Stravinsky
which, in their melancholy indifference or unrelenting harshness, do more
honor to expression and its vanishing subject than do those moments of
exuberance in his music in which the subject simply overflows. This it can
do only because it does not realize that it is already dead: in such an attitude,

122
 Stravinsky and Restoration

Stravinsky actually concludes the lawsuit of Nietzsche contra Wagner.30

The empty eyes of his music have at times more expression than does
expression itself. The denial of expression becomes untrue and reactionary
only when the force exerted thereby upon the individual appears directly as
the overcoming of individualism, the atomization and levelling of human
society. Stravinsky’s hostility towards expression coquets with this process
in all its various stages. Hebephrenia is finally revealed from a musical
perspective to be what the psychiatrists claim it to be. The ‘indifference
towards the world’ results in the removal of all emotional affect from the
non-ego and, further, in narcissistic indifference towards the lot of man.
This indifference is celebrated aesthetically as the meaning of this lot.

Catatonia

Even in cases where Stravinsky’s music evidences frenetic activity, there

is passivity in the hebephrenetic indifference which does not succumb
to expression. His rhythmic procedures closely resemble the schema of
catatonic conditions. In certain schizophrenics, the process by which the
motor apparatus becomes independent leads to the infinite repetition of
gestures or words, following the decay of the ego. Similar behavior is familiar
in patients who have been overwhelmed by shock. Thus Stravinsky’s shock
music stands under the pressure of repetition which thereby further injures
the repeated material. The conquest of regions previously unexplored
by music, such as the animalized insensitivity in L’Histoire, is due to the
catatonic impact. This not only supports the intention of characterization,
but affects the course of the music itself. The school rooted in Stravinsky
has been called motoric. The concentration of music upon accents and time
relationships produces an illusion of bodily movement. This movement,
however, consists of the varied recurrence of the same: of the same melodic
forms, of the same harmonies, indeed of the very same rhythmic patterns.
Motility – Hindemith named one of his works Das Unaufhörliche – is actually
incapable of any kind of forward motion.31 Consequently, insistency – the
pretension of power – falls victim to a weakness and uselessness of the same
type as the gesticulatory schemata of the schizophrenic. The total energy
exerted is placed in the service of blind and aimless obedience according
to blind rules; this energy is devoted to Sisyphus-like tasks. The best of the
infantile compositions exhibit the delirious and confining gesture of chasing-
one’s-tail. This provides the alienated effect of not being able to escape

123
Philosophy of Modern Music

one’s own grasp. Catatonic actions are at the same time rigid and bizarre;
thus the repetitions unite Stravinsky’s conventionalism with his damaging
machinations. The former recalls the mask-like, ceremonial politeness of
many schizophrenics. Once this music has successfully exorcized the spirits,
it is faced by the empty abodes of those once animated by these spirits which
remain behind. At the same time, such conventionalism functions as a
‘phenomenon of restitution’ – as a bridge back to the ‘normal.’ (It was out
of this conventionalism that the neoclassic ideal proceeded; in the process,
of course, there was a slight shift of emphasis.) In Petrouchka conventional
recollections – the banality of the hand-organ and children’s rhymes –
appeared as stimuli. Le Sacre du printemps by and large cast them aside: with
its many dissonances and all the prohibitions stylistically dictated therein,
it strikes conventions squarely in the face and has been, consequently,
understood in all quarters as a revolutionary work in the culturally hostile
sense of the word.32 All this changes with L’Histoire du Soldat. The factors of
degradation and insult, the triviality – which in Petrouchka functioned as a
joke in the midst of the sound – now becomes the sole material and is made
the agent of shock. Thus began the renaissance of tonality. The melodic
nuclei are now totally devaluated – following the example of Sacre and,
to some extent, the three compositions for quartet. These nuclei now bear
traces of commonplace music – the march, the idiotic fiddle, the antiquated
waltz, indeed even of the current dances such as tango and ragtime.33 The
thematic models can be detected not in artistic musical composition, but
rather in various standardized commercial pieces. Such music – degraded by
the market – needs, to be sure, only be made transparent by compositional
virtuosos and their rattling skeleton is revealed. Through its affinity to this
musical sphere, infantilism gains its ‘realistic’ hold – no matter how negative
it might be – on the customary and traditional; this is revealed, above all,
in the manner in which it conveys shock. Infantilism does this by bringing
popular music, well known to people, so close to them that they are shocked,
as though the music were something from the market place, yet objective
and from very far away. Convention collapses: it is only through convention
that music accomplishes alienation. Convention has discovered the latent
horror of commonplace music in the failures of its interpretation and in
its construction out of disorganized particles as well; out of this general
disorganization, convention forms its principle of organization. Infantilism
is the style of the worn-out and ruined. Its sound resembles the appearance
of pictures pasted together out of postage stamps – disjunct – but on the
other hand a montage which has been constructed with labyrinthine density.

124
 Stravinsky and Restoration

It is as threatening as the worst nightmares. Its pathogenic arrangement,

which is at the same time hoveringly hermetic and disintegrated, leaves the
listener breathless. In this work the decisive anthropological condition of the
era at whose beginning it stands is musically indicated; it is characterized
by the impossibility of experience. Walter Benjamin characterizes Franz
Kafka’s narratives as the illness of healthy common sense; by analogy the
defective conventions of L’Histoire are scars resulting from the wounds of
everything which was viewed as common sense in music throughout the
bourgeois epoch. They reveal the irreconcilable break between the subject
and that which musically stood in contrast to it as an objective factor – the
idiom. The former has decayed to the same level of impotence as the latter.
Music must give up the attempt to design itself as a picture of the good and
virtuous, even if the picture is tragic. Instead it is to embody the idea that
there no longer is any life.

Music about music

The decisive contradiction in Stravinsky’s music is thereby explained. It is

the counter-blow to every ‘literary’ aspect of music, not only in program
music but in the poetic aspirations of Impressionism as well. Even Satie,
who was close to Stravinsky intellectually – even if he was inadequate as
a composer – poked fun at such aspirations. However, Stravinsky’s music
does not appear upon the scene as a direct life process, but rather as absolute
indirectness. In its own material, his music registers the disintegration of life
and, simultaneously, the alienated state of the consciousness of the subject.
In so doing, this music becomes literary in a wholly different sense, thus
revealing the ideology of proximity to its original roots as a lie. This is, of
course, the ideology which it would like to claim as its own. Compositional
spontaneity itself is overwhelmed by the prohibition placed upon pathos
in expression: the subject, which is no longer permitted to state anything
about itself, thus actually ceases to engage in ‘production’ and must content
itself with the hollow echo of objective musical language, which is no longer
its own. In the words of Rudolf Kolisch,34 Stravinsky’s work is music about
music; this is most evident during his infantilistic phase, but it is actually
true throughout his career.35
He could not conform to the dictate of his aesthetician: ne faites pas l’art
après l’art. The concept of mutilated tonality itself, upon which all Stravinsky’s
works since L’Histoire are more or less based, presumes ‘literarily’ established

125
Philosophy of Modern Music

subject matter for music. Such material exists outside the immanent
formal validity of the work and it is determined through a consciousness
which exerts itself also from outside the work. The composition concerns
itself with such subject matter. The composition feeds upon the difference
between its models and the use which it makes of them. The concept of
a musical material contained within the work itself – a central idea for
Schoenberg’s school – can hardly be applied to Stravinsky in any narrow
sense. His music continually directs its gaze towards other materials, which
it then ‘consumes’ through the over-exposure of its rigid and mechanical
characteristics. Out of the externalized language of music, which has been
reduced to rubble, L’Histoire constructs a second language of dream-like
regression; this it does by means of consequent manipulation. This new
language would be comparable to the dream montages which the Surrealists
constructed out of the residue of the wakeful day. It might well be in this way
that the interior monologue is constructed which music, deluged upon city
dwellers from radio and juke boxes, carries in its relaxed consciousness. This
second language of music is synthetic and primitive; it bears the markings
of technology. Stravinsky’s attempt to achieve such a language recalls that
of Joyce: nowhere does he come closer to his basic desire to construct what
Benjamin called the primitive history of the modern. He did not remain
at this extreme, however: even compositions such as the two ragtimes do
not actually alienate the tonal language of music itself, to any great degree,
through the dream process of remembrance; they rather recast individual,
clearly separable models from the commercial sphere into structures of
absolute music. A marginal notation could be made as to how they might
‘correctly’ sound: polkas, galops, and the vulgar salon hits of the nineteenth
century. The damaging action is diverted from the idiom, as such, to the
remains: it is the first significant turning point. According to psychology,
the ‘authoritarian personality’ expresses an ambivalent attitude towards
authority. Stravinsky’s music thus turns up its nose at the music of our
fathers.36 Respect for authority – which is thus rudely treated – rather than
absorbing authority in the critical effort of personal production, combines
with the furor over renunciation, an emotion otherwise well suppressed in
Stravinsky’s music. This attitude strikes the new authoritarian public in mid-
course. The ridiculousness of the polka flatters the jazz fanatic; the abstract
triumph over time – over everything which is presented as obsolete because
of the change in fashion – is the substitute for revolutionary impulse, which
is still able to find affirmation only in those instances where it can rely
upon protection by great forces. Nevertheless, Stravinsky’s literary character

126
 Stravinsky and Restoration

prohibits any possibility of scandal. His imitators further differentiated

themselves from him in that, less assailed by the spirit, they quickly overcame
the temptation to compose music about music. Hindemith, in particular,
adopted from Stravinsky a claim to New Objectivity, but he translated its
broken musical language – after a few short-lived excesses – into a literary
and sound-medium. He further promoted a retrogressive relationship
between the masks and hollow sculptures on the one side, and the ‘absolute’
musical ideal of German academicism on the other. The short circuit
which led from the aesthetics of Apollinaire and Cocteau to the popular
music movement and the youth music movement – as well as to similar
Philistine undertakings – would easily be one of the most unusual examples
of the decline of the cultural heritage, if it did not have its counterpart in
the fascination which German cultural fascism exercised internationally
upon those intellectuals whose innovations were at one and the same time
perverted and annulled by Hitler-style regimentation.

Denaturation and simplification

Stravinsky’s music about music-making disavowed the provincialism of the

good German musician, which paid for the consequences of craftsmanship
with cultural retardation. In Stravinsky there is no musical event which lays
claim to being ‘nature’ in itself; in so doing he has emphatically renounced
the figure of the man of letters in music. He is able, consequently, to defend
his position to the same degree that the man of letters can defend himself
against the claim of the poet in his cherished image of himself as the lonely
inspired creator in the forest in the midst of the late industrial commercial
world. The schizoid isolation from nature which his work has fashioned
for itself becomes a corrective against an attitude in art which covers up
alienation rather than stands up to it. In Western music the man of letters
has his early history in the ideal of moderation. The finite is that which is
well executed. Only that which lays metaphysical claim to infinity attempts
thereby to eliminate the character of the well executed as all too limiting,
thus establishing itself as an absolute. Debussy and Ravel were similar to
men of letters not only because they wrote good poems. Particularly Ravel’s
aesthetics of the well-turned-out toy – of the ‘bettor’ or one who wagers or
the tour de force – submitted to the verdict of the Baudelaire of Les Paradis
Artificiels, whose production of natural lyric broke off at this time. No music
which plays a role in technological enlightenment is any longer able to evade

127
Philosophy of Modern Music

this verdict. In the works of Wagner the technical, sovereign fabrication

already came to dominate, in every sense, over inspiration – the self-
abandonment of the artist to the unmastered material. German ideology
demands, however, that this precise moment of inspiration be concealed:
it is the domination of the artist over nature which is to appear as nature
itself. Wagner’s vicious irrationalism and his rationalism, in the conscious
disposition over the means, are two sides of the same state of affairs. The
Schoenberg school has not advanced beyond this point; it is blind to those
historical changes in that process of aesthetic production which abrogates
completely the category of the gifted singer. In twelve-tone technique, a
childlike belief in genius runs parallel to the total rationalization of material;
this belief culminates, finally, in ludicrous priority conflicts or possessive
claims to originality. Such blindness – perhaps the necessary condition for
the strict and total formation of things – refers not only to the attitude of the
composers, which as such is a matter of indifference. This blindness further
renders the composers helpless in all questions of the spiritual function of
their music. Viennese music, striving for the most extreme autarky possible,
innocently insists upon doubling literary accusations according to the
scheme of music-drama, instead of distancing itself from them or treating
them antithetically. This atmosphere has withdrawn into Stravinsky’s work.
Once the artificial moment of music – the ‘fabrication’ – has become
conscious of itself and recognized this dilemma, it loses the sting of the lie
involved in thinking of itself as the pure sound of the soul, as a matter of
primacy, as unconditional. This is the gain in truth, attained through the
exorcism of the subject. An artful ‘mal fait’ replaces the French ‘bien fait’:
music about music insists that it is not a microcosm fulfilled within itself, but
rather the reflection of shattered depletion. Its calculated errors are related
to the open contours of legitimate contemporary painting – such as that
of Picasso; such painting dismantles every hermetic aspect of the depicted
figure. Parody, the basic form of music about music, implies the imitation
of something and its resulting degradation through this imitation. This
attitude – which the bourgeois regarded suspiciously as the attitude of the
intellectual music-maker – adapts to regression with ease. Infantile music
treats its model in a manner much like that of the child who takes apart his
toys and puts them together again incorrectly. In this unnaturalness there
is an element which is not entirely domesticated, an undisciplined mimetic
factor – indeed, something of true nature itself. This might well be the way
in which primitives would portray a missionary through dance, before they
devour him. The impulse in this direction, however, has proceeded from

128
 Stravinsky and Restoration

civilizing forces, which scorn affectionate imitation and tolerate it only as a

mutilating force. This – not the alleged Alexandrianism – is the subject of
criticism. The evil glance at the model casts a spell of bondage upon music
about music. It atrophies through its dependence upon heteronomy. It is
as though it could expect of its compositional content nothing more than
that which is present in the shabbiness of that music, the reverse reflection
which determines fortune. The danger of the musical man of letters with his
various reaction patterns, the justification of the music hall against Wagner’s
Parsifal, of the player piano against the intoxication of string instruments,
of a romantic dream – America against the childlike horrors of German
Romanticism – all of this is not an excess of cognizance, exhaustion, and
differentiation, but rather of half-wittedness. It becomes evident as soon as
music about music conceals the quotation marks.

Dissociation of time

The remnants of the memory are joined together; direct musical material is
not developed out of its own driving force. The composition is realized not
through development, but through the faults which permeate its structure.
These assume the role which earlier was the province of expression: this
recalls the statement which Eisenstein once made about film montage; he
explained that the ‘general concept’ – the meaning, that is, or the synthesis
of partial elements of the theme – proceeded precisely out of their juxtaposi-
tion as separated, isolated elements.37 This results, however, in the dissocia-
tion of the musical time continuum itself. Stravinsky’s music remains a
peripheral phenomenon in spite of the extension of its style over the entire
younger generation, because it avoids the dialectical confrontation with the
musical progress of time. This, in turn, is the basis of all great music since
Bach. The eradication of time, however, which is accomplished by rhythmic
tricks, is no sudden achievement of Stravinsky. Ever since Sacre he had been
proclaimed as the anti-pope to Impressionism; from Impressionism he
learned musical ‘timelessness.’ Anyone who has been schooled in German
and Austrian music and who has listened to Debussy will be familiar with
the experience of frustrated expectation. Throughout any one of his compo-
sitions, the naive ear listens tensely, asking whether ‘it is coming’; everything
appears to be a prelude, the overture to musical fulfillment, to the organic
resolution of the Abgesang – which, however, never arrives. The ear must be
re-educated if it is to understand Debussy correctly, seeking not a process of

129
Philosophy of Modern Music

obstruction and release, but perceiving a juxtaposition of colors and surfaces

such as are to be found in a painting. The succession simply expounds what
is simultaneous for sensory perception: this is the way the eye wanders over
the canvas. Technically, this is accomplished at first by ‘functionless’ har-
mony – to use the expression of Kurt Westphal. The tensions of step-­
progression are not executed within the key or by modulations; instead
harmonic complexes relieve each other. These complexes can be either static
or exchangeable in time. The harmonic play of forces is replaced through the
exchange of forces; conceptually, this is not dissimilar to the complimentary
harmony of twelve-tone technique. Everything else proceeds out of the
harmonic thought peculiar to Impressionism: the suspended treatment of
form – a treatment which actually excludes ‘development’; the predomi-
nance of a type of character piece, which originated in the salon – it acquires
its dominance at the expense of actual symphonic structure even in length-
ier compositions; the absence of counterpoint; and finally a superior colora-
tion, allotted to harmonic complexes. There is no ‘end’; the composition
ceases as does the picture, upon which the viewer turns his back. In Debussy
this tendency became gradually intensified up to the second volume of the
Preludes and the ballet Jeux; in his works it is characterized by a growing
atomization of thematic substance. His radicalism in this regard cost several
of his most masterly compositions their popularity. Debussy’s late style is,
therefore, a reaction against the attempt to indicate once more something
approximating a musical course in time without sacrificing the ideal of sus-
pension for the sake of it. Ravel’s work, to a large degree, took a reverse
course. The early Jeux d’eau, in spite of its sonata-like disposition, is one of
the most non-developmental compositions of the entire school; it is further
characterized by the absence of dynamics. Following this, however, Ravel
strove to strengthen his consciousness of progression. This explains the
unique role of modality in his work; it plays there a role different from, for
example, that in Brahms. The church modes provide a substitute for tonal
progressions. These, however, lose their dynamic quality through the lessen-
ing of emphasis upon the function of the cadence – a function not inherent
in modality. The archaism of organum- and faux bourdon-effects helps to
produce a type of step-progression, yet retains the feeling of static juxtaposi-
tion.38 The undynamic nature of French music might well be traced back to
its arch-enemy Wagner, who was accused of an insatiable appetite for
dynamics. In Wagner’s works progression is, in many places, actually mere
displacement. Debussy’s motivic technique is derived from this source; it
consists of an undeveloped repetition of the simple tonal successions.

130
 Stravinsky and Restoration

Stravinsky’s calculated and sterile melismata are the direct descendants of

Debussy; they are almost physical. They allegedly signify ‘nature’ – as do
many of the Wagnerian melismata – and Stravinsky remained faithful to his
belief in such primeval phenomena, even if he hoped to achieve this pre-
cisely by avoiding the expression of them. In Wagner’s untiring dynamics
which, without exception, actually annul themselves, there is indeed some-
thing illusory and futile. ‘Every peaceful beginning was followed by a rapid
upward drive. Wagner – insatiable, but not inexhaustible in this procedure –
hit of necessity upon the alternative of another soft beginning after reaching
such climaxes, only to expand again anew.’39 In other words, the intensifica-
tion actually does not lead further; rather the same thing is simply repeated.
Correspondingly – in the second act of Tristan, for example – the musical
content of the motivic models upon which the passages of intensification are
based is hardly anywhere affected by sequential progressions. The mechani-
cal is joined to the dynamic. The old, narrow reproach upon Wagner of
formlessness might well refer to this. The music drama resembles a gigantic
container, offering the first indication of that substitution of a spatial aspect
for progress in time, of the disparate co-existence in time which later was to
become predominant among the Impressionists and in Stravinsky, resulting
in the phantasm of form. Wagner’s philosophical theory, which is
­amazingly homogeneous with his compositional theory, is really unfamiliar
with history and recognizes only permanent revocation in nature. Such
suspension of musical time consciousness corresponds to the total con-
sciousness of a bourgeoisie which – in that it no longer sees anything
before it – denies the time process itself and finds its utopia in the with-
drawals of time into space. The sensual melancholy of Impressionism is
the heir to Wagner’s philosophical pessimism. In no case does sound go
beyond itself in time; it rather vanishes in space. In Wagner, renunciation
– the negation of the will to life – was the sustaining metaphysical cate-
gory; French music, which renounced all metaphysics – even the meta-
physics of ­ pessimism – emphasized such renunciation all the more
strongly the more it contented itself with a fortune which – as a mere here-
and-now, as absolute transitoriness – is no longer fortune. Such steps of
resignation are the pre-forms for the liquidation of the individual that are
celebrated by Stravinsky’s music. With some exaggeration, he might be
called a Wagner who has regained consciousness as a composer abandon-
ing himself, as a matter of principle, to the pressure of repetition – indeed,
even to the ‘music-drama’ vacuity of musical progress, while no longer
concealing the regressive impulse through the bourgeois ideals of

131
Philosophy of Modern Music

s­ ubjectivity and ­development. Earlier Wagnerian criticism – Nietzsche, in

particular – raised the objection that Wagner’s motivic technique wanted
to pound his thoughts into the heads of the musically illiterate, whose
characteristics were determined by industrial mass culture. Accordingly,
in Stravinsky – the master of all percussion – this pounding becomes the
admitted principle not only of technique but of effect as well: authenticity
becomes its own propaganda.

Music – a pseudomorphism of painting

The analogy which has been noted repeatedly between the transition from
Debussy to Stravinsky in music, and the development from Impressionistic
painting to Cubism, demonstrates more than a vague common denominator
of cultural history, according to which music limped along behind literature
and painting at the customary distance. The development of a spatial
perspective in music is much rather a testimony of a pseudomorphism of
painting in music. At its innermost core, it is the abdication of music. This
might at first be explained with regard to the unique situation in France,
where the development of productive forces in painting was so far superior
to those in music that musicians involuntarily sought support in great
painting. But the victory of genius in painting over genius in music submits
to the positivistic trend of the entire age. All painting – even abstract – has
its pathos in that which is; all music purports a becoming. This, however, is
exactly what, in Stravinsky, music attempts to evade through the fiction of
its mere existence.40 In Debussy the individual color complexes were still
related to each other and mediated as in the tradition of Wagner’s ‘art of
transition’: sound is not devaluated, but soars for the moment beyond its
boundaries. A perspective of sensory infinity is attained by means of such
confluence. In Impressionistic paintings, whose technique absorbed music,
dynamic effects and light impressions are produced according to the same
procedures through the juxtaposition of spots of color. That sensory infinity
was the poetic-aural nature of Impressionism in its age; the artistic rebellion
shortly before the First World War was directed against it. Stravinsky
directly adopted the conception of music involving spaciousness and surface
expanse from Debussy; and his technique of complexes as well as the make-
up of his atomized melodic models also illustrate Debussy’s influence. The
innovation actually consists only in the severance of the connecting threads
and the demolition of remnants of the differential-dynamic procedure.

132
 Stravinsky and Restoration

The partial spatial complexes stand in harsh contrast to one another. The
polemic negation of the gentle reverberation is fashioned into the proof of
force, and the disconnected end-product of dynamics is stratified like blocks
of marble. What earlier had sounded congruent unto itself now establishes
its independence as an anorganic chord. The spatial dimension becomes
absolute: the aspect of atmosphere, in which all Impressionistic music
retains something of the subjective experience of time, is eradicated.

Theory of ballet music

Stravinsky and his school bring about the end of musical Bergsonianism.
They play off le temps espace against le temps durée. The procedural method
originally inspired by irrationalistic philosophy establishes itself as the
advocate of rationalization in the sense of that which can be measured and
counted without memory.41 Music, which has become the victim of its own
confusion, fears – in the face of the expansion of technology in the late stage
of capitalism – that it might regressively fall victim to the contradiction
between itself and technology. Music escapes this momentarily by means of
a ballet-like leap, but in so doing it becomes all the more deeply enmeshed
in the dilemma. Stravinsky, to be sure, hardly ever concerned himself with
machine art in the sense of the ominous ‘tempos of the time.’ On the other
hand, his music is concerned with types of human attitudes which view the
ubiquity of technique as a schema of the entire life process: whoever wishes
to avoid being crushed by the wheels of the times must react in the same
manner as this music does. Today there is no music showing any trace of
the power of the historical hour that has remained totally unaffected by the
decline of experience – by the substitution, for ‘life,’ of a process of economic
adjustment dictated by concentrated economic forces of domination. The
dying out of subjective time in music seems totally unavoidable in the
midst of a humanity which had made itself into a thing – into an object
of its own organization. The result is that similar aspects can be observed
at the extreme poles of composition. The Expressionistic miniature of the
new Viennese School contracts the time dimension by expressing – in
Schoenberg’s words – ‘entire novel through a single gesture.’ Furthermore,
in the most convincing twelve-tone compositions, time plays a role through
an integral procedure seemingly without development, because it tolerates
nothing outside itself upon which development could experiment. However,
there is a significant difference between such a change in time-consciousness

133
Philosophy of Modern Music

in the inner organization of music and the established pseudomorphism of

the spatial dimension within musical time – its inhibition through shock
and electric blows which disrupt its continuity. In this inner change, on the
one hand, music – in the unconscious depth of its structure – lags far behind
the historical destiny of time-consciousness. In the pseudomorphism, on
the other hand, it establishes itself as an arbiter of time, causing the listener
to forget the subjective and psychological experience of time in music and
to abandon himself to its spatialized dimension. It proclaims, as its unique
achievement, the fact that there is no longer any life as though it had achieved
the objectification of life. For this reason, immanent revenge descends upon
it. One trick characterizes all of Stravinsky’s formal endeavors: the effort of
this music to portray time as in a circus tableau and to present time complexes
as though they were spatial. This trick, however, soon exhausts itself. He loses
his power over the consciousness of continuousness: continuousness now
reveals itself and appears heteronomously. It discloses Stravinsky’s musical
intentions as a lie, unmasking this intention as nothing but boredom. Instead
of working out the tension between music and time in composition, he plays
another of his tricks upon this tension. Therefore, all those forces shrivel
in his hands, which otherwise thrive in music, whenever it absorbs time
into itself. The mannerized impoverishment which asserts itself, as soon
as Stravinsky attempts to go beyond his speciality, is encumbered by the
spatial expansion. To the extent that he renounced all possible means for the
production of time-relationships – transition, intensification, the distinction
between the field of tension and the field of release, further of exposition and
continuation, and of question and answer – all artistic musical means fall
under this edict, with the exception of his one artistic trick.42 A regression
now sets in – justified by the literary-regressive intention – but it becomes
his undoing when the absolute musical demand is seriously raised. The
weakness of Stravinsky’s production during the last twenty-five years –
which can be detected even by the most insensitive ear – is not just a matter
of the composer having nothing more or new to say. It rather arises out of a
chain of events which degrades music to the status of a parasite of painting.
That weakness – the non-intrinsic element in the general compositional
make-up of Stravinsky – is the price he has had to pay for his restriction to
the dance; although this limitation once seemed to him a guarantee of order
and objectivity. From the beginning it imposed upon his music an aspect
of servitude which required the renunciation of autonomy. True dance –
in contrast to mature music – is an art of static time, a turning in a circle,
movement without progress. It was in this consciousness that sonata form

134
 Stravinsky and Restoration

came to replace dance form: throughout the entire history of modern music –
with the exception of Beethoven – minuettes and scherzi have always been a
matter of convenience and of secondary importance; this is particularly true
when they are compared to serious sonata form and to the adagio. Music for
the dance lies on this side of – and not beyond – subjective dynamics; to this
extent, it contains an anachronistic element, which in Stravinsky stands in
highly peculiar contrast to the literary-modish success of his hostility towards
expression. The past is foisted upon the future as a changeling. It is suited
to this purpose because of the disciplinary nature of the dance. Stravinsky
has restored it again. His accents are just so many acoustic signals to the
stage. He has, therewith, infused into dance music – from the viewpoint
of its usefulness – a precision which it had totally forfeited beyond the
pantomimic-psychologizing or illustrative intentions of the Romantic ballet.
A glance at Richard Strauss’s Josefslegende clarifies the drastic effect of the
cooperation between Stravinsky and Diaghilev; something of this effect has
adhered to the music, which – even as absolute music – has not forgotten one
moment of its danceability. All symbolic intermediate instances, however,
have been removed from the relationship between dance and music; as a
result, that fatal principle gains control which everyday speech designates
with expressions such as ‘dancing to one’s tune.’ The effective relationship for
which Stravinsky’s music strives is, to be sure, not the identification of the
public with psychic impulses which are supposedly expressed in the dance.
Stravinsky aspired, rather, for an electrification equal to that of the dancer.

Modes of listening

Stravinsky – by means of the preceding – proves himself as the executor

of a social tendency, of progress to a negative lack of historical relevance
to a new order which is hierarchically rigid. His trick – self-preservation
through self-annihilation – falls into the behaviorist scheme of the total
incorporation of mankind. His music attracts all those who wish to rid
themselves of their ego, because it stands in the way of their egoistic interest
within the total composition of commanded collectivization; similarly, his
music concurs with a spatially regressive mode of listening. On the whole,
two such types can be distinguished; they are not determined by nature,
but are historical in essence and belong to the predominant syndrome of
character at a given time. They are the expressive-dynamic and rhythmic-
spatial modes of listening. The former has its origin in singing; it is directed

135
Philosophy of Modern Music

towards the fulfilling domination of time and, in its highest manifestations,

transforms the heterogeneous course of time into the force of the musical
process. The latter obeys the beat of the drum. It is intent upon the
articulation of time through the division into equal measures which time
virtually abrogates and spatializes.43 The two types are separated by force
of that social alienation which separates subject and object. Musically,
everything subjective is threatened by coincidence; everything which
appears as collective objectivity is under the threat of externalization, of the
repressive hardness of mere existence. The idea of great music lay in a mutual
penetration of both modes of listening and by the categories of composition
suited to each. The unity of discipline and freedom was conceived in the
sonata. From the dance it received its integral regularity, and the intention
regarding the entirety; from the Lied it received that opposing and negative
impulse which, out of its own consequences, again produces the entirety. In
so doing, the sonata fulfills the form which preserves its identity as a matter
of principle – even if not in the sense of a literal beat, or tempo. It does
this with such a multiplicity of rhythmic-melodic figures and profiles that
the ‘mathematical’ pseudo-spatial time, which is recognized as tendential
in its objectivity, coincides with the psychological time of experience in
the happy balance of the moment. This conception of a musical subject-
object was forcibly extracted from the realistic dissociation of subject and
object. Consequently, a paradoxical element was present in the conception
from the beginning. Beethoven – closer, from the perspective of such a
conception, to Hegel than to Kant – had need of the most extraordinary
configurations of the formal spirit to attain so complete a musical synthesis
as he did in the Seventh Symphony. In his late phase he added a paradoxical
unity, permitting the unreconciled character of these two categories to
merge openly and eloquently as the highest truth of his music. It might
be felt that the history of music after Beethoven – Romantic music as well
as that which is actually modern – indicates a decline parallel to that of
the bourgeois class; it does this in a more meaningful sense than in mere
idealistic phrases regarding beauty. If this is in any way true, then this decline
is conditioned by the impossibility of resolving the conflict between the
defined categories.44 The two types of musical experience, torn from each
other, have today diverged without mediation and must pay with untruth.
This untruth is decoratively concealed in the products of artistic music,
but is revealed in light music, whose shameless incorrectness disavows
what takes place on the higher level under the mask of taste, routine,
and surprise. Light music is polarized; the one extreme is ‘Schmalz’ –

136
 Stravinsky and Restoration

the region of sweet sentimentality, detached from every objective time

organization, and either arbitrary or standard in expression. The other
extreme is mechanical – a fiddling and tooting – the ironic imitation of
which provided the training for Stravinsky’s style. The innovation which he
brought to music is not only that of the spatial mathematical type of music
as such, but also the apotheosis thereof – a parody of Beethoven’s apotheosis
of the dance. The academic illusion of synthesis is scorned without illusion.
However, the scorn directed towards the illusion also affects the subjective
element in the subject. Stravinsky’s work draws the consequence from the
dying – out of the expressive-dynamic type of music, to which he is related
by natural affinity. He then turns solely to the rhythmic-spatial, playfully
adept type, which today sprouts forth everywhere with amateurs and
mechanics, as though it were rooted in nature and not in society. Stravinsky
sees in this musical type the supreme task. He has to expose himself to its
attacks – to its irregular, jolting accents, without being diverted from the
order of the ever-constant underlying meter. Thus this music trains him
to resist every impulse which might possibly challenge the heterogeneous
alienated progression. In so doing it refers to the body as though this
were its legal basis; in extreme cases, even the heartbeat is evoked as the
basis for authority. However, justification through a supposedly constant
or physiological element cancels out that through which music becomes
music: its spiritualization consists of its modifying influence. Music is as
little bound by any particular allegiance to the constancy of the heart beat
as it is to a musical law of nature – as, for example, it is possible to explain
only the simpler overtone relationships as harmonies: however, musical
consciousness has liberated the physiological-aural perception from such
fetters. In his antagonism towards the spiritualization of music, out of
which he draws his energies, Stravinsky’s rage over a certain lie has played
an important role; this lie maintains that music implies an escape from the
enchanted realm of the physical, and, furthermore, that it is in itself the
ideal. The physical aspect of music, however, is not indicative of a natural
state – of an essence pure and free of all ideology – but rather it accords
with the retrogression of society. The mere negation of the spirit puts on
airs, as though this negation were the realization of its own intentions. This
negation is a result of the pressure of a system whose traditionally superior
power over everything subject to it can maintain itself only if it is able to
break the subject’s habit of engaging in whims of thought, and to make of
him nothing more than a centre of reactions – the monad of conditioned
reflexes. Stravinsky’s sweetest dream is versatile submissiveness and

137
Philosophy of Modern Music

hysterical obedience – the very pattern of the authoritarian character which

is today in formulation on all sides. His music no longer succumbs to any
temptation to be otherwise. The previously occurring subjective deviation
has been transformed into a mere means of shock, employed to terrify the
subject in order that the hold upon him can be made still tighter. In so
doing, the aesthetic discipline or order, which actually no longer has any
substratum, becomes empty and irresponsible; it remains only as a ritual
of capitulation. The claim to authenticity is relegated to an authoritarian
manner of procedure. Unwavering parrying establishes itself as an aesthetic
principle, good taste, or asceticism, thus degrading expression – the mark
of memory in the subject – to the level of kitsch. The negation of the
subjectively negative in such an authoritarian attitude – the negation of the
spirit itself – asserts itself as a new ideology. This is the deceptive aspect of
negation, for it is in reality hostile to every ideology.

The deception of objectivism

Negation establishes itself only as an ideology; for the authority of effect is

surreptitious: it does not proceed from the specific law of the structure –
out of its own logic and correctness – but rather from the gesture which it
directs to the listener. The bearing of the composition is sempre marcato. Its
objectivity is a subjective arrangement, embellished and elevated to the level
of super-human a priori validity; it is ordained dehumanization as an ordo.
The illusory appearance thereof is produced by a small number of tested
measures of technical demagogy which are continually carried out without
concern for the changing nature of the cause. All becoming is eliminated,
as though it were the contamination of the object itself. The object is now
excluded from any intervening treatment; in this position it pretends
to have been liberated from all elaboration and to have achieved self-
contained monumentality. Every complex is restricted to a basic material
which resembles something photographed from changing perspectives,
but essentially untouched in its harmonic-melodic nucleus. The resulting
lack of meaningful musical forms lends the entire object an aspect of the
intransitory: the omission of dynamics feigns an eternity in which only a
few satanic metric tricks relieve the monotony. The objectivism in this case
is a façade, because there is nothing to objectify – because, further, this
objectivism is therefore nothing but an illusory façade of power and security.
It proves itself all the more ineffective because the basic material – statically

138
 Stravinsky and Restoration

atrophied and emasculated from the very beginning – dispenses with its
own substance, thereby gaining life only within the context of function.
Stravinsky’s style resists precisely such a context. Instead his music offers, with
great aplomb, something totally ephemeral which gives the impression that
it is of the essence. The listener is made a fool by means of the authoritarian
repetition of something which does not really exist. At first the listener feels
that he is confronted by something which is by no means architectural in
its structure but totally irregular, and, in its continual transformation, he
considers it to be his own image. At the same time, however, the stomping
and hammering of it all teaches him something still worse – its immutability.
He has to submit. Stravinsky’s authenticity is built upon this schema; such
authenticity is usurpatory. An arbitrary concept – highly subjective because
of its coincidental nature – asserts itself as if it were confirmed and generally
obligatory. The order which it embraces is equally questionable because of
the principal exchangeability of all its successive elements. The convincing
force which it exerts is due, on the one hand, to the self-suppression of the
subject, and on the other to the musical language which has been especially
contrived for authoritarian effects. This is most obvious in the emphatic,
strikingly dictatorial instrumentation which unites brevity and vehemence.
This is all as far removed from that musical cosmos which later generations
perceive in Bach, as is the conformism – superimposed from above – of an
atomized society from the dream image of hermetic culture, based upon a
guild economy and an earlier stage of industry.

The final trick

How treacherous that Stravinsky – as soon as he had stated his objective

demands in positive terms – had to assemble his armature out of the
supposedly pre-subjective phases of music. It would have been preferable
if this formal language had primarily extended beyond the incriminated
Romantic element therein by virtue of its own gravitational force. In this
case, however, he was able to come to his own aid, in that he derived a
stimulus from the inconsistency between the ‘pre-Classic’ formulae, and
his own state of consciousness and the condition of material. In an ironic
game, he then enjoyed the impossibility of restoration which he initiated.
The subjective aestheticism of the objective attitude is unmistakable: it
is reminiscent of Nietzsche who, in order to prove that he was cured of
Wagner, claimed to love in Rossini, Bizet, and the journalistic Offenbach

139
Philosophy of Modern Music

all of those elements which made a mockery of his own pathos and
differentiation. Subjectivity was retained through the exclusion of it from
the creative process, as, for example, in the somewhat graceful insult to
Pergolesin in the Pulcinella suite. This has been the major accomplishment
of Stravinsky in recent years. The work is, of course, lightly colored by
speculation upon those listeners who wish their music to be familiar, but
at the same time to be labelled modern. This indicates the willingness
inherent in this music to be used as fashionable commercial music – similar
to the willingness of surrealism to be used for shop-window decoration.
The penchant for conciliation, which becomes ever more pressing, cannot
find relief in the face of the contradiction between modernity and pre-
Classicism. Stravinsky tries to balance this out in a double manner. On the
one hand, the devices of the eighteenth century – to which this new style was
restricted in the beginning and which, once taken from their context, are
painfully dissonant both in the literal and figurative sense – are blended into
the compositional idiom. They by no means protrude as foreign elements;
rather the total musical inventory is developed therefrom. They are no
longer evident, and with the mediation of their contradiction to the modern
element, the musical language is increasingly toned down from work to
work. At the same time, however, the musical idiom now no longer limits
itself to the quoted conventions of the eighteenth century. The specifically
unromantic, pre-subjective nature of time-past, mobilized in any particular
case, is no longer decisive; it is only that it is past at all and sufficiently
conventional that it could be a conventionalizing factor of subjectivity itself.
Indiscriminate sympathy flirts with every hypostatization, but by no means
binds itself to the imago of undynamic order. Weber, Tchaikovsky, and the
entire rhetoric of ballet of the nineteenth century attain grace before the
uncompromising ear; even expression is tolerated, so long as it is no longer
true expression, but merely the death-mask thereof. Universal necrophilia
is the last perversity of style; it is hardly still possible to distinguish it from
the normalcy in which it finds its affirmation – that sediment, namely, in
the conventions of music which is looked upon as its second nature. In the
graphic montages of Max Ernst, the parental world of images – red plush,
buffets, and balloons – is intended to evoke panic by suddenly appearing
as though it were already a matter of history. In like manner, Stravinsky’s
shock technique assumes a command of that musical world of images of
the most recent past. This shock, however, loses its effectiveness with ever-
increasing speed; today, for example, only twenty years after its composition,
Le Baiser de la Fée sounds honestly innocuous in spite of the lovely skirts

140
 Stravinsky and Restoration

of the ballerinas and the Swiss tourist costumes out of Andersen’s day. At
the same time, the increase in quotable musical goods gradually bridges
the gap between past and present. The idiom, finally developed with such
great effort, no longer shocks anyone: it is the very essence of everything
approved and certified in the two hundred years of bourgeois music,
treated according to the procedure of rhythmic tricks which has meanwhile
found approval. As a revenant, healthy common sense is re-established to
the right which it had forfeited long ago. The authoritarian character of
today is, without exception, conformist; likewise the authoritarian claim
of Stravinsky’s music is extended totally and completely to conformism.
In the final analysis, this music tends to become the style for everyone,
because it coincides with the man-in-the-street style in which they have
always believed and to which this music automatically directs them again.
Its indifference, and its anemia – which becomes evident as soon as the
last aggressive impulses are subdued – are the price which it must pay for
its recognition of the consensus as the moment of authenticity. Stravinsky,
in his later years, reserves schizoid alienation for use as an alternate
course. The shrinking process, which causes his earlier achievements –
in themselves results of the shrinking process – to disappear, without the
pursuit of new discoveries, guarantees easy comprehension of his works.
Furthermore, as long as the shock-gesture and the addition of ingredients
which are to some degree tasteful still function, he is assured of success,
at least in the sphere of good taste. Of course, it is not long before such
simplification extinguishes even the interest in domesticated sensation, and
those who like the easy life so well make it still easier for themselves and run
to the camp of Stravinsky’s followers – the modest pranksters or youthful
fossils. The formerly rough surface is now sealed and polished. Previously,
expression had been cut off from the subject; now even the ominous secret
of the sacrifice of the subject is concealed in silence. Those who long for the
administration of society through direct domination by force continually
acclaim the traditional values which they wish to preserve from ruin.
From this point, in like manner, objectivistic music appears as the force
of preservation, proclaiming its own recovery. Out of the disintegration of
the subject it designs for itself the formula of the aesthetic integration of
the world. It recoins in counterfeit the destructive law of society itself – of
absolute power, that is as the constructive law of authenticity. The farewell
trick of Stravinsky – who otherwise, in an elegant gesture, renounced
everything astonishing – is the enthroning of the self-forgotten negative as
the self-conscious positive.

141
Philosophy of Modern Music

Neoclassicism

Stravinsky’s entire work has had this manouver as its goal; in pursuing it,
however, it becomes a modestly pompous event in the transition to neo-
classicism. It is decisive that according to its purely musical nature, no
distinction between infantile and neo-classic works can be discerned. The
reproach that Stravinsky – in the manner of a German classicist – had
developed from a revolutionary into a reactionary cannot be validated.
All compositional elements of the neo-classic phase are not only implicitly
contained in what preceded this phase, but in both cases they define the
entire compositional inventory. Even the mask-like ‘as if ’ of the first
compositions of the new style coincides with the old process of writing
music about music. There are works of the early nineteen-twenties – such
as the Concertino for String Quartet and the Woodwind Octet – which
would be difficult to classify as either infantile or neo-classic. They are
particularly successful because they preserve the aggressive fragmentation
of infantilism without deforming a model in any obvious way: They neither
parody nor celebrate. It would be a simple matter to compare the transition
to neo-classicism to that from free atonality to twelve-tone technique, which
Schoenberg completed at the very same time: both developments have in
common the transformation of highly specifically designed and employed
means into, as it were, disqualified, neutral material, severed from the
original intention of its appearance. But the analogy is not valid beyond
this point. The transformation of the vehicles of atonal expression into the
expressive means of twelve-tone came to pass in Schoenberg out of specific
compositional force itself. For this reason it has changed decisively the
language of music as well as the essence of the individual compositions. In
Stravinsky, there is no trace of this. To be sure, his regression to tonality
gradually becomes less scrupulous, until the provocatively false is mellowed
to the point that it is no more than a spice within the work – as, for example,
the chorale contained in L’Histoire du Soldat. If there is any essential change,
however, it is not the musical, but rather the literary aspect; it involves the
claim made by the musical, or, it could almost be said – by its ideology.45
All of a sudden, music wishes to be taken literally. It is the idolatrously
fixed grimace, which is revered as an image of the gods. The authoritarian
principle of making-music-about-music is applied in such a way that
all possible antiquated musical formulae are vindicated of their binding
responsibility, which they have lost historically and which they seem to
possess only when they actually no longer possess them. At the same time,

142
 Stravinsky and Restoration

the usurpatory element in authority is cynically underscored by means of

arbitrary acts which inform the confused listener of the illegitimacy of the
claim to authority without relenting from this claim in the slightest degree.
Stravinsky’s older jokes – which were often somewhat more discrete –
ridicule the norm in the same breath in which they proclaim it: this norm
is to be obeyed not for the sake of its own justice but merely because of the
dictatorial powers which it possesses. This strategy of courteous terror takes
the following technical course. There are passages in which the traditional
language of music, particularly in the pre-classic practice of sequences,
seems automatically to demand certain continuations as a matter of course.
These continuations are, however, avoided. Instead a surprise – an imprévu –
is offered, which amuses the listener by cheating him out of what he has been
waiting for. The schema prevails, but the continuity of progress which it has
promised is not developed. Thus Stravinsky’s neo-classicism practices the
old custom of joining brokenly disparate models together. It is traditional
music combed in the wrong direction. The surprises, however, fade away
like little pink clouds; they are nothing but a volatile disturbance of the order
within which they remain. They consist only in the dismantling of formulae.
Characteristic means – for example, Händel’s formulations of suspensions
and other tones alien to harmony – are employed independently of their
technical purpose, which is that of combining in a manner producing tension
without preparation and release; indeed they are employed while being
maliciously avoided. It is by no means the least of Stravinsky’s paradoxes
that his unique New Objectivist, functionalistic procedure involves elements
which had their purpose in precise functions of musical continuity which
he now separates from these functions, making them independent and
allowing them to ossify. Therefore, his earlier neo-classic compositions
sound as though they were dangling on strings and many of them – such as
the dissolute Concerto for Piano and Winds – insult the culturally responsible
ear far more fundamentally than did dissonances previously. This they
do particularly with consonances which are twisted in their very joints.
Compositions of this type – in A minor – are incomprehensible; common
sense, which labeled such works atonal chaos, was fond of hurtling this
reproach at Stravinsky. The flourishes which he exorcises are not organized
into a unity of musical-logical structure which constitutes musical meaning;
they present, rather, the inexorable denial of any such meaning. They are
‘anorganic.’ Their judiciousness is a phantasm, resulting from the vague
familiarity of the materials presented and the reminiscent exultant pomp
of it all, the cloak of forced affirmation. The objective incomprehensibility

143
Philosophy of Modern Music

in face of the subjective impression of the traditional sternly admonishes

every contradictory question of the listener to silence. Blind obedience,
anticipated by authoritarian music, corresponds to the blindness of the
authoritarian principle itself. The statement attributed to Hitler, that a man
could only die for an idea which he does not understand, could be engraved
as an inscription over the gate of the temple of neo-classicism.

Experiments in expansion

The works of Stravinsky’s neo-classic phase are of a vacillating niveau

throughout. Insofar as it is even possible to speak of development in
Stravinsky’s later years, it is a mere matter of removing the thorn of absurdity.
In contrast to Picasso, from whom the neo-classic stimulus comes, Stravinsky
soon no longer felt any need to damage this questionable orderliness. It is
only the most steadfast critics who are still in search of traces of the wild
Stravinsky. A certain amount of consequence has to be admitted in his
carefully planned disappointment: ‘Let them be bored.’ It lets slip the secret
of a rebellion which from the very first impulse was not concerned with
freedom, but with the suppression of the impulse. The pretended positivism
of late Stravinsky affirms that his type of negativity – which contradicted
the subject and justified every kind of pressure – was in itself positive and
stood in alliance with the stronger battalions. At first, to be sure, the turn to
the positive – to cohesively absolute music – resulted in the most extreme
impoverishment of the musical absolute. From this perspective, compositions
such as the Serenade in A for piano or the ballet Apollon Musagète have
never been equalled.46 On the other hand, this was not Stravinsky’s goal. He
rather exploited the newly proclaimed quiescence to expand the inner reach
of specialistic music and to overtake some of the compositional dimensions
proscribed since Sacre, insofar as this was possible within the boundaries
which he had set for himself. At times he has tolerated innovative thematic
figures; he has pursued modest questions of larger structural form; or he
has offered rather complex – even polyphonic – forms. Artists such as he,
who thrive on slogans, have always had the tactical advantage that they
need only bring forth again, from a period of imprisonment, one single
means, which they had once cast aside as hopelessly antiquated, in order
to launch it as an avant-garde achievement. Stravinsky’s efforts towards
a musical structure, which would be richer in itself, are responsible for a
few penetrating moments: for example, the first three movements of the

144
 Stravinsky and Restoration

Concerto for Two Pianos – the second of these is a thoroughly unusual and
streamlined piece; or, for example, passages in the Violin Concerto or the
Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, which is significant and colorful until its
energetically banal finale. All of this, however, has been wrung out of the
style by abstract intellect and is hardly to be regarded as the product of any
neo-classic procedure. To be sure, Stravinsky’s monotonously effervescent
production gradually designs the most outspoken model of childishly plastic
incidental motifs – as the Violin Concerto still offers them – overture-like
accentuation, and terraced groups of sequences. His composition, however,
is so restricted to the material resources of impaired tonality, left behind
by his infantile phase, that the possibilities of fully matured formulations
are thereby limited. This is particularly conditioned by the diatonic within
individual groups, soiled through accidentally ‘false’ notes. It is as though
the repression of the compositional process through the technique of tricks
resulted everywhere else in appearances of deficiency. In this way the fugue
of the Concerto for Two Pianos contradicts everything which preceded it; it
should also be noted that the fugue itself is much too short and insufficiently
developed. Furthermore, the painfully compulsory octaves in the stretto at
the conclusion ridicule this master of renunciation as soon as he reaches out
for that counterpoint which his cleverness denied itself. Through shocks,
his music forfeits its power. Compositions such as the ballet Jeu de Cartes
or the Duo for Violin and Piano and, for the most part, everything which
he composed in the nineteen-forties, have a dullness characteristic of
commercial art, not at all dissimilar to the last works of Ravel. The only
aspect of Stravinsky which can be publicly appreciated is his prestige; a
number of his secondary works – such as the Scherzo à la Russe – which are
officious copies of his own youthful works – evoke a spontaneous pleasure.
He gives the audience more than its rightful share, and consequently he gives
them too little: the cold-hearted flocked to the asocial Stravinsky; where as
they are now left cold by the affable Stravinsky. Most difficult to tolerate are
the major works of the new genre, in which the collective pretense sets its
immediate goal in monumentality – the Latin Oedipus Rex, that is, and the
Symphony of Psalms. The contradiction between the pretension of greatness
and grandeur and the embittered and pitiful musical content causes the wit
from which he shies away to be reflected upon with seriousness. Among
his most recent works, there is one more which makes an impressive entry:
the Symphony in Three Movements, for orchestra, composed in 1945. It is
cleansed of antiquated components, presents contours of cutting sharpness,
and applies itself to a lapidary homophony which might well have had

145
Philosophy of Modern Music

Beethoven in mind: he had hardly ever before so openly presented the ideal
of authenticity. This orchestral achievement is totally suited to that ideal:
it is totally sure of its goal; it is economical; and it is not found wanting
in new coloration, as for example in the brittly thematic harp scoring or
the combination of piano and trombone in fugato. Nevertheless, he again
only suggests to the listener what the composition might have had in mind.
The reduction of all thematic material in the work to the most simple
primitive motives, which the analysts simply label Beethoven-like, has no
influence upon the structure. This represents – just as it did previously – the
static juxtaposition of ‘blocks’ – with the addition of a few time-honored
displacements. According to the theory, the mere relationship of the parts is
to be created by that synthesis which in Beethoven resulted in the dynamics
of form. The extreme reduction of motivic models, however, demanded a
dynamic treatment of them and their expansion. Through Stravinsky’s usual
methods, to which the work rigidly clings, the contrived void of its elements
becomes insufficiency, the emphatic guarantee of its absence of content; and
the inner tension – which had been pre-demonstrated – is not developed.
Only the tone is brazenly successful; the course of the work crumbles, and
the two outer movements break off, at the point where they could have been
arbitrarily continued: they do not undertake the dialectical work, which in
this case they promised through the very character of the thesis itself. As
soon as something similar recurs, it degenerates monotonously and even the
development-like contrapuntal interpolations have no power over the fate
of the formal course of the composition. Even the dissonances which have
been widely acclaimed as tragic symbols prove upon closer observation to
be completely tame: the familiar Bartók effect of the neutral third through
the coupling of the major with the minor is exploited. Symphonic pathos is
nothing but the obscure countenance of an abstract ballet suite.

Schoenberg and Stravinsky

That ideal of authenticity for which Stravinsky’s music strives here and in all
its phases is, as such, by no means its unique privilege: this, however, is
precisely the impression which the style would attempt to give. From an
abstract point of view, this ideal guides all great music today and defines –
for better or for worse – the concept of such music. Everything depends,
however, upon whether this music, by its attitude, advertises this authenticity
as something which it has already attained, or whether – with closed eyes, as

146
 Stravinsky and Restoration

it were – it surrenders itself to the demands of the entire matter in the hope
of mastering it. It is the willingness to do this which defines – in spite of all
the exasperating antinomies – the incomparable superiority of Schoenberg
over that objectivism which in the meantime has degenerated to everyday
jargon. Schoenberg’s school obeys without excuses the reality of a perfected
nominalism in composition. Schoenberg draws the consequences from the
dissolution of all binding forms in music, as this existed in the law of its own
development: he affirms the liberation of ever broader levels of musical
material and the musical domination of nature which progresses towards
the absolute. He does not falsify that which, in the world of sculpture, is
called the obliteration of style-developing power into that dawning self-
awareness of the bourgeois principle of art. His answer to this is: Discard it,
if you would win. He sacrifices the illusion of authenticity, viewing it as
incompatible with the state of that consciousness which was driven so far
towards individuation by liberal order, to the point that this consciousness
negates the order which had advanced it thus far. In the state of such
negativity, he does not feign any collective responsibility: such a factor
would here-and-now stand in contrast to the subject as an external and
repressive responsibility which, in its incompatability with the subject,
would be unbinding and irresponsible in terms of its content of truth. He
entrusts himself openly to the aesthetic principle of individuation, without
concealing his entanglement in the actual decline of traditional society. He
does not conceive – as a ‘philosopher of culture’ – the ideal of comprehensive
totality, but relies step by step upon that which becomes concrete as a
demand in the encounter between the compositional subject which is
conscious of itself, and the socially established material. In so doing he
preserves with particular objectivity the greater philosophical truth as the
open attempt at the reconstruction of responsibility; he does this entirely on
his own. The obscure driving force within him is nourished by the certainty
that nothing in art is successfully binding except that which can be totally
filled by the historical state of consciousness which determines its own
substance – by its ‘experience’ in the emphatic sense. This drive is guided by
the desperate hope that such a movement of the spirit – always undertaken
in a certain obscure blindness – can through the force of its own logic
transcend every private concern from which it proceeds. This hope is
criticized, because of this private aspect, by those who demonstrate that they
are not the equal of such objective logic of the matter. The absolute
renunciation of the gesture of authenticity becomes the only indication of
the authenticity of the structure. This school, which has been reproached for

147
Philosophy of Modern Music

its intellectualism, is in such a venture naive compared to the pretentious

manipulation of authenticity, as it thrives in Stravinsky and in his total circle.
In view of the course of events in the world, this naïveté has many traits of
retardation and provincialism: it expects more from the integrity of the
work of art than it is able to accomplish in integral society.47 In so doing, this
school endangers almost every one of its own structures, but at the same
time it gains, on the other hand, not only a more cohesive and instinctive
artistic view, but also a higher objectivity than that objectivism – an
objectivity, namely, of the immanent correctness – and, further, of the
undisguised appropriateness to the historical condition. It is forced to go
above and beyond this to a manifest objectivity which is sui generis – to
twelve-tone constructivism – without total illumination by the subject of the
animation of the material. The naïveté, or the clinging to the semi-
professional ideal of the German ‘good musician’ – who is concerned about
nothing beyond the massive inventory of his product – finds in this
objectivity – no matter how consistent it might be, its punishment through
the transition of the absolute autonomy into something heteronomous, into
unresolved self-alienation on the material level – even, therefore, if self-
alienation pays its debt to its own spirit of enlightenment, to the spirit of
heteronomy, to the senseless integration of that which has been atomized. It
is exactly this which happens willfully in Stravinsky: the epoch forcibly
binds the contrasts together. Stravinsky, however, spares himself the
tormenting self-animation of the material and treats it as would a producer.
For this reason, his language is as close to the language of communication as
it is to the language of the practical joke: non-seriousness itself, play – from
which the subject remains aloof, abdication to the aesthetic ‘development of
truth,’ considers itself the guarantee of authenticity and therewith of truth as
well. This contradiction destroys his music: the contrived style of objectivity
is demanded of the recalcitrant material as forcefully and irresponsibly as art
nouveau was formulated fifty years ago. (It is the renunciation of art nouveau
which has nourished all aesthetic objectivity down to the present day.) The
will to style replaces style itself and therewith sabotages it. No objectivity of
that which the structure wills from within itself is present in objectivism. It
establishes itself by eradicating the traces of subjectivity; the hollows are
proclaimed as the cells of a true brotherhood. The decay of the subject –
which the Schoenberg school bitterly defends itself against – is directly
interpreted by Stravinsky’s music as that higher form in which the subject is
to be preserved. Thus he arrives at the aesthetic transfiguration of the
reflective character of present-day man. His neo-classicism fashions images

148
 Stravinsky and Restoration

of Oedipus and Persephone, but the employed myth has already become the
metaphysics of the universally dependent, who neither want nor need
metaphysics. They mock the very principle thereof. Therewith objectivism
designates itself as that which it fears and the proclamation of which
constitutes its entire content. It defines itself as the vain private concern of
the aesthetic subject – as a trick of the isolated individual – who poses as
though he were the objective spirit. If this were today of the same essence,
then such art would still not be validated by it; for the objective spirit of a
society, integrated by its presumed domination over its subjects, has become
transparent as false in itself. All of this raises doubts, of course, about the
absolute proof of the ideal of authenticity itself. The revolt of Schoenberg’s
school against the hermetic work of art in the years of Expressionism actually
jolted that concept in itself. In so doing, however, the school was unable
permanently to break its primacy, for it was caught up in the actual survival
of that which it challenged spiritually. The concept includes the basic
demand of traditional art: that something should sound as though it had
been present since the beginning of time. This means that it retrieves what
has existed through the ages – that which as a matter of actuality preserved
the power to repress the possible. Aesthetic authenticity is a socially
necessary illusion: no work of art can thrive in a society founded upon
power, without insisting upon its own power. However, it thus comes into
conflict with its own truth, with the administration for a future society,
which no longer relies upon power in any way and has no need of it. The
echo of the primeval – the recollection of the pre-historical world – upon
which any claim to aesthetic authenticity is based, is the trace of perpetuated
injustice. This injustice at the same time preserves this authenticity in
thought, and is further solely responsible, down to the present day, for its
pervasiveness and binding force. Stravinsky’s regression to archaism is not
totally alien to authenticity, even if authenticity is completely destroyed by it,
particularly by means of the immanent disjunction of its structure. When he
concocts a mythology, thereby both violating and falsifying myth, he reveals
not only the usurpatory nature of the new order proclaimed by his music,
but also the negative factor of myth itself. The qualities of myth which
fascinate him are its image of eternity, of salvation from death, and that
which came into being in time through the fear of death and through
barbaric suppression. The falsification of myth documents an elective affinity
with authentic myth. Art would perhaps be authentic only when it had
totally rid itself of the idea of authenticity – of the concept of being-so-and-
not-otherwise.

149
150
Note to the third edition

The Philosophy of New Music, now appearing in its third edition, had been
out of print since 1953. In making the decision to publish a new edition
in 1958 the author was influenced less by a feeling of grateful obligation
to those who sought the book in vain than by the less-friendly assertion
that the book had done its duty and that there was no longer any particular
need for it today. Whenever intellectual formulations are treated simply by
relegating them to the past and permitting the simple passage of time to
substitute for development the suspicion is justified that such formulations
have not really been mastered, but rather that they are being suppressed. The
present condition of music might profit from the stigma contained in the
Philosophy of Modern Music. That part of the book dealing with Schoenberg,
written almost twenty years ago, critically anticipates developments in
music which manifested themselves only after 1950. The convictions of the
author regarding the book are strengthened not only by these developments,
but further, subsequently, by the emphatic endorsements by such composers
as Gyorgy Ligeti and Franco Evangelisti and theorists such as Heinz-Klaus
Metzger.
Since he feels that the fulfillment of the thoughts out of which the book
is composed still remains to be accomplished, and since he still endorses
its fundamental motives, the author presents the text unchanged from its
first publication. He has corrected only printing errors and mistakes which
were pointed out to him for the most part by the Italian translator, Giacomo
Manzoni. To Manzoni’s careful conscientiousness he owes a great deal.
Faithfulness to previous concepts is, however, not to be confused with a
stubborn clinging to every detail thereof. In particular, the author would
like to emphasize even more positively than he did twenty years ago the
fact that one musical dimension can be substituted for another. He would
attempt with still greater emphasis that mediation which the animation
of musical material accomplished through the concrete work. Instead of
supplementing the text itself with considerations of this type, he will content
Philosophy of Modern Music

himself only to indicate a number of later publications. The following are the
most significant:

‘Arnold Schönberg,’ Prismen (Frankfurt, 1955); paperback reprint in

Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (Munich, 1963).
‘Arnold Schönberg,’ Die grossen Deutschen (Berlin, 1957), Vol. 4.
‘Das Altern der Neuen Musik,’ Dissonanzen, Göttingen, 1958. (This
volume further contains Adorno’s first American essay, ‘Über den
Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression des Hörens,’
written in New York in 1938. – Trans.)
‘Die Funktion des Kontrapunkts in der neuen Musik,’ published by the
Berlin Academy of Arts in 1937.
Klangfiguren, Frankfurt, 1955.
Quasi una Fantasia, Frankfurt, 1963.
Der getreue Korrepetitor, Frankfurt, 1963.
‘Schwierigkeiten,’ in Impromptus, Frankfurt, 1968.
Berg: Der Meister des kleinsten Übergangs, Vienna, 1968.

152
Notes

Translators’ Introduction

1. Thomas Mann, The Story of a Novel, New York, 1961, 43.

2. Mann, 43–44.
3. Theodor W. Adorno, Jargon der Eigentlichkeit, Frankfurt, 1964, 68.

Preface

1. ‘Über den Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression des Hörens,’
in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, later published in the collection of essays
Dissonanzen, Göttingen, 1956.
2. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, Amsterdam,
1947; English translation, New York, 1972.

Introduction

1. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, trans. F. P. B. Osmaston, London,

1920, Vol. IV, 349.
2. Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, in Schriften, ed. Theodor
Adorno, Frankfurt, 1955, Vol. I, 163.
3. Cf. René Leibowitz, ‘Belá Bartók or the Possibility of Compromise in Contem-
porary Music,’ (in French) Les Temps Modernes (October, 1947), II:25, 705–734.
4. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie, London, 1964, 604.
5. A reference to the song ‘Lob des hohen Verstandes.’ – Trans.
6. The appetite of the consumer is, to be sure, less concerned with the feeling for
which the work of art stands than with the feeling which it excites, namely,
the sum of pleasure which he hopes to garner. The pragmatic value of art as
emotions has always been insisted upon by arm-chair enlightenment. Hegel
spoke the final word about this point and its Aristotelian overtones: ‘From such
a point of view writers have asked what kind of feelings art ought to excite –
take fear, for example, and compassion – with the further question how such
can be regarded as pleasant, how, in short, the tendency of reflection dates for
Notes

the most part from the times of Moses Mendelssohn, and many such strains of
reasoning may be found in his writings. A discussion of this kind, however, did
not carry the problem far. Feeling is the undefined obscure region of spiritual
life. What is felt remains cloaked in the form of the separate personal experience
under its most abstract persistence; and for this reason the distinctions of
feeling are wholly abstract; they are not distinctions which apply to the subject
matter itself. . . . Reflection upon feeling is satisfied with the observation of
the personal emotional state and its singularity, instead of penetrating and
sounding the matter for study, in other words the work of art, and in doing so
bidding good-bye to the wholly subjective state and its conditions.’ Hegel, Fine
Art, Vol. I. 43–44.
7. Hegel. Fine Art, Vol. II, 394.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., Vol. II, 391.
10. Hegel, Fine Arts, Vol. I, 37.
11. Cf. Max Horkheimer, ‘Neue Kunst und Massenkultur’ (‘Modern Art and Mass
Culture’), in Die Umschau (1948), III:4, 459f.
12. Fine Arts, Vol. III, 425.
13. It is highly surprising that Freud, who otherwise placed all possible emphasis
on the subjective-psychological content of the work of art, hit upon this idea
in one of his late works: ‘Unluckily an author’s creative power does not always
obey his will: the work proceeds as it can, and often presents itself to the author
as something independent or even alien’ (Moses and Monotheism. The Complete
Psychological Writings of Sigmund Freud, London, 1964, Vol. XXIII, 104).
14. The Phenomenology of Mind, 789ff.
15. Adorno here refers to Florestan’s expression of gratitude to Fidelio and Rocco
near the beginning of Act Two of Beethoven’s opera. – Trans.
16. This tendency is by no means limited to advanced composition, but is valid for
everything labeled esoteric under the domination of mass culture. In America
a string quartet cannot support itself unless subsidized by a university or by
other wealthy interests. Here, too, the general trend affirms itself, transforming
the artist, under whose feet the foundation of liberal enterprise wavers, into
a salaried employee. This happens not only in music, but in all fields of the
objective spirit, particularly in literature. The actual reason is growing economic
concentration and the decline of free competition.
17. In his aesthetics of music – in the third section of Fine Arts – Hegel contrasted
dilettantes and connoisseurs, who take opposing views of absolute music. He
subjected the aural perception of the layman to penetrating criticism – still of
validity today – and unconditionally supported the claim of the experts. As
admirable as this deviation from the healthy common sense of the bourgeoisie –
which Hegel was ever eager to support in questions of this nature – might
possibly be, he nonetheless overlooks the necessity of the divergence of these two
types, rooted in the division of labor. Art became the heir of highly specialized

154
 Notes

artisan procedures when the artisan craftsmen were totally succeeded by mass
production. Consequently, the connoisseur, whose contemplative relationship
to art has always contained something of that suspicious taste which Hegel’s
aesthetics saw through so completely, also arrives at that state of untruth –
complementary to the layman – whose only expectation from music remains
that it continue to babble forth alongside his workday. He becomes an expert;
his knowledge – the only thing which can still reach the object in any way –
degenerates to a warehouse of information which, in turn, kills the object.
He unionizes intolerance with stubborn naïveté in everything which extends
beyond technique as an end in itself. While he can control all counterpoint,
he has long since lost his ability to perceive the purpose of the entirety and
whether there even still is a purpose: this specialized know-how is transformed
into blindness; at the same time, perception into an administrative statement of
accounts. In their snobbish zeal for the apologetics of the cultural commodity,
the real expert and the cultivated listener are on the same footing. His attitude is
reactionary: he monopolizes progress. The more this development stamps the
composer as an expert, the more does the attitude of the expert as the agent of
a group identified with privilege permeate the internal construction of music.
18. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, 141.
19. Completeness of material is not in the best interests of philosophical
intention or any aesthetic epistemological theory which hopes to gain more
from persistence in the face of the individual object than from the unified
characteristics of many objects compared with each other. That which proved
itself as most fruitful for the idea was selected. Along with many others, the
works of Schoenberg’s prolific youth are not discussed. The essay on Stravinsky
likewise admits everything from the universally known Firebird to the
Symphony in Three Movements for orchestra (1945).

Schoenberg and Progress

1. Hegel, Phenomenology, 561.

2. The soothing quality comes totally to the surface in the opera Lulu. It is not
only that the accents of the music have transformed Alwa into an ecstatic
German youth, thereby revealing the possibility of reconciling Berg’s Romantic
origins with his mature intentions in the most touching manner possible. The
text itself, moreover, has been idealistically distorted: Lulu has been simplified
to a female creature of nature whom civilization itself outrages. Wedekind
would have reacted sardonically to this twist. Berg’s humanism makes the affair
of the prostitute his own; in so doing he removes the irritating thorn which
the prostitute represents from the flesh of bourgeois society. The principle
according to which she is saved is itself a bourgeois principle: that of false
sublimation of the sexual. In the second of the two dramas by Wedekind upon
which Berg based his libretto, Pandora’s Box, the closing lines of the dying

155
Notes

Geschwitz are: ‘Lulu! My angel! Let me look at you once more! I am close to
you! I’ll stay close to you in eternity! O accursed!’ (She dies.) The decisively
final words ‘O accursed’ were eliminated by Berg. Geschwitz dies a death of
love, a ‘Liebestod.’
3. The German word is ‘Erkenntnis,’ – Trans.
4. The same is true for modern music. In the domain of twelve-tone technique
chords essentially employing octave doublings sound incorrect. Their exclusion
was at first viewed as one of the most significant limitations of the technique in
comparison with free atonality. But – strictly speaking – the prohibition pertains
only to the state of material today and not to older works. The numerous octave
doublings of Die glückliche Hand are in every case still correct. They were
technical necessities because of the excessive tonal richness in the stratified
structure of harmonic sound levels upon which the construction of the work
is based. For the most part they are neutralized, since the doubled tones in
themselves belong to different sub-complexes; they are not directly related to
each other and nowhere do they suspend the effect of the one ‘pure’ chord,
which is not even sought here. At the same time, they have their identity in
the quality of the material. In free atonality there are effects which are related
to those of the leading tone. This results in a tonal residue – the understanding
of the goal-tone as a ‘lead basic tone.’ This gives rise to the possibility of octave
doublings. There is no mechanical pressure – not even the highest precision
of aural perceptions – which leads to twelve-tone technique. It is rather the
tendencies of the material (which by no means correspond to the tendencies
of the individual work and often enough even contradict them) which do so.
Furthermore, twelve-tone composers are undecided as to whether, in the future,
they will avoid all octave doublings for the sake of the purity of the composition
or whether they ought to readmit them for the sake of clarity in the work.
5. In cases where the developmental tendency of Occidental music has not been
purely developed – as in many agrarian regions in south-east Europe – the use
of tonal material has been permitted down to the most recent past. This was not
a matter of disgrace. Janaček and Bartók come to mind. Janaček’s art is extra-
territorial, but nonetheless magnificent in its consequences. Many of Bartók’s
compositions, in spite of his folkloristic inclinations, are nonetheless among the
most progressive in European musical art. The legitimation of such music on
the periphery lies foremost in its ability to formulate a technical canon which is
in itself both correct and selective. In contrast to the blood-and-soil ideology –
a party-line tenet of National Socialism – truly extra-territorial music (the
material of which, even though it is familiar, is organized in a totally different
way from that in the Occident) has a power of alienation which places it in the
company of the avant-garde and not that of nationalistic reaction. The external
exertion of this force comes to the aid of inner-musical cultural criticism as is
expressed in radical modern music itself. Ideological blood-and-soil music,
on the other hand, is always affirmative and holds to ‘tradition.’ It is precisely
the tradition of every official music, however, which is suspended by Janaček’s
diction – patterned after his language – in the midst of all triads.

156
 Notes

6. Cf. Friedrich Holderlin’s poem ‘Brevity’:

‘Why so brief now, so curt? Do you no longer, then,
Love your art as you did? When in your younger days,
Hopeful days, in your singing
What you loathed was to make an end!’
Like my joy is my song. – Who in the sundown’s red
Glow would happily bathe? Gone it is, cold the earth,
And the bird of the night whirs
Down, so close that you shield your eyes.
Poems and Fragments, tr. Michael Hamburger (Ann Arbor, 1967), 45.
7. Musica ficta: In the music of the tenth to sixteenth centuries, the theory of
the chromatic or, more properly, non-diatonic tones other than those in the
diatonic scale. – Trans.
8. This concept is a recurrent motive in Adorno’s study, reflecting the indebtedness
of the Frankfurt school to the work of Freud. The translation emphasizes this
aspect through reliance upon the term ‘case study.’ – Trans.
9. The tremolo passage in the first piano piece from opus 19 or measures 10, 269,
and 382 of Erwartung are examples of such blotches.
10. The origin of atonality as the fulfilled purification of music from all conventions
contains by its very nature elements of barbarism. In Schoenberg’s outbursts –
often hostile to culture – this purification repeatedly causes the surface to
tremble. The dissonant chord, by comparison with consonance, is not only the
more differentiated and progressive; but furthermore, it sounds as if it had not
been completely subdued by the ordering principle of civilization – in a certain
respect, as if it were older than tonality itself. In the midst of such chaos the
style of Florentine Ars Nova – the combining of voices without concern for
harmony, accomplished merely through the senses of untrained musicians –
can easily be confused with many thoughtless products of ‘linear counterpoint.’
At first the complex chords strike the naïve ear as ‘false,’ as an inability to do
things correctly, in the same manner that the layman finds radical graphics
‘misdrawn.’ Progress itself in its passionate protest against conventions has
something of the child – a regressive tendency. Schoenberg’s earliest atonal
compositions – particularly the Piano Pieces [opus 11] – shocked the audience
much more through primitivism than through their complexity. In the midst
of all proliferation, Webern’s works retain a thoroughly primitive complexion,
precisely through the help of proliferation. Stravinsky and Schoenberg are
for a second tangential in this impulse. In Schoenberg the primitivism of the
revolutionary phase is related to the content of expression. The expression
of unmitigated suffering, bound by no convention whatsoever, seems ill-
mannered: it violates the taboo of the English governess who took Mahler
along to a parade, and warned him: ‘Don’t get excited!’ The international
resistance to Schoenberg, in its innermost motivation, is not at all so different
from that directed towards Mahler in his strict tonality. (Cf. Max Horkheimer
and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklarung, Amsterdam, 1947, 214.)

157
Notes

11. ‘New Objectivity’: an artistic movement in the years after the first war; in
German ‘die neue Sachlichkeit.’ – Trans.
12. Arnold Schoenberg, Probleme des Kunstunterrichts (Problems of Art
Instruction), Musikalisches Taschenbuch, Vienna, 1911.
13. Mackay (1864–1933) was born in Scotland, but lived in Germany from earliest
childhood. In 1898 he published the definitive biography of Max Stimer (1806–
1856). Stimer, himself a student of Hegel in Berlin, was a dominant voice of
social and economic criticism in the nineteenth century; his theories anticipate
many of those of the Frankfurt School. He was one of the earliest advocates of
anarchy. – Trans.
14. In the case of Alban Berg, in whose works the tendency towards stylization of
expression dominates and who never completely emancipated himself from the
Art Nouveau movement, the art of quotation moved more and more into the
foreground after Wozzeck. Thus the Lyric Suite duplicates, tone for tone, a spot
from the Lyric Symphony of Alexander Zemlinsky (Viennese composer and
conductor; Schoenberg was his friend, pupil, and – subsequently – his brother-
in-law), as well as the beginning of Wagner’s Tristan. Likewise, a scene in Lulu
quotes the first measures of Wozzeck. By divesting the autonomy of form of its
power in such a quotation, its monadological depth is immediately recognized
as illusory. Proving oneself sufficient in the singular form is tantamount to
the perfection of that which has been assigned to all other forms. The quoting
Expressionist defers to communication.
15. In its attitude towards the organic, Expressionism distinguishes itself from
Surrealism. The ‘inner strife’ of Expressionism is a result of its organic
irrationality. This strife is definable in terms of opposites: sudden gesture
and motionlessness of the body. Its rhythm is patterned after that of waking
and sleeping. Surrealistic irrationality, on the other hand, assumes that
the physiological unity of the body has collapsed – Paul Bekker once called
Schoenberg’s Expressionism ‘physiological music.’ Surrealism is anti-organic
and rooted in lifelessness. It destroys the boundary between the body and the
world of objects, in order to convert society to a hypostatization of the body.
Its form is that of montage. This is totally alien to Schoenberg. With regard to
Surrealism, however, the more subjectivity renounces its right over the world
of objects, aggressively acknowledging the supremacy of that world, the more
willing it is to accept at the same time the traditionally established forms of the
world of objects.
16. ‘Klangfarbenmelodie’: a term suggested by Schoenberg in his Harmonielehre in
a discussion of the possibility of composing ‘melodically’ with varying tone
colors, on a single pitch level as well as with varying pitch, duration and intensity.
The term attempts to establish timbre as a structural element comparable in
importance to pitch, duration, and so forth (cf. Harvard Dictionary, 455). –
Trans.
17. Cf. Theodor Adorno, ‘The Radio Symphony,’ Radio Research 1941 (New York,
1941), passim.

158
 Notes

18. Triadic harmonies are to be compared to the occasional expressions of

language and, even more so, to money in economics. Their abstractness
qualifies them to assume a mediating role at any point and their crisis is
deeply ingrained in the crisis of all functions of mediation in the present
phase. Berg’s musical-dramatic allegory alludes to this fact. In Wozzeck as well
as in Lulu the C-major triad appears in contexts otherwise detached from
tonality, as often as money is mentioned. The effect is that of pointed banality
and, at the same time, of obsolescence. The little C-major ‘coin’ is denounced
as counterfeit.
19. Egon WelIesz, Arnold Schonberg, trans. W. H. Kerridge, New York, 1969, 116.
20. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno’s review of Wilder Hobson’s American Jazz Music and
Winthrop Sargeant’s Jazz Hot and Hybrid, in Studies in Philosophy and Social
Science (1941), 9: I, 173.
21. In his tendency to conceal the working-out in the phenomenon itself,
Schoenberg carries an old impulse of all bourgeois music to its logical
conclusion. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Essay on Wagner,’ in Versuch uber Wagner,
Berlin and Frankfurt, 1952, 107.
22. The last of the Five Piano Pieces [Opus 23]. – Trans.
23. Josef Hauer (1883–1959), Austrian composer; developed a system of
composition according to ‘tropes’ or patterns, without repeated notes and
aggregating to thematic formations of twelve notes. The true development of
the method, with full use of contrapuntal and canonic devices, did not appear
until Schoenberg laid its foundations about 1924. – Trans.
24. It is hardly a coincidence that the mathematical techniques of music
originated in Vienna, the home of logical positivism. The inclination towards
numerical games is as unique to the Viennese intellect as is the game of
chess in the coffee house. There are social reasons why this is so. While
productive intellectual forces in Austria developed to the highest level of
capitalist technique, material forces did not keep pace. For this very reason
controlling calculation became the dream image of the Viennese intellectual.
If he wanted to be a part of the process of material production, he had to seek
a position in industry in Germany. If he stayed at home, be became a doctor
or a lawyer, or else he kept to the numerical game as a phantasm of monetary
power. The Viennese intellectual wants to prove this to himself as well as to
others: ‘bitte schön!’
25. In his use of the phrase ‘recurrence of the same’ Adorno undoubtedly plays
upon Nietzsche’s coinage and use of this concept. It is a basic formula in
Nietzsche’s thought on the myth. – Trans.
26. Quoted by Richard Batka in Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, Stuttgart, n.d.,
Vol. 1, 191.
27. Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West, trans. C. P. Atkinson, New York, 1926,
Vol. 2, 477.
28. Decline of the West, Vol. 1, p. 428.

159
Notes

29. One of the most outstanding characteristics of Schoenberg’s later style is

that it no longer permits conclusions. Furthermore, since the dissolution of
tonality, cadential formulae no longer exist in harmonic context. Now they
are eliminated on the level of rhythm as well. With increasing frequency the
closing of a work falls upon the weak beat of the measure. It becomes no more
than a breaking-off.
30. Music is the enemy of fate. Since earliest times the force of protest against
mythology has been ascribed to it. This is equally true in the image of Orpheus
and in Chinese musical theory. Only since Wagner, however, has music
attempted to imitate fate. The twelve-tone composer resembles the gambler; he
waits and sees what number appears and is happy if it is one offering musical
meaning. Berg spoke emphatically of such joy when tonal contexts were
coincidentally produced by the rows. With the augmentation of this character
of gambling, twelve-tone technique once again communicates with mass music.
Schoenberg’s first twelve-tone dances are of a game-like nature, and during the
time in which the new technique was being defined, Berg was actually offended
by them. Walter Benjamin insisted upon the differentiation between illusion
and play, pointing to the death of illusion. Illusion, as superfluous, is also
rejected by twelve-tone technique. In play, however, that mythology, rejected as
illusion, is reproduced along with the technique.
31. The reason for this is the incompatibility of the concrete melody of song,
towards which Romanticism strove as the seal of subjectivity, with the ‘classic’
idea of integral form, as found in Beethoven. Brahms who foreshadows
Schoenberg in all questions of construction which go beyond mere chordal
material, offers a blatant example of what will later develop into the discrepancy
between row exposition and continuation, namely, the break between the
theme and the next consequence to be developed from it. A striking example
is the beginning of the String Quartet in F-major. The concept of ‘Einfall’ was
defined in order to distinguish the theme as a matter of organic essence from
its creative transformation in the work as a matter of abstract, hypothetical
ordering. ‘Einfall’ is not just a psychological category, a matter of ‘inspiration,’
but a moment in the dialectical process manifest in musical form. This moment
marks the irreducibly subjective element in this process and, by means of its
inexplicability, further designates this aspect of music as its essence, while
the ‘working out’ represents the process of objectivity and the process of
becoming, which, to be sure, contains this subjective moment as a driving
force. On the other hand, as essence, ‘Einfall’ is also possessed of objectivity.
Since Romanticism music has been based upon conflict and synthesis of these
moments. It appears, however, that they resist unification just as strongly as the
bourgeois concept of the individual stands in perennial contrast to the totality
of the social process. The inconsistency between the theme and what happens
to it reflects such social irreconcilability. Nevertheless, composition must keep
a firm grasp on the ‘Einfall’ if the subjective moment is not to be lost. This would
make the composition a parable of fatal integration. If Beethoven’s genius was

160
 Notes

able to manage without this ‘Einfall,’ which in his day had been developed to
an incomparable degree by the masters of early Romanticism, Schoenberg,
on the other hand, adhered to the ‘Einfall’ – to thematic plasticity – in cases
where this had long lost the qualities which would permit its unification with
formal structure. In such instances Schoenberg undertook formal construction
from the perspective of this worn-out contradiction instead of striving for
tasteful reconciliation. (The German word ‘Einfall’ with which Adorno here
works is impossible to translate; it involves the idea of a decisive inspirational
occurrence bordering upon revelation which becomes the basis for a work of
art. – Trans.)
32. In no way is this to be attributed to a decline of individual compositional power,
but rather to the weighty handicap of the new technique. When Schoenberg
in his mature years worked with earlier, random material – for example in
the Second Chamber Symphony [opus 38] – the spontaneity and the melodic
character resulting in these works are in no way inferior to the most inspired
pieces of his youth. On the other hand, however, an obstinate insistence in
many twelve-tone compositions – the magnificent first movement of the Third
Quartet is actually a formulation of this principle – is by no means an external
decoration upon Schoenberg’s musical essence. Such obstinacy is rather the
mirror image of undeterred musical consequence: just as Schoenberg could
not eliminate from his mind the neurotic weakness of anxiety through his will
towards emancipation. Particularly the tonal repetitions, which in twelve-tone
music often have something obstinate and stubborn about them, appear in
an elemental form much earlier in Schoenberg – though, to be sure, usually
with a particular intent of characterization, as in ‘Vulgarity’ in Pierrot Lunaire
(song no. 16 of the cycle). Even the first movement of the Serenade [opus 24],
which is not twelve-tone, shows signs of this same coloration, which is at times
reminiscent of the musical idiom of Beckmesser in Wagner’s Meistersinger.
Frequently, Schoenberg’s music speaks as though it were trying to justify itself
at any price before an imaginary court of justice. Berg consciously avoided such
gesticulations; in so doing, of course, he in turn contributed against his will to
the smoothing and leveling.
33. Berg was pressured in this direction by the technique of variation even before
Schoenberg discovered twelve-tone technique. The tavern scene in the third act
of Wozzeck is the first example of a melodically abstract rhythm which becomes
thematic. This serves a drastic theatrical intention. In Lulu this has developed
into a large form, which Berg calls monoritmica.
34. The early works of twelve-tone technique preserve the principle of
complementary harmony most clearly. Harmonically conceived passages –
such as the coda of the first movement (measures 200ff.) of Schoenberg’s
Woodwind Quintet or the conclusion of the first chorus of opus 27 (measures
24f.) – show this tendency, as it were, in didactic clarity.
35. Ernst Kurth, Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts: Bachs melodische
Polyphonie, Bern, 1917. – Trans.

161
Notes

36. Cf. Schoenberg, opus 27, no. 1, measure 11, soprano and alto, and the
corresponding measure 15, tenor and bass.
37. Paul Hindemith, Craft of Musical Composition, trans. Arthur Mendel,
New York, 1942.
38. Schoenberg orchestrated two choral preludes and one organ prelude and fugue
by Bach; Webern transcribed the six-part fugue of Bach’s Musical Offering for
orchestra. – Trans.
39. The assertion made in a programmatic essay written by Erwin Stein in 1924
and continually repeated since then remains unproven: namely, that in free
atonality larger orchestral forms are not possible. Die glückliche Hand is
perhaps closer to such a possibility than any other work of Schoenberg.
Incompetence in larger forms had to be interpreted more narrowly than in the
Philistine sense that the desire to achieve this was there; but the anarchistic
material would not permit it, and therefore new principles of form had to be
worked out. Twelve-tone technique does not simply prepare the material in
such a way that it is finally suited for use in larger forms. It cuts through the
Gordon knot. Everything which happens within the technique bears traces
of an act of violence. Its invention is a coup de main of the type glorified by
Die glückliche Hand. This could never have been achieved without violence,
because the manner of composition – polarized to extremes – turned its critical
weapon towards the idea of formal totality. Twelve-tone technique attempts to
evade this responsible criticism.
40. The extremely significant String Trio [opus 45] goes furthest in this direction.
In its dispersion – the construction of extreme sound – the Trio evokes the
Expressionist phase, which it approaches in character as well, without neglecting
any structural element. The insistence with which Schoenberg pursues the
questions which he has once designed can only be compared with Beethoven.
Schoenberg does this without ever contenting himself with one particular ‘style,’
such as, for example, the one represented in the earlier twelve-tone works.
41. Cf. T. W. Adorno, ‘Der dialektische Komponist,’ Arnold Schönberg, Festschrift,
Vienna, 1934.
42. ‘Entrückung’ is the text for the soprano solo in the fourth movement of the
Second Quartet [opus 10]. The poem is by Stefan George. – Trans.
43. After this, Berg did not write another composition in sonata form. Those parts
of Lulu relating to Dr. Schoen seem to be an exception. But the ‘exposition’
and its repetition in the composition are so far removed from development
and reprise that they can hardly be understood along with these as a matter
of actual form: the name ‘sonata’ refers rather to the symphonic sound of this
music, to its dramatically cohesive activity, and to the spirit of the sonata in its
inner musical composition, rather than to its external architecture.
44. Cf. T. W. Adorno, ‘Schönbergs Blaserquintett,’ Pult und Taktstock (1928), 5:45ff.
45. This may aid in understanding why Schoenberg completed the Second Chamber
Symphony – in the very late style of decaying tonality – thirty years after it was

162
 Notes

begun. In the second movement of the Symphony he utilizes the experiences

of twelve-tone technique, just as the most recent twelve-tone compositions
resort to figures of that earlier epoch. The Second Chamber Symphony belongs
to the series of ‘dynamic’ works of late Schoenberg. It seeks to overcome the
externality of twelve-tone dynamics through recourse to a ‘dynamic’ material –
the material of chromatic tonality ‘modulated to death’ – and to gain control
over this through total employment of constructive counterpoint. An analysis
of the Symphony, which sounded so old-fashioned to critics oriented to the
style of Sibelius, would necessarily offer the most precise insight into the state
of most progressive production. This obvious recourse recognizes the aporia
with all possible Schoenbergian consequence.
46. ‘The theater director who must himself create everything from the ground
up, has even first to beget the actors. A visitor is not admitted; the director
has important theatrical work in hand. What is it? He is changing the diapers
of a future actor.’ Franz Kafka, Diaries: 1914–1923, trans. Martin Greenberg,
New York, 1949, 222.
47. Karl Linke, Arnold Schönberg, Munich, 1912, 102.
48. ‘A Boat Upon the Sea,’ the third piece of the five which compose Ravel’s
Miroirs. – Trans.
49. Arnold Schonberg, ‘Aphorismen,’ in Die Musik (Berlin, 1909–1910), 9:4, 159ff.
50. Ibid.
51. The quotation is the first line of the poem ‘Entrückung’; cf. note 42 above. –
Trans.
52. T. W. Adorno, ‘Spätstil Beethovens,’ Auftakt (Prague, 1937), 5/6:67.
53. Orchestral transcriptions of Brahms’ G-minor Piano Quartet [opus 25] and the
Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra after Handel’s Concerto Grosso [opus
6 no. 7]. – Trans.
54. ‘The perfected works are of less value to the great man than those fragments
upon which they work throughout their lives. For only the weaker and
more distraught individual finds incomparable joy in concluding a work,
experiencing, in so doing, that he is granted return to his own life. To the
genius in his workshop, the interruption, the severe blow of fate is the same
as the gentle hand of sleep. He captures the magic circle thereof in a fragment.
“Genius is diligence.”’ (Walter Benjamin, Schriften, Frankfurt, 1955, Vol. 1, 518).
At the same time, it must not be overlooked that in Schoenberg’s resistance to
the completion of precisely the most grandiose works which he had planned,
other motives than this cheerful one exerted themselves: the tendency
towards destruction, with which he often damaged his own compositions; the
unconscious, but deeply effective distrust towards the possibility of ‘grandiose
works’ in the present age, and the dubiousness of his own texts, which hardly
could have remained hidden from him.
55. Benjamin’s concept of the ‘aural’ work of art corresponds by and large with that
of the hermetic work. The aura present therein is the uninterrupted sympathy of

163
Notes

the parts with the whole, which constitutes the hermetic work of art. Benjamin’s
theory emphasizes the manner in which circumstances are manifested as
phenomena from the perspective of the philosophy of history; the ‘aural’
content of the hermetic work of art underscores the aesthetic perspective. This
concept, however, permits deductions which the history of philosophy does
not necessarily draw. The result of the decline of the aural or hermetic work
of art depends upon the relationship of its own decline to epistemology. If the
decline takes place blindly and unconsciously, it degenerates into the mass art
of technical reproduction. It is not a mere external act of fate that the remnants
of the aura remain throughout mass art; it is rather an expression of the blind
obduracy of the structures, which, to be sure, results from their suppression
by the present circumstances of domination. The work of art as a means of
perception, however, becomes critical and fragmentary. Agreement on this fact
prevails today in all works of art which have a chance for survival: the works
of Schoenberg and Picasso, Joyce and Kafka, and even Proust offer unified
support of this contention. This, in turn, perhaps allows further speculation in
the field of the philosophy of history. The hermetic work of art belongs to the
bourgeois, the mechanical work belongs to fascism, and the fragmentary work,
in its state of complete negativity, belongs to utopia.
56. Stile recitativo: vocal style designed to imitate and emphasize the natural
inflections of speech, employed particularly in opera, most notably
Baroque. – Trans.
57. Goethe, Faust I, line 784. – Trans.

Stravinsky and Restoration

1. Hegel, Fine Art, Vol. 2, 393–394.

2. ‘When all is said and done, the “Sacre” is still a “Fauvist” work, an organized
“Fauvist” work.’ Jean Cocteau, A Call to Order, trans. Rollo Myers, London,
1926, 43.
3. At an early date Nietzsche recognized the fact that musical material is
permeated by intentions and, at the same time, with the potential contradiction
of these intentions as well. ‘Music by and for itself is not so portentous for
our inward nature, so deeply moving, that it ought to be looked upon as the
direct language of the feelings; but its ancient union with poetry has infused
so much symbolism into rhythmical movement, into loudness and softness of
tone, that we now imagine it speaks directly to and comes from the inward
nature. Dramatic music is possible only when the art of harmony has acquired
an immense range of symbolical means, through song, opera, and a hundred
attempts at description by sound. “Absolute music” is either form per se, in
the rude condition of music, when playing in time and with various degrees
of strength gives pleasure, or the symbolism of form which speaks to the

164
 Notes

understanding even without poetry, after the two arts were joined finally
together after long development and the musical form had been woven about
with threads of meaning and feeling. People who are backward in musical
development can appreciate a piece of harmony merely as execution, whilst
those who are advanced will comprehend it symbolically. No music is deep
and full of meaning in itself, it does not speak of “will,” of the “thing-in-itself ”;
that could be imagined by the intellect only in an age which had conquered
for musical symbolism the entire range of inner life. It was the intellect itself
that first gave this meaning to sound, just as it also gave meaning to the
relation between lines and masses in architecture, but which in itself is quite
foreign to mechanical laws’ (Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human,
in The Complete Works, trans. Oscar Levy, New York, 1924, Vol. 6, Part 1,
192–193). At the same time, however, the separation of sound and that which
is ‘superimposed upon it’ – meaning, for example – remains a mechanical
conception. Nietzsche’s postulate regarding the ‘per se’ is a fiction: all modern
music constitutes itself as a vehicle for meaning. Its essence, after all, involves
more than existence in pure sound, and therefore it cannot be dissected into
simple categories of illusion and reality. Consequently, Nietzsche’s concept of
musical progress as an expanding psychologization is too narrowly designed.
Because the material in itself is already spirit, the dialectics of music move
between the objective and subjective poles; it can in no way be stated that the
subjective pole is of higher stature. The psychologization of music at the cost
of the logic of its structure has proven itself faulty and is now obsolete. By
means of phenomenological and Gestalt-theoretical categories, Ernst Kurth’s
psychology of music (Musikpsychologie, Berlin, 1931) has attempted to define
this ‘superimposition’ with somewhat more finesse. The result, however, is that
he has fallen victim to the opposite extreme – to an idealistic concept of musical
pan-inspiration which simply denies the heterogeneous material element in
musical tone, or rather assigns it to the discipline of the ‘psychology of sound,’
thus restricting musical theory, from the beginning, to the realm of intentions.
In so doing, Kurth – in spite of his understanding of the language of music
– has closed himself off from any insight into the decisive basic component
of musical dialectics. Spiritual-musical material necessarily contains a level
which is without intention – something ‘natural,’ which obviously could not be
distilled as such from music.
4. Parade, a 1917 ballet upon a theme by Jean Cocteau with music by Erik Satie. –
Trans.
5. Stravinsky in his earlier period – as Cocteau openly emphasized at that time
– was far more impressed by Schoenberg than is admitted today in the conflict
between the schools. This influence is evident in the Three Japanese Lyrics and
in many details of Le Sacre du printemps – particularly in the introduction of
the work. It could, however, be traced as far back as Petrouchka. The visual
impact of the score in the final measures before the famous Russian dance of
the first scene, for example (numbers 32ff.) – above all from the fourth measure

165
Notes

on – would be difficult to imagine without Schoenberg’s Pieces for Orchestra

[opus 16].
6. It is here perhaps that the Russian element in Stravinsky is to be sought –
something he has misused, for the most part, as an identification tag. It was
noted long ago that the lyricism of Mussorgsky is distinguished from the
German Lied by the absence of any poetic subject: he views each poem as
does the opera composer the aria, not from the perspective of the unity of
direct compositional expression, but rather in a manner which distances and
objectifies every possible factor of expression. The artist does not converge with
the lyric subject. In essentially pre-bourgeois Russia the category of the subject
was not quite so firmly fitted together as in the Western countries. The factor of
alienation – particularly in Dostoevsky – originated in the non-identity of the
ego with itself: not one of the brothers Karamazov is a ‘character.’ Stravinsky, as
a product of the late bourgeoisie, has at his command such pre-subjectivity that
he is finally able to validate the decline of the subject.
7. Technically, this piping is produced through a certain type of progression
by octaves or sevenths in the contours of wood-wind melodies – clarinets,
in particular – often at a wide range from each other. Stravinsky preserved
this manner of instrumentation as a means of depicting death long after the
grotesque intention had fallen victim to the verdict, as for example in the
‘Cercles Mystérieux des Adolescentes’ (‘Mystic Circle of the Adolescents’) in
Sacre (numbers 94ff.).
8. Sir James Frazer (1854–1941), best-known for The Golden Bough (1911–1920).
Of relevance to the thought complex referred to by Adorno are Frazer’s Taboo
and the Perils of the Soul (1911) and Totemism and Exogamy (1916). Lucien
Lévy-Bruhl (1857–1939), a French psychologist, was the first to define the
pre-logical character of the mentality of primitives. – Trans.
9. Cocteau, op. cit.
10. The concept of renunciation is basic for the total work of Stravinsky and
actually determines the unity of all phrases. ‘Each new work . . . is an example of
renunciation’ (Cocteau, op. cit.). The ambiguity of the concept of renunciation
is the vehicle of the total aesthetics of that sphere. It is used by Stravinsky’s
apologists in the sense of Paul Valéry’s pronouncement that an artist is to be
evaluated according to the quality of his refusal. As a formal generalization
this need not be disputed; it can be applied to the new Viennese school – to
the implicit prohibition of consonance, symmetry, and uninterrupted upper-
voice melody – equally as well as to the varying ascetics of the Western
schools. Stravinsky’s renunciation, however, is not merely renunciation as
abstinence from worn-out and questionable means, but it is a denial as well.
It is an exclusion, as a matter of principle, of all redemption or fulfillment of
an element which appears in the immanent dynamics of musical material, as
an expectation, or a demand. Speaking of Stravinsky, after his conversion to
tonality, Webern said that ‘music had been withdrawn from him.’ Webern thus
characterized the incessant process, which then distorts its self-chosen poverty

166
 Notes

into objective wretchedness. It is not sufficient to reproach Stravinsky’s naïve

technology for everything which he is lacking. Insofar as these lacks stem from
the stylistic principle itself, such reproach would not differ essentially from that
criticism of the Viennese school which complains about the predominance of
‘wrong sounds.’ The meaning of this denial for Stravinsky is to be defined by
the standard of any self-made rule. It must be understood according to the
idea involved, not just according to the omissions determined by it. It would
be meaningless to reproach the artist for not doing what his principle does
not indicate. The important factor is that the product of the will becomes
entangled – permitting the surrounding landscape to wither away – and that it
consequently loses its own validation.
11. Already before the First World War the audience lamented that composers
no longer offered any ‘melody.’ In Strauss’s compositions they were disturbed
by the technique of permanent surprise, which interrupts melodic continuity,
only to permit it occasionally in the crudest and most vulgar fashion, as
a reward after turbulence. Reger causes the melodic profile to disappear
behind unrelentingly mediated chords. In Debussy’s mature works melodies
are reduced to elementary tonal combinations, as materials in a laboratory
are reduced to models. Mahler, finally, who clings to the traditional concept
of melody more tenaciously than any other composer, made enemies in so
doing. He is reproached for the banality of invention as well as for the forced
aspects of his works – for those elements which do not proceed purely from
the motivic driving force of elongated phrase structure. Mahler – parallel to
Strauss in his role as the conciliator of opposing factions, and the life thereof
as well – compensated exaggeratedly for the demise of Romantic melody as
understood in the nineteenth century. In truth, his genius was necessary to
recreate such exaggeration itself as a compositional means of representation,
as the vehicle of musical meaning – the meaning, that is, of a desire conscious
of the impossibility of any lasting fulfillment. It is by no means true that
the melodic power of the individual composers was exhausted. Harmonic
progression, however, historically speaking, moved more and more into the
foreground of musical formulation and reception; this, in the final analysis, did
not permit the melodic dimension to develop proportionally in homophonic
thought. It was this melodic dimension which previously – particularly
since early Romanticism – had made harmonic discoveries possible. This
immediately explains the triviality of many Wagnerian motivic constructions,
which Schumann criticized. It is as though chromatic harmony could no longer
tolerate independent melody. If independent melody is the goal – as it was
in Schoenberg’s early compositions – then the tonal system itself fails as a
result. Otherwise, only two possibilities remain for the composer: he can dilute
melody to such an extent that it is transformed into a mere harmonic function;
or, by sheer force, he can decree harmonic expansions which appear arbitrarily
within the firmly defined harmonic scheme. Stravinsky drew the consequences
of the first possibility – the one established by Debussy: fully aware of the
weakness of melodic successions which in actuality are no longer such, he

167
Notes

totally discards the concept of melody in favor of a truncated, primitivistic

pattern. It was actually only Schoenberg who emancipated melos; in so doing,
however, he liberated the harmonic dimension itself.
12. Cocteau, op. cit.
13. The Six: ‘les Six’ – a name applied in 1920 to a group of six French composers –
Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Germaine Tailleferre, Georges
Auric, and Francis Poulenc – who around 1916 formed a loose association
based on their acceptance of the aesthetic ideas of Eric Satie. They found an
eloquent advocate in Jean Cocteau. (Cf. Harvard Dictionary, 779.) – Trans.
14. ‘Profundity of this kind demands not merely sensitive reception and abstract
thought, but the reason is its concrete grasp and the most sterling qualities
of soul-life. Taste on the contrary is merely directed to the outside surfaces,
which are the playground of the feelings, and upon which one-sided
principles may very well pass as currency. But for this very reason our so-
called good taste is scared by every kind of profounder artistic effect, and is
dumb where the ideal significance is in question, and all mere externalities
and accessories vanish’ (Hegel, Fine Art, Vol. I, 46). The coincidental nature
of ‘one-sided principles,’ the hypostatized sensual sensitivity, idiosyncrasies
as rules, and the dictate of taste are various aspects of the same basic state of
affairs.
15. The formal analogy between twelve-tone constructivism and Stravinsky’s
procedures extends to rhythm as well; in Schoenberg and Berg, rhythm
occasionally makes itself independent from the intervallic melodic substance
and assumes the role of the theme. The difference between these composers is,
however, far more important: even in those cases where the Schoenberg school
operates with such rhythms, they are for the moment charged with melodic
and contrapuntal content, while the rhythmic proportions which in Stravinsky
dominate the musical foreground are employed solely in the sense of shock
effects. They refer to decorative melismata, and in that they appear as an end in
themselves, and not, for example, as the articulation of lines.
16. The polemics of Stravinsky’s followers against the atonality of the central
European countries tends towards an accusation of anarchy. With regard to this
situation, the following insights into Stravinsky the ‘rhythmist’ are by no means
superfluous: he designs the picture of immutable objectivity through the equality
of all rhythmic unities within a given complex; further, the modifications of
accents in which the dynamic markings stand are in no prudent relationship
to the construction; in all cases they could just as well be fixed in another way;
and, finally, beneath the rhythmic shocks there is concealed what Viennese
atonality is continually accused of: arbitrariness. Modifications have the effect
of abstract irregularities as such – not of specific rhythmic events. The last
admission which the outward appearance of music would be inclined to make
is that shocks are effects which can be controlled only by taste. The subjective
moment lives on in pure negation – the irrational tremor, which is the response
to stimulus. The assembled rhythmic patterns of exotic dances are imitated, but

168
 Notes

they remain on the level of free invention, void of all traditional meaning. They
are an arbitrary game, and, to be sure, their arbitrariness is deeply related to
the habit of authenticity throughout Stravinsky’s music. Sacre already contains
those elements which later undermine any claim to authenticity and revert
music – because it aspires to power – to impotence.
17. Cf. Walter Benjamin, Schriften I, 426ff., where several of Baudelaire’s motives
are treated.
18. From society’s perspective the grotesque is generally the form employed to
make alien and progressive factors acceptable. The bourgeois is willing to
become involved in modern art if – by means of its form – it assures him that
it is not meant to be taken seriously. The most obvious example thereof is the
popular success of Christian Morgenstem’s lyric poetry. Petrouchka manifests
clear traits of such conciliation, reminiscent of the master of ceremonies, who
tells jokes to reconcile his audience with whatever else strikes them squarely
and directly. The pre-history of this function of humor is to be found in music.
Not only Strauss and the conception of Beckmesser in Meistersinger come to
mind, but Mozart as well. If it is insinuated that a composer were attracted by
dissonance long before the turn of the twentieth century and were to resist
it only through the convention regarding the sounds of subjective suffering,
then Mozart’s rustic sextet Der Musicalische Spass (‘The Musical Joke’) assumes
far greater importance than that of eccentric frivolity. Precisely in Mozart the
irresistible inclination to dissonance is to be found; this is present not only at
the beginning of the C-Major Quartet, but also in various late piano pieces.
Because of his lavish use of dissonance, Mozart’s style was distasteful to his
contemporaries. The emancipation of dissonance is perhaps not at all the result
of the late-Romantic post-Wagnerian development – as the official history of
music teaches – but rather the desire for it underlying all bourgeois music since
Gesualdo and Bach – somewhat comparable to the role which the concept of
the unconscious secretly plays in the history of bourgeois rationality. This is
not simply a matter of analogy; the dissonance has been, rather, since the very
beginning, the vehicle of meaning for all those factors which have fallen victim
to the taboo of order. Dissonance is responsible for the censured sex drive.
As tension it further contains a libidinal moment – the lament over denial.
This would explain the rage which characterizes the rather universal reaction
to manifest dissonance. Mozart’s Musical Joke is an early anticipation of that
factor in Stravinsky which entered into common consciousness.
19. Konzert im alten Stil (Concerto in the Old Style), for orchestra, opus 123. –
Trans.
20. There is already a counterpart in Petrouchka to the figure of the Wise Elder in
Sacre: the Showman who commands the marionettes to life. He is a charlatan.
It would be a simple matter to see the meaning of Stravinsky’s vaudeville
act as the transfiguration of the charlatan into the all-mighty magician. His
principle of domination – the musical principle of authenticity – emerged out
of play – from deception and suggestion. It is as though contrived authenticity

169
Notes

recognized its own untruth in such an origin. In Stravinsky’s later works,

charlatans and medicine men no longer appear.
21. Essays of Three Decades, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter, New York, 1968, 307–352.
22. Anbruch (1926), 8:5, 214ff.
23. Adorno refers to the Brahms song ‘O wüsst ich doch den Weg zurück’ [opus 63,
number 8]. – Trans.
24. There is no stage of Schoenberg’s work which is characterized by any aspect
of startling; his work rather reveals an aspect of credulous confidence in the
objectively compositional accomplishment – a confidence which refuses to
understand that the products of Brahms or Wagner were of a quality different
from his own. In unshakable faith in tradition, the tradition is dissolved by its
own consequence. In the startling moment, on the other hand, the thought of
effect is always present, even if the effect is one of alienation. There is scarcely
a work of Western art which has totally freed itself from effect. For this reason
it is, in the end, so much easier for those who startle to reach an understanding
with the existing order.
25. The close relationship of this stage of the ritualistic in Stravinsky’s music to
jazz – which became internationally popular at exactly the same time – is
evident. The comparison is valid in technical details such as the simultaneity
of rigid tempi and irregular syncopated accents. Stravinsky experimented with
jazz forms precisely in his infantile phase. The Ragtime for Eleven Instruments,
the Piano Rag Music, and also the ‘Tango’ and ‘Ragtime’ from L’Histoire du
Soldat, are among his most successful pieces. Unlike the numerous composers
who thought to benefit their own ‘vitality’ – whatever that might mean
musically – through tactless familiarity with jazz, Stravinsky reveals, by means
of distortion, the shabby and worn-out aspects of a dance music which has
held sway for thirty years and has now given in completely to the demands of
the market. In a certain respect he forces the flaws of this music to speak, and
transforms the standardized elements of it into stylized ciphers of decay. In so
doing he eliminates all traits of false individuality and sentimental expression,
which irrevocably belong to naïve jazz, and converts such traces of the human –
insofar as they might survive in the artful fragmentation of the formulae which
he has put together – into ferments of dehumanization, with glaring mockery.
His compositions are pieced together out of scraps of commercial goods just
as many pictures or sculptures of the same time were composed of hair, razor
blades, and tinfoil. This defines its difference in niveau from commercial trash.
At the same time, his jazz pastiches appear to absorb the threatening attraction
of that which has been abandoned to the masses, enchaining the danger
thereof by giving in to it. Compared to these practices, every other interest of
composers in jazz was a modest effort to gain an audience – a simple matter
of selling-out. Stravinsky, however, thoroughly ritualized the selling-out itself,
indeed even the relationship to consumer goods. He performs a danse macabre
around its fetish character.
26. Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, New York, 1945.

170
 Notes

27. Fenichel, 419.

28. The inner-aesthetic tendency towards dissociation, which asserts itself here,
stands in a remarkably pre-established harmony with the harmony of the film.
Here the harmony can be explained only out of the unity of society as a totality;
in the film it is technologically determined, representing the decisive medium
of contemporary cultural industry. In the film, picture, word, and sound are
disparate. Film music obeys laws similar to those of the ballet.
29. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, 212ff.
30. This is historically mediated by Cocteau’s Cock and the Harlequin, a work
opposing the theatrical element in German music. It coincides with the
expressive: musical theatrics are nothing but the prevalence of command over
expression. Cocteau draws heavily upon Nietzsche’s polemics. Stravinsky’s
aesthetic is derived from the same source.
31. Das Unaufhörliche, oratorio in three parts after a text by Gottfried Benn, for
solos and mixed chorus, boy’s choir and orchestra. – Trans.
32. Even Sacre is not unconditionally anti-conventional. Thus the passage of
jousting which prepares for the entrance of the Medicine Man (from number
62 on; page 51 of the miniature score) is the stylization of a gesture of operatic
convention, as opera might well provide the background for the excitement
of the masses of common people; formally, it is repetition composed to death.
Grand opera has contained such moments since Auber’s La Mouette de Portici.
Stravinsky’s entire work exhibits a tendency not so much to eradicate all
conventions as to work out their essence. Several of his last works – such as
the Danses Concertantes and the Scènes de Ballet – have almost converted this
tendency into theory. Such an inclination does not belong to Stravinsky alone,
but rather to an entire epoch. The more musical nominalism increases and
traditional forms lose their cohesiveness, the less important it becomes to add
one more special case of a type to its already existing representatives. Wherever
composers are not willing to renounce every established generality of form,
they must attempt to formulate purely the essence of form with which they are
involved, as though it were the Platonic idea thereof. Schoenberg’s Woodwind
Quintet is a sonata in the same sense that Goethe’s Märchen embodies the
idea of Märchen. (Cf. T. W. Adorno, ‘Schönbergs Bläserquintett,’ in Pult und
Taktstock (1928), 5, 45ff. Regarding the ‘destillation’ of figures of expression,
cf. Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter, New York, 1965,
488ff.)
33. Therewith the danger of the unendangered becomes acute, the parody of that
which is already so despised that it is no longer in need of parody. The superior
imitation of this situation provides the cultural bourgeois with a certain
melancholy joy. Shock is absorbed by laughter in the outspokenly charming
four-banded piano pieces, which were later orchestrated in such a virtuoso
manner as the Suite No. 1 for Small Orchestra. Nothing can be noticed of the
schizoid alienation of L’Histoire, and the pieces have become concert favorites
in the ever-present cabaret tradition.

171
Notes

34. Rudolf Kolisch, Austrian violinist, born 1896; brother-in-law of Schoenberg;

founded his own string quartet which was renowned for its extensive repertory
of modern works. – Trans.
35. The inclination to write music about music was widespread at the beginning of
the twentieth century. This may be traced back to Spohr, if indeed the blame
is not to be placed upon Mozart and his imitations of Händel (Overture in the
Style of Händel, K. 399. – Trans.). Even Mahler’s themes, however – free as
they are of such ambitions – are childhood memories from the Golden Book
of Music which have been displaced through blissful desire. Strauss has found
pleasure in innumerable allusions and pastiches. The model for all this is in
Wagner’s Meistersinger. It would be superficial to condemn this inclination
as Alexandrian and civilizing in Spengler’s sense, as though the composition
no longer had anything of its own to say and therefore had attached itself
parasitically to something already lost. Such concepts of originality are derived
from the concept of bourgeois property: unmusical judges condemn musical
thieves. The basis of the tendency is technical in nature. The possibilities of
‘invention’ or ‘discovery,’ which seemed unlimited to aestheticians in the age
of competition, are limited in the scheme of tonality: on the one hand they are
defined, to a large extent, by the dissected triad, on the other by the diatonic
succession of seconds. At the time of Viennese classicism, when the formal
totality was of greater importance than melodic ‘inspiration,’ the restrictive
narrowness of that which lay at the disposal of the composer had not yet been
felt. With the emancipation of the subjective melos of the Lied, however, the
barriers became ever-more perceptible: composers were forced to rely upon
‘inspiration’ – as in the cases of Schubert or Schumann. The scant material,
however, was so totally exhausted that no further inspiration could come forth
which had not been present previously. They therefore absorbed the depletion
of this supply into a subjective relationship and then constructed their
thematic motives – more or less openly – as ‘quotations’ with the effect of the
recurrence of the familiar. In Stravinsky this principle becomes absolute: the
only procedure which can be contrasted with it is that which departs from the
harmonic-melodic circle, as in the case of Schoenberg. Among the impulses
towards atonality, the desire to escape into freedom was certainly not the least
important. It was the impulse to flee from a material which was exhausted
not only in terms of its own configurations, but of its symbolism as well. The
relationship between the historical aspect of writing music about music and the
collapse of what was once commonly known as ‘melody’ is unmistakable.
36. This ambivalence is so strong that it repeatedly manifests itself even during the
neo-classic phase, where it was posed in the incessant affirmation of authority.
The most recent example thereof is the circus polka with the minor caricature
towards the end of Schubert’s Marche Militaire.
37. Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense, New York, 1942, 30.
38. Fauxbourdon effect: the parallel progression of first-inversion triads common
in the fifteenth century. – Trans.

172
 Notes

39. Feruccio Busoni, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, in Three Classics in the
Aesthetics of Music, New York, 1962.
40. The bourgeois idea of the pantheon would like to join painting and music in
a peaceful relationship. Their relationship, however – in spite of synaesthetic
double talents – is contradictory to the point of incompatibility. This
became obvious precisely at that point where their union was proclaimed
in cultural philosophy, that is, in Wagner’s concept of the composite work
of art – the Gesamtkunstwerk. The plastic aspect of this idea was from the
outset so rudimentary that it is hardly amazing that Bayreuth performances,
representing the absolute height of musical perfections, were presented
with hopelessly outmoded stage settings. Thomas Mann has pointed out
the ‘dilettante’ aspect involved in the concept of unification of the arts. He
defines this dilettantism as an essentially unartistic relationship to painting.
From Rome and from Paris, Wagner wrote to Mathilde Wesendonk: ‘. . . my
eyes are not enough for me to use to take in the world,’ and ‘. . . Raphael
never touches me.’ He continued: ‘See everything for me’ (Thomas Mann,
‘The Sufferings and Greatness of Richard Wagner.’ Essays of Three Decades,
trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter, New York, 1948, 316–317). For this reason Wagner
calls himself a ‘vandal.’ He was guided by the presentiment that music
contains an element not grasped by the process of civilization – which has
not been fully subjugated to objectified reason – while the art of the eye,
which holds to the deigned objects – to the objective practical world – reveals
itself to be intimately related to the spirit of technological progress. The
pseudomorphism of music with the technique of painting capitulates before
the superior power of rational technology in that very sphere of art which
had its essence in protest against such domination and which nevertheless
became the victim of progressive rational domination of nature.
41. The Histoire du Soldat further reveals itself as the true focal point of Stravinsky’s
work in that, in the composition of the Ramuz text, the score leads to the very
threshold of consciousness of the state of affairs expressed in the text. The hero –
a prototype of that generation after the First World War, out of which fascism
recruited the hordes who were ready to march to the battlefields – perishes
because he transgresses against the commandment of the unemployed: to live
only for the moment. The continuity of experience in his memory is the mortal
enemy of self-preservation which can be gained only through self-annihilation.
In the English text the narrator warns the soldier:
‘One can’t add what one had to what one has
Nor to the thing one is, the thing one was.
No one has a right to have everything –
It is forbidden.
A single happiness is complete happiness
To add to it is to destroy it. . . .’
This is the anxiety-ridden, irrefutable maxim of positivism, the proscription
of the recurrence of everything past, which would threaten regression into

173
Notes

myth – it would represent deliverance to forces which in the composition are

embodied by the devil. The princess complains that she has never heard the
soldier speak about his earlier life; thereupon he vaguely mentions the city
where his mother lived. His sin – the transgression of the narrow boundaries
of the kingdom – can hardly be understood as anything but a visit to that city:
as a sacrifice to the past. ‘La recherche du temps perdu est interdite’ – this is
of greater validity for no other art form than that for which the innermost
law is regression. The regressive transformation of the subject into its pre-
worldly being is made possible by cutting him off from the means by which
he might become aware of himself. The soldier remains under the spell of
the mere present; this fact unravels the taboo which prevails throughout
Stravinsky’s music. The jerky, blatantly present repetitions in the music should
be understood as the means by which permanence can be given a dimension
in memory while remaining static. These repetitions further serve to uproot
the protected past from within the music. Traces thereof form the background
both of the mother and the taboo. The course ‘back to the land of childhood’ –
as prescribed in the song by Brahms – becomes the cardinal sin of an art which
would like to restore the pre-subjective aspect of childhood.
42. Stravinsky is in many respects the opposite pole of Gustav Mahler, to whom
he is nevertheless related in his thoroughly disjunct compositional procedure.
Stravinsky has often opposed the highest ambition of Mahler’s symphonic
composition: the concluding section, those moments in which music – having
come to a standstill – must move on. Essentially he grounds his dictate over the
listener (proof of the latter’s impotence) – in the withholding of that which he
feels entitled to for the sake of the element of tension in the models: this right
is denied, and tension in itself – an undefined and irrational effort without a
goal – is made the law of the composition and of its adequate perception as well.
There is a tendency to become enthusiastic about a wicked man if he once does
something respectable; in like manner, such music is praised for its moments
of respectability. In rare exceptional cases of cleverness, the music permits
conclusion-like sections which, by contrast – precisely by virtue of their rarity –
border on ethereal bliss. An example is the intensive final ‘cantilena’ from the
‘Danse de l’Elue’ (from number 184 to number 186), before the last entrance
of the rondo theme. But even here, where the violins are permitted to ‘sing
themselves out’ for a moment, the same, unchanged rigid ostinato remains in
the accompaniment. The concluding section is not intrinsic in nature.
43. Ernst Bloch’s distinction between the dialectical and mathematical essence
within music approximates the distinction between these two types quite
closely.
44. The most important theoretical document on this topic is Wagner’s essay on
conducting. The subjective expressive ability to react dominates so totally in the
spatial-mathematical sense of music that the latter appears only in the Philistine
phenomenon of the provincial German metronomical conductor. Wagner
demands radical modifications of tempi even in Beethoven, depending upon
the varying character of the figures. Consequently, even in the most obvious

174
 Notes

aspects the paradoxical unity in multiplicity is sacrificed. The abyss between

the total architectural scheme and details laden with expression can be bridged
only by dramatic force – a theatrical factor which by its innermost nature is alien
to music, particularly in the form in which it became the interpretive medium
of modern virtuoso conductors. In contrast to this shift of the symphonic time
problem to the merely subjective-expressive side, which renounces the musical
domination of time and entrusts itself to permanence (totally lacking, as it
were, in will), Stravinsky’s procedure simply represents a counter-blow, by no
means the reassumption of the actual symphonic dialectics of time. The only
thing he accomplishes is the severing of the Gordian knot, which opposes the
subjective disintegration of time with its objective-geometrical division, but
does not establish a constructional relationship between the time dimension
and the musical content. In the spatial expansion of music, time disintegrates,
by means of stylistic attitude, just as it decomposes into lyric moments in lyric
expressive style. (Adorno refers to Wagner’s ‘About Conducting,’ Wagner’s Prose
Works, trans. W. A. Ellis, London, 1895, Vol. 4, 289–364. – Trans.)
45. This touches upon a condition of affairs which is characteristic of Stravinsky’s
works as a whole. The individual compositions are not developed in
themselves; the works and the various phases of style follow one another
without any actual development. All are unified in the rigidity of ritual. The
eternal constancy of the individual works corresponds to the surprising change
of his periods. Because there is no essential change, the original phenomenon
can be shown from disarming perspectives and in countless circumventions.
Even those transitions in Stravinsky’s career as a composer – dictated by
rationalization – are dominated by the law of trickery. ‘The main thing is the
resolution’ (Arnold Schoenberg, ‘Der neue Klassizismus,’ Introduction to the
Three Satires for Mixed Chorus). One of the difficulties involved in a theoretical
treatment of Stravinsky, and by no means the least, is that the modification
of the immutable in the succession of his works forces the observer either to
arbitrary antitheses or to mediation without contours of all contrasts, as they
are practiced by ‘understanding’ intellectual history. In Schoenberg the phases
are far less openly contrasted with each other and it can be said – even in his
early works, the songs of opus 6, for example – that what later is to break forth
with the force of a revolution is already anticipated or pre-thought under a
cotyledon. But the revelation of new quality as the self-equation – along with
the differentiation from the old – is actually a process. Mediation – the process
of becoming – in the dialectical composer contributes to its own substance;
this is not accomplished in that which does no more than manipulate this
substance.
46. Cf. the analysis by H. F. Redlich in Anbruch (1929), 41f.
47. The provincialism of the Schoenberg school is not to be separated from its
contradictory quality, its intransigent radicalism. Wherever there is reason to
still hope for an absolute from art, art looks upon every factor, every tone, as
absolute and in this way pursues authenticity. Stravinsky is clever with regard
to aesthetic seriousness. His consciousness of the transformation of all art into

175
Notes

consumer goods is today of relevance for the organization of the elements of

his style. The objectivistic emphasis of play as play means – and this is true
above and beyond his aesthetic program as well – that the entire matter is
not to be taken too seriously; to do so would be awkward, pretentious in a
characteristically German manner – to a certain degree it would even be alien
to art because of the contamination of art by reality. Taste had always been
supported by a certain lack of seriousness; at this point it seems – within the
development of a long tradition – that seriousness itself has become tasteless.
On the other hand, it is precisely in the denial of seriousness, in the negation
of any responsibility in art – including resistance to the preponderance of
existence – that seriousness should consist: music is seen as the parable of an
attitude which ridicules seriousness, while this attitude itself is actually rooted
in terror. In the authenticity of the buffoon or the clown, to be sure, such a
realistic disposition is outdone and driven to absurdity by the pride of the
‘tune-smiths’ who behave as though they were expression of the times. These
tune-smiths tack their formulae together on pianos prepared in F-sharp major.
On the other hand, Stravinsky – to them – is a ‘long-haired musician,’ while
they are sufficiently unfamiliar with the name of Schoenberg that they guess
him to be a hit-tune composer.

176
Index

absolute music 12, 13, 126, 144 and the basis of cognitive criticism 1
of Schoenberg’s school 13 cousin of Adorno x
Adorno, Theodor ix–xii Berg x, 7, 20, 42, 55, 68, 74, 75, 76, 77
Hegelian outlook xi Der Wein concert aria 74
his German xi Lulu/Lulu see Lulu
sociology of music ix Lyric Suite, his first twelve-tone
advanced music 13 work 68–9, 75
alienation 118–19 violin concerto 74–5
Apollinaire 127 Berlioz 107
apologetics 18 Bizet 139
archaism 110–13 Brahms 8, 36, 38, 39, 53, 77, 84, 130
Art Nouveau 30, 148 advocate of universal economy 38
atonal chaos 143 Brech 117
atonal style, disjunct 40 Britten, Benjamin 4
atonality 2, 3, 142 Bruckner 55
authenticity 95–7, 145, 146, 149 Buson 122
avant-garde 6–7, 9
and theory 78–82 catatonia 123–5
Clairaudient composers 74
Bach 8, 36, 44, 62, 65, 75, 84, 96, 101, 139 classic in music, concept of the 37
Art of the Fugue 62, 63, 65 coarsening 52–4
Musical Offering 62 Cocteau 103, 127
polyphonic music 65, 81 Parade 98
Well-Tempered Clavier 62 cognition 87
ballet music 133–5, 140 collective perception 12
Bartók, Béla 1, 146 composers 72–8
Baudelaire 115, 127 class membership 92
Beethoven 5–6, 8, 12, 23, 34, 36ff., 46, 47, in Germany 86
52, 53, 54, 69, 71, 84, 85, 89, 91, 106, of eminence 11
136, 137, 146 composition
classicism 38 gift of 11
dance, apotheosis of the 137 technical procedures of 79
Eroica, the 38, 98 concert hall performance 6
later works 84, 85 consonance 58, 143
Ninth Symphony 112 as reconciliation 75
opera 13 content
polyphonic sections 62 interdependency with form 27
Seventh Symphony 136 regarding subject matter 13
Sonata [opus 111] 23 continuation 69
technique 23 animation 70
Benjamin, Walter 1, 126 concept of 69
and Franz Kafka’s narratives 125 contradiction 18
Index

contrapuntal logic 81 negation of 122

contrast rejection of 121
as a law of form 32 subjective 38, 78
principle of 40, 64 expression in music 12–13
themes of Mozart 40 Expressionism 30, 32, 34, 149
Cosi fan Tutte 16 as objectivity 32–4
counterpoint 35, 36, 61ff., 81, 105 content of 32
function of 65–6 Expressionist music 28
in Western music 65 Expressionistic chaos 29
Schoenberg’s emancipation of 65 Expressionistic music 32–3, 34
twelve-tone 61–6
criticism 18 fate
and domination of nature 45
Debussy 55, 104, 105, 106, 111, 114, 127, schema of 45
129, 130, 131, 132 Fenichel, Otto 121
Jeux 130 fifths, progression of 22
Pelléas et Melisande 114 film industry 80
Preludes 130 film production 79
denaturation 127–9 Flaubert, Madame Bovary 102
depersonalization 120–1 form 27, 32, 53, 66–72, 130
Devincourt, Claude, Offrande à Shiva 106 conventions of 40
Diaghilev 135 dynamics of 146
Die glückliche Hand [opus 18] 20, 30, 33 interdependency with content 27
differentiation 52–4 taboos of 25
dimensions 34, 35, 65 Frazer 102
dissonance 39, 40, 58, 59, 143 freedom, loss of 45–8
as disaster 75 Freud 104, 111
distributing music 3 Totem and Taboo 102
domination 43, 44, 45 fugue, the art of the 8
dramatic music 25
Dukas 106 generation
dynamics 132 Hindemith’s 3
compositional 41 the third 3
dynamic musical form 112 German music, tradition of 106
twelve-tone technique contradicts 67 Goethe 83, 84
Faust 91
economy of material 39 Greenberg, Clement 6
Eisenstein 129
Elgar 4 Handel
Ernst, Max 140 formulations of suspensions 143
Erwartung [opus 17] 8, 22, 29, 33–4, 35, B-flat major concerto 85
60, 113 harmonic aporia 63
European music, history since Hadyn 71 harmonic breakdown 56
Euryanthe 16 harmonic logic 81
Eurydice 91 harmonic perception, phenomena of 52
expansion, experiments in 144–6 harmonic polyphony 62
Expression/expression 122, 123, 125, 129, harmonics 54
135, 140, 141 harmony 42, 54–9, 62, 105
as stylized communication 25 complementary harmony 55, 56, 57, 59
modes of 13 decline of 59

178
 Index

emanciation of by Schoenberg 105 language of music, the new 7

functionless 130 Le Sacre du printemps 101ff., 108,
in modern music 56 110, 111, 115, 120, 121, 124,
indifference between harmony and 129, 144
melody 57 and African sculpture 101–3
relationship with polyphony 39 ‘Jeu de Rapt’ 104
triadic 58 technical elements 103–6
Hauer, Josef 42 Les Paradis Artificiels 127
hebephrenia 121–3 Lévy-Bruhl 102
Hegel 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 38, 136 light music 136–7
dialetic of master and servant 14 listening, modes of 135–8
negation of Kantian aesthetics 11 loneliness 31
‘unhappy self-consciousness’ 13 as style 30–2
Heidegger, Martin xi dialectics of 27–30
Hindemith 3, 21, 36, 58, 59, 92, 96, Lulu 7, 42, 75
123, 127 Lulu’s twelve-tone death chord 55
compositional procedures 36
his generation 3 Mach, Ernst 115
hit-tune industry 79 Mackay, John Henry 31
Hitler 103, 127, 144 Mahler, Gustav 5, 59, 75, 98, 119
homophonic sonata-form 36 Das Lied von der Erde 110
homophony 39, 62 Eighth Symphony 11
Horkheimer, Max xv man of letters 127, 129
Husserl 17 Debussy and Ravel 127
Mann, Thomas ix, x
Impressionism 130, 131, 132 Doctor Faustus ix
incomprehension 7 Mannheim school 113
individuation 114 mass production xiii, 79
infantile music 128 material, thematic 37
infantilism 110–13, 124 material dimensions 36
instrumental timbre 59–61 mechanized art 2
instrumentation, clarity in 59 mediation 70
intellectualism 7–10, 87 melody 34, 42, 121
irrational philosophy, music’s appeal to 3 indifference between melody and
harmony 53
Joyce 126 melos 48–52
juke box 15, 126 Mendelssohn 86
Jung, Carl Gustav 111 metaphysics 149
Meyerbeer 119
Kafta, Franz 125 ‘middle road, the’, according to
Kandinsky, Vassily, on Schoenberg 25 ­Schoenberg 1
Kant 87, 113, 136 Milhaud 1
kitsch 6, 138 mind, freedom of 14
‘Klangfarbe’ melody 35 modern composition 7
Kolisch, Rudolf 125 modern music, philosophical analysis of
Kolliner, Else, article on Renard 111, 116 extremes 17
Krenek, Ernst 90 modernism 110–13
and twelve-tone technique 80 monody 66
Second Symphony 90 Monteverdi 25
Kurth, book on linear counterpoint 56 motility 123

179
Index

Mozart 16, 26, 40, 44, 53, 54, 96 polyphonic music 12

music about music 125–7, 128, 129, 142 Bach’s superiority in 65
music and text, quality of 16 polyphony 12, 39, 56, 62, 105
musica ficta 25 Bach’s validation of 81
musical expression, change in function relationship with harmony 39
of 25 polytonality 105
musical form, and permanent Impressionistic model 105
­regression 114–16 popular music 124, 127
musical material 24, 44, 126, 129, 147 Pres, Josquin des 43
historical tendency in 21 progressive music 14
liberation of 34
traditional conception of 21 radical music 19
musical time, dissociation of 41 radio, the 15, 126
Mussorgsky 97, 105, 112 Ravel 73, 130, 145
myth 149 Jeux d’eau 130
Valses Nobles et Sentimentales 103
narcissism 121 Reger, Max 35, 109
National Socialist Chamber of Music Renard 113, 114, 116, 17
(Reichsmusikkammer) 4 renunciation 76, 131
nature, musical domination of 43–5, 147 restitution, phenomenon of 124
neo-classicism 2, 124, 142–3, 144, 148 rhythm 48–52, 106–8
Netherlands school, the ‘arts’ of the 63 ritual 117–18
New Objectivity 30, 127 Romanticism 6
philosophically oriented consideration rondo 66
of 1 Rossini 139
Nietzsche 26, 102, 123, 139–40
polemic against Wagner 26, 131 Sacre see Le Sacre du printemps
sacrifice 108
objectivism 148, 149 Satie 98, 125
the deception of 138–9 schizophrenia 120–3, 124
objectivity 32 Schoenberg x, xi, xiii, xiv, 1, 6, 7, 8, 13,
alienation as 118–19 24ff., 35, 40ff., 49, 51, 54, 55, 57,
observation 87 60–1, 67ff., 73, 74, 76, 77, 80, 83ff.,
Oedipus 149 92, 99, 102, 106, 107, 112, 117, 133,
Offenbach 139–40 142, 147
ostinato technique, employed by Accompaniment to a Cinematograhic
­Schoenberg 57 Scene [opus 34] 42, 85
aesthetic objectivism 38
Palestrina school 82 and classic bourgeois music 38
perception 87–9 and decorative elements of
collective perception 12 Romanticism 26
perceptive faculty 6 and New Objectivity music-makers 26
Persephone 149 and universal unity 39
philosophical investigation of art, the 2 as a synthesis of Brahms and
photography 2 Wagner 36
Picasso 80, 128, 144 attitudes towards play 26
Pierrot Lunaire [opus 21] 7, 14, 59, 99–100 Bach arrangements 59
the ‘Moon Spot’ 58–9 choral works 89
polyphonic achievements 65 cognition 87
polyphonic fugal structure 36 compositional procedure 52

180
 Index

compositional technique 41 Second Chamber Symphony

compositions 26, 29 [opus 38] 85
Concertino for String Quartet 117 Second Quartet 83
criticism of illusion and play 24–6 secondary works 86
Das Buch der hlingenden Gilrten sentimentalism 122
[opus 15] 25 shortest movements 24
defining the theory of composition 89 Six Orchestral Songs [opus 8] 86
developing row technique in Serenade Suite for String Orchestra [Kol Nidre,
[opus 24] 48 opus 39] 84–5
Die glilckliche Hand 28, 29, 30, 60, 85, 98 technical innovations, and
Die Jakobsleiter 85, 89 expression 27
early chamber music 60 the waltz from opus 23 86
economy of material 39 Third Quartet 57, 59, 60, 66, 67, 69
Entrückung 68 Third String Quartet [opus 30] 42
espressivo style 24–5 Three Satires for Mixed Chorus
Expressionist works 20, 27 [opus 28] 1
Expressionistic phase 35 twelve-tone phase 63
Expressionistic Schoenberg Variations for Orchestra [opus 31]
school 122 42, 60, 74
First Chamber Symphony [opus 9] Violin Concerto [opus 36] 68, 84
68, 71, 86 Von heute auf morgen 85
Five Pieces for Orchestra [opus 16] 60 Well-Tempered Clavier 42
Five Pieces for Piano [opus 23] 108 Woodwind Quartet [opus 26] 60, 69,
formal innovations, and expression 25 74, 84
Fourth Quartet 54, 56, 68, 70, 71 Schopenhauer 3, 114
Fourth String Quartet [opus 37] 49 Schubert, Die Winterreise 96
George songs 25 Schumann’s ‘Der Dichter spricht’ (from
Gurrelieder 85 Kinderszenen) 75
harmony, emancipation of 105 Scriabin 54
Kandinsky’s publication on 25 second neo-classic generation 1
‘Klangfarbe’ melody 35, 60 shock 107–8, 112, 134, 138, 141
middle period 60 Berlioz 107
Moses und Aron 85 concept of 107
most recent works 13, 87, 89 Stravinsky 108, 123, 140
musical substance, his 16 Shostakovich, and Bolshevism 4
objectively musical validities 115 Sibelius 4, 23
orchestration of operetta 85 simplification 127–9
ostinato technique 57 Six, The 105
Piano Pieces [opus 11] 25, 86, 87 sonata, the classic 67
Piano Rag Music 117 sonata form 66, 136
pieces for male chorus 32 Spengler 43–4
polyphonic organization 62 Stein, Erwin 39
polyphony 39, 63 Steuermann, Eduard x
recent instrumental works 66 stile recitative 90
rondos 50 Stirner, Max 31
Schoenberg school 98, 116, 122, 128, Strauss 35, 119
147, 149 Der Rosenkavalier 104
musical material 126 Elektra 111
rhythmic concept 107 Josefslegende 135
the prolific output of 19 Till Eulenspiegel 99

181
Index

Stravinsky x, xi, xiii, xiv, 1, 2, 41, 44, 48, taste, primacy of 106
52, 54, 67, 92, 95ff., 101, 104ff., the totem clan 115
134ff., 148 Violin Concerto 145
and authenticity 96 Woodwind Octet 142
Apollon Musagéte 144 stylistic legitimacy 2
Bergsonianism 133 subjectivity 90, 140, 148
caberet, the 99 symmetry 67
Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra 145 in twelve-tone technique 67
children’s songs 111 symphony, the 40
compositional procedures 36
compositions for Diaghilev 14 taste
Concertino for String Quartet 142 absence of 106
Concerto for Piano and Winds 143 truth of 106
Concerto for Two Pianos 145 Tchaikovsky 7, 140
depersonalization 121 technical analysis 18
division into ballet and objectivistic technology, music and 133
music 121 thematic formation 40
Duo for Violin and Piano 145 thematic material 37, 41
folk, concept of 114 theme 70
hand organ and Bach organ 101 and working-out 70
harmony 98 themes 40
L’Histoire du Soldat 111, 116, 119, 120, timbre 60
123, 124, 125, 126, 142 instrumental, decline of 59
individuation 114 time 133
infantilism 114, 116–17, 120, 123, 125, articulation of 136
142, 145 disassociation of 129–32
insanity 118 eradication of 129
Jeu de Cartes 145 music and 37
jokes 143 music as arbiter of 134
Jung’s theories 111 tonal system, the 7
Le Baiser de la Fée 140 tonality 3, 7, 39, 54, 58, 62, 63, 85, 87, 97,
Les Noces 111 104, 142
neo-classic phase 142, 144 decay of 71
objectivism 96 mutilated 125
Oedipus Rex 145 renaissance of 124
Petrouchka 98, 99–101, 102, 103, 105, selection in 34
108, 109, 111, 124 traditional music 6, 7
position in the modern music triadic harmony 58
­movement 4–5 Tristan 31, 131
positivism 115 truth and untruth 122
Pulcinella suite 140 twelve-tone constructivism 72, 148
Russian ballet, the 98 twelve-tone counterpoint 61–4
Scherzo a la Russe 145 Schoenberg’s earlier twelve-tone
schizophrenic elements in his pieces 64
music 120 Webern’s works 64
separates portrayal and song 113 twelve-tone harmony 55, 57
Serenade in A 144 twelve-tone melody 49
student of Rimsky-Korsakov 97 twelve-tone melos and rhythm 48–52
Symphony of Psalms 145 twelve-tone music 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59,
Symphony of Three Movements 145 60, 66, 70, 71, 76, 78

182
 Index

arbitrariness of 54 Wagner 16, 35, 36, 39, 52, 85, 114, 115,
repetition 66 119, 123, 128, 130, 131, 132, 139
twelve-tone polyphony 56 Bayreuth 9
twelve-tone row 63 criticism of 29
twelve-tone technique xi, 2, 32, 41, 43, German philosophy 114
44–7, 48, 51, 52, 54, 57ff., 70ff., Germanic polytheism 115
75, 76, 80ff., 89–90, 113, 122, 128, Gesamtkunstwerk 30
130, 142 individuation 114
and structure of color 60 Parsifal 129
concept of 41–3 Prelude to Tristan 55
contradicts dynamics 68 Ring 15
not permitting choice 71 the libretto 15
origin of 36 Thomas Mann’s essay on 110
prevents dynamic form 70 ‘Treibhaus’ 57
rigidity of 75 Valkyries, the 110
symmetry in 67 Weber 16, 53, 140
twelve-tone theme, and rondo 49 Der Freischutz overture 52–3
Webern 27, 36, 63, 66, 76, 78, 83, 87, 96
universal economy 38 Bach arrangements 59
universal necrophilia 140 Five Movements for String Quartet 87
universal unity 39 last string quartet [opus 28] 36
Piano Variations [opus 27] 77
Varèse, Edgar 106 shortest movements 24
variation 45, 66, 70 String Quartet [opus 28] 77
prior to Beethoven 71 String Trio 76
procedure of 37, 41, 52 twelve-tone compositions 76, 77
variational development 38 Wedekind, Frank, circus plays 98
Verdi 25 Wellsez, Egon, and Petrouchka and Pierrot 99
Viennese classicism 6, 45, 54 Western music 24, 36, 113, 127
Viennese music 128 Western tonal music, dimensions of 34
Viennese school 113 Westphal, Kurt 130
the new 95, 133 Wozzeck 20

183
184