grgr (20): the vanishing of free atonality

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 "the subject is dominating the music through a rational system, only to be 
 defeated himself by the rational system. the same way the twelve-tone system 
 shifts back the actual composing, the productivity of variation, into the   
 material, the freedom of the composer in general gets lost. realizing itself in 
 the disposition about the material, the freedom becomes a definition of the  
 material, which is, as an alienated one, counterparting the subject and forcing 
 it to devotion. when the composer's fantasy has diciplined the material to its 
 constructive will, the constructive material paralyses the fantasy. what  
 remains of the expressionistic subject is the sobered devotion to technology."

 (m.o.p.a.t. from adorno's "philosophie der neuen musik" [1949], p. 68)

                                              nichtidentisch: kfl