grgr (20): " moment of maximal freedom" (- what schönberg's revolution was about)

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

"where was there to go after webern? it was the moment of maximal freedom."
 (pp. 440f.)

 "moment of maximal freedom" sounds quite like adorno's view on free atonality, 
 the 'method' schönberg worked with between 1908 and 1921. theoretically 
 connecting it to the avantgarde in the visual arts and to kafka, proust & 
 joyce, adorno also followed the paradigm of free atonality in his own  
 compositions. some of them you can hear on the cd "kompositionen",  
 mainz/germany 1990: wergo (- by the way: if somebody out there is seeking an  
 introduction to "new music" i recommend the 4 cd box: "second vienesse school. 
 string  quartets. lasalle quartet with margaret price". hamburg: deutsche   
 grammophon, containing works of schönberg, webern & berg). here come adorno's 
 remarks on the actually revolutionary aspect in schönberg's work:

 "...pretty different with schönberg. the actually revolutionary moment in his 
 work is the functional change of musical expression. it ain't about fictional 
 passions anymore, but inside the medium of music direct somatic motions of the 
 unconsciousness, shocks, traumas, are registered. they attack the taboos of 
 form, because these subject such motions to their censorship, rationalize them 
 and transport them into pictured schemes. schönberg's formal innovations were 
 closely related to the change in the content of expression. they were meant to 
 bring the breakthrough of its reality. the first atonal works are protocols in 
 the sense of psychoanalytic dream protocols. kandinsky, in the earliest book  
 publication on schönberg, has called schönberg's pictures 'brain acts'. the 
 scars of that revolution of expression, however, are the blots, which establish 
 themselves, in  pictures and music alike, as messengers of the id against the  
 composer's will, disturb the surface and cannot be taken away by following 
 corrections like the mark of blood in the fairy tale."

 (m.o.p.a.t. from adorno's "philosophie der neuen musik" [1949], p. 44)

                      nichtidentisch: kfl