Pynchon Radio Programme/: adorno on popular music

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

Otto quoted: 

> Da verzieh man ihm [Naumann] gern die windige These, dass das deutsche 
> geistige Pendant zu  Pynchon Theodor W. Adorno gewesen sein könnte, hätte der 
> etwas von Jazz verstanden.


  unlike the author of the article, i consider this thesis to be among the more 
  inspired things naumann has uttered. along with rolf dieter brinkmann adorno  
  is the most pynchonesque gestalt on the german corner. but why was teddy (in 
  contrary to brinkmann who, like trp, loved monk and heard him play live) such 
  an enemy of jazz? it's not so much, as naumann suggests, that adorno would not 
  have been able to dig deeper into the jazz thing: fact is he did not want to 
  do this. he had, sad to say, made up his mind on jazz before he came to   
  america. seriously i doubt that adorno ever listened to artists like bird, 
  miles, or trane. but of course he read a lot to brush up his arguments, first 
  of all, already in the 1930s, winthrop sargeant's "jazz, hot, and hybrid". for 
  adorno jazz belongs to the cultural industry, it's standardized and offers 
  through somatic stimulation only pseudo-individualization, something herbert 
  marcuse later called "repressive desublimation". its counter-part is authentic 
  radical art which in the sphere of music --- teddy's favourite writers, by the 
  way, were kafka, proust, beckett, and celan --- means the zwölftonmusik (and, 
  even more, the freie atonalität) of arnold schönberg. for adorno, in his own 
  peculiar way of late marxism (actually there's at least as much max weber in 
  it, so habermas calls adorno's sociology 'webermarxismus'), radical authentic 
  art is kinda 'revolutionary subject' which alone COULD change things for the 
  better: so teddy, who studied composition with alban berg, takes lenin and the 
  proletariat out of the game and replaces them by schönberg and the   
  avangardistic arts: "die schocks des unverständlichen, welche die 
  künstlerische technik im zeitalter ihrer sinnlosigkeit austeilt, schlagen um. 
  sie erhellen die sinnlose welt. dem opfert sich die neue musik. alle 
  dunkelheit und schuld der welt hat sie auf sich genommen [doesn't this sound 
  pretty, well, christian? kfl]. all ihr glück hat sie daran, das unglück zu 
  erkennen; all ihre schönheit, dem schein des schönen sich zu versagen. keiner 
  will mit ihr etwas zu tun haben, die individuellen so wenig wie die 
  kollektiven" (philosophie der neuen musik, p. 126). authenthic art, like real 
  erotic intimacy, gives us an idea what a better world would look and feel 
  like. yet popular music tends to fool the people with standardized fake   
  ecstasy. now, there you have, along with the highbrow resentment, a grain of  
  truth or two ... english speaking p-listers who would like to read something  
  about adorno and the frankfurt school i advise to leave out frederick jameson 
  and check instead martin jay's classic "the dialectical imagination: a history 
  of the frankfurt school and the institute of social research 1923-1950", 
  boston/toronto 1973: little, brown and company. unlike popular music, adorno 
  says, radical art gives us the possibility to experience the internally   
  mediated contradiction (hegel's 'in-sich-vermittelter widerspruch') of society 
  and the individual in an authentic and non-repressive way. the following 
  outtake from the "ästhetische theorie" (p. 177), posthumuosly published in 
  1970, might remind you on the beethoven/rossini-debate from the regenbogen der 
  schwerkraft: " ... am gegensatz von beethoven und jazz, gegen den manche     
  musikerohren bereits taub zu werden beginnen. beethoven ist,  modifiziert doch 
  bestimmbar, die volle erfahrung des äußeren lebens, inwendig wiederkehrend, so 
  wie zeit, das medium von musik, der innere sinn ist; die popular music in all 
  ihren variationen ist diesseits solcher sublimierung, somatisches stimulanz,  
  und damit, angesichts ästhetischer autonomie, regressiv". yeah, that's what i 
  call dialectics ---

KFL +