clarity

curtiss_leung at ibi.com curtiss_leung at ibi.com
Mon Dec 28 10:00:13 PST 1998


Of the Jameson essay Doug exerpted, this passage caught my eye:

> What is particularly noteworthy is the poverty of the materials from

> which such new perception has been fashioned; for the ear is the

> most archaic of the senses, and instrumental sounds are far more

> abstract and inexpressive than words or visual symbols. Yet in one

> of those paradoxical reversals that characterize the dialectical

> process, it is precisely this primitive, regressive starting point

> that determines the development of the most complex of the arts.

>

This is from an essay on Adorno? It seems to run counter to some of

Adorno's own positions. I thought Adorno held that the mimetic aspect

of the arts, while unacknowledged, was ever present; and so the lines

and harmonies of Western music are always expressive.

Somebody mentioned Adorno's essay on Schoenberg in *Prisms*. What

struck me most about it was Adorno's discussion of the emotive and

expressive content of Schoenberg's music. He doesn't deny that

Schoenberg's music requires an effort on the part of the listener (the

phrase, I think, is "requires not mere contemplation but active

praxis"), but emphasizes that the experience that will follow will be

an emotional, visceral one.

I don't know what non-Western music Adorno knew, but his training in

Western music was extensive. He studied composition with Alban Berg,

and almost became a composer rather than a philosopher. He left

behind some chamber music and songs, as well as an unfinished opera of

(believe it or not) Twain's *Tom Sawyer*.

--

Curtiss Leung



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