[lbo-talk] criteria

Mike Beggs mikejbeggs at gmail.com
Wed Dec 9 15:09:37 PST 2009


On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:41 AM, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:


> Adorno's funny. Not that I disagree that's Sibelius is kind of sucky,
> and not because of the snobbery -- snob away, I say -- and not even
> because of the quasinationalist elevation of Bach and Schoenberg, but
> because of his thoroughly bourgeois belief that deploying
> transhistorical "criteria" is an acceptable critical approach.
> Unfortunately, and as much as I like his later stuff, his dialectic
> never did fully "negate" this prejudice.

I really want to get around to reading Adorno's stuff on music first hand because he's such a bugbear for 'snobbery'. I agree with you on both counts. His counterposing of Schoenberg (yay) and Stravinsky (boo) (or so I have heard) might be a more interesting one since clearly something seemed to be at stake in the divergent directions they took music, but from today's perspective there doesn't seem to be any barrier to thinking they were both pretty awesome. Like disco vs punk, it makes you wonder about the judgments we make today.

By the way, have you checked out 'Noise and Capitalism'? - pdf at http://www.mattin.org/ Although I fundamentally disagree with most of the contributors I've found it a pretty interesting book.

Mike scandalum.wordpress.com



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