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Caveat emptor
While it is good to have translations of these essays, the lack of editorial ambition in comparison to Leppert's Adorno: Essays on Music is disappointing, the translator Wieland Hoban's disclaimer notwithstanding. With the exception of the Introduction, all we are given is the date of composition/revision at the end of each essay. Granted the intention was not to produce a scholarly edition, but I suspect that the reader of this collection is unlikely to be satisfied by the unvarnished text and the basic information found in the Introduction. The 1928 essay 'Schubert', found in an earlier translation (by Rodney Livingstone) in the collection 'Can One Live After Auschwitz' as Hoban notes, has also been rendered into English by Jonathan Dunsby and Beate Perrey in the journal 19th-Century Music (Vol. 29/1, 2005, p. 3-14). Their accompanying discussion (short but stimulating) of the difficulties of translating the essay surely warrants a footnote here for the benefit of curious readers.

Whatever one may think of Adorno (and, I have to confess, I have yet to be convinced), it certainly does not help to publish what seems to be a well-designed book with a pagination error: pages 353-368 occur in the order 357, 354-5, 360, 353, 358-9, 356, 365, 362-3, 368, 361, 366-7, 364. I was tempted to return it, but, short of a reprint, another copy is unlikely to be any better. And speaking of footnotes, is it too much to ask that they appear on the same page as the reference? ... Read more

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Theodor W. Adorno's long-awaited but never finished Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music was published in Germany only in 1993, nearly a quarter of a century after the author's death in 1969. These important and illuminating notes and texts - which remain in fragmented form - were described by Adorno as a "diary of his experiences of Beethoven". The editor of this volume, Rolf Tiedemann, has organized the segments in such a way as to bring out their inherent logic and relatedness. He has added copious explanatory notes and an appendix which serve as an invaluable elaboration of Adorno's frequently cryptic aphorisms. ... Read more

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Adorno returns Beethoven,as if the ink never dried
Of all the composers Adorno has thought about intensely, writing essays which merged into book lengths on Mahler,Berg, or Wagner, as well as countless articles and essays on music, Beethoven seems to be a highspecial preserve within his body of work. This is a work of fragments, andnotes,incomplete thoughts collected into notebooks throughout Adorno's lifewhich never was able to solidify under one leaf,or merge into a completedwork. But if you've read his brilliant and overwhelming intellectualdiscourses in his "Philosophy of Modern Music" or "NegativeDialectics" or lastly, his posthumous "Aesthetic Theory"this is more a threshold unto perhaps Adorno's working methods, unformedthoughts and frequent postponments of thoughts, concepts and directions tobe takened up later,perhaps for the reader to fulfill. Beethoven was theconsummate artist, one committed to the musical subject,the continuation oftime, a composer who sought to break rules as well as follow them. And infollowing them there is a liberation for what this allows,sometimes newforms,a breakage of the tonal scheme or creating a piano sound almostprovincial yet innovative,as the "Waldstein Sonata". Adornofrequently draws on Beethoven the craftman, the manipulator and purveyor ofmaterials, on tonality,motives,variations, and form in a state of becoming,and makes us aware once again, that the process of music is a time-boundone, one of an incessant durational frame. Beethoven dealt with first andforemost with reprisals, with materials, themes and harmonic schemes wehave heard and will hear again. He dealt with something which is already inthe world, and his music simply deals with the inevitability of thosemoments and their fate redemption or demise. Late Beethoven as well welearn was not a state of increased polyphonic complexity, "MissaSolemnis" was a retrogressive act,not one of innovation as his"Piano Sonatas" frequently were. Adorno reminds us of thedimensions of Beethoven's art we seem to forget,as the simplified moments,the economy of means reduced to pure power as the "NinthSymphony"or reduction of subjectivity as the late"Sonatas" proclaims. The Late Music "Spatstil" was amusic of reduction of harmonic schemes beginning too soon as the late"Quartets" the "C# minor". The editor here RolfTiedemann long an Adorno executor trys to make the fragmentariness of thisincomplete work cohere with copious notes placed at the end, eveninterjecting excerpts from completed essays and entire works, as"Aesthetic Theory". Although useful I found this distracting andnot all that absorbing.It seems we've never understood Beethoven or thatthe dimensions of his creativity have been layered,Adornoreturns him backto a composer status, a contemporary or visitor of the postmodern field asif the ink never dried. ... Read more

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Despite all of humanity's failures, futile efforts and wrong turnings in the past, Adorno did not let himself be persuaded that we are doomed to suffer a bleak future for ever. One of the factors that prevented him from identifying a definitive plan for the future course of history was his feelings of solidarity with the victims and losers. As for the future, the course of events was to remain open-ended; instead of finality, he remained committed to a Hölderlin-like openness. This trace of the messianic has what he called the colour of the concrete as opposed to mere abstract possibility.

Early in the 1960s Adorno gave four courses of lectures on the road leading to Negative Dialectics, his magnum opus of 1966. The second of these was concerned with the topics of history and freedom. In terms of content, these lectures represented an early version of the chapters in Negative Dialectics devoted to Kant and Hegel. In formal terms, these were improvised lectures that permit us to glimpse a philosophical work in progress.

The text published here gives us an overview of all the themes and motifs of Adorno's philosophy of history: the key notion of the domination of nature, his criticism of the existentialist concept of a historicity without history and, finally, his opposition to the traditional idea of truth as something permanent, unchanging and ahistorical. ... Read more

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Negative Dialectics
Adorno presents a series of philosophical reflections on concepts central to the understanding of humanity. His tone is scholarly but punctuated with sincerely caring remarks to his pupils. Negative dialectics is the common philosophical and rhetorical method I detect in these intricate and difficult lectures. Whether he expands on the the idea of progress, critically reviews Hegel's concept of nation, or questions Kant's explanations of morality, Adorno places these categories within the contradictory relation and existence of the individual vis-à-vis society. For instance, he reminds us of the dangers of universals and total abstractions when removed from the realities of human experience: "In a radically administered world, that is to say, in world which [...] really had fallen under the thumb of the universal, undialectically and exclusively, the will would lose all its power"; he advocates interpretation as a response to a false understanding of the real: "[T]he joys of interpretations [...] consist in refusing to be blinded by the semblance of immediacy" (137); and, he emphatically defends the affirmation of freedom as a work in progress: "[...] we must abandon the illusion that freedom is a reality so as to salvage the possibility that freedom might one day become a reality after all" (203). Forty years after they were delivered, these lectures are still meaningful and provocative.

More readable than the old translation of negative dialectics
It's translated into contemporary English, sometimes I concede with jarring effect. Older Adorno texts were translated by bitter, twisted, and prematurely aged graduate students into something isomorphic with prewar Hoch Deutsche, making them murky beyond belief.

Here, the import of Negative Dialectics is that at some point, the so-often-misrepresented thought midcentury has a ground.

Why in fact should there be no concentration camps, even if God is dead, was a question which was in my experience answered with moral seriousness until about 1980, perhaps more precisely until 1982, when with the permission of Holocaust victim descendants, a group that at times called itself the Falange entered a refugee camp (which is where women and kids take refuge) and started systematically slaughtering people.

Called unserious, it was the deliberate failure to reify dialectical terms so as to somehow justify any specific instance of suffering.

As did Kant, it called on us to remember that we're not able to stand outside of philosophizing.

As far as I can understand, the notion of a constellation is one in which we simultaneously realize that a "thing" was the product of an act in history (some Greek guys pointing to stars and finding shapes) but with permanent reality, a reality as real as we are going to get.

For example, cf p. 173 of this book for "freedom". Here we realize that whatever else it is, ordinary Americans don't mean by "freedom" what they have, for trivially, had they had it they would not seek it. But we do, usually getting what we call jack: cf. most of Ray Carver's stuff.

Ray Carver documents adventures in all twelve tones. Most superficial readers read-into his stuff a religious *aufhebung* based on his confession of alcoholism but most such confessors do anything but come to Jesus, using the word "spiritual" and not "religious".

Perhaps (to continue philosophizing based on this starting point) that we really have it, because "freedom" means "the pursuit of happiness", permission to enter a race.

But from his European perch, I can see Adorno replying that Spartacus had this, Hobbes' troglodyte had this, Hegel's Slave had this.

And we have to realize that dialectically, as Americans, we have to shuttle between two forms of language.

In one, we are "free" and have "choice". So they tell us, even when we're perp-walked for making "bad" choices (hey, I thought I was free, o never mind).

In the other we find the daily language of I have to go to work I have to go to church I have to pick up the kids. This form of language speaks of at least a partial determination, in which we have agreed to sacrifice some freedom in pursuit of a final goal which we do, I concede, get to choose, sort of (we can't choose, of course, to become rich criminals...I guess...although this is precisely who we celebrate).

My head hurts.

But what Adorno has done, with far more mastery than the overrated head case of a late Wittgenstein, and far more personal self-control (cf. Wittgenstein's Poker), is show that the existence of the confusion is prior to Wittgenstein's attempts to demonstrate a false syllogism: if it is a confusion, it cannot exist.

[The late Wittgenstein is a male syllogism, seen when we males are lost when driving: there is a confusion, I'm lost, but since I am an adult male as was the late Wittgenstein, I cannot be confused therefore the Question is a pseudo-problem.]

[My guess is that when in California and driving with nee Karplus to the all you can eat fish place, Adorno would pull into a gas station and ask directions. Fortunately for the ladies, Wittgenstein wasn't married.]

"Freedom" can like "art" name something not quite existing, a child in the birth canal. Why the hell not? Admitting the confusion PREVENTS us from killing in the name of "freedom".

This is moral seriousness on steroids. Contrast "analytic" philosophy which today makes the kow-tow to prephilosophical thinking apologetically so the janitor won't turn out the lights or ask for a living wage, and then proceeds unreflectingly yet under the name of philosophy to reach silly conclusions such as "it is a necessary truth that all people have a brain".

There is not now, and I hope there never will be, Adorno for Dummies. But this series of lectures is accessible because the lecture format, in which we watch a man thinking, is a scene of Negative Dialectics. ... Read more

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This volume comprises one of the key lecture courses leading up to the publication in 1966 of Adorno's major work, Negative Dialectics. These lectures focus on developing the concepts critical to the introductory section of that book. They show Adorno as an embattled philosopher defining his own methodology among the prevailing trends of the time. As a critical theorist, he repudiated the worn-out Marxist stereotypes still dominant in the Soviet bloc – he specifically addresses his remarks to students who had escaped from the East in the period leading up to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Influenced as he was by the empirical schools of thought he had encountered in the United States, he nevertheless continued to resist what he saw as their surrender to scientific and mathematical abstraction. However, their influence was potent enough to prevent him from reverting to the traditional idealisms still prevalent in Germany, or to their latest manifestations in the shape of the new ontology of Heidegger and his disciples. Instead, he attempts to define, perhaps more simply and fully than in the final published version, a ‘negative', i.e. critical, approach to philosophy. Permeating the whole book is Adorno’s sense of the overwhelming power of totalizing, dominating systems in the post-Auschwitz world. Intellectual negativity, therefore, commits him to the stubborn defence of individuals – both facts and people – who stubbornly refuse to become integrated into ‘the administered world’.

These lectures reveal Adorno to be a lively and engaging lecturer. He makes serious demands on his listeners but always manages to enliven his arguments with observations on philosophers and writers such as Proust and Brecht and comments on current events. Heavy intellectual artillery is combined with a concern for his students’ progress. ... Read more

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During the occupation of West Germany after the Second World War, the American authorities commissioned polls to assess the values and opinions of ordinary Germans. They concluded that the fascist attitudes of the Nazi era had weakened to a large degree. Theodor W. Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues, who returned in 1949 from the United States, were skeptical. They held that standardized polling was an inadequate and superficial method for exploring such questions. In their view, public opinion is not simply an aggregate of individually held opinions, but is fundamentally a public concept, formed through interaction in conversations and with prevailing attitudes and ideas “in the air.” In Group Experiment, edited by Friedrich Pollock, they published their findings on their group discussion experiments that delved deeper into the process of opinion formation. Andrew J. Perrin and Jeffrey K. Olick make a case that these experiments are an important missing link in the ontology and methodology of current social-science survey research.

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Adorno's study of Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885-1935) is a sui generis document. In addition to Adorno's personal account of of the life and musical works of his mentor, friend, and composition teacher, the book explores the historical and cultural significance of Berg's music, its relationship to that of other nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers, and to the larger issues of contemporary life. ... Read more

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Brilliant! ....simply...
This is the definitive work on Berg I believe. This is Adorno at his best. You might already know that Adorno is notoriously difficult to read- as in his Philosophy of Western Music- but this is wonderful.

not entirely vintage Adorno,yet lightyears beyond academia
Adorno first met Alban Berg in Frankfurt during a festival of new music in June 1924. Excerpts from Berg's opera "Wozzeck" was being performed.Adorno ultimately studied composition with Berg but did notpursue a career as a composer rather Adornorbecame a brilliantphilosopher of negative dialiectics with a profound work on aesthetics,hislast major statement. In these short essays on Berg written over the courseof his life, Adorno is at his weakest link. They are analytical in contenttraversing all of Berg.The "First Piano Sonata", The"LyricSuite" for string quartet. Although brilliant, the complexity ofthought we usually encounter in Adorno, dense loci of continuouscross-referencing, and associations of images interspersed with otherartisitic genres is not to be found here. And in terms of pure musicalanalysis this is fairly basic representations,and ultimately not Adorno'spossessive thinking realm.Academia today hates Adorno for his philosophicalmore socially-bound emphasis away from just this kind of note-for-note,moment-to-moment analysis along Schenkerian dimensions. Still there areconceptual meeting places in the center as George Perle's excellent work onthe two Berg operas. And academia has much to fear given Adorno'simpressive legacy of his writings on music . In this brief volume Adorno'sthoughts on Berg's opera "Lulu" is the high point.And in a way wemeet the more personal,conversational Adorno, a rare treat. ... Read more

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In this classic work, Adorno revolutionized music theory through an analysis of two composers he saw as polar opposites, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. "Philosophy of Modern Music" presents a profound study of key musical works of the twentieth century. But it is more than this because, as always with Adorno, a wide range of social and cultural questions are brought to bear on the analysis. In many ways, "Philosophy of Modern Music" is a product of Adorno's exile in the United States, where he wrote the book while National Socialism fell apart in his European homeland. ... Read more

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poor translation
Adorno's Philosophy of New Music gets five stars. This translation gets two stars. It's notoriously unreliable and full of errors. Instead, buy Robert Hullot-Kentor's translation titled, "Philosophy of New Music" (he explains why this is the correct translation of the title rather than *Modern* music.) That edition is far superior with an amazing introduction provided by the always perceptive Hullot-Kentor. Read Adorno as he was meant to be read. Don't buy this translation.

Still a nourishing display of conceptual power.
Although out-of-print this is an event in the history of music comparable to primary musical works.It had to be Theodor Adorno a consummate intellect that created a new mode of contemplating contemporary art, music simplybeing the realm he knew more intimately,literature a close second. Hisprolific student from the late Fifties, Jurgen Habermas once said ofAdorno, that he created theory spontaneously, simply within the course of adiscussion, adept at synthesizing his thoughts as he spoke. But Adorno'simportance for contemporary expression was assured,in that Adorno broughtthe complexity of philosophic,social and political thought to music.Something hardly done prior, and is only now within the past ten yearsbeginning to be realized. See numerous studies on Adorno and his approachto speaking about music. To read the"Philosophy of ModernMusic" is to understand Adorno's departures for his thought is themost exposed. Written in short cursive, aphorisitic-like paragraphs, almostapproaching a sketch of a thought is to reveal a complexity, but one whichengages his subject. The two polar opposites here are composers, ArnoldSchoenberg(representing the progressive elements in music), and IgorStravinsky(representing the backward-looking retrogressive elements).Adorno had considered the private artist working in seclusion as thehighest form of rebellion, of subversion, for Adorno had contempt for themarketplace and how that magnetized and transformed art. Something of themarket, in the late Forties was prevalent in jazz and film. Had Adornolived into the age of computers and simulation,he would have seen to fullextent how his thought has been realized in ever purified forms. Adornothought Schoenberg's discovery of the 12-Tone dodecaphonic compositionalmethod as a sign of progress. 12-Tone in a profound way was a synthesis, aconduit of the theoretical advancements of the history of music.It was botha beginning and an endpoint. But Schoenberg's method, althought quite newand unfinished allowed for all the parameters of music to be defined anddeveloped, "Total Organization of the Elements of Music" is oneparagraph here or section, "Differetiation and Coarseness" yetanother referring to thinking about sound, as a sculptor would of his/hermaterials, shapting them, giving them form and direction. Stravinskycontrarywise indulged in looking backward, at the folksongs of his nativeRussia for music materials to be manipulated and the projection of soundwithout its deep attenuation. A view that is subjective now inretrospect,for Stravinsky was a grand orchestrator and a craftsman. But inStravinsky, in particular his early period of the marvelously powerfulballet music, sound is pulverized,and is forced into suppressedforms,usually ashifting alternating suite of pieces,refocusing our shortattention spans as required and, all in the projection of an image, ascreeen for which the ballet takes place. But Adorno had takened issue withStravinsky's subject matter as well as his technical means, a puppet in"Petrouska" one given over to a master without hope norrecourse.Likewise the "Rite of Spring" a virgin is simplysacrificed without recourse and we have the human image portraying theinevitability of natural forces, something Europe was about to experiencefirst hand with the rise of fascism. These sections here are"Depersonalization" and "Fetishism of Means", explainsStravinsky's creativity stepping backwards within himself. In "Modesof Listening" Adorno refers to the "Shock" value thatpummels the listener and the degradation of hearing into a music you merelysubmit to, whereas in Schoenberg there is more a sense of give and take,ofthe music allowing contemplative time. Again to my mind this is allrelative, for these festures I find in both composers oeuvre. Still I finda conceptual power in Adorno,one that still nourishes today in the mileauof after-postmodernity. ... Read more

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A reflection on everyday existence in the "sphere of consumption of late Capitalism," this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece. ... Read more

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Brilliance
Adorno's Minima Moralia is one of his characteristic texts-it is an extraordinary study of the contradictions of modern society. While Adorno's argument does not turn exclusively on a criticism of capitalism (whereas Marcuse's did), his work is clearly indebted to a mode of dialectical argumentation which exposes the thetic movements of our modern cultural situation. Adorno is a marvelous stylist-this text moves in Nietzschean manner through a dense web of cultural and political lineages and points to their corresponding symptoms. This is one of the singularly accomplished texts regarding the state of alienated subjectivity from the Continental tradition. A limitless and indispensable resource.

A classic.
If read carefully, everything's in here, but it may be best enjoyed piecemeal, as a source of inspiration and a means of provoking thought.Not a primer on Adorno's work, but an enjoyable, relatively accessible way to dip your toes in.At the same time, it's one of the pinnacle works of twentieth-century theory.

Pure thought
Though largely unknown outside of certain obscure academic circles, Theodore W. Adorno was, without a doubt, the foremost socio-political theorist of the 20th century. For truly intelligent, literate, questing minds (free of occultist nonsense) Adorno's MINIMA MORALIA is absolutely indispensible. A compendium of always eloquent, surprising, mournful, and deeply humane musings on modern capitalist society in all its terrible unfreedom, this book is among the most uncompromisingly radical ever written (cf. Max Stirner's THE EGO AND ITS OWN). To read and understand Adorno--even imperfectly--is to experience the tremendous pleasure of being in the presence of impeccable historical awareness, great moral rectitude, and visionary wisdom.

We're all damaged
This is essential reading for our times, and Adorno's insights can be applied to many different areas e.g. literature, sociology, politics, and philosophy.Highly recommended.

Firme Vatos
Dis is puro...firme vato locs. Down for Adorno por vida..Smile now, Cry later.. ... Read more