Customer Reviews (2)

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

Book Description
Theodor W.Adorno was one of the towering intellectuals of the twentieth century.His contributions cover such a myriad of fields, including the sociology of culture, social theory, the philosophy of music, ethics, art and aesthetics, film, ideology, the critique of modernity and musical composition, that it is difficult to assimilate the sheer range and profundity of his achievement.His celebrated friendship with Walter Benjamin has produced some of the most moving and insightful correspondence on the origins and objects of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

This unprecedented collection, devised and assembled by one of Europe's rising social theorists, distills the best from published assessments and responses to Adorno's oeuvre.The collection is divided into 4 volumes:

Volume 1: Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theory

Part 1: Negative Dialectics

Included here are contributions on the concept of totality in the writings of Adorno and Lukacs; Adorno and Bourgeois Philosophy; the relationship between Adorno and Kierkegaard; Adorno's Critique of Idealism; Adorno and Linguistics; Adonoand Habermas.

Part 2: Ethics and Redemption

This is comprised of contributions on Adorno and Truth; Adorno's Inverse Theology; and Adorno and the Ineffable

Part 3: Critical Theory, Ideology Critique and Social Science

Included here are contributions on Adorno's relation to the Positivist Dispute; the Popper-Adorno Controversy; Adorno and Empirical Research; and Hermeneutics and Critical Theory.

Volume 2: Aesthetic Theory

Part 1: Art and Politics in 'Aesthetic Theory'

This includes material on the De-Aestheticization of Art; Adorno, Utopia and Mimesis; Adorno and autonomous art; Adorno and Dialectics; Adorno, Marxism and Art; Art and Criticism in Adorno's Aesthetics; Adorno's concept of the Avant-Garde.

Part 2: Philosophy of Music

This includes contributions on Adorno's music and social criticism; Adorno and nostalgia; Adorno, Heidegger and the meaning of music; Adorno and Wagner.

Part 3: On Jazz

The material included here addresses questions of Adorno and Popular Music; Adorno's encounter with jazz; Adorno, Jazz and Society; and the reasons for Adorno's apparent hatred of jazz.

Volume 3: Social Theory & The Critique of Modernity

Part 1: On 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment'

Included here are chapters on the dialectic of enlightenment and post-functionalist thought; dialectic of enlightenment as genealogy critique; the relationship between the dialectic of enlightenment, modernity and postmodernity; Adorno's critique of progress; Adorno and theories of subjectivity; and the dialectic of enlightenment and rationality.

Part 2: Anti-Semitism

This consists of material on Adorno and Horkheimer; and Adorno and Public Sphere

Part 3: Popular Culture and Capitalism

Included here are contributions on Adorno and Sport; Adorno's alleged left-wing elitism; Adorno's critique of astrology and the Occult; Benjamin and Adorno on Disney; Adorno, Totalitarianism and the Welfare State; and Adorno and Mass Society.

Volume 4:Cultural Theory and the Postmodern Challenge

Part 1: 'Damaged Life': Exile in America

This section includes Leo Lowenthal's insightful recollections of Adorno; Adorno and the primal history of subjectivity; Adorno and Los Angeles; Adorno's relation to American culture; and Adorno's exile in England.

Part 2: Film Theory

This section includes chapters on Adorno and the Culture Industry; Benjamin, Adorno and Contemporary Film Theory; Adorno, Aesthetics and the Social.

Part 3: Wellmer and Adorno

Included here are papers on Aesthetic, Psychic and Social Synthesis in Adorno and Wellmer; and New German Aesthetic Theory after Adorno.

Part 4: Jameson on Adorno

Included here are papers on Jameson, Adorno and the persistence of the Utopian; and a Marxism for Postmodernism

Part 5: Modernism and Postmodernism

This section contains papers on Adorno, Foucault and the Modern Intellectual; Adorno, Foucault and Two forms of the Critique of Modernity; Adorno and the Habermas-Lyotard Debate;Adorno, Postmodernism and Edward Said; Adorno, Heidegger and Postmodernism; Adorno and the Decline of the Modern Age; The literary process of modernism; Adorno, Tradition and the Postmodern

Part 5: The Feminist Response

Included here are contributions on Adorno and Judith Butler; Adorno, Art Theory and Feminist Practice; and Gender in the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer.

The collection comes with a superb Introduction to Adorno by Gerard Delanty which elucidates the main contributions of this penetrating and enduring thinker.

Comprehensive and consistently illuminating, the collection includes the thought on Adorno from some of the most distinguished commentators on social theory.Included here are selections from the writings of Susan Buck-Morss, Martin Jay, Agnes Heller; David Frisby; Johann Arnason; Richard Wolin; Andrew Bowie; Robert Hulnot-Kentor; Leo Lowenthal; Richard Rorty Axel Honneth; Albrecht Wellmer;and Jurgen Habermas.

The result is a peerless research resource allowing readers to delve into all aspects of Adorno's extraordinary accomplishments in social thought, philosophy and cultural criticism.It will be required reading for students of the Frankfurt School, Marxism, Critical Theory, Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics and Social Theory. ... Read more

Book Description
Quasi una Fantasia contains Adorno's own selection from his essays and journalism over more than three decades. In its analytical profundity it can be compared to his Philosophy of Modern Music, but in the range of its topics and the clarity of its arguments it stands alone among Adorno's writings on music. At the book's core are illuminating studies of thc founders of modern music: Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg, and an important 'dialectical portrait' of Stravinsky. More unexpectedly, there are moving accounts of earlier works, including Bizet's Carmen, along with an entertainingly caustic 'Natural History of the Theatre'. Musical kitsch is the target of several shorter pieces. Yet even while Adorno demolishes 'commodity music' he is sustained by the conviction that music is supremely human because it retains the capacity to speak of inhumanity and to resist it. It is a conviction which reverberates throughout these remarkable writings. ... Read more

Book Description
In December 1945 Thomas Mann wrote a famous letter to Adorno in which he formulated the principle of montage adopted in his novel Doctor Faustus. The writer expressly invited the philosopher to ‘consider, with me, how such a work – and I mean Leverkühn’s work – could more or less be practically realized’. Their close collaboration on questions concerning the character of the fictional composer’s putatively late works (Adorno produced specific sketches which are included as an appendix to the present volume) effectively laid the basis for a further exchange of letters.

The ensuing correspondence between the two men documents a rare encounter of creative tension between literary tradition and aesthetic modernism which would be sustained right up until the novelist’s death in 1955. In the letters, Thomas Mann openly acknowledged his ‘fascinated reading’ of Adorno’s Minima Moralia and commented in detail on the ‘Essay on Wagner’, which he was as eager to read as ‘the one in the Book of Revelation consumes a book which tastes “as sweet as honey”’. Adorno in turn offered detailed observations upon and frequently enthusiastic commendations of Mann’s later writings, such as The Holy Sinner, The Betrayed One and The Confessions of Felix Krull. Their correspondence also touches upon issues of great personal significance, notably the sensitive discussion of the problems of returning from exile to postwar Germany.

The letters are extensively annotated and offer the reader detailed notes concerning the writings, events and personalities referred or alluded to in the correspondence. ... Read more