In Search of Wagner

by Theodor W. Adorno, Rodney Livingstone (Translator)

Richard Wagner’s works are among the most controversial in the history of European music because of their powerful aesthetic qualities and, in wider political terms, because of their eventual assimilation into the official culture of the Third Reich.

This concise synoptic account by the most brilliant exponent of Frankfurt School Marxism subtly interweaves these artistic and ideological qualities. It provides deft musicological analyses of Wagner’s scores and of his compositional techniques, orchestration and staging methods, quoting copiously from the music dramas themselves. At the same time it offers incisive reflections on Wagner’s social character and the ideological impulses of his artistic activity.

Genres: Music, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Germany, Classical Music, Politics

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II. Although less well known among anglophone philosophers than his contemporary Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adorno had even greater influence on scholars and intellectuals in postwar Germany. In the 1960s he was the most prominent challenger to both Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science and Martin Heidegger's philosophy of existence. Jürgen Habermas, Germany's foremost social philosopher after 1970, was Adorno's student and assistant. The scope of Adorno's influence stems from the interdisciplinary character of his research and of the Frankfurt School to which he belonged. It also stems from the thoroughness with which he examined Western philosophical traditions, especially from Kant onward, and the radicalness to his critique of contemporary Western society. He was a seminal social philosopher and a leading member of the first generation of Critical Theory.

Unreliable translations hampered the initial reception of Adorno's published work in English speaking countries. Since the 1990s, however, better translations have appeared, along with newly translated lectures and other posthumous works that are still being published. These materials not only facilitate an emerging assessment of his work in epistemology and ethics but also strengthen an already advanced reception of his work in aesthetics and cultural theory.

Reviews

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really is mostly about Wagner - his life, the plots of his operas, and the details of their music, occasionally even down to specific bar-to-bar features of their orchestration - such that even readers closely familiar with Adorno's philosophical writings might not get a huge amount out of it without a musical background.

I read it because I'm interested in the revisionist account of Wagner that tries to recover some kernel of aesthetic and political value from his work - i.e., Zizek's position, outlined in his foreword to this edition. Zizek points out that this book conflicts somewhat with later essays published by Adorno in the 60s about Wagner, but it's worth noting that even though this book is filled with quite pointed criticisms of Wagner - chief among which would be the proliferation of bad infinities and bad dialectics ("Wagner's music simulates this unity of the internal and external, of subject and object, instead of giving shape to the rupture between them" (27)), the exteriorisation of gestures (there's no character development, "they barely retain their identity" (105)), and the excessive use of leitmotives which prevent thematic development and serve only as commodified musical slogans - Adorno is careful not to strawman his subject. At several key moments Adorno notes the ways in which Wagner is a genuine innovator. One that particularly stands out is his discussion of Wagner's orchestration in chapter 5, Colour. The opening sentences of this chapter are nothing but praise: "Whereas Wagnerian harmony swings between past and future, the dimension of colour is, properly speaking, his own discovery" (60). What Adorno likes about Wagner's orchestration is the way in which it seems to be productive, and conscious of the role of material sound production, in contrast to those harmonic and structural aspects of his music which, for Adorno, efface their production, which is to say, they contribute to the alienated, phantasmagoric aspects of Wagner's work which are unconnected to social processes. Partially this productiveness is due to Wagner's attention to the literal production of sound: "A note 'sounds like a horn' as long as you can still hear that it has been played on the horn," which is something that Wagner worried would not be so clear on the newly invented valve horn (66). Thus his use of the horns, and instruments generally, is one that is closely concerned with their degree of alienation and immediacy with respect to the method of their sound production. The productiveness also follows from the way the Wagnerian orchestra comments on the higher-order forms and melodies of the works: Adorno comments that "the latent intention of the form is orchestrated out," such is Wagner's proficiency in expanding and inscribing the colouristic dimension (65).

The other unusual moment of positivity in this book would be the last few pages, which are something of a mic drop, a surprisingly powerful and lyrical ending - the chapter divisions are very clear in this book, but the actual text is quite dense and ranges quite unpredictably over its topics without much obvious rhetorical or structural shaping. It is therefore somewhat surprising when Adorno brings in a line like "love and happiness are false in the world in which we live, and ... the whole power of love has passed over into its antithesis," in order to set up the revisionist reading (which Zizek seemingly has to wrench out of Adorno's corpus) by concluding that "Anyone able to snatch such gold [the possibility of actual material self-determination for the individual, rather than nihilistic collapse into the void of a mythologically static natural totality] from the deafening surge of the Wagnerian orchestra would be rewarded by its altered sound, for it would grant him that solace which, for all its rapture and phantasmagoria, it consistently refuses" (145). It takes a while to get here but this is what 'Music of the Future' really means.

[Justin Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

It always strikes me as strange when people use Adorno's musical works as the basis for their interpretation of Adorno, and now I've read this it seems even stranger. There's very little here that you can't find more clearly expressed in shorter programmatic essays, or essays on literary figures.The meat here comes in the form of sentences wedged into paragraphs which are incomprehensible to me, and I assume to most of the rest of the world, since they deal with details of the plot or the musical structure of Wagner's operas. I got very little out of it, to be honest, either for Adorno or for Wagner. If you're looking for an 'easy' way in, you should try 'Critical Models,' or the first few essays in 'Notes to Literature' instead. Unless you're a music buff, in which case this might make more sense to you.

[Javier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adorno excoriates the proto-fascist Wagner in this series of essays on different aspects of the ultra-nationalist composer's oeuvre, or "Gesamtkunstwerken." He highlights Wagner's anti-Semitism, racialist thinking, and bourgeois apologism and nihilism, as reflected especially in the Götterdämmerung (The Twilight or Fall of the Gods), the conclusion to The Ring cycle. The Ring itself, of course, has a fundamentally anti-Semitic and Aryanist plot. Besides this, Adorno charges Wagner with reifying oppression by framing the pseudo-revolutionary struggle as a medievalist "myth," rather than one that would resist capitalism, racism, patriarchy, the State, etc. It's intriguing, though, that Wagner's Ring, at the end of Siegfried (part II), has what could be called a national-anarchist or -socialist message, in terms of Siegfried's destruction of the forces symbolizing capitalism (i.e., Jewish caricatures), the State (the dragon Fafner), & religion (the gods, particularly Wotan/Odin). This presentation was very likely informed by Wagner's "participation" in the 1849 uprising in Dresden alongside Bakunin ("participation," as Adorno writes, because at first he reportedly denied the charge of having participated in the revolt to save his life, and then considering that Wagnerian scholarship had systematically distorted the record on this [according to Adorno]). It's clear that Wagner was a fraud and a dilettante, as well as a repulsive white-supremacist and proto-Nazi.

[Harry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like my musical geniuses just as they are, all-too-human and flawed, but Adorno seems at times to believe in the promise of the Gesamtkunstwerk even more than Richard Wagner himself. It's not hard to find inconsistencies in Wagner's work, especially when examining it from a Marxist perspective, but this does not nullify the composer's whole oeuvre as this book seems to suggest. Adorno tries too hard to discredit Wagner, influenced no doubt by the political climate of the time, but in the end his criticism feels unjust. The fact that, as Slavoj Žižek writes in the foreword, he later "changed his position into a more positive appreciation of Wagner" is telling.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were occasional brilliant or thought-provoking insights, but for the most part I had a difficult and often impossible time teasing his meaning out of the complex prose and Marxist terminology. It’s the one book on Wagner I have read which I would be unable to summarize or discuss intelligently. My favorite quote from the book has nothing to do directly with RW:

in Max Reger … there is no theme or bar in any work that could not be transposed into any other.

[M Pereira · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book but not for the faint hearted. You need to have a background in harmony and music history; philosophy and social theory. It's a pretty rewarding book if you know how to cope with it.

The last 2-3 chapters did not hit me so well however. I felt that the more philosophical emphasis undermined the hard hitting-ness of the critique.

[Taneli Viitahuhta]

No rating for this: it's one star and five star at the same time.

What is maddening in Adorno, is that his remarks are always to the detail and often ingenious, yet they are set inside a structure that is not only "fragmentary" or "paratactictal", but next to unfair to any reader who is not dedicated to sit through 150 pages of difficult prose, that can change the topic whenever. I recommend starting to read at chapter 7. Here Adorno takes up the historical and political conjuncture of Gesamtkunstwerk and the commodification of arts in the latter part of 19th century. First and second chapter are far more difficult and hermetic.

Readers of Adorno know that he seldom works out transparent narrative or conceptual gridwork, but also that he has a frustrating habit of not opening up his "anti-system" for rigorous criticism. Here that tendency is quite exaggerated. Especially, Adorno leaves out many theoretical and historical building blocks, and concentrates on rhapsodies and variations, that go on for unlimited length, leaving the reader in the dark about how to read and balance out his many allusions to philosophical figures, such as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud.

Yet, this being said, Adorno's view on Wagner is substantial. Commodification and differentiation of arts is for Wagner the problem facing stage art and music - and Adorno totally agrees. Adorno clearly sees the progressive element in Wagner. But, according to Adorno, Wagner's solution is proto-Fascist as he sets together by ingenius fiat something that could only be presented truthfully in constructivist manner and with planned collective work. Adorno's take on how cinema is structurally based on some of the technical breakthroughs of Gesamtkunstwerk are wonderful.

The question of anti-semitism as integral part of discussion. Adorno doesn't oversimplify matters, for he sees in Wagner a musical modernist, who paves way to Schoenberg and Viennese atonal school. But for him, Wagner is essentially and philosophically anti-Semitic, and he would not have agreed with the suggestive question, prefacing his book: "Why is Wagner worth saving?" (by Slavoj Zizek and Verso). Make no mistake, Adorno's task is ruthless critique, not "saving" Wagner. This is best part in Adorno for those of us, who feel that capitalism has betrayed the majority of people. Adorno does not suggest that we should cherish or "save" the historical roots of this betrayal in arts and culture, but expose them as what they are.

The chapters finished for the 1952 first complete publication by Suhrkamp (Chpts 3,4,5,6,7,8) are more balanced, and in fact more informative. Yet the chapters already published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforshung in the late 1930s (Chpts 1,2, 9, 10) have the most weighty judgments about what role Wagner plays in the "spatialisation" of music in modernity. Anyhow, reading them last is the route I suggest.

I recommend the book if you are interested in commodification of music and history of art and capitalism, and if you can stomach Adorno's style. Myself, I think Adorno's argument, if not essentially "right" all the way, poses the right questions, and this is what matters. Also, I think this might be THE best place to start, if you feel that something goes crucially wrong in Walter Benjamin's account of how the mechanisation of arts leads to general revolutionising of social relations, argued for in "The Work of Art" -essay. It is a pity Adorno's presentation borders on arrogant, but if you get past that, there's lot to salvage.

[Megatrend · Rating 4 out of 5]

Völlig überraschenderweise findet Adorno Wagner nicht so toll.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

did not follow this entirely, but i did understand enough to hold the opinion that Adorno is just finding reasons to hate Wagner at some points. i am too confused to know if it is entirely justified but it seems like he is pulling new things out of thin air.

[Peter Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The case against Wagner, covering his approach to social questions, music, and racism. Much more digestible than I expected from Adorno.

[Simone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great analysis, don’t agree with all of it, but glad to have read it.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

What this book does so well is to interweave musical analysis, and he has a wide-ranging and deep knowledge of wagner's work, with philosophy, almost seamlessly. themes like myth, sonority and phantasmagoria really get at the essence of wagner's compositions. to put it simply, wagner, in glorifying virginity and sex, empties all eros of meaning. Similarly, in using myth, he excludes both transcendence and fact, and thus ends up in metaphysical nihilism for adorno. the same goes for his musicality -- it is phantasmagoria in that it seems to come from somewhere organic and natural (we are supposed to listen to it and it sound pure, as if from nature), but it is all intended to trick us into thinking that that is where it comes from. The same goes for deprecation and humour. Wagner has the ability to laugh at himself (or at the anti-semitism of his time), while ending the laughter with self-deprecation and nothing else. I've never read a book that loves the music more, while critiquing (and self analysing) every minute of that love instead of listening and enjoying (without thinking).

[Leonardo]

Si ha habido un crítico del efecto fetichizador de fascinantes y deslumbrantes «Leitmotivs», se trata de Adorno. En su devastador análisis de Wagner trata de demostrar cómo los Leitmotivs wagnerianos sirven de fetichizados elementos fácilmente reconocibles, que constituyen, así, una cierta clase de conmodificación interno-estructural de su música.

Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.239

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Moving" is not a word one often associates with Adorno; this has to be the most moving of Adorno's books I've read, and the most enjoyable as well.

[Mateus Passos · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best part of it is Zizek's preface.

[Mark Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pioneering musicological study of Wagner. Must-read for musicologists. Adorno dissects Wagner's character, the subject matter of his operas, and his approach to composition in a series of topical chapters, showing the authoritarian and fascistic aspects of Wagner's style, as well as his undoubted achievements in technique and orchestration. This new edition features a provocative introduction by Slavoj Zizek, where he argues why Wagner is worth saving for the left, even though he completely eschews Adorno's approach, offering his own inimitable blend of Hegel, Lacan, and Badiou.