Night Music: Essays on Music 1928-1962

by Theodor W. Adorno, Wieland Hoban (Translator)

Although Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, he began his career as a composer and successful music critic. Night Music presents the first complete English translations of two collections of texts compiled by German philosopher and musicologist Adorno— Moments musicaux , containing essays written between 1928 and 1962, and Theory of New Music , a group of texts written between 1929 and 1955. In Moments musicaux , Adorno echoes Schubert’s eponymous cycle, with its emphasis on aphorism, and offers lyrical reflections on music of the past and his own time. The essays include extended aesthetic analyses that demonstrate Adorno’s aim to apply high philosophical standards to the study of music. Theory of New Music , as its title indicates, presents Adorno’s thoughts and theories on the composition, reception, and analysis of the music that was being written around him. His extensive philosophical writing ultimately prevented him from pursuing the compositional career he had once envisaged, but his view of the modern music of the time is not simply that of a theorist, but clearly also that of a composer. Though his advocacy of the Second Viennese School, comprising composer Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, is well known, many of his writings in this field have remained obscure. Collected in their entirety for the first time in English, the insightful texts in Night Music show the breadth of Adorno’s musical understanding and reveal an overlooked side to this significant thinker.

Genres: Music, Philosophy, Essays, Nonfiction, Theory

492 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2009

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

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I know of classical music is what I hear on record/vinyl/cd. Beyond that, almost nothing. My reaction to Classical it totally musical, and the occasional liner note on the back cover of the album. With curiosity, I picked up Theodor W. Adorno's "Night Music," in the hopes of learning more about this form of music as well as dipping into the brain of Adorno, one of the leading 'thinkers' of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Adorno was also a composer, and what is interesting about "Night Music" is that it was written from the late 1920s to 1962. The essays are not organized in chronicle order, but in a manner that is very readable. The book consists of two collections of texts "Moments musicaux" and "Theory of New Music." When Adorno speaks of new music, he's not talking about Cage (who does get a brief mention in a later essay) but composers of his generation and time, for instance, Schönberg, who is the main figure in these series of writings, along with Berg, Webern, and Ravel. There is also the commentary on Beethoven, Wagner, and Bach, but the heart of the book is on the Second Viennese School of music. For one, it's interesting to read these essays knowing that they were written during a time when Schönberg and Ravel were active and doing music. One is not looking back, but at the present when these essays were written. The writing for me is readable, but also difficult due to its density and Adorno's knowledge of music. People who are either serious fans of Classical (especially 20th-century) or musicians will jump on this book with no problem, but for the guy or gal, it's a serious journey into the rabbit hole that is music. Seagull Books who published "Night Music" should get special notice for the design of the book, and their great taste in titles. Also, Wieland Hoban did a fantastic job in doing the translation from German to English.

[Michal Lipták · Rating 3 out of 5]

I "hit-and-miss" - yes, Teddy, you've read that right! - collection of essays. It opens with glorious essay on Beethoven's late style, but that's followed with underwhelming essay on Schubert - Schubert is one of the most enigmatic composers ever, and it's crucial to cut through the straightforward and deceptive prettiness of much of his work to get to the confusing core and realize that one doesn't really know where one stands, and Adorno's essay does aim there, but it's kind of meh in the end.

Long "On Jazz" essay is better than essay on regressive listening - though it's also less vitriolic and thus less fun - and it's not completely indefensible, but it still can't hold, obviously. Adorno's essay is worse than wrong - it's undialectical. Adorno quite straightforwardly assumes that jazz basically has no history, that by 1930s it's utterly reified and all variations and innovations are illusory. Popular music, for Adorno, cannot develop - it's always just there, to be unthinkingly consumed. For jazz, this wasn't just decisively empirically disproved (Adorno's theses about jazz improvisation being anchored by fixed chord progressions can't survive already modal jazz, if it ever was tenable; basically nothing of what he writes can survive free jazz), it was never through - there's longing to "break through the wall" in much of popular music. And if Adorno believes - and he's not entirely wrong to believe - that there are forces holding this desire back, forces both personal - embodied in producers - and impersonal - embodied in market - that's still not excuse to ignore the desire. Benjamin in his wildly optimistic speculation - which was then instantly empirically disproved, starting with roll back of avant-garde cinema in Soviet Union - has nonetheless glimpsed this aspect. He was productively wrong, his errors were dialectical. But there's not actually much one can do with Adorno's writing on popular music.

There's a lot one can do with his writing on avant-garde music, though. Some of those writings are bit repetitive here, but there's great final essay "On the Current Relationship Between Philosophy and Music", which simultaneously touches on theoretical issues of philosophical aesthetics - and basically claims that music hides and it must hide, and philosophy must expose the music and must fail in doing so - and that's what life of art requires and atonal avant-garde music is just best-disposed for hiding, best in taunting exposure and then retreating again, mockingly.

And there's great essay on Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, where Adorno attacks a canonical work - and man, it just struck a chord... I always had immense problems with Missa Solemnis, with its violently spectacular nature, its preference for bombast, its neatly packed Spirituality™ - but I thought that come on, it must be me who's missing something. So Adorno restored my confidence here - he shows that, indeed, Missa Solemnis is a failure, but the tendency that operates there, the tendency to seek the untenable, which causes it to gloriously fail, is the very same that makes Beethoven's late quartets timidly succeed - or fail in a way that's intriguing. It's not easy to attack a canon, Adorno admits that clearly at the beginning. Thankfully, he whips up his analytical forces in that essay, and it's joy to read.

[Franklyn Oliver · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a cretin

[Ryan Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the earlier essays here are not as strong as the later ones, however Adorno is always a pleasure to read. The encyclopaedia entries on new music are quite interesting, as it shows Adorno giving descriptive/critical detail to various musical concepts and terms that he otherwise puts to work without explanation. For the reader without any musical "training" or background, this would prove immensely helpful. However, I would doubt that too many people come to these texts without any musical knowledge, so the real point of interest is seeing how Adorno engages with each term in some kind of restricted manner.

Essays on Music is still the best introduction and collection of Adorno's texts on music, rigorous and scholarly as the collection is, while Philosophy of New Music is his most philosophically incisive and demanding (and rewarding, if contestable). This takes up position with Quasi Una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music and others as the indispensable depth in the field of inquiry.