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instrumental music f ro m t he o ut se t, above all in t he i de a oftimbral melody [Klangfarbenmelodie].

Thus th e new music has two extreme tendencies. On th e on ehand, it is emancipated expressiveness; on t h e o t he r, there iselectronic music whose material laws seem to preclude th esubjective intervention of t h e co mp o ser, just as they precludethat of the interpreter. Th e fact that these extremes actually meetconfirms th e objective trend towards unity. In th e final analysis itleads to th e liquidation of t h e co ncept of new music. This is no tbecause th e new music is s imply absorbed into- a larger musicaperennis, bu t because music in general will be absorbed into th enew music. Th e lat ter brings to fulfilment t h e id ea co nta in ed inall traditional music. It is fo r this reason that th e new music isobsolete as a particular category; it is a suspect subheading. Th econcept has become irrelevant because by th e 'side of th e newmusic all other music production has become impossible. It hasdegenerated into kitsch. Th e distinction between new music a:n dmusic in general becomes th e distinction between good an d ba d

music as such.(1960)

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Vers u n e m u s i q u e i n f o r me l l e

In memory of Wolfgang Steinecke

Dire cela, sanssavoirquai.Beckett, L'Innommable

-, Anyone of my ag e an d ' experience who is both a musician an dwho thinks about musicfinds himself in a difficult quandary. On eside of it consists in th e attitude 'so fa r an d n o fu r th er' . In otherwords, it consists in clinging to one's youth as if modernity were

o ne 's o wn private monopoly. T h is m ea ns res is t ing at al l cos tseverything which remains inaccessible to o n e' s o wn ex per ien ceor at least one's primary, basic reactions. This ha d o n ce b een th eattitude of confirmed Wagnerians when confronted by Strauss,an d th e Straussians adopted it in their turn as a defence againstth e new music of t h e Scho en berg persuasion. We are perfectlymodern ourselves; wh o are they to offer us tuition? Sometimes,of course, my narcissism, which asserts itself ev en th o ug h I ca nsee through it, has a hard task persuading itself t h a t th e countlesscomposers of music that ca n only be understood with th e aid ofdiagrams an d whose musical inspiration remains whollyinvisibleto m e c an r ea ll y all be so much more musical, intelligent an d

progressive than mys el f. I frequently f in d m ys el f unable torepress the thought that their system-driven music is no t so veryd i ffe rent f ro m the- false notes arbitrarily i n tro d uced in to th eneo-Classical concertos an d wind ensembles of th e music festivalsof thirty or forty years ago. Musicians ar e usually t ru an t s f ro mmaths classes; it would be a terrible fate fo r them to e n d u p in th ehands of t h e math s teach er after all. Th e speculative artistabove

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all ought to c ling to th e vestiges of common sense which wouldremind hi m that mus ic is no t necessarily more advanced justbecause he ha s fai led to comprehend it. It ma y indeed be soprimitive an d uninspired that he failed to consider it an option inth e f irst p lace. This explains why t h e p ro du ct s o f laborious

mindlessness ar e sometimes not seen through at th e outset.Because th e musical material isintelligent in itself, it inspires th ebelief t ha t m in d must be at work, where in r ea li ty only th eabdication of mind is being celebrated.

Th e other side of th e dilemma becomes visible when we see .2-how many members of the older generat ion feel compelled to goalong with th e latest trend in order to avoid beingthrown on th escrapheap. Th e works they produce ar e greeted ' fo r t he m os tpart with well-earned disdain by th e young. At b es t t he y ar eto lerated for their propaganda value. It isessential to overcomethese equally unpalatable alternatives. Theya re too abstract an doperate solely at the level of th e subjective judge where nothingcounts bu t th e content of thejudgement and th e motives underlying it. No r is th e prehistory of musical judgement, the judge'sown intellectual pedigree, decisive h ere , a l tho u g h that is undoubtedly an important factor in the formation o f his thought. Iwould no t wish to c la im that my membership of Schoenberg'sViennese school co nfe rs any p art i cu lar au th o ri ty on me or toassert that as an initiate I ha d easy answers to these questions.

What we have to contend w ith in th e development of music3>since 1945 di d no t simply appear from a clear blue sky. It ca n beseen to have been haunting everything thatis included nowadaysunder th e ra ther suspect title of 'classical' twelve-note technique.I have been very favourably impressed by works of th eKranichstein or Darmstadt School such as Stockhausen's Zeit-mafJe, Gruppen, Kontakte, an d Carre, as w ell a s Bou lez' s Marteausans maitre, his Second an d Third Piano Sonatas an d his Sonatinafo r Flute. I was also deeply moved by a s ingle hearing o f Cage'sPiano Concerto played on Cologne Radio, though I would behard pu t to define th e effect with any precision. Even at th e bestof times precise definition is anything bu t straightforward withworks of this kind.

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If Nevertheless, my reaction to most o f these works is qual ita-tively differentfrom my reaction to th e whole t radit ion down to,an d doubtless including, Webern 's l as t w or ks . My productiveimagination does no t reconstruct them all with equal success. Iam;not ableto participate, as i t were, in th e process of composing

, them as I listen, as I still could with Webern's String Trio , which isanything bu t a simple piece. Bu t what I am tempted at first toregister as my ow n subjective inadequacy may turn out no t to be

, that at all. I t jnay well prove to be th e case that serial an dpos t- se ri al mus ic is founded on a q ui te d if fe re nt m od e o f

, apperception, in so fa r as mus ic ca n be said to be based onapperception at all. In traditional listening th e music unfoldsf ro m t h e p ar ts to th e whole, in tune with th e flow of time itself.This flow - that is to say, th e parallel between th e temporalsuccession of musical events an d th e pure flow of time itself- hasbecome problematical an d presents itself within t he w or k as atas k to be thought th rough and mastered.

s- It is no accident that in his theoretical essay 'How time passes"- e asily t he m os t i mp or ta nt o ne o n this t op ic - Stockhausenshould have dealt with the central issue of how to achieve unifiedparameters of pitch and duration in th e context of partition, thatisto say, from to p to bottom ra ther than f rom b o tto m to top . Myfirst reaction to ZeitmafJe, in w hich I relied exclusively on my ears,involved me in a strange interaction with his theory of a s taticmusic which arises from a universal dynamics as well as with histheory of cadences. Actual acoustic listeningmay not provide th eultimate in musical criteria, bu t it is cer ta in ly superior to th efar-fetched an d idiotic commentaries with which scores areo f t enprovided nowadays - t h e m o re fulsomely, th e less they containthat stands in need of commentary.

" In th e best modern works. there is a unity o f theory an dpractice. Listening to actual performances is l ikely to be th e bestway of determining whether a musician whose own assumptionslie some way b eh i nd t he latest developments will thereby bedebarred from an adequate appreciat ion. Th e recognition of

1. Die Reihe, no. 3,1957, p. 13. [Adorno's note.]

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frontiers implies th e possibility of crossing them. It is just asurgent for musical theory to reflect on its ow n procedures as i t i sfo r music itself. It is t h e b i tt e r fate of an y th eo ry wo rth y of th en a me t h at it is able to th ink beyond its ow n limitations, to reachf ur th e r t ha n th e en d of i ts nose. To do t hi s is almost th edistinguishing mark of any authentic thinking. It is in thi s spirit

that these pages, which a re n ot th e product of t h e m os t r ec e ntideas, venture to speak of on e of t h e mo st ad van ced conceptsnamely, that of an informal or, to use Metzger's term, an a-serialmUSIC.

Given th e prestissimo of recent years, t h e t ime is perhaps no t ,.unfavourable for such an attempt. Th e developmental lines ofcomposition themselves seem to converge with th e postulate ofmusical emancipation w hi ch I f in d so appealing. I have coinedth e Fren ch term musique informelle as a s ma ll token of gratitudetowards th e nation fo r wh om th e t rad i tio n of th e avant-garde issynonymous with t he c ou ra ge to produce manifestoes. In 'contrast to th e stuffy aversion to ' isms' in art, I believe.slogans ar e

as desirable now as they were in A po ll inai re 's day. Musiqueinformelle resists definition in th e botanical terms of th e positivists. If there is a tendency, an actual trend, which t h ewo rd servesto bring into focus, it is on e which mocks all efforts at definition,just as N ie tz sche ,' no bad , authority on musical matte rs , o n cer e ma r ke d t h at every historical phenomenon eluded semioticattempts at definition.

I am no t able to provide any programmes for' athematic music 1or an y statisticiallaw g o vernin g th e in cid en ce.o f mark s on th ewriting paper, or anything of t h eso r t th a t mig ht clarify my visionof informal music. Nevertheless, I should l ike at leas t to attemptto s take ou t t h e p arameters of th e concept. What is meant is a

type of music which has discarded all forms which ar e external orabstract or which confront it in an inflexible way. At t h e s am etime, although such music should be completely free of anythingirreducibly a lie n to itse lf or superimposed on it, it shouldnevertheless constitute itselfin an objectively compelling way, inth e musical substance itself, a nd n ot in terms of external laws.Moreover, wherever this ca n be achieved without running the

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risk of a new form of oppression, such an emancipation shouldalso s tr ive to do away with th e system of musical co-ordinateswhich have crystallized ou t in t h e i n ne r mo s t recesses of th emusicalsubstance itself.

C; O f course this gives r ise to th e difficulty that in th e absence ofsuch residual forms , musical co h erence ap p ears to be quite I

inconceivable, while their survival as foreign bodies inhibits th ein tegrated elaboration of musical events. Th is co nt rad ict ionhighlights most clearly the problems facingmusic at a s tage whenan unconstrained musical nominalism, th e rebellion against an ygeneral musical form, becomes conscious of its ow n limitations.Just as in dialectical logic, so here too in aesthetics th e universalandthe particular do no t constitute mutually exclusive opposites.If informal music dispenses with abstract forms - in other words,with th e musically ba d universal forms of internal compositionalcategories- then these universal forms will surface again in th einnermost recesses of t h e p art i cu lar ev ent an d set them alight.This was th e greatness of Webern's music." However, a uni

versality an d cohesion achieved by means of specificity must be ashostile towards th e same qualities as b or ro we d f ro m t he trad it ion, as it would be towards a pure mathematics of objectiverealitywhich remains neutral towards individual phenomena.

lo Such informal music ha d been a real possibility o n ce b efo re,around 1910. Th e date is no t irrelevant, s ince it provides ademarcation line, dividing t he age fro m the vastly overratedtwenties. Th e b egin nin gs can be seen in t he p er io d whenSchoenberg wrote Erwartung, Die gliichliche Hand an d Herzgeioiichse, an d Stravinsky th e Three Poemsfrom theJapanese. Bu t thisage, the age of synthet ic Cubism, s oon d ri ft ed i nt o otherdirections. Quite early on , in Die gliickliche Hand, we find

Scho enb erg makin g u se of all t oo pa lpa bl e surface structures,together w ith a sort of recapitulation - a notable contrast toErwartung, although doubtless with good reason. These surface

2. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Der getreue Korrepetitor. Lehrschriften zur musikalischenPraxis, Frankfurt am Main 1963, passim, especially pp. 102 and 129. [See a lsoGesammelte Schriften, vol. 15, Frankfurt am Main 1976, pp. 252 and 179.] [Adorno'snote.]

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they have come into being an d are th ere fo re transitory, so thattheir naturalness stands revealed as a 'second nature'.

Bu t thisdiscovery changes everything. It isto Stockhausen that I ~we owe t h e in sig ht th at in a certain sense th e whole rhythmicalan d metrical structure of music, including atonal an d twelvenote music, has remained within th e bounds of tonality. This

in sig ht can n o lo n ger be forgotten; the contradict ion it points toca n no longer be tolerated. Th e fact that since then t herelationships between all th e dimensions of musical compositionh ave b een th oro ug h ly p lo ug h ed over, t h at e ac h on e inevitablyaffects t h e o thers, has now become as deeply pervasive as anycompositional technique of th e past. Even thematic work, in th ebroadest sense, nowadays displays a tonal aspect, if t h e w o rd istaken in its truest sense. Admittedly, th e significance an d th egreatness o f th e works composed just before th e First World Warc an n o l on ge r be divorced f ro m t he ir o wn illogicality. Theireffects were so profound simply because o f th e friction produced'by their interaction with so methin g th ey still fel t to be a li en,

something with which they ha d no t become identical. Bu t evenfriction coefficients cannot be preserved artificially.Over th e last fifty years there has been a huge growth in th e 1


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Th e new rebel l ion sacrifices no nuance, bu t in tendency at J,.1-least, it raises e ac h n u an ce f ro m t h e r ea lm of expression onto aless malleable technological plane. It retains a firm hold on th eachievements of subjectivity; its exponents all maintain th etradition of t h e Scho enb erg School r at he r t h an that of neoClassicism. It is w or ld s away from t h e r e cu p er at io n of th e

pristine, an d h en ce f ro m a ny t en de nc y to make a c ult of itsobjectivity. Bu t it does represent a response to th e progressiveexpropriation of th e individual to th e point where it threatens tooverwhelm th e totality with catastrophe. Because of this recenthistory has reacted by coating every directexpression of subjec-tivity with a layer of vanity, inauthenticity an d ideology.. In . th e trad.ition of West.ern n o ~ i n a l i s mart had always . ~ ~imagined that It could locate Its enduring core an d substance inth e subject. This subject now stands exposed as ephemeral.While it behaves as if it were th ecrea to r of th e world, th e groundof reality, it turnsout to be wh at th e Englishcall a 'fake', th e meretrappings of so meo n e wh o gives himself airs, sets himself up assomething special, while scarcely retaining any reality at all. Th eevents that h ave taken place in th e world, which ar e repeateddaily an d c an g e t e v en worse, have contributed effectively to th eundermining of ar t in whichsubjectivityasserts itself asa positivegood, just as t he y h av e d ev al ue d every would-be pious community a r t. Im poss i bl e though it be to c on ce ive of music, ori n de e d a n y a rt , as bereft of t h e e lemen t of subjectivity, it mustnevertheless bid farewell to that subjectivity which is mirrored inexpression an d hence isalways affirmative, a form of subjectivitywhich Expressionism inherited directly from neo-Romanticism.To t h at e x te n t t h e situation is irreconcilable with th e position ofclassical Expressionism in which expression an d th e individualwere unproblematic features of music.

With th e in creas ing maste ry of t h e mate r ia l the events at th e ~subjective pole of music inevitably unsett le the opposite pole, th emusical material itself. Misunderstandings arise because of th etenacious resistance of t h e co ncept to any abstract designation.Bu t this res istance is his torical in form. Th e sound materialavailable is different at different times an d it is no t possible to

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overlook these differences in considering the concrete shape ofth e work. Material cannot be thought of except as th e stuff withwhich the ccmposer operates an d in which he works. An d this inturn is nothing less than th e objectified an d critically reflectedstate of th e technical productive forces of an ag e with which anygiven composer is inevitably confronted. Th e physical an d

historical dimensions mutually interact. -In Viennese Classicism, for example, th e material comprisesno t just tonality, the tempe red tuning system, th e possibility ofmodulation through the complete circle of fifths. It also includescountless idiomatic components which ad d up to th e musicallanguage of th e age. On e might say that music operates withinthat language, ra ther than with it. Even typical fo rms su ch as th esonata, t h e ro n do , th ech aracte r variation, or syntactic forms likethose of t h e an teced en t an d consequent, were largely a priorigivens, rather than forms actively chosen.

What Schenker calls the fundamental line [Urlinie] isin realityprobably th e essence of that idiom expressed as a n o rm. W h en hereproaches Wagner with having destroyed the fundamental line,he speaks no more than th e truth in th e sense that in Wag ner fo rth e first time the form-creating function of musical idiom wasbeing eroded by th e process of evolution of th e musical material.

Schenker's lasting achievement as an analyst is an d remains th efact that he was. th e fi rst to d em o ns t ra te t h e constitutiveimportance of tonal relationships, as understood in th e widestsense, f o r t h e concrete shape of a composition - an achievementwhich stands incurious contrast to his cult of genius. Imprisonedin his dogmatic approach, however, he fai led to perceive th ecountervailing force. This was th e fact t h at t h e tonal id iom doesno t just 'compose' of its ow n volition, but tha t it actually obstructsth e specific conception of th e composer as soon as t h emo men t ofth e classical unity of both elements has vanished. Dazzled by th eidiom, he hypostatized it and, notwithstanding insights intostructure which have affinities with Schoenberg's practice, hestrove to establish fo r a reactionary aesthetics a solid foundationin mus ical logic w hich tal li ed all too well with his loathsomepolitical views.

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In contrast to his formulae, whose sterilityis no t eliminated by t ~his habit of pointing to them as if to a sublime an d u n a l t e r a b l ~n o rm , t h e composer's relationship to those features of th e tonalidiom which have freed themselves f ro m t he i r original contexthas resulted in egregious difficulties whose effects are still withus. In Kranichstein I once accus ed a composition, w hich inintention at least ha d managed to unify all possible parameters,of vagueness in its mus ical language. Where, I a sked , w as th eantecedent, an d wh ere th e consequent? This cri ticism has to bemodified. Contemporary music cannot be forced into suchapparently universal categories as 'antecedent' an d 'consequent',as if they were unalterable. It is nowhere laid d o wn th a t modernmusic must a priori co nta in su ch e lement s of th e tradition astension an d resolution, continuation, development, contrast an dreassertion; all th e less since memories of all thatare t h e f req u en tcause of crude inconsistencies in th e new material an d th e needto correct these isitselfa motive force in modern music.

Of course musical categories are probably indispensable to 2.,achieve articulation, even if they have to be wholly transformed,unless we are going to rest content with an undifferentiatedjumble of sounds. Th e problem, however, is no t to restore th etraditional categories, bu t to develop equivalents to suit t he n ewmater ials, so that it will become possible to perform in atransparent manner th e tasks which wereformerlycarried ou t inan irrational an d ultimately inadequate way. This would be th eprime task of thematerial __theory which I am envisaging here. 6

Bu t if th e materials of music are" no t static, a n d i f to work with th eavailable materials isto mean more than contenting oneself witha craftsmanlike approach which aimsat n o m o re than th e skilfulmanipulation of t h e mean s available, then materials t h e ~ s e l v e s

will be modified by th e act of composition. Th e materials willemerge from every successful work they enter, as if newly born.Th e secret of composition is t he e ne rg y which m ou ld s t he

6. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler. Eine musikalische Physiognomie, Frankfurt amMain 1960, pp. 124 ff. [Nowalsoin Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, The Musical Monographs,second edn, Frankfurt am Main 1977, pp. 239ff. [Adorno's note.]

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material in a p ro cess of progressively greater appropriateness.Anyonewho refuses to take cognizance of such a dialectic will fallvictim to th e sterility of th e New Sobriety [neue Sachlichkeit]. Thistransferred to music requirements which were a l ready en co u n-tering resistance in a rc hi te ct ur e f ro m w h er e t he y o ri gi na te d,e ve n t h ou g h they ha d a greater justification in th e practicalexigencies of architecture than in music.

30 Th e risk I a m a ll ud in g to man if es ts i ts el f in what I haveheretically t e rm e d t h e loss of tension. Th e real social ernasculation of the individual, which everyone feels, does no t leave th eartist unscathed. It is scarcely imaginable that in an a ge w h en t h eindividual isso diminished an d isconscious of his impotence an dapathy, he should feel t h e same co mp u ls ion to produce as di dindividualsin more heroic epochs. Given th e anthropology of th epresent age, th e call fo r a non-revisionist music is to expect toomuch. Composerstend to react to i tby renouncingany control oftheir musicby their ego. They prefer to drif tand to refrain fromintervening, in t h e h o pe that, as in Cage' s bon mot, i t will be no tWebern speaking, bu t th e music itself. Their aim isto t ransformpsychological eg o weakness into aesthetic strength.

.,3\ Something of t h e so rt may be said to have been anticipated bytheir f ! r t t i Q Q ~ e ,integral twelve-note technique, if weview itas th eattempt to free th e ea r fro m the obligation of ubiquitousimmediacy, permanent presence, by normalizing an d institutionalizing that obligation. Bu t th e very relief this broughtresulted in an important shift, a quiteconcrete an d specific shiftof emphasis in th e material itself. I mention just on e example.On e of th e crucial impulses of twelve . . . note technique, on erecently confirmed in Web er n' s p os th um ou sl y p ub li sh edlectures, was th e prohibition on repeating anyone note before allt h e o t he rs ha d appeared. A work like Webern's Bagatelles forString Quartet , Opus 9, w hich does no t yet embody th e principles of dodecaphony, obeys this injunction m o re p ur e ly an dmore rigorously than anything that came later. On e argument infavour of the thesis that systematization brings about a qualitativechange, is that th e moment t h e f o u r basic row shapes were fixed,music abandoned th e ex per ien ce w hich gave r is e to them. If a

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composer writes less ascetically than Webern in th e period of theworks f rom Opus 9 to Opus 11 - if, in other words, he uses morenotes, an d i fhe attempts, legitimately, to create no t just intensive,bu t also more detailed mus ic - he will f in d himself violating th eprohibition on repeating notes. Th e combination of differentrow t ransformations, the use of a second basic shape to accompany a mel od ic row, merging rows harmonically or combining them contrapuntally - all these ar e incompatible with thatrequirement. Such methods easily result in that fatal preponder-ance of an individual note which triggered of f th e originaldodecaphonic rebellion. Th e entire situation isa textbook model'of musical dialectics. 7

I l lu min a tin g fo r th e p resen t controversy is the confrontat ionof a possibly apocryphals tatement of Schoenberg's with utteran-.ces of very different musicians like Eimert an d Cage. WhenDariu s Mi lh aud visited Schoenberg in Brentwood a ft er t heSeco n d Wo rld War a nd told hi m of th e universal triumph oftwelve-note technique, Schoenberg i ssa id to have been less thandelighted, a reaction with which it iseasy to sympathize. Instead,he asked, 'Indeed, an d do they actually compose with it? ' Thistallies with the cumbersome, bu t stubbornly defended description he gave of twelve-note technique, namely, 'composition withtwelve n o tes re la t ed o nl y to on e another '. Everything in hi mresisted the idea that th e notes somehow composed themselves,

7. Th e sensitivitytowards repetition which, according to The Philosophy of ModernMusic, is one of the motivating forces of twelve-note technique, is less ambiguouswhen viewed from a distance than when it wasdiscussed there. Its dialectic is one ofthe architectonic features of music assuch. Asa developmentalstructur e music isanabsolute negation of repetition, in accordance with Heraclitus' assertion that no oneever steps in to th e s a m e r iv e r twice. On the other hand, i t i s only able to develop byvirtue of repetition. Thematic work, the principle which concretizes the abstract

passage of t imein terms of musicalsubstance, is nevermore than the dissimilarity ?fthe similar. A development which leadsto something new can onlydo so thanks to Itsrelationship to th e o ld which is assumed a priori in such arelationand is repeated inhowever sublimated and unrecognizablea form. There can beno articulated music inthe absence of this highly formal constituent of similarity; identityin n o n - i d ~ n t i t yisitslifeblood. In serialmusic this dialectic is taken to extremes. Absolutely nothing maybe repeated and, as the derivative of One ~ h i n g , . a b ~ o l u t e " yeve:ything is r e p ~ t i t i o . n .Th e task of informal musicwouldbeto rethink this dialectic and Incorporate ItInto ItSown organizational structure. [Adorno's note.]

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or even that their pure essence is t h e meanin g of music an d mustmanifest i ts el f in the composi tion : they were there to becomposed with. In contrast to this Eimert, in his essay 'TheComposer's Freedom of Decision' (in th e third issue of Die Reihe) ,asserts very succinctly, 'The notes ' - t h e co n tex t is Messiaen'scelebrated short piano composition Mode deva leurs etd'intensites-:

' do n ot function, they exist. No t that psychology in music is togive way to physics. Th e sums don't work ou t as neatly as tha t.Th e acoustic process is th e product of the intercourse betweenperception a n d t he state of th e object.'

3 ~ Th e contrast here is profound. Schoenberg's ' I ndeed , and dothey actually compose with it?' containsin th e 'with it' a residue ofunresolved externality. Composition is understood in a traditional sense; t h e co mpo ser .composes with ra w 'material whichhe works on thematically, establishingmotivic connections whichin Webern, thanks to theirextremely condensed nature, developinto an all-embracingcanonic system. Materialand compositionremainalien.opposedtoeach other, Ways of mediating between

them have no t been w or ke d ou t. T hi s alienness becomesmanifest in th e decline of t h e e lemen t of idiom. Previously theproblem of reconciling composition an d material was not th eleast of its tasks. Bu t th e more completethe composer's control ofhis material an d t he m or e vigorous his rejection of establishedmusical categories as conventional, t he n t he m or e abrasive hisencounter with his material tends to become.

3 In consequence the composer's tradit ional way of making use1 of the notes becomes tinged with something anti-traditional,something comparable to an industrial form of production: aruthlessness in th e treatment of th e material which was inconceivable w he n t he musical sub ject was in it s prime. No r is thesituation affected by th e fact that the composer's material, th erow, is preformed - or , as many would not hesita te to assert,manipulated by h im. Th e twelve-note row is treated far moreuninhibitedly than was earl ier the case with interval successions,chords a n d t h e idiomatic elements of tonality, wi th o ut an y g reat 'Ic on c er n b e in g s ho wn about the connections between what is Jcomposed a n d t he materials of composition. But the objection to

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twelve-note practice isno less problematic. This approach simplyaccepts as realities in themselves what ar e actually a subjective setof sound materials which have been preformed by history. Th enote ishypostatized, asit were. This is th e basis of the concept ofthe parameter. According to this concept all musical dimensionsof the entire piece of music should be deducible from th eproperties of individual notes.

In a strange way this l ea ds here, an d no t only here, to a lrresurgence of certain motifs ofJugendstil. Following the demiseof aesthetic Victorianism, with its obsession with copying otherstyles, Jugendstil hoped that i t would be possible to create 5 l ~ e wf 2 ! - ~ ~ ~ _ H , ! Q . ~ 9 ~ . _ , _ ~ _ ~ ~ ~ l y f r o I l l ~

. pre-existing.. setof'materials. Th eresult was thatple thoraofref ined an d spiritualstructures whichwere sti ll causing such m is ch ie f in 1 92 0 in such activities asrhythmic gymnastics, expressive dancing an d t h ear t s an d crafts.Th e confusion here lay in t h e id ea thatthe purely subjective workcould be avoided byfetishizingthesubject.matter, as if it were aspure as the driven snow. Absolute qualities were attributed to it

in th e hope that they would speak. Bu t these materials, the ideaof th e world as a precious jewel, only b eco me wh at th ey ar e byvirtue of their relationships, if no t to th e individual subject, thenat l ea st to th e collective subject that negotiates with them. It isdoubtless true that th e ideaof th e selfbood an d absolute identityof th e material used in advanced music has been purified ofkitschig associations. It would not occur to an y half-wayint elligenttheoretician of Serialismto talk of noble sounds in the way peopleused to talk of rough or unsmoothed material, an d so forth. (

But there isan echo of that ideology in the credo that th e raw lmaterial, the note in i ts el f is m or e t ha n simply j us t t he re a ndactuallyenjoysa real existence. If this ideology is eradicated from

th e whole conception, then nothing remains of th e much-vaunted material to whi ch th e composer submits, e xc ep t f o rnatural, physica l quali ti es . As such , however, they are pre-artistic, crudely factual an d incapable of guaranteeing anythingof aesthetic worth . Whatever you do y ou g et it wrong. Th e firsttask is:to establish an awareness of the limitations. Schoenberg'sdictum, 'Indeed, a n d d o they actually compose with it?' opens the

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door to the abuse of operating with the twelve notes as if they stillbelonged within t h e scheme of tonality. But the hypothesis thatthe note 'exists' ra therthan 'functions' is. either ideological or elsea misplaced posit ivism. Cage, fo r example, perhaps because ofhis involvement with Zen Buddhism, appears to ascribe metaphysical powers to t he n ot e o nc e i t has been l iberated from allsu p po sed su p ers tru c tu ra l baggage. Th is d est ruc t io n of thesuperstructure is conceived along botanical l ines, in th e sensethat e i th e r th e tone's basic acoustic material is scooped out f romit,' or else t h e co mp o ser relies on chance , p lac ing his trust inprobability theory.

3 \ Eimert underscores th e distinction between science an d th eT work of art, bu t as far as I ca n see, even he has fai led to take th e

d is ti nc ti on to its l og ic al c on cl us io n an d follow' through itsphysical an d aesthetic implications. He postulates that ' themusical calculus must harmonize with th e fundamental musicalmaterial'. Less mathematically, an d couched in t h e lang u age ofHegelian philosophy, this wo uld b eco me th e ideal of a musicalsubject-object. Th e only question is whether such a harmony ispossible. Does no t such an a priori requirement beg the questionof the identity of subject matter an d 'manipulation'? An d doest ha t n ot imply t ha t t he subject , which has only been removedafter huge efforts, will now return by virtue of th e preformationof the musical material? Or alternatively, does it no t entail theascription of an occul t quali ty which mysteriously crea tes anobjective musical meaning to an already prepared material towhich t h eco mp o serh as only to adjust himself? In th e absence ofsuch explanations an adequate relationship would be nothingbu t th e miracle of a pre-established harmony. Adherents ofcommunication theory will find that hard to swallow.

3, Conversely, the fundamental material - an d Eimert i s in ther igh t on this point - is no t simply th e subject in its o wn r igh t ; italso contains the element of what is a li en to th e subject, th eelement of otherness. Every musician who comes into contactwith physically pure sounds is aware of the shock he experiences.Bu t if what Eimert calls the fundamental material [Grundstofj]really cannot be reduced to the subject, then there ca n be no

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identity between it an d th e 'musical calculus' or th e process ofcomposition. In that event, however, i t would correspond to th eidea of doing justice to th e material; to th e efforts of ar t reallyan d truly to be what it is, wi th o ut th e ideological pretence ofb e in g so methin g else. O r rather, to admit frankly th e fact ofnon-identity an d to follow through its logic instead of coveringit

up by an appeal to th e almost Romantic concept of a seamlessidentity.

This might well be th e way in which Stockhausen would see th e ~matter. At l ea st , it says quite l it eral ly in his essay 'How TimePasses' ' . . . should he not' (the composer, that is) 'accept th econtradiction an d resolve to compose from ou t o f th e dialecticalrelationship, since it frequently appears more fruitful to startfrom a contradiction than f ro m t h e definition 2 + 2 = 4'. Yet th econtext in which this sentence occurs isso difficult that I hesitateto appeal to i t without further qualification. Nevertheless, he toorefers to the antinomy of material an d composed music. Stockhausen becomes conscious of it in the context of t h e p rob lem of

the relat ionship between physically measurable an d authentically musical time.That identity, the congruence of th e composition an d its pre- i b

formed material, was also th e ideal of classica l twelve-note tech- 'nique. Musical totality should also be at on e with th e set ofinternal musical relationships. Bu t th e problematic nature of thatideal makes i t necessary to go beyond the dodecaphonic, as wellas beyond the ol d tonality. Webern called on composers to estab-lish as many interconnections as possible. A lb an B erg, an dSchoenberg too fo r that matter, would have agreed. This postu-late ca n scarcely pass unchallenged t od ay. I may perhaps be allowed to reminisce. When on e comesacross such th ings as a very

youngand somewhat naive man, on e occasionally gains insightswhich ar e easily overlooked because t h ey seem all too obvious,once a certain familiaritywith a subject has been attained. When Iwas no t yet twenty, I heard Webern's Five Movements fo rStrings, Opus 5, f or t he first t imeat a music festival, an d studiedthe score. I then wrote an essay on it for th e Leipzig Zeitschrift fu rMusik, which published my first pieces of music criticism.

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l ' In this essay I contrasted Webern with Schoenberg, especiallythe Schoenberg of Opus 19 an d Opus 11.,My reservations aboutWebern would perhaps ' take a different form nowadays fromwhat they were ev en ten years ago. I maintained that tendencieswhich in Schoenberg derived from the need fo r self-expressionan d which arose spontaneously and, as it were, irrationally, were

given a rationalized an d systematic form in Webern. This wasalready evident in th e exhaustive motivic development of theFive Movements, Opus 5. Compared to th e unprotected openness of Schoenberg w hi ch I so g re at ly admired, I f ou nd t heWebern reactionary. I scented rei fica tion in h is postu la te of amaximum of interconnections. It was comparable to whathappened l a te r o n , in classical twelve-note technique, wh ere th edensity of organization was intended to mak eg o o d th e loss of th etonal system of relations. In this resp ect Web ern was to beclassified among t h e ex p on en ts of traditional, that is, thematicmusic. Eimert points ou t t ha t a lt ho u gh 'h e was th e first toabandon the merelylinear dimension of the row, he di d no t do so

by i n teg ra t in g th e ro w within a three-dimensional sound world',b ut t ha t h e h a d gained 'spaceby splitting up the row into motivicparticles an d by inserting, as it were, th e flat surfaces i n to eachother, t h us crea t in g a relief-like network set fast in th e soundmat er ia l, a structure whose materia l n at ur e a nd modes ofinterlockinghave only recently become fully transparent'.

12.-- In an analogous way, in 1957, I interpreted the function ofcounterpoint as a de vi ce fo r reco n st ruc t in g th e musical spacethat had been lost. There ca n be no doubt that that too was whatwas meant later on by t h e _ J Q t i ! U 1 Y , . Q f J h . ~ . 1 ' ~ 1 t ! ~ ~ Q _ ! ! , ~ h j p ~ . Q i ~fromtheindividual.note. Webern d id n ot think in parameters;what h e d id was to intensify m o t i v ~ c G l n dthemat icmusic in a waythat surpassed Schoenberg' an d hedid so in order to eliminatewhatmay be thought of as the fortui tous residueswhich survivedinto both atonality an d twelve-note technique. Bu t we should ad dthat this greater concentration of th e relationships an d th etightening up of techniquedoes not necessarily mak eth e musicalend-product, th e composition, denser and more compelling.

There is quite a simple explanation for thi s. As an instance of

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impositions. Ev en t he d ev el op me nt f ro m Fauvism to ne oClassic ism confirms this, as i s b or ne o ut by Cocteau's slogan'L'ordre apres le desordre'. I am unable to discern any guarantee oftruth in this eternalrecurrence of the needfor an order based onknown systems; on t he c on tr ar y, t he y s ee m rather to be th esymbols of perennial weakness. They internalize the social

co mp u ls ion o p press ing th em in t h ei r s up p os ed k in gd om offreedom, th e realm of artistic production, a n d o n to p of that theyconfuse it with the innate vocation of art. w

Th e immanent, transparent laws t ha t s pr in g f ro m f re ed om { l '\an d th e capitulation to an invoked order are mutually incompat-ible. Th e contradiction between t he p ow er of order an d theimpotence of human beings cuts them of f from their ow nyearnings, yearnings fo r which ar t could assume responsibility.Fo r all th e oppressiveness of the actual an d spiritual world, theyd o n o t really want things to change. They continually reproducethe authoritarian mechanisms within themselves, in th e beliefthat you cannot dispense with the conventions, ev en wh en th e irvalidity has long since b een ex po sed an d even though culturefails to generate anything remotely similar to them a ny m or e.This is t he d ark secret of th e Classical ideal, t h e a ut he nt icformalism. In Stravinsky this attitude is a toned for to a certainextent, b ec au se he lets t he ca t ou t of the bag, naming theconventions f or w ha t t he y are, instead of claiming an y musicalsubstantiality fo r them by false pretences. It is where that is donethat th e rot sets in.

Categories like order should be scrutinized under th e micro- (0scope soas to destroy ! h ~ } ! ! ~ ~ l . 2 . ~ _ . ~ ! . ~ ~ e i r ~ ! 1 . ~ ! Y 'It isilluminatingthat a f te r th e collapse of th e tonalschemata, which fell apartbecause t he y w er e u na bl e to create t he f or m which was theirraison d'etre, music should stand in need of organizing powers soas 'not to l ap se into chaos. B ut t he f ea r of chaos is excessive, inmus ic as in social p sy ch ol og y. It resul ts in the s am e s ho rtc ircu it in g as is found in th e schools of neo-Classicism an dtwelve-note technique, which in this respect a re n ot all that f a rapart f ro m e ac h o th er . Order simply has to be imposed onfreedom, th e la tt e r mu s t be reined in - so th e argument goes -

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wh ereas th e situation is r a the r that freedom sh ou ld o rgan izeitselfin such a way that it need bow to no alien yardstick whichmutilates everything that s tr ives to shape i tsel f in freedom.Perhaps on e d ay p eop le will be astonished at music 's fa ilu re torejoice in its ownfreedom an d at its short-sighted commitment toideas that were disast rous phi losophical ly, as well as in other

respects. People wil l be aston ished , in short, at music 's masochism.Th e discomfort shown by emancipated music when faced bya

situa t ion in which anything goes, i s handed d ow n f ro m on egeneration to. t h e n ext , like th e violent order of t h e wo rld itself.Th e shadow of that order weighs on all musical construction, allstructured composition, to this day. From t h e s tand p o in t of thecomposing subject informal music would be music which liber-a t e ~ i ~ ~ 1 f . f ~ 9 mf e ~ r o ~ } ~ ~ . f l ~ c ; t i n g . ~ _ ~ ~ _ E ~ ~ i a ~ ~ _ ! 1 . : g j ! " > ~ . ~ ~ins teado f . q ~ i I l : g g ~ : r Y ~ r n t ; ~byjt, It would learn how to d is ti ng ui shbetween chaos, whichin reality never was such a great threat, an dth e ba d conscience of freedom, in which unfreedom ca n blossoman d thrive. Concepts l ike logic an d even causality, which thepassion fo r order necessarily avails itselfof, bu t which even theconception of musique informelle cannot entirely dispense with, donot operate literally in works of art, bu t o nl y i n a modified way.

To the extent to which works of ar t share some of th e featuresof reality,logic an d causalityalso intervene, bu t onlyin th e way inwhich t he y f un ct io n in dreams. If someone invents noveltechniques an d attempts to just ify them, he ca n easily fall into th etrap of natural izing them, treat ing them as if t h ey were directlysubject to th e laws of t h e p h eno men al world. This is demonstrated as much by the pr ide with which Schoenberg.imaginedthat th e twelve-note technique established a lasting control overthe material of music, as by the mostrecent enthusiasm aboutthesu pp o sed o r ig in of sound. It is as important to explode theillusion of naturalness in ar t as it is to d ismi ss th e superstitiousbelief in the unambiguous aesthetic necessity which is groundedin that illusion.

In works of a r t t he re is no s uch thing as natural causality.When compared with causality in nature, causalityin ar t bears an

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extra layer of subjective mediation. Th e illusion [Schein] that ar tis thus an d cannot be otherwise must always be refuted by whatar t actually is. If works of art exaggerate their fictive necessityan d convert it into a literal one, then their 'realistic' attitude willh av e led them to v io la te t he ir o wn reality. Th e category ofcorrectness, which has been used to supplant that of similarity inart, isno more suitable t h an th e la tt e r to serve as a philosopher'sstone. Whatever is observably correct in ar t ca n all too easily turninto the false.

Th e benefits of emancipating aesthetic necessity f ro m t he ('"1l i teral variety ca n be profitably studied at an earlier stage ofcontrol of th e material of music, namely in Erwartung. In this and 'other closely related works Schoenberg evidently felt thatmotivic, thematic work was somehow alien to t h e sp on tan eo usflow of th e music. That itwas,in short, a form of manipulation,. inmuch th e same way as seria l determinism appears to be t od ay.Hen ce th e athematic thread in Schoenberg's monodrama. H o w ~ever, i t does no t simply surrender to chance, bu t elevates [aufhebt]th e spirit of motivic, thematicwork in a positive assimilation. Thisbrings about a change in th e latter; i t expands it. From now onthis concept subsumes all music (including Webern' s midd leperiod) which integrates partialcomplexes of relative autonomyinto a relationship which manifests itself cogently through itscharacters an d their reactions to each other, without its beinggenerally possible to point to motivic similarities an d variations.Such things are not rigorously precluded; indeed they arediscreetly hinted a t o n occasion. Th e impulses an d characteristicrelations of such music d o n ot presuppose any system laid downin advance or superimposed, no t even a principle like th e theme.

Instead, they produce interconnections of themselves. To that fr

extent they a re the descendants of themes, al though themes arenot processed in them, or at most only in a . rudimentary way,n ev e r r e pe a te d at i nt erva ls . Ser ia l c ompo si ti on , in c on tras t,makes use on th e one hand of t he n o te an d all its characteristicsand, on t h e o th e r, of th e totali ty which is d eriv ed fro m it an dbefore which all notes - andrests - are equals. Differentiationan d integration a re r ed uc ed to the same formula a nd the

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composition contains nothing qualitatively different to setagainst them. A thematic composition, however, is one in whichthe totality consists of autonomous elements which would benothing without the totality an d without which th e totality wouldnot exist. 9 Despite this serial music should no t just be regarded asth e antithesis of motivic, thematic composition. In actual fact

serial music arose f ro m the totality of motivic, thematic musicthat isto say, from th e extension of that principle to include timean d colour. B oth m eth ods aim at t ot al o rg an iz at io n. Th edifference between them could perhaps be stated as follows. Inseria l composi t ion as a whole unity is regarded as a fact, as animmediate reality. In thematic, motivic music, on theo the rhand,unity is always defined as becoming an d thus as a p ro ce ss ofrevelation.

r6 In each case this implies a different attitude towards dynamicsan d statics. Th e way in whic h music is encoded points to acontradiction it shares with literature. Both ar e dynamic - as th econtinuum of syntactic clauses, as mental process an d as th e

temporal succession of mutually conditioning elements. Even inStravinsky's stylized static constructs, t h e mo de l cu be at th e startcould no t simply change places with on e of its subsequentdistortions; fo r in that event those constructs would sacrificet h e ir o wn punctilious claims. An experiment with th e openingmarch in Raynard demonstrates this quite clearly.

f 1.. On the o ther hand, music an d literature alike are reduced toT immobilityby writing. Th e spatial, graphic system 'of signs holds

successive events spellbound in simultaneity, in stasis. In ne ithercase is th e contradiction superficial. Th e factor that definesmusicas a process- namely, th e knit ting together of themes so that on efollows from another - " O ' n ~ ybecomes possible thanks to the fixed

pattern of notes. Th e c om pl ex f or ms by means of which 1succession is internally organized as such would be inadequate.Jfo r an y improvised, non-written music-making. In th e ag e of

9. lowe the formulation of this distinction toa conversationwith Rudolf Kolisch.[Adorno's note.] Kolisch, a prominent interpreter of the views of the SchoenbergCircle, taught Adorno the violin.

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obligato compositiou'" improvisation quickly d ie d o ut , an dmemories of an improvising practice in .many of th e Fantasiesfrom th e ag e of Viennese Classicism are actually defined by th eabsence of motivic, thematic dynamics, using th e te rm not in th esense of intensity, needless to say, bu t in th e sense of musicaldevelopment.

Bu t in th e contradiction between its congealed writ ten statean d th e f lu id sta te it s igni fies , music shares in th e ambiguity[Scheincharakter] of d ev el op ed a rt , e ve n though it does no tpretend to offer any other reality than its ow n - o r i f i tdoes, then ronly intermittently. What isfixed in th e sign an d is really there,appears in terms of its meaning, as process. Th e language ofwords shares something of this quality. Just as al l new ar t rebelsagainst i l lusion [Schein], mus ic reb el s a ga in st this particularversion of it. Looked at from this point of view, its most recentdevelopment should be seen as th e attempt to d iscard i k t i ~ ~d Y ! } . . ~ I T I : j . ~ ! ! 1that istosay, to make itselfas staticin its acoustic formas it always was in its written form. Ale at ory mus ic , in whi chsuccessive sounds can be interchangeable, does in fac t goas far asthis. Conversely, th e loosening of the notat ion to vanishing pointenvisages a music which really achieves a stasis to which it couldonly aspire in th e past. This reduction to object status refuses topretend tobe process when in fact all is decided by th e notation inadvance. It is therefore left with th e choice of either ruthlesslyrealizing th e decision taken in a dv an ce by downgrading what

.follows, or else of transforming itself into an authentic process.However, such a reduction still remains an abstract negation.

Thestatic nature of notation isonly on e side of th e problem. Th eother s id e is what is h e ar d , t h e t em p or al event. Unthinkablethough this be without script, t h e la tt e r is no less unthinkablewithout th e former. Notes are of course morethan just directions

for performance; they are music objectivized as text. This iswhythey exert a gravitational pull towards being read silently. Bu twhat makes a text a text which coincides wi th i ts immanent

10. This te rm was introduced by Eric Doflein. [Adorno's note.]

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meaning an d which requires no performance is something whichunfolds in time.

This fact condemns a thoroughgoing staticmusic once more toth e status of illusion [Schein]. Th e illusion is that a succession ofpure sounds ca n in rea li ty stand outside time, while what th en otes signify in space is neve rtheles s to be deciphered intemporal sequence, h ow ev er f ar t he n ot at io n m ay have strayedfro m measu r in g t ime. A succession in t ime that denies its ownprogressivity sabotages th e obligations of becoming, of process; itfai ls to mot iva te why this should follow t ha t a nd n ot anythingelse. Bu t in music nothing has t h e r ig ht to follow something elseunless it has been determined by what precedes it or conversely,unless i t reveals ex post facto that what has preceded it was, inreality, its own precondition.

Fo r otherwise t h e co ncrete t emp o ra l unity of music an d itsabstract temporal form will break asunder. What demands toappear just now, neither sooner no r later, feeds parasitically ont ime, since it automatically e n te rs t he c ha in of succession. If amusique informelle is expected to absorb thematic, motivic composition into itself, despite its rejection of i t, this only means thatmusic should resolve th e dilemma of how to reconcile temporalform an d musical content. Paradoxically, however, fo r thi s tohappen recourse must be ha d to relatively static segments whicha lo ne m ak e it p os si bl e to g en e ra te s om e d yn am is m. F o r anabsolute undifferentiated dynamism would of course lapse oncemore into th e static. It is true t h a t th e co ng ealed t ime co nta in edin mus ic al t ex ts ca n be ac tu al iz ed in e ve ry performance orreading, an d hence is no t identical with empirical t ime, bu t isdeemed to be dist inguished from it. In this respect too th einnermost essence of mus ic as a temporal ar t participates in th eaesthetic illusion. Bu t even while distinguishing it f ro m n on -

a es th et ic t ime, it r et ai ns t h e character of time within itself,although modified by its general inclusion in th e category of art.As soon as t h e n o ta t io n is actualized - that is to say, th e piece isplayed - it merges withempirical time an d possesses chronological duration, even while appearing simultaneously to belong toanother o rd er o f time, namely that of th e work w hi ch is

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Beyond that , i t confirms th e musical relevance of pitch relationships,sinceit makes clear that within limits, configurations retaintheir i d en t ity ev en wh en th e ir overall pitch level is altered.

Underlying this is th e fact uncovered by the unjustly forgottenE rn st K ur th , that no tes in music are not physical or evenpsychological data, b u t t ha t they possess a unique suppleness,'elasticity'. 14 Every note that comes within the compass of musicisalways m o re t ha n a n ot e, even though it is no t possible to sayprecisely what that 'more'amounts to. In th e first place, it must bewhatever the note becomes in relation to others. In th e terminology of Ch ri s ti an v an Eh ren fe l s from th e early days of gestaltpsychology, this was called 'gestalt' quality. Musical notes d o n otform a quasi-physiological continuum, bu t at best on e fo r whichKurth chose the rather unfortunate an d easily misconstruedexpression 'psychology'. It ismisleading because th e continuumof notes is no t at the mercy of the whims of the individual psyche,bu t b ec omes c ry st al li ze d in a second objectivity after beingmediated by the subjective mind. An d it i s misleadingabove al lbecause the elements that enter into thatcontinuum include thenon-emotive lifeless, acoustic elements just as much as theemotionally charged [beseelt] acts of th e subject, an d neither theo ne n or th e other can be wholly sep ara ted o u t. Th e purelyacoustic element becomesemotionally charged, whether it will orn ot , as soon as it is ab so rbed in to th e composition; even theunexpressive participates in expression, namely as its negation.

Th e emotive, however, cannot become music without acousticsupport. No t even th e subject of musical composition is identicalwith the psychological subject. Th e subjectivity at work in ar t isno t th e adventitious empirical individual, no t th e c o m p o ~ e r .Histechnical forces of production are th e immanent function of themateria l; on ly by fol lowing the latter's l ea d d oe s he g ai n an yp ow er o v er it. By means of such a process of exteriorization,however, i t receives back a universal ity which goes beyond theindividuation of t h e p art i cu lar p ro du cer. Valid labour o n the

14. Cf. Ernst Kurth, Musikpsychologie, Berlin 1931, Section I, especially pp. 10ff.[Adorno's note.]

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wofk of ar t i s a lways social labour. I t i s thi s that legitimates th etalk of artistic rationality. W h ere th ere are grounds fo r assertingthat a composer has composed well such universal subjectivitywill have proved itself, as will reason asa positive, a logic that goesbeyond the particular by satisfying its d esid era ta . Su ch reaso ntends rather to be obscured by th e psychological-subject thatleaves its impr in ton the music.

'" Th e site of all musicality isa priori an interior space" an d onlyhere does it become constituted asan objec tive rea li ty. It is to benumbered among those things fo r which over for ty y ea rs ago agestalt psychologist coined th e rather unattractive name 'psychicobject-world'. It is precisely th e most subjective aspects of music,th e imaginative, associative element, the i d ea co n ten t an d th ehistorical substance that is present in all music that point back toexternals, to t h e r ea l world. Music negates psychology dialectically. It i s doubtless enacted in an interior s pa ce , in th eimagination, an d to that extent in th e subjective mind. But byobjectifying itself through its own logic, an d becoming a formedgestalt , i t also exteriorizes itself at t h e s am e time, becoming anobjective reali ty raised to t he s ec on d d eg re e, an d even aquasi-spatial reality. In it t h e ex te rna l objectivity returns as th eobjectivity of th e subject itself. 16

~ t t This i s why rela tions in their turn, as the incarnation of th e1 subjective dimension, cannot be regarded as th e primal material

of music: t he re a re no n ot es without relat ions , no relat ionswithout notes. Deception is th e primary phenomenon .. Th ehypostatizing of relations would be th e victim of exactly t h esamemyth of originsas the reduction to the naked note, bu t in reverse.Even that definition of twelve-note technique as 'a compositionwith - t welve n ot es o nl y related to o ne a no th er ' resists thatreduction to primal elements . I t con tains b ot h t he concept of

notes an d th e dimension of relations: each isto be strictly definedin terms of the other. Schoenberg's idiosyncratic use of language

15. Cf. ibid. pp. 116ff. [Adorno'snote.]16. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler, op.cit., pp. 98ff. (Also Gesammelte Schriften,

vol. 13, pp. 218f.) [Adorno'snote.]

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is a l it tl e in advance of contemporary developments. Th e lattern o l on ge r r es t c on t en t with th e straightforward alternativeb et we en t he serial principle - th e absolute note - an d th emotivic-thematic principle as t h e in carna t io n of th e relationaldimension. In the lat ter itis th e subject that predominates; in th eindividual note whatdominates is th e opposing principle. This is

then actualized in th e tension between composition an d material.Subjectivity is notjust injected into th e material or imitated by it.Th e post-Schoenberg development has e x pl o de d t he familiareq u at ion b e tween subjectivity an d expressiveness. Th e latteronly stood ou t w he re t he composition failed, temporarily, tomatch up to its material.

What wasobjectedto as experimental in the formative phase of 1-0th e new music was essentially its criticism of this discrepancy:particularly of th e way in w hich idiom ha d d eg en era ted in to itsort of p ad d in g b e tween material an d composition. What wasprofoundly shocking was th e fact that t hi s ver y idiom ha dreceived its march in g o rders. Th i s shock was rationalized away

with th e argument that wh atever d evia ted f ro m th e establishedlanguage an d wh enev er th e co mpo ser ventured to o fa r into th eunknown, th e resulting music would be more prone to failurean d more likely to be consigned to oblivion than would be true ofth e so-called tried-and-proven tradition.

In t h e u p sh o t t h e music that has been forgotten was th e music f\that played safe an d hence simply reproduced th e same thingover an d over again. If anything has an y prospects of survival,then it will only be music that is no t concerned with safety. Thishas led to a shift in t h e meanin g of the experimental . Th e needfo r security today, unfreedom and heteronomy, exhausts itself intone-row an d serial productions which conserve the timbre an dth e harmonics of t h e ex per imen ts of yesterday. It is imaginedthat whatever we have in black an d white by way o f contract an dfactually provable material will be ours to take away an d call ou rown. Bu t thanks to th e discrepancy b et we en t h e m et ho ds ofproofand what is actually proved, it ispreciselythis that islost atth e outset.

Th e avant-garde therefore calls fo r a mus ic w hich takes th e t-a...

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composer by surprise, much as ~ . s h e : : Q ) . i tca n be surprised by thenew substance in his tes t- tube. In fu ture, experimental musicshould no t just confine itself to refusing to deal in th e currentcoin; it. ~ ~ ( ) u l c lalso beIIlll.sic whoseendcannotbeforeseen in th e~ _ l ! ~ ~ ~ ~ _ Q f ~ p j . Q _ ~ ~ ~ ~ _ ~ ~ o - n ~- ~ ~ g ~ n l ~ i ~ l ~ " ~ x p e r i m e n t sthere has alwaysbeen something of a surplus of that objectivity o v er th e p rod u c

tion process.Th e idea that t h e co mpo ser was a bl e to imagine every last

detailin advance is a legend which every composer finds refutedwh en h e .h ears his o wn o rc h es tr at ed s ou nd s f o r t he first time.Schoenberg, who always insisted on the primacy of th e imagination an d whose own imagination was quiteunique, neverthelessad mit t ed th a t this was a possibility when he made it known thathe ha d ha d to interrupt work on th e Variations for Orchestra,Opus 31, fo r a long t imebecause some jo t t ings aboutsome of th erows ha d been mislaid an d he was 'merely a constructor' bynature. Th e tension between what is imagined an d wh at can no tbe foreseen is itselfa vital component of th e new music. Bu t i t is

no m or e t ha n a vital element, no t an equation which ca n beresolved in on e direction or th e other.Highly complex atonal or twelve-note scores have presumably

always eluded a fully adequate formulation in th e imagination,whereas important composers have always k n own fro m ex per ience that t h e re lev an t passages would sound right, as they say,an d would be able to judge in advance wh eth er th e sound wouldfulfil its proper function. To t h at e x te n t t he e le m en t of chancewas already incorporated teleologically into th e very music fromwhich aleatory music occasionallydistances itself. Bu t productivethough it is fo r th e composition to adopt on principle th ep he no m en on t ha t h a d previously taken place against its will,namely the surprise experienced by th e ea r when it first h ears th esound actually produced, this.does no t mean th a t th e composer'sability to imagine has b een mad e redundant. Th e element of th eunforeseen in its new an d emphatic sense must no t be allowed toescape. From this point of view musique.informelle would be th eidea [Vorstellung] of something not fully imagined [vorgestellt]. Itwould be th e integration by th e composer's subjective ea r of what

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simply cannot be imagined at th e level of each individual note, asca n be seen from Stockhausen's 'note clusters' [Tontrauben]. Th ef ro nt i e r b e tween a meaningless objectification which the composer gapes at with open mouth and closed ears, an d acomposition which fulfils the imagination by transcending i t, i sn ot o ne t ha t ca n be drawn according to an y abstract rule. Tomake

thi s d is tinc tion in each ind ividual casewould no t

beth e

least insignificant of th e tasks facing any informal composition.Th e intention is no t to reinstate thematic-motivic composition t(

as an indispensable prerequisite of informal music. Th e notionthat th e relational aspect, which exists o n ly b e tween n o tes an dhas n o i nd e pe nd e nt existence, should no t be hyposta tizedcorresponds to the composer's suspicion that thematic interconnections might act as t h e ru diment s of tonality. Just as th e note,when turned into an absolute, tends to degenerate i nt o p reartistic physical sound, th e absolutizing of tonal relations leads tpa mechanical clattering. It is as if once the relationships wereestablished, the whole composition would be cu t an d dried. Th ereprehensible th ing here is t he n ee d f or security as such. Th eclattering of pure relationships probablystems from th e fact thatthey do no t have to prove themselves through an y friction withsomething other, something unintentioned: they give shape, bu tnothing shaped results. If in certain phases of twelve-notetechnique th e only themes have been rhythmic - that is to say,relations independent of tones an d pi tch - t h ese rh yth ms so ondegenerated in to 'pat terns ', 17 abstract schemata. "'l '-

In fetishism there is a co nv erg ence b e tween the hostile 1extremes of fa ith in the material an d absolute organization. Amusique informelle rebels against both. Th e late Erich Itor Kahnhas coined the expression 'robot music'. It is directed againstreification; against ar t which from a hatred of intellectualfalseness goes to th e other extreme of pure factuality, an d endsby submitting to th e spell of what actually exists, just like anyideology. Needless to say, thi s is not the inevitable fate of serialpractice; the qualitative distinctions to be m ad e h er e a re those

17. Adorno used the English word.

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between music an d robotics. Anyone who fails to perceive themshould be reminded that the marks of th e mechanical whichcause such irritation to those monopolists of creativity who strollin th e forest by themselves an d find things that have been foundthere f or t h e p a st 150 years 18 - that these marks really have beendeeply etched into traditional music.

11Musique informelle is no t cultural neutralism, bu t a critique ofth e past. It is pr ob ab ly true that th e ar t of t h e a ut he nt ic

composers of earlier times, that i s to say, up to the threshold ofthe new music, ha d a greater ability to make th e l i st ener fo rg e tthe pre-fabricated-forms, or else to b r ea t he n ew m e an in g i nt othem, than to e sc ap e f ro m t he ir clutches. Up to now allcomposition was a struggle against something alienated; musich as h ard ly ev er been at on e with its ow n systems, bu t has insteadcelebrated its triumph in the illusion [Schein] of such uni ty.Eimert'sastonishment at how much sensiblemusic there istoday,despite th e proliferation of mechanical recipes, could be extended to traditional music. In Bach all this isa matter of record;the same holds g oo d f o r M oz ar t an d Beethoven. They all madeus e of mechanical topoidown to the most intimate inflection.

~ , In many ways th e process of composition of the classical type1 resembled a j ig sa w puz zle. Its g re at ne ss lay in its p ow er s of

self-reflexivity which l i be rated th e mechanical from its inflexibility and transformed th e trivial. Th e idea of the robot makesexplicit something t ha t h a d b ee n implicit throughout t h e b o u rgeois musical tradition - an element of rei fied rat ionali ty ingeneral. This now desires to atone by refusing to conceal itselfan y lo n ger behind th e semblance [Schein] of th e organic. This iswhy th e integral constructivists might do well to adopt th e term'robot music' an d turn it from a word of ab use in to a posit iveslogan, much as h ad b ee n d o ne earlier with th e 'atonal'. If th erational an d mechanical principle t ha t p erv ad es t he e nt ir ehistory of Western music is made explicit, it parts company with

18. Anal lusion toa poem byGoethe, Ichgingim Walde / Sofurmich hin, / Undnichtszu suchen, / Daswarmein Sinn. (I was just stroll ingin the forest by myself, withoutanyidea of looking for anything.)

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resolved dialectically. Works of ar t move towards a neutral zonebetween things that exist in themselves an d those which exist fo rus, becausethis 'for us' isa constitutive element of their existencein themselves. This also affects the relationships of works of ar t tolanguage from which they distance themselves.f" Th e morecompletely th e work is organized, t he m o re eloquent i t is, sinceth e idea of complete organization refers to th e content of th eorganic an d no t to mathematical necessity. In its pure f or m t helatter isalways a compositional defect - as has been most reliablyshown by Stockhausen. Anything which only seems right everywhere, cannot be right anywhere, particularly in its proportions.This i s s ignalled by t he n ee d of th e in tegral construct f or t heassisting subject.

Even the most gifted an d advanced composers scarcely rise to '3th e situation. Under the spell of serialism they commonly confinethe intervention of th e subject to retrospective corrections an d tosounding ou t the determinate structure to test i ts legit imacy as al iving work. Aleatory li terary texts, such as those generated bycybernetic machines, behave in a s imil ar fashi on . Th e authorattempts to establish something l ike a meaning or some sort oforder through retrospective interventions. In music too suchretouching operations seem to be i nd is pe ns ab le . It w ou ld bepedantic to objectto them. In ar t the waya work is produced is amatter of indifference. Holderlin wrote prose sketches fo r evenhis mostpowerful hymns. What ca n be said, however, is that suchmethods do notappea r to be whollycompatiblewith the aleatoryprinciple. Th e lat terhopes that something like organization willresult f ro m t he strict operations of chance. If i t b reaks free ofchance,it denies itself an d the entire procedure , together. withitsmeaning, becomes self-defeating. It should be recalled that instatistical surveys th e resul ts will o nl y be v al id if t he r a nd o mselection of th e sample has been strictly adhered to. If ar t allowsitselfsuch departures, it may no t at th e same t ime grant i tselfadispensation from the scientific discipline from wh ich it hasborrowed, whether justifiably or not, i ts ideal of objectivity.

20. Cf. above , pp. 5-6. [Adorno's note.]

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~ L f To tackle t he p ro bl em f ro m a di ff e ren t po in t of view is'prohibitively difficult because there can be no rel ia nc e on thes ub je ct as an organic consciousness - on his hearing or hismusicality. Th e superannuated language of music has buil t uplayers of sediment to a degree which cannot be overestimated. Asearly as Schoenberg th e burden of this language was a majorsource of difficulty. He dealt with i t with th e aid of a peculiarpolarity in the rhythm of his production. It swings between th e.extreme organic , as in Erwartung, an d the anti-organic, such asth e Suite fo r Piano, Opus 25. At the sametime it was perhaps no tyet possible to see how on e could be transformed into the o therwithout inconsistency. This possibility isonly explored, if atall, inth e late instrumental works, like th e string trio a nd t h e Phantasyfor Violin an d Piano, Opus 47.' r There is an ambivalent relationship between Schoenberg'stwelve-note technique an d th e organic ideal. In this respect, too,it is a turning point. Th e organic aspect, which was still the ideabehind Schoenberg's concept of the instinctual life of sounds infree atonality, referred to th e close contact between differentmusical complexes, just as in t on al it y. Only what comes intodirect contact gives the impression that i t i s growing organically.On th e age-old model of th e leading note th e organic relationship was always conceived as that of two successive, neighbouringevents, which merge without break. Wagner's doctrine of th e ar tof transition is th e aesthetics of th e organic ideal.

That co ntact b e tween n e ig h bo u rs was a l ready severed intwelve-note technique. Subjectively, Schoenberg strengthenedthis tendency withhis dislike of 'animalwarmth'. 21 Th e challengeof th e f irst twelve-note composi tion to ears schooled in freeatonality lay in the way that it strictly related successive musicalcomplexes to each other, without on e terminating in theo the r as

if that were its rightful goal. To t ha t e xt en t t he element ofchance, which is intensified with th e growing tendency towardsintegral constructivity, is undoubtedly implicit in twelve-notetechnique. Ini tial ly i t i s the individual successions that .sound

21 . S ee p. 231 [Adorno's note.]

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accidental. T h ey a re deprived of th e necessity that once boundthem together. This is ceded to the determinants from above, th etotality, a n d r et ur n ed by th es e to th e individual successions,whichas the manifest derivatives of th e totality fit in toeach otherwithout jo ins , bu t by the s am e t ok en , w it ho ut their formerinstinctual vitality. .

In music, as elsewhere, isolation, atomization was associated 1c.with i nt eg ra ti on f ro m t he outset. This brought with it th epotential for stasis. At the micro-level temporal sequence remains external to the sounds. Th e concrete musical compositionof individual e ve nt s mak es i ts el f independent of time. InSchoenberg the compositional metho d s re tain ed fro m tonality,thematic articulation, an d especially the 'developing variation',carry th e l i st ener o v er these hurdles. Bu t their contradiction toth e virtual isolation of th e micro-complexes f ro m e ac h other,could not remain hidden. Th e radicalized constructivists that g6b ey on d S ch oe nb er g d ra w t he logical co nsequ ence from thisw h en t he y lose all interest in drive-like relations at th e level of

detail, an d even resist them, no t unlike th e way in whi ch freeatonality recoiled f r om t he false sound of an y t r i ad it discoveredin i tsel f. Fo r p r ef e re n ce t he y wou ld like to do away witheverything covered by th e term ' tendency' in musical peinture,that isto say, the ideathat a musical expression left to itselfwouldlike to proceed to the next an d go on f ro m th ere .

This may well explain the overall static complexion: th e image 1' }of a musicessentially aliento time. It attempts to make do withoutstrong categories. But, against i ts own intentions, this justdeprives it of objectivity an d makes i t incompatib le wi th th emedium of time to whi ch as mus ic it i ne vi ta bl y b el on gs . Toneglect t im e m e an s nothing less t ha n t ha t mus ic is fai li ng toconcern itselfwith on e of its specific material preconditions. Thisraises t h e q u es t io n ab o ut the nature of a form of music whoseconcrete elements move towards each other, or collide with eachother, like ~ Q 1 J a d . i ~ .__~ ~ n , . _. wi th o ut b eco min g in fec ted by theresidues of organic idiom. An d this affects no t just its micro-cells,bu t also th e overall fo rm rig ht up to an d including the large-scalearchitecture. Th e l at te r c an no longer be erected above th e

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individual events on th e basis of an abstract plan, no r ca n it bed ed uc ed f ro m parameters which leave matters to a chancesuccession from onesound to the next.

T1 This throws some light on th e categorywhich ha d a normativesignificance f or t he l at e r S ch oe nb erg, that of equilibrium, th egeneration of tensions an d their resolution through th e total

form. This norm was th e apotheosis of the t radit ional notion o fth e organic. In Schoenberg the totalitybecomes fo r the last t imewhat t he p ur e particularity of th e dominant-tonic successiononce was. In this strict s ense it may really be cl aime d thatSchoenberg is classical music, much as Einstein may be sai d t o beclassical physics in relation to quantum theory as a wh ole . Ac ompo si ti on as a who le creates tension an d resolution, just asused to happen in t h e t on al i di om with i ts primal. model, th ecadence. This shift to the totality, however, has stripped t h e p art sof their power. In o rder to become equal to th e task, then, whichat present remain s h id den , it wou ld be n ec essa ry to constructdown to th e last detail the en t ire t ex tu re of the composition, as

Schoenberg did in h is da y with larger forms, like th e sonata an dth e variation, trusting that construction at the level of detailwould be carried ou t by th e twelve-note technique. Relationshipshave to be establ i shed between events which succeed each otherdirectly an d ind i rect ly - an d this ap plies to event s withinsimultaneous complexes - relationships which themselves provide th e necessary stringency.

8'1 A premonition of the limitless possibilities of this was suppliedby free atonality. They were th e possibilities of somethingorganic which d id n ot let i ts el f be sedu ced in to imitating th eorganisms of l ife which in actuali ty just disguise reification. If we

. wished to provide examples with on e eye to the larger structuresof free atonality, then informal music would be a third waybetween the jungle of Erwartung, on the one hand, an d thetectonics of Die glilckliche Hand, on t he o th er. However, th esections should no longer just be juxtaposed, as is commonlydone nowadays to the point of monotony; they must be placed ina d y namic re la t io n sh ip, co mp arab le to the relationship ofsubordinate clauses an d main clause in grammar. Boulez's work

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with so-called parentheses, an idea that goes back to Schumann,probably poin ts in this d irec tion. Th e reification of structuraltypes of composition today takes the form of involun tary clichesat the very point w he re t he rational creation of somethingcompletely unforeseeable would like to prevent them. Aninstance of sucha cliche was the use of pointillist methods, whichhave now fal len into disuse; on e of the most recent consists ofsound surfaces organized in patches an d separated from eachother with exaggerated tidiness. These unified sounds an d th epieces that deploy them are all as alike as two peas.

Such d efec ts h av e their r oo ts in the limitations of s er ia l , 0

composition. Th e most obtrusive among them arises f ro m t heway in whi ch p it ch an d duration have been merged under thegeneral heading of t ime. Stockhausen, who took this identitymore seriously than an y other serial cmposer, was also the firstto express his doubts about it. Th e objective time-factor in allparameters an d th e living experiential time of the phenomenonare byno means identical. Durationand pitch belong to differentmusical realms, even if in acoustics they come under the sameheading. In the controversy on this point the concept of t ime isused equivocally. It covers both temps espace an d temps duree,physically measurable, quasi-spatial time an d experiential time.Bergson's insight into their incompatibility cannot be erased.

Long be fore h im, e ve n t ra di ti on al e pi st emol og y, whi ch he , Icalled causal-mechanical theory, made a dis t inct ion betweenphenomenal an d thing-like time. Bu t in experienced t ime like isno t l ike. Logarithmic concepts d o n ot suffice to calculate suchlikenesses. With the Weber-Fechner law experimentalpsychology has ascertained thatthe relationshi.ps between basic st imulithat is to say, o bje cti ve phy sica l e ve nt s an d the subjectivereactions to them - were only rel at iv e, a nd t ha t t he re was no

direct equivalence. This lawwas concerned with experiences thatar e far more primitive than those of music; it was concernedsimply with the intensity of sensations. Th e pre-eminent complexity of music as music renders ev en su ch conjectures impossible. There i s l it tl e prospect of deducing musical t ime an dconcrete music from objective physical d a ta , ev en though music

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cannot be sa id to be the summation of psychological reactionseither. Fo r if it c ou ld , we w ou ld be unable to think of musicalobjectivity t,y virtue of which music is ar t an d no t an agglomeration of sensuousmodes of behaviour.

'(2.. In the context of these thoughts about time, current practicereveals signs of discrepancies which make a reversal of theseprocedures an urgen t matter. Sick of the pointillist translationsof Webernian patterns into chamber works in which there i s notangible connection between the different attacks, some of themost g if ted young composers have returned to th e large-scaleorchestra. An d in general a g ro wi ng need has been felt fo rbroader, internally coherent areas of sound, in. contrast to theausterity of dissociated ones. In sound t he se p ie ce s oftenstrikingly resemble the flamboyant style for which Boulez ha dearlier criticized Schoenberg an d B erg. M an y of these compositions display great mastery of the orchestra; bu t they ar elacking in the representation of sculptured compositional eventssuch as th e luminosity an d density of sound might suggest. Bu tneither does an orchestral style working wit h a spatula toleratethe Impressionist primacy of sound-events as such. Th e emphatic nature of the sound-image calls for something substantial,which would merit such emphasis, instead of the sound constituting the musical content in itself.

, ~ Th e sound offers itself up to musical interpretation in a directway; bu t what is usually present, the texture, remains bereft ofsuch immediacy, an incomprehensibleinference from the systemwhich sets the parameters. Sound an d music diverge. Throughits a ut on om y t he s ou nd r eg ai ns a c ul in ar y q ua li ty w hic h isirreconcilable with the constructive principle. Th e density of

.material an d colour has done nothing to modify the dissociativecharacter of the structure, which remains external. Dynamism

remains as elusive a goal as it ha d done previously w he n t hefashion was for an unconnected succession of jumpy staccatonotes or segments simply strung up in sequence . This is theobjection that should be levelledat th e so-called neo-Impressionist features of th e most recent music. If music is to liberate itselffr om t he Stravinskian imitation of p ai nt in g, a reshaping of

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composition as such isessential. Music must acquire a theme-likeforce, on th e lines of the opening bars of Le marteau sans maitre,without restricting th e thematic to th e melodic. Th e thematic canbe ar ticulated at any level. However, th e pure course of eventsmust perform what was once done by thematic work, even if itsmethods - i dent it y, var ia ti on , surface connections between

motifs - ar e ruthlessly cu t away. Only with musical postulateswhich ar e as vivid as th e configurations of thematic .music oncewere, willit be possible to create that tensionin which th e musicalconsciousness of t imecan actualize itself. ~

Th e aspirations of Cage an d his school have eradicated all tttopoi, without going intomourningfor a subjective, organic idealin which they suspect th e topoi of maintaining an after-life. This,i s why to dismiss anti-art as pretentious cabaret a nd h um ou rwould be as great an error as to celebrate it. Bu t such a s p i r a t i o ~ sdo not yet amount to a musique informelle. As a joke they h ~ T Iculture into people's faces, a fate which both culture an d peoplerichly deserve. T he y d o this no t as a barbaric gesture, bu t to

demonstrate what they have made of each other. Th e joke onlytu rns sour when it appeals to an exotic, arty-crafty metaphysicsan d ends up with an exaggerated version of th e very positivismwhich it set ou t to denounce. This helps to explain why thejoke,which I respect , has been neutralized in contemporary society.Th e la tter defends itself ideologically by swallowing everything.A musique informelle should also take good care to protect itselfagainst revivals of Die Aktion an d Dadaism, against Alexandriananarchy.V

However, in the last analysis nothing slips through t he n et o f ~ ~th e de-individualized. society; it integrates everything, ;,even itspolar opposite. This i s why we do n ot n ee d to worry overmuchabout art's socialeffect an d can devoteourselves uninterruptedlyto the matter in hand or, if the word is preferred, to culture. On efeels movedto say musically whatevercomes into one's head; th e

22. DieAktion, editedby Hans Pfemfert from 1911 to 1932, was one of the leadingExpressionist magazines. It was notab le for i ts extreme revolutionary attitudes inboth a r t a n d politics.

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only limitations would be those of one's own head. At all events,Cage's work does approach that of an informal music in on erespect : asa protest against the dogged complicity of music withthe domination of nature. 23 He does no t yield to th e terrorism ofthe phenomenon which has come to be known by the phra se ' thetechnological age ', an age which people fear may leave them

behind. Bu t just as ar t is unable to r e tr eat f rom the tendencies ofth e age into enclaves of sensitivesouls, so too it may no t behave asif it co uld take th e bull by the horns an d escape from reificationdirectly into a non-existent immediacy. Cage, an d doubtlessmany of his disciples, content themselves with abstract negationin seances with overtones of [Rudolph] Steiner, eurythmics an dhealthy-living sects.F" What is aston ishing is their abi li ty totranslate theapparently vaguesigns in a decisive manner and th ecollective acceptance of irrational modes of behaviour. Itis easierto ridicule the element of folly than to recognize th e u top ia forwhich th e provocation to the senses provides a refuge, namelyt he h op e of escaping f ro m t he lie of everything meaningful,wheremeaning

is merelysubjectively postulated.A musique informelle will f ind i t as hard to avoid an element ofabs tr useness, as it wou ld to consciously pl an f or i t. Whollyorganized an d transparent music eternalizes th e compulsion ofform. Sowhile even an informal music cannot dispense with th eabstruse, it becomes a warning against its own dubiousness. It isth e blind spot in which it conceals the uncul tured e lement ofmusical culture. In free atonality such blindspots can no more beeradicated than th e white spots on th e coat of Pierrot Lunaire.They even a pp ea r i n th e most uncompromising twelve-noteconstructions, such as th e intermezzo of th e Suite fo r Piano,Opus 25. Perhaps the reason for this most recent abstruseness is

23. Cf. Cage's aphorisms from the Darmstadter Beitriige 1959, p. 52; and on thispoint see Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophieder neuen Musik, secondedition, Frankfurtam Main 1958, pp. 195ff . [Also in The Philosophy of Modern Music, Sheed & Ward,p. 67.] [Adorno's note.]

24. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was the founder of anthroposophy, a mysticalcreed basedon Goethe'sideas on education and on theosophy. He founded schools topromote a more'organic style of education.

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that in contrast to its Dadaist grandparents it degenerates at oncein to cu ltu re , an d it cannot r ema in unaffected by this. Th eassaults of Dadaism could no t be accused of abstrusenessbecauset h ey were both conceived and interpreted as hosti le to a r t a n dculture. Abstruseness degenerates into ideology an d toa vacuouscraft wher

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Adorno_Vers Une Musique Informelle