Scan barcode
george_r_t_c's review
4.0
This book really is mostly about Wagner - his life, the plots of his operas, and the details of their music, occasionally even down to specific bar-to-bar features of their orchestration - such that even readers closely familiar with Adorno's philosophical writings might not get a huge amount out of it without a musical background.
I read it because I'm interested in the revisionist account of Wagner that tries to recover some kernel of aesthetic and political value from his work - i.e., Zizek's position, outlined in his foreword to this edition. Zizek points out that this book conflicts somewhat with later essays published by Adorno in the 60s about Wagner, but it's worth noting that even though this book is filled with quite pointed criticisms of Wagner - chief among which would be the proliferation of bad infinities and bad dialectics ("Wagner's music simulates this unity of the internal and external, of subject and object, instead of giving shape to the rupture between them" (27)), the exteriorisation of gestures (there's no character development, "they barely retain their identity" (105)), and the excessive use of leitmotives which prevent thematic development and serve only as commodified musical slogans - Adorno is careful not to strawman his subject. At several key moments Adorno notes the ways in which Wagner is a genuine innovator. One that particularly stands out is his discussion of Wagner's orchestration in chapter 5, Colour. The opening sentences of this chapter are nothing but praise: "Whereas Wagnerian harmony swings between past and future, the dimension of colour is, properly speaking, his own discovery" (60). What Adorno likes about Wagner's orchestration is the way in which it seems to be productive, and conscious of the role of material sound production, in contrast to those harmonic and structural aspects of his music which, for Adorno, efface their production, which is to say, they contribute to the alienated, phantasmagoric aspects of Wagner's work which are unconnected to social processes. Partially this productiveness is due to Wagner's attention to the literal production of sound: "A note 'sounds like a horn' as long as you can still hear that it has been played on the horn," which is something that Wagner worried would not be so clear on the newly invented valve horn (66). Thus his use of the horns, and instruments generally, is one that is closely concerned with their degree of alienation and immediacy with respect to the method of their sound production. The productiveness also follows from the way the Wagnerian orchestra comments on the higher-order forms and melodies of the works: Adorno comments that "the latent intention of the form is orchestrated out," such is Wagner's proficiency in expanding and inscribing the colouristic dimension (65).
The other unusual moment of positivity in this book would be the last few pages, which are something of a mic drop, a surprisingly powerful and lyrical ending - the chapter divisions are very clear in this book, but the actual text is quite dense and ranges quite unpredictably over its topics without much obvious rhetorical or structural shaping. It is therefore somewhat surprising when Adorno brings in a line like "love and happiness are false in the world in which we live, and ... the whole power of love has passed over into its antithesis," in order to set up the revisionist reading (which Zizek seemingly has to wrench out of Adorno's corpus) by concluding that "Anyone able to snatch such gold [the possibility of actual material self-determination for the individual, rather than nihilistic collapse into the void of a mythologically static natural totality] from the deafening surge of the Wagnerian orchestra would be rewarded by its altered sound, for it would grant him that solace which, for all its rapture and phantasmagoria, it consistently refuses" (145). It takes a while to get here but this is what 'Music of the Future' really means.
I read it because I'm interested in the revisionist account of Wagner that tries to recover some kernel of aesthetic and political value from his work - i.e., Zizek's position, outlined in his foreword to this edition. Zizek points out that this book conflicts somewhat with later essays published by Adorno in the 60s about Wagner, but it's worth noting that even though this book is filled with quite pointed criticisms of Wagner - chief among which would be the proliferation of bad infinities and bad dialectics ("Wagner's music simulates this unity of the internal and external, of subject and object, instead of giving shape to the rupture between them" (27)), the exteriorisation of gestures (there's no character development, "they barely retain their identity" (105)), and the excessive use of leitmotives which prevent thematic development and serve only as commodified musical slogans - Adorno is careful not to strawman his subject. At several key moments Adorno notes the ways in which Wagner is a genuine innovator. One that particularly stands out is his discussion of Wagner's orchestration in chapter 5, Colour. The opening sentences of this chapter are nothing but praise: "Whereas Wagnerian harmony swings between past and future, the dimension of colour is, properly speaking, his own discovery" (60). What Adorno likes about Wagner's orchestration is the way in which it seems to be productive, and conscious of the role of material sound production, in contrast to those harmonic and structural aspects of his music which, for Adorno, efface their production, which is to say, they contribute to the alienated, phantasmagoric aspects of Wagner's work which are unconnected to social processes. Partially this productiveness is due to Wagner's attention to the literal production of sound: "A note 'sounds like a horn' as long as you can still hear that it has been played on the horn," which is something that Wagner worried would not be so clear on the newly invented valve horn (66). Thus his use of the horns, and instruments generally, is one that is closely concerned with their degree of alienation and immediacy with respect to the method of their sound production. The productiveness also follows from the way the Wagnerian orchestra comments on the higher-order forms and melodies of the works: Adorno comments that "the latent intention of the form is orchestrated out," such is Wagner's proficiency in expanding and inscribing the colouristic dimension (65).
The other unusual moment of positivity in this book would be the last few pages, which are something of a mic drop, a surprisingly powerful and lyrical ending - the chapter divisions are very clear in this book, but the actual text is quite dense and ranges quite unpredictably over its topics without much obvious rhetorical or structural shaping. It is therefore somewhat surprising when Adorno brings in a line like "love and happiness are false in the world in which we live, and ... the whole power of love has passed over into its antithesis," in order to set up the revisionist reading (which Zizek seemingly has to wrench out of Adorno's corpus) by concluding that "Anyone able to snatch such gold [the possibility of actual material self-determination for the individual, rather than nihilistic collapse into the void of a mythologically static natural totality] from the deafening surge of the Wagnerian orchestra would be rewarded by its altered sound, for it would grant him that solace which, for all its rapture and phantasmagoria, it consistently refuses" (145). It takes a while to get here but this is what 'Music of the Future' really means.
More...