Adorno's aesthetics of music

by Max Paddison

This is an introduction to the aesthetics and sociology of music of the German philosopher and music theorist T. W. Adorno. Its main aim is to offer a conceptual context within which to situate Adorno's writings on music. Starting with a thematic survey of the early writings from the 1920s the music of Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinsky and the Second Viennese School is discussed in relation to the philosophical influences which Adorno had absorbed at this time. Adorno's idiosyncratic reception of Marx and Freud is examined in the context of his aesthetic theory. The central part of the book discusses Adorno's approach to analysis (through a consideration of his theory of form and a critique of his analysis of the Berg Sonata op. 1), his approach to a sociology of music (through a study of the relation between autonomous musical works and their social function as commodity) and his philosophy of history (through an examination of his philosophical interpretation of the music of the eighteen