1st Edition

Adorno on Music

By Robert W. Witkin Copyright 1998
    220 Pages
    by Routledge

    220 Pages
    by Routledge

    Adorno is one of the leading cultural thinkers of the twentieth century. This is the first detailed account of Adorno's texts on music from a sociological perspective. In clear, non-technical language, Robert Witkin guides the reader through the complexities of Adorno's argument about the link between music and morality and between musical works and social structure. It was largely through these works Adorno established the right of the arts to be acknowledged as a moral and critical force in the development of a modern society. By recovering them for non-musicologists, Witkin adds immeasurably to our appreciation of this giant of twentieth-century thought.

    Chapter 1 MUSICA MORALIA; Chapter 2 SOCIETY IN SONATA-FORM; Chapter 3 BEETHOVEN LATE AND SOON; Chapter 4 WAGNER; Chapter 5 BREAKING THE CODE; Chapter 6 MAHLER AND BERG; Chapter 7 SCHOENBERG; Chapter 8 STRAVINSKY; Chapter 9 THE CULTURE INDUSTRY AND ALL THAT JAZZ; Chapter 10 TAKING A CRITICAL LINE FOR A WALK; References Index;

    Biography

    Robert W. Witkin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Exeter and the author of Art and Social Structure (1995).