Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction

Notes, a Draft and Two Schemata

Theodor W. Adorno, Henri Lonitz, Weiland Honban

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780745631998, 9780745631981
• eBook ISBN: 9780745694528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

At the beginning of his career in the 1920s, Adorno sketched a plan to write a major work on the theory of musical reproduction, a task he returned to time and again throughout his career but never completed. The choice of the word reproduction as opposed to interpretation indicates a primary supposition: that there is a clearly defined musical text whose precision exceeds what is visible on the page, and that the performer has the responsibility to reproduce it as accurately as possible, beyond simply playing what is written. This task, according to Adorno, requires a detailed understanding of all musical parameters in their historical context, and his reflections upon this task lead to a fundamental study of the nature of notation and musical sense.

In the various notes and texts brought together in Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction, one finds Adorno constantly circling around an irresolvable paradox: interpretation can only fail the work, yet only through it can musics true essence be captured. While he at times seems more definite in his pronouncement of a musical scores absolute value just as a book is read silently, not aloud his discourse repeatedly displays his inability to cling to that belief. It is this quality of uncertainty in his reflections that truly indicates the scope of the discourse and its continuing relevance to musical thought and practice today.

NOTES I

[1]

Notes towards a theory of musical reproduction.

(NB herein lies dissolution of the natural, ‘organic’ aspect of music, which is a mere social appearance)

True reproduction is the x-ray image of the work. Its task is to render visible all the relations, all aspects of context, contrast, and construction that lie hidden beneath the surface of the perceptible sound – and this through the articulation of precisely that perceptible manifestation. The concealment of such relationships, such as the works' own meaning may on occasion demand, is itself but a part of that articulation. This demand relates in particular also to the smallest of units – themes and motives. While the majority of performers effect an articulation of the large-scale form in basic terms, that of the partial units eludes them. For example: a structuring of themes in large-scale – not strophic – forms in terms of antecedent and consequent. Or: that a theme which reappears as a consequent to another has an entirely different meaning, and must therefore be interpreted differently than upon its first appearance. It is the precision and focus with which this micrological work is carried out (the simplest example of this is distinguishing between primary and secondary voices in chamber music) that the sense of the forms – their translation into content – depends on (example 2nd theme from C sharp minor Scherzo by Chopin, or the A flat major theme of the F minor Fantasy). And the problem of interpretation that always returns is the creation of a dialectic between part and whole, one which neither sacrifices the whole for the detail nor entirely annuls the detail through the whole. In the tradition of great Western music, the unity of the basic tempo achieves this. Wherever the unity of the movement is endangered by tempo modifications, even differential ones, articulation must be achieved by other means: phrasing, agogics, dynamics, timbre.

*

[2]

Different dimensions of music-making substitutable. With more highly organized music-making, there are countless occasions upon which a diminuendo, but sometimes also a crescendo, takes the place of a ritardando. Tempo modifications are always the most comfortable, the mechanical device – almost without exception at the cost of unfaithfulness to the text.

*

Against the cliché that one should be faithful to the spirit, not the letter. (NB Toscanini is unfaithful to the letter. Expand)¹ NB Goeze and Lessing.²

*

Mimetic aspect of reproduction: the interpolation of details most readily comparable to that of the actor: interpreting means for one second playing the hero, the berserker, hope itself, and this is where the communication between the work and the performer lies.³ Only those who are able to imitate the work understand its sense, and only those who understand this sense are able to imitate. All languages apply the notion of playing to music.

*

Precise analysis as a self-evident precondition of interpretation. Its canon is the most advanced state of compositional-technical insight.

*

Development of the ideal of silent music-making, ultimately the reading of musical texts, in connection with falling silent (NB the utter destruction of the sensual phenomenon of music through mass reproduction). Playing from memory – ‘thinking the music to oneself’ – as a preliminary stage to this.

*

Begin with the question: what is a musical text. No set of performance instructions, no fixing of the imagined, but rather the notation of something objective, a notation that is necessarily fragmentary, incomplete, in need of interpretation to the point of ultimate convergence.

*

What is the relationship between musical notation and writing? One of the most central questions, inseparable from: what is the relationship between music and language?

*

[3]

Two fundamentally incorrect notions of the nature of musical interpretation need to be refuted: 1) that of the musical text as a set of performance instructions 2) that of the musical text as the fixing of the imagined. In a more profound sense, it is not the work that is the function of imagination, but rather vice versa (derive from the subject–object dialectic of the work. NB also the epistemological argument of the unknownness of the imagined – ‘thing-in-itself’. NB Schönberg's attitude to the text versus my own view. Yet it must be said that the ideal of the work incorporates the imagined and the performance instructions as extremes of the spectrum).

*

The concept of musical sense – as that which is to be represented – needs to be developed. Whereas the sense is not absorbed within the phenomenon, the possibility of its representation – as also of its self-representation – consists exclusively in the phenomena. But this means: within their context. Fulfilling the sense of music means nothing other than rendering all aspects of the context visible. This can be shown with reference to ‘senseless’ music-making, as the difference between what is living and what is dead. The dead elements are always those whose function in the musical context does not become evident. The concept of expression is itself to be understood in these terms (though not entirely: i.e. as an ideal; and in Beethoven's last works it is discarded.). This theory should be related both to the theory of music as a non-intentional text and the theory of x-ray images. Determining this relationship is the real concern of the study.

*

There will have to be an analysis of Toscanini's style of presentation. ‘Interpretation in the Age of Uninterpretability’.⁴

Motifs:

Separation of text (merely apparent faithfulness) and expression (context of effect).

‘Streamlining’: fetishism of smooth functioning without musical sense and construction. [Additional note in the left margin:] Functioning comes to replace function.

Relates to the compositions in the same manner that Zweig's biographies of writers relate to the writing.

[4]

Galvanization of the uninterpretable as ‘effect’: music becomes a form of consumption and an educational artefact at the same time.

Function of naïveté: infiltration of music by barbarism. Sibelius.⁵

The motifs of the conducting essay from Anbruch⁶ should be treated in this context.

*

The dignity of the musical text lies in its non-intentionality. It signifies the ideal of the sound, not its meaning. Compared to the visual phenomenon, which ‘is’, and the verbal text, which ‘signifies’, the musical text constitutes a third element. – To be derived as a memorial trace of the ephemeral sound, not as a fixing of its lasting meaning. – The ‘expression’ of music is not an intention, but rather mimic⁷-imitative. A ‘pathetic’ moment does not signify pathos etc., but rather comports itself pathetically. Mimetic root of all music. This root is captured by musical interpretation. Interpreting music is not referred to without reason as music-making – accomplishing imitative acts. Would interpretation then accordingly be the imitation of the text – its ‘image’? Perhaps this is the philosophical sense of the ‘x-ray image’ – to imitate all that is hidden. Actors and musicians.

*

Introduce the mere reading of music as a conceptual extreme. Perha...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• EDITOR'S FOREWORD
• TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
• NOTES I
• NOTES II
• DRAFT
• MATERIAL FOR THE REPRODUCTION THEORY
• TWO SCHEMATA
• APPENDIX: KEYWORDS FOR THE 1954 DARMSTADT SEMINAR
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX OF NAMES