The New Music. Theodor W. Adorno

this [plays]. What happens here is exactly what one would refer to in a dodecaphonic context as the retrograde inversion. Because here you have – so these are the four notes [plays]. If you now play these backwards – no, it’s not a retrograde inversion, I was talking nonsense; it’s a simple retrograde [plays]. And if you transpose it, you have this [plays]. So you can see here – and I would like to emphasize that very strongly: it is clear how little the invention of the twelve-note technique is a mathematical matter, much less a substitute for tonality, from the fact that the consequences of organic motivic work led Schoenberg, still in the midst of tonality, to operate with exactly the same methods that were later made absolute in twelve-tone music. Now, the form of note row technique in question here really consists – if one leaves aside the somewhat schematic disposition, as this is really a faithful retrograde – only in taking a small selection from the available intervals and forming an entire thematic complex from it, very often using a procedure I would call ‘axial rotation’. By this I mean starting from the second note of such a four-note group, for example, and then appending the missing first note or an interval corresponding to it at the end. So this character – a somewhat broader ‘serial’ character, if you like – defines the course of this whole section, which I deliberately played slowly for you so that you can appreciate it. Now I will show you in detail. So the whole thing is based on two, really only two intervals: seconds and thirds. Nothing else really appears in the entire melody during the first eight bars [plays]. Third, third, second, third, second, third, second, second, third, second, second, third, second, third, second, third, third, third, second, second, third, third, second. So there is nothing else at all, and this creates a great sense of unity. Let me play it to you again [plays]. […] Counterpoint to that. So you see how, even here, and in a very simple melody where there is not actually any constructivist necessity, I would almost say that the note-row principle extends to the musical invention, because the entire theme is already invented in such a way that it always [plays] – so you can truly see how organic this aspect actually is.

Well, I don’t know, I had wanted to show you today, for a very different reason, the last song from op. 2, which became very famous.²⁶ But this is really for, well, an aesthetic reason, in order truly to show you what possibilities for musical happiness and musical abundance this composer sacrificed because of an urge that was stronger than anything else. And I cannot shake off the feeling – I mean, I do not intend to bore you with some pathos-drenched theories now – but I cannot shake off the feeling that the incredible cogency of Schoenberg’s later works that they – forgive the mythological turn of phrase – that they benefited from everything that was once there, from this whole abundance. So that whole past had to have been there once and then been forgotten, in order to lead to the mature Schoenberg without this rigour taking on any sense of aridity or meagreness. And I think you should all bear this in mind and be aware of this whole side of the phenomenon, without simply covering it up by saying, ‘Well, that was Romantic, and one can’t carry on like that any more.’ Indeed, we all know that, and so did Schoenberg. But if this so-called Romantic element had not been there, then the rest would probably never have come into existence. That is, if this overflowing feeling of happiness had not been there in the young Schoenberg, I would say, then the particular kind of tragedy and the necessary darkening of the later Schoenberg would not have been possible, for even there one finds an indescribable possibility of love, of hope, of self-surrender – all these things are infinitely strong in this young Schoenberg, and the later darkness always rests on the foundation of, how shall I put it, suffering from the world, precisely because the world does not return these feelings, as it were, because the world is cold and foreign. And I think that only when one grasps this element of exuberance, which is a precondition for the alienation in later Schoenberg, only then can one truly understand the profundity, the real intellectual and human profundity, that this whole phenomenon actually possesses, which is the real reason for my speaking to you so extensively about the young Schoenberg. Though I do want to go into a few technical matters as well. Firstly, that this wonderful middle section is introduced from the remainder of a consequent, a middle section that is among the most flowering, rich music there is. Then, that there is a second at the end when it seems as if the lion were showing its claws, and as if there were a quiet rumble going through this world, as if it were saying, ‘Well, we’re not quite so safe after all.’ So this rumble, which lies only in the epilogue, at the very end, in the very last bars, I would like to draw your attention to this in particular [plays ‘Waldsonne’ [Forest sun], Four Songs, op. 2, no. 4]. Now, let me just point out the following, namely how, even in so ostensibly unproblematic a song, how consistent and – I would almost say – how little concerned with effect Schoenberg is in his approach. You will have noticed that, at the end of the middle section, the whole thing dissolves somewhat and is reduced to a repetition of this small motif from here onwards [plays]. Now, any other composer would simply have ended the song with a reprise of the first verse. Schoenberg does not; this feeling of a quiet dissolution of the musical line, a form of atomization, it has consequences. So he hints at the differences here [plays]. It is still all a reprise – ‘with restraint’. And now once again this dissolution of the motif [plays]. […]

      So, I think we should end there for today, and in the next session we will perhaps look more closely at Verklärte Nacht and Gurrelieder, then perhaps at the end also the op. 6 songs, and after that I will also tell you a few things about the major chamber music works, though I assume that most of you are very familiar with them. – Thank you.

Notes

      1 1. There is no document of the lecture’s opening. In the following, ellipses in square brackets indicate gaps in the recording or unintelligible speech.

      2 2. The tenth International Summer Course for New Music took place in Darmstadt from 29 May to 6 June 1955.

      3 3. Gertrud Schoenberg (1898–1967), Rudolf Kolisch’s sister, was Arnold Schoenberg’s second wife; he married her in 1924 after the death of his first wife, Mathilde. They had three children: Nuria (born 1932, later wife of Luigi Nono), Ronald (born 1937) and Lawrence (born 1941).

      4 4. ‘The Aging of the New Music’ first appeared in the journal Der Monat, 7/80 (1954–5), pp. 150–8; then in book form in Dissonanzen: Musik in der verwalteten Welt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956); now in Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 181–202. The Kierkegaard reference is on p. 183: ‘More than a hundred years ago Kierkegaard, speaking as a theologian, said that where once a dreadful abyss yawned a railroad bridge now stretches, from which the passengers can look comfortably down into the depths.’ Adorno is referring to a passage from Kierkegaard’s text ‘The Moment’:On these assumptions, the New Testament, considered as guidance for the Christian, becomes a historical curiosity, somewhat like a handbook for travellers in a particular country when everything in that same country is completely changed. Such a handbook is not to be taken seriously by travellers in that country, but it has great value as entertaining reading. While one is comfortably riding along in the train, one reads in the handbook, ‘Here is the frightful Wolf’s Glen, where one plunges 70,000 fathoms down under the earth […].’See Søren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard’s Writings, Vol. 23: The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 123.

      5 5. In the essay ‘Physiognomy of Krenek’, Adorno writes:Today, when all New Music is listened to with fatally respectful ears and scarcely unbalances its well-informed audiences, it is difficult to imagine the aggression radiated by the young Krenek’s works – his first two symphonies, String Quartet No. 1, or also the Toccata and Chaconne for piano, which caused a scandal. The world premiere of the Second Symphony under Laugs, which took place in Kassel in 1923, was probably no less potent in its effect than the legendary premieres before the First World War, such as Berg’s Altenberg-Lieder or Le Sacre du Printemps.See Theodor W. Adorno, Night Music: Essays on Music 1928–1962, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Wieland Hoban (London and Calcutta: Seagull, 2009), p. 178. See also the radio interview recorded in August 1965 for North German Radio (NDR): Theodor W. Adorno and Lotte Tobisch, ‘Wiener Skandale um die Neue Musik’, published in Wespennest: Zeitschrift für brauchbare Texte und Bilder, no. 117 (2000),