The New Music. Theodor W. Adorno

but of an extra-musical intention, of a cerebral reflection. The technical labour which required so much time was in adding such subordinate voices as would soften the harsh frictions of this combination. (Schoenberg, Style and Idea, pp. 55f.)

      5 5. See Richard Strauss, Tod und Verklärung, op. 24 (1888–90).

      6 6. ‘Warnung’ is the third song from the cycle Six Songs for Middle-Register Voice and Piano, op. 3 (1899–1903).

      7 7. ‘Peripetie’ is the fourth piece.

      8 8. There are two arrangements for string orchestra, from 1917 and 1943 (the revised version).

      9 9. ‘In composing I make decisions only according to feeling, according to the feeling for form. This tells me what I must write; everything else is excluded’ (Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, p. 417). In a letter to Alexander Zemlinsky, Schoenberg comments on the latter’s wish to cut one passage for a performance of Pelleas und Melisande: ‘Apart from the fact that it [the passage] follows the line of the drama (which would no longer strike me as the most essential thing), it seems to me justified (and this is more important to me than justification in the light of a formal scheme) by the sense of form and space that has always been the sole factor guiding me in composition, and which was the reason why I felt this group to be necessary’ (Schoenberg, Letters, p. 55).

      10 10. The logo designed by Paul Thesing featuring the ascending fourths from the introductory theme of Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, op. 9, was used at the summer course until 1962; it was also reproduced on the covers of the series Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik. See Gianmario Borio and Hermann Danuser (eds), Im Zenit der Moderne: Die Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt 1946–1966, Geschichte und Dokumentation in vier Bänden, Vol. 1 (Freiburg: Rombach, 1997), p. 30.

      11 11. In an issue of the journal Pult und Taktstock devoted to Schoenberg, the conductor Ernst Kunwald (1868–1938) wrote of the Chamber Symphony:The most interesting passage in the whole piece for me, however, is the end of the development section shortly before the slow movement, where all traces of the tonality still maintained before then gradually disappear, augmented triads whirl about, the fourths motif takes everything over step by step, and then a chord of six stacked fourths is vehemently repeated. Then, in the quietest pianissimo, one hears harmonics in the double bass, cello and viola intoning the fourths motif; the strings rise in fourths, encircled by arpeggios of fourths in the wind, to the greatest heights. An atmosphere as icy and solemn as a glacier – a music surely like none ever imagined before. (Ernst Kunwald, ‘Die Kammersymphonie’, in Pult und Taktstock, Fachzeitschrift für Dirigenten: Arnold Schönberg und seine Orchesterwerke [Vienna: Universal Edition, 1927], p. 35)

      12 12. See Alban Berg, Arnold Schönberg, Gurrelieder: Führer (Leipzig and Vienna: Universal Edition, 1913), now in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Rudolf Stephan et al., Section III: Musikalische Schriften und Dichtungen, Vol. 1: Analysen musikalischer Werke von Arnold Schönberg (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1994), pp. 1–81.

      13 13. The ‘sleep harmonies’ first appear in Act 3 of Die Walküre, directly before Wotan’s words ‘Denn so kehrt der Gott sich dir ab / so küsst er die Gottheit von dir’ [And so the god / turns away from you / so he kisses your godhead away]. A series of woodwind chords begins on the last word. Adorno may also have been thinking of the scene with Wotan and Erda from Act 3 of Siegfried; here the sleep motif first enters when the curtain rises, then returns four bars before Erda’s words ‘Stark ruft das Lied’ [Strong is the call of the song] and also at the words ‘Mein Schlaf ist Träumen’ [My sleep is dreaming] and ‘Die Walküre, der Wala Kind’ [The Valkyrie, child of Wala]. It also appears in a fragmented form at Wotan’s words ‘Hinab, zu ew’gem Schlaf’ [Down, to eternal sleep] during the last four bars of the scene (with thanks to Johannes Dombois for this information).

Lecture 3: 4 June 1955

      Ladies and gentlemen,

As this is the final session of the course, I feel it is appropriate for me to begin with a few rather fundamental matters. And this also relates to a specific occasion. My text ‘The Aging of the New Music’, which I have presented a number of times as a lecture,¹ has now been published, and I think that some of you have already seen it. And I have the feeling that this text has been subject to certain misunderstandings. I have heard that a number of young readers saw this essay as a form of apostasy, or a sort of disavowal of the things I have stood for and which I consider fundamental to music as such. First of all, let me just ask you in all modesty, especially the younger ones among you, to read this essay, which is very closely connected to the lectures I have given. I consider it one of the great ills of the current situation in Germany that people are getting out of the habit of grasping ideas of a somewhat complex and nuanced nature as ideas, and that they are all, as I put it, viewed as slogans of the kind found in training camps. [Applause] One has to be in favour of something or against something. And I think that, as long as this mentality persists, something of the totalitarian element survives, even if none of its outward forms have remained. It is absolutely not the case, of course, that I have turned against modern music, tried in this essay to cut off its development or anything similar, and I think that, if you take a close look at the text, you will find that I have even tried to identify those elements precisely in Schoenberg and Webern that virtually necessitated some of the developments in so-called pointillist music,² which is the primary focus. But I do think that an autonomous person should not seek cover in trends or movements but, rather, aim autonomously for an understanding of the matter. And if this leads one to oppose a prevailing trend, I see no great misfortunate in that – one has to admit that such possibilities exist, especially if one knows with certainty that history does not proceed in a straight line. And just as I was unable to see, shall we say, the neoclassical fashion that emerged in the thirties as a form of progress, I am equally doubtful that a music written in the belief that its true raison d’être lies in the creation of relationships based to varying degrees on mathematics or physics, that this can provide its justification. Because I genuinely think that our view of things should be as complex as they themselves are. This means, on the one hand, acting on what I have been trying to convey to you the whole time, namely that the works are force fields, and that there are indeed countless problems in Schoenberg, in Berg, in Webern, that demand to be thought further and pushed further – but that, on the other hand, one should not blind oneself to certain human and intellectual-musical regressions that are apparent to a certain extent in this current musical trend. And I think one can do these things properly only if one goes into the complexity of the phenomenon – but not in the sense of, shall we say, espousing progress at all costs; just as, conversely, one cannot retreat to the supposedly eternal values and use those eternal values to devalue what is created now. I simply mean – and this is the purpose of my critique, as well as the purpose of the lectures I am giving to you now – that the category that is constitutive for all music is that of musical sense, of that which is ‘composed’. I will admit to you that I hinted almost ten years ago, in Philosophy of New Music, at the possibility that even this category of so-called musical sense is not the last thing, and that there is a growing rebellion against it. But I would say that such a rebellion, even as a negation of musical sense, would still need some portion of musical sense; that is, it would have to remain within the artistic realm and not drift into the pre-artistic state of mere cogency, into the pseudo-scientific. It would be pseudo-scientific because, firstly, one can show at every turn that an integral logical design, if it draws very different media into itself, is an illusion; that is, it is not derived from a single principle at all. And, secondly, because what I call the ‘composed’ is given too little attention. And I think our task is rather to speak to the young composers – I am happy to see two of the foremost exponents of these things here today³ – I consider it better and more important that we work through these problems together, and that we genuinely attempt to put our heads together and make progress in these matters rather than tying our selves down according to some rigid slogans and adopting inflexible positions. And that finally takes me to the purpose of this lecture, namely to use the details of Schoenberg’s works to show you the musical sense of those phenomena that hold the danger of drifting towards something purely mechanical, something that can no longer be explained through