The Historical Dialectic of 20th Century Music : From the Point of Adorno’s Theory of Sociological Aesthetics

Suh,In-Jung

In the beginning of the twentieth century, A. Schönberg(1874-1951) destroyed the hierarchical system of tonality by treating all twelve tones in an octave as being equal. He replaced the dynamic tonal system with the mathematically rationalized twelve-tone system. A. Webern, student of Schönberg, tried to rationalize all paradigms of music mathematically. According to Th. W. Adorno(1903-1969), the twelve-tone system is an inevitable outcome of the historical pressure within the material. The system is related to current expressive needs. In Adorno's sociology of music, the autonomous musical work has to be understood as itself embodying the mediation of the subjectivity of the composer and the objectivity of the musical material. The autonomy of music has been relative to bourgeois society as a whole by mimesis. In opposition to mimesis, rationality dominates the object by identity principle. For Adorno, mimesis is an alternative to dominative rationality. In art, mimesis and rationality are dialectically related each other. The dialectic relationship of mimesis and rationality is revealed in the relation of expression and construction in the work of art. Adorno regarded Schönberg’s atonality and the twelve-tone music as the mimesis of the rationalized and standardized structure of today’s capitalist industrial society through its immanent form. The social mediation of music appears through musical material. The immanent form of the individual work is a reflection upon, and recontextualization of, musical material, itself already historically ‘pre-formed’. In this way, Adorno maintains, each work, as a mode of cognition, is a critique of social reality itself. The truth content of works is always historically, and socially mediated. The musical avant-garde of the early 1950s, particularly the multiple serialists of the Darmstadt School, followed Webern rather than Schönberg. They tried to rationalize the work by total serialism. Adorno regarded the total serialism as an attempt to offer the possibility of a new, totally integrated and autonomous music. According to him, the total serialism returned to a mythical state of musical nature, in an attempt to purge musical material of its historically acquired meanings. At the same time, Adorno saw the disintegration of the logic of form in the traditional language of music through the standardizing effects of culture industry. Adorno’s examination of contemporary music fits into his philosophical historical dialectical context. In modern society, intellectual activity runs the risk of being dominated by economic and social relations. The individual feels alienated because capitalist industrial society has stifled his independence and free creativity. The society has brought about an ever-increasing degree of standardization. Music is becoming commercialized and spoiled subject to the laws of supply and demand, losing its character as truth. The dialectic of musical material can be understood as the historical objectification of the bourgeois Subject in musical structures. Adorno considered a piece of music not as a self-contained entity but as inherently historical and sociological. However, a musical work should be autonomous to have a social significance. Autonomy in music remains crucial to preserve the critical potential within advanced capitalist industrial society.

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