Theodor W. Adorno's Struggle with the Concept
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BETWEEN MODERN AND POSTMODERN WORLDS: THEODOR W. ADORNO’S STRUGGLE WITH THE CONCEPT OF MUSICAL KITSCH Molly L. Barnes A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Music. Chapel Hill 2012 Approved by: Advisor: Felix Wörner Reader: Tim Carter Reader: Jon Finson © 2012 Molly L. Barnes ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT MOLLY L. BARNES: Between Modern and Postmodern Worlds: Theodor W. Adorno’s Struggle with the Concept of Musical Kitsch (Under the direction of Felix Wörner) The concept of “kitsch” remains a perennial concern for philosophers of aesthetics. Many distinguished writers have contributed to the literature on kitsch, yet the valuable work of the musicologist, sociologist, and philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) has been largely overlooked. Adorno nurtured an abiding interest in the topic of musical kitsch in particular, but was profoundly troubled by its implications for the cultural edification and psychological health of modern society. His writings also indicate that his ambivalence regarding kitsch became more acute with time. Through a close study of four texts by Adorno, including his analyses of specific musical works, I propose that Adorno’s increasingly conflicted attitude toward musical kitsch reflects growing tensions between modernist and postmodernist cultural perspectives in the mid-twentieth century, tensions that have persisted strongly into the twenty-first century. Indeed, Adorno’s thoughts regarding kitsch may help us understand musical aesthetics in his era as well as our own. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have many people to thank for their help in bringing this thesis to completion. First of all, I could not have attempted this project without the guidance and patience of my advisor, Dr. Felix Wörner, from whose seminar the idea for the thesis arose. I am very grateful to my readers, professors Tim Carter and Jon Finson, for taking time from their summer vacations to provide insightful comments on previous drafts. My colleagues in the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill engaged me in many discussions about my topic, encouraging me to think more deeply and critically about my work. I wish also to thank my dear friend Daniel Legrand for his helpful suggestions. Finally, I cannot adequately express my gratitude to my parents and my brother, whose love and support have always been beyond measure. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION….………………………………………………………………………....1 SECTION I. The “Problem” of Kitsch…………….………………………………………..…....7 Contemporary Writers on Kitsch…………………….………………..…..…10 II. Adorno on Kitsch: Four Texts……………………………………………............15 “Kitsch” (1932)………………………………………………………………18 “On the Social Situation of Music” (1932)………………………………..…27 “Commodity Music Analyzed” (1934-40)……………...……………………33 Aesthetic Theory (1970)……………………………………………………...41 CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………………...........48 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………51 v Introduction In 1967, after a decades-long career, the German sociologist, musicologist, philosopher and cultural critic Theodor W. Adorno wrote the following: Though attempts to define kitsch usually fail, still not the worst definition would be one that made the criterion of kitsch whether an art product gives form to consciousness of contradiction—even if it does so by stressing its opposition to reality—or dissembles it. In this respect seriousness should be demanded of any work of art. As something that has escaped from reality and is nevertheless permeated with it, art vibrates between this seriousness and lightheartedness. It is this tension that constitutes art.1 Perhaps more than any other words in his œuvre, this passage represents Adorno’s continued grappling with the definition of art, and by extension, the definition of kitsch. Throughout his life, Adorno (1903-1969) devoted serious critical attention both to “high” and “low” (or “popular”) artistic expression. Some of his more widely read essays on music, including “On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening” (1938) and “On Popular Music” (1941) have provoked a common reaction in many readers today—to discount his critiques as merely elitist complaints about the supposed vacuity of popular entertainment. Yet as Robert Witkin notes, a closer investigation of Adorno’s writings on music and society reveal “not a judgement of taste but a theory concerning the moral and political projects 1 Adorno, “Is Art Lighthearted?” (1967) in Notes to Literature, Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 249 (Gesammelte Schriften [henceforth GS], Vol 11, 601: “Pflegen die Versuche, Kitsch zu definieren, zu scheitern, so wäre jedenfalls der nicht der schlechteste, der zum Kriterium von Kitsch macht, ob ein Kunstprodukt, und wäre es durch den Nachdruck des Gegensatzes zur Realität, das Bewußtsein des Widerspruchs ausprägt oder darüber betrügt. Unter solchem Aspekt ist von jeglichem Kunstwerk sein Ernst zu fordern. Kunst vibriert zwischen ihm und der Heiterkeit als der Realität Entronnenes und gleichwohl von ihr Durchdrungenes. Allein solche Spannung macht Kunst aus”). inhering in both ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ art.”2 Adorno’s many discussions of art and his perennial attention to the idea of “kitsch” reflect less a desire to condemn that which he perceived as inferior, than the goal of demonstrating the functions and circumstances of both serious and popular art in contemporary society. Indeed, in his work on aesthetics, Adorno dealt primarily with the sociological aspects of art and entertainment. His most fundamental questions involved the dialectical links between art and the social world in which it necessarily exists, yet he remained adamant that his observations were not based on any empirical study of the relationship between art and society, but on a philosophical inquiry into the nature of “truth content” (Wahrheitsgehalt) in art. This “truth content” consists in a dialectic between content and form within the artwork, a dialectic that the critical viewer finds to be true rather than false on the basis of the artwork’s position in its socio-historical context.3 For Adorno, only art in its highest form, particularly music, could express truth content. Only a utopian world, however—one that did not succumb to the degradation of commodity culture—could give rise to artworks that genuinely express truth content. Adorno’s purpose as a critic was not to change art or society in any significant way (for this would be an impossible goal), but to heighten the general awareness of the situation of art—especially music—in society, however dire or dismal that situation may be. The “reality” to which Adorno refers in the above passage is the inescapable reality of society with which art must contend in some way. Perhaps reflecting Kant’s notion of the “free play” or vibration of the cognitive faculties (the 2 Robert W. Witkin, Adorno on Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 2003), 1. 3 Lambert Zuidervaart, “Theodor W. Adorno,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, <http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2011/entries/adorno/>. 2 imagination and the understanding) in judging artworks, Adorno argues that when we perceive true art, our consciousness will “vibrate” between reality (seriousness) and imagination (lightheartedness).4 As difficult as it was for Adorno to articulate clearly the definition of or criteria for art, he found an equally daunting challenge in defining kitsch, which Richard Leppert has called “art’s bad conscience.”5 Adorno never quite defined kitsch in a concrete sense— kitsch as an aesthetic concept remains notoriously difficult to characterize—and in several writings he insisted that such a definition was ultimately unattainable. Yet he returned to the idea of kitsch time and time again over the course of his career, evidently finding in it something useful for explicating the fate of art in modern, commodified culture. In particular, Adorno believed that kitsch was intimately connected to the Marxist idea of “false consciousness,” a term used by Friedrich Engels which posits that individuals become ideologically deluded about their class status when living in a capitalist society. Adorno was especially concerned with kitsch as manifested in music. Why is it important to investigate the term “kitsch” at all, if its essential meaning and proper usage remain enigmatic? And why should we use Adorno’s work as an entry point? I will argue that a study of the concept(s) of kitsch through the lens of Adorno’s thought can provide valuable insight into fundamental aesthetic dilemmas and their social context during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Adorno’s deep ambivalence regarding the term, and the concept itself, reflects broader tensions between modernist and postmodernist aesthetic outlooks, tensions that have persisted strongly into the early twenty-first century. 4 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 217. 5 Leppert, “On Reading Adorno Hearing Schubert,” 19th-Century Music Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer 2005): 62. 3 The “modernism” of the fin-de-siècle and first half of the twentieth century, originating in the Enlightenment, can be broadly characterized as a movement advocating progress and a renunciation