Music, Language, and Composition Author(s): Theodor W. Adorno and Susan Gillespie Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 401-414 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/742388 Accessed: 05/10/2010 08:02

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http://www.jstor.org Music, Language, and Composition

TheodorW. Adorno(Translated by Susan Gillespie)

Musicis similarto language.Expressions like musicalidiom or musical accent are not metaphors.But musicis not language.Its similarityto languagepoints to its innermostnature, but also towardsomething vague.The personwho takesmusic literally as languagewill be led astrayby it. Musicis similarto languagein that it is a temporalsuccession of articulatedsounds that are morethan just sound.They say something, often somethinghumane. The higherthe speciesof music,the more forcefullythey say it. The successionof soundsis relatedto logic; there is a rightand a wrong.But what is saidcannot be abstracted fromthe music;it does not forma systemof signs. The similarityto languageextends from the whole, the orga- nizedcoherence of meaningfulsounds, down to the singlesound, the tone as the thresholdof mereexistence, the puremedium of expres- sion. It is not only as an organizedcoherence of soundsthat musicis analogousto speech, similarto language,but also in the mannerof its concretestructure. The traditionaldoctrine of musicalforms has its sentence,1phrase, period, and punctuation.Questions, exclamations, subordinateclauses are everywhere,voices rise and fall, and, in all of this, the gestureof musicis borrowedfrom the speakingvoice. When Beethoven,referring to the performanceof a Bagatellefrom Op. 33, asksfor "a certainspeaking expression," he only emphasizes,in his reflection,an ever-presentaspect of music. The distinguishingelement is commonlysought in the fact that musichas no concepts.But quite a few thingsin musiccome rather close to the "primitiveconcepts" that are dealt with in epistemology. It makesuse of recurringsymbols, insignia that bearthe stampof tonality.If not concepts,tonality has, in any case, generatedvo- cables:first the chords,which are alwaysto be used in identicalfunc- tion, even worn-outcombinations like the stepsof a cadence,them- selvesoften merelymelodic phrases that reformulatethe harmony. Such general symbols have the ability to merge with a particularcon- text. They make room for musical specification, as the concept does

401 402 TheMusical Quarterly

for individualthings, and, like language,they are simultaneously healedof their abstractnessby the context. But the identityof these musicalconcepts lies in theirown existenceand not in somethingto which they refer. Their invariancehas becomesedimented, a kind of second nature.This is what makesit so difficultfor consciousnessto separate itselffrom the tonality.But the new musicrebels against the appear- ance that characterizessuch secondnature; it does awaywith the congealedformulae and theirfunction, as mechanical,but not with the similarityto languageitself-only its reifiedversion, which misuses its individualelements as meremarkers, disqualified signals of no less rigidsubjective meanings. Musically, too, subjectivismand reification correspondto each other, but their correlationdoes not describecon- clusivelythe similarityof musicto languagein general.Today, the relationshipof languageand musichas becomecritical. In comparisonto signifyinglanguage,2 music is a languageof a completelydifferent type. Thereinlies music'stheological aspect. What musicsays is a propositionat once distinctand concealed. Its idea is the form3of the name of God. It is demythologizedprayer, freedfrom the magicof makinganything happen, the humanat- tempt, futile, as always,to name the name itself, not to communicate meanings. Musicaims at an intention-lesslanguage, but it doesnot separate itselfonce and for all fromsignifying language, as if therewere differ- ent realms.A dialecticreigns here; everywhere music is shot through with intentions-not, to be sure,only since the stilerappresentativo, which usedthe rationalizationof musicas a meansof comingto terms with its resemblanceto language.Music without any signification,the merephenomenological coherence of the tones, wouldresemble an acousticalkaleidoscope. As absolutesignification, on the otherhand, it wouldcease to be musicand pass,falsely, into language.Intentions are essentialto it, but they appearonly intermittently.Music points to the true languageas to a languagein which the content itself is revealed,but for this it paysthe priceof unambiguousness,which has gone over to the signifyinglanguages. And as if to give it, the most eloquentof all languages,comfort for the curseof ambiguity--its mythicalelement--intentions stream into it. Time and againit points to the fact that it signifiessomething, something definite. Only the intention is always veiled. Not for nothing did Kafka, in several of his works, give to music a place that it had never before occupied in literature. He treated the meaningfulcontents of spoken, signifying language as if they were the meanings of music, broken-offparables-- Music,Language, and Composition 403 this in the most extremecontrast to the "musical"language of Swin- burneor Rilke, which imitatesmusical effects and which is alien to the originsof music.To be musicalmeans to innervatethe intentions that flashforth, withoutlosing oneself to them in the process,but tamingthem, instead.Thus, the musicalcontinuum is constructed. This bringsus to interpretation.Both musicand languagerequire it in the samedegree, and entirelydifferently. To interpretlanguage meansto understandlanguage; to interpretmusic means to make music. Musicalinterpretation is the act of executionthat holdsfast to the similarityto language,as synthesis,while at the sametime it erasesevery individual incidence of that similarity.Hence, the idea of interpretationbelongs to musicessentially and is not incidentalto it. But to play musicproperly means, above all, to speakits language properly.This languagedemands that it be imitated,not decoded.It is only in mimeticpractice-which may, of course,be sublimatedinto unspokenimagination in the mannerof readingto oneself--that musicdiscloses itself, never to a considerationthat interpretsit inde- pendentof the act of execution.If one wishedto comparean act in the signifyinglanguages with the musicalact, it wouldmore likely be the transcriptionof a text than its comprehensionas signification. In contrastto the cognitivenature of philosophyand the sci- ences, in art the elementsthat are broughttogether for the purpose of knowingare nevercombined into judgment.But is musicin fact languagewithout judgment? Among its intentions,one of the most urgentseems to be "Thatis the way it is"--the judicious,even judg- ing, affirmationof somethingthat is, however,not expresslystated. In the highest, as well as the most violent momentsof greatmusic, such as the beginningof the repriseof the firstmovement of the Ninth Symphony,this intention, throughthe sheerpower of its coherence, becomesdistinctly eloquent. It resonatesin lowerworks as parody,for examplein the C-sharpminor prelude by Rachmaninoffthat keeps hammering"That is the way it is"from the firstto the last measure, while lackingthat elementof becomingthat could lead to the state of beingwhose existence it affirms,abstractly and to no avail. Musical form, the totalityin which a musicalcontext takeson the characterof authenticity,can hardlybe separatedfrom the attemptto create,for the nonjudgingmedium, the gestureof judgment.At times this suc- ceeds so completely that the threshold of art is scarcely able to with- stand the onslaught of logic's desire to dominate. Thus, one is led to conclude that the differentiationof music and language will emerge not from their individual traits, but only from the entirety of their constitution. Or rather from their direction, 404 TheMusical Quarterly

their "tendency,"the wordused with the most extremeemphasis on the telos,with regardto musicin general.Signifying language would say the absolutein a mediatedway, yet the absoluteescapes it in each of its intentions,which, in the end, are left behind,as finite. Music reachesthe absoluteimmediately, but in the sameinstant it darkens, as when a stronglight blindsthe eye, which can no longersee things that are quite visible. Musicshows its similarityto languageonce morein that, like signifyinglanguage, it is sent, failing,on a wanderingjourney of end- less mediationto bringhome the impossible.Except that its mediation unfoldsaccording to a differentlaw fromthat of signifyinglanguage, not in meaningsthat referto each other, but in theirmortal absorp- tion into a context that preservesmeaning even as it movesbeyond that meaningwith everymotion. Musicrefracts its scatteredinten- tions awayfrom their own powerand bringsthem togetherinto the configurationof the name. To differentiatemusic from the meresuccession of physicalstim- uli, we sometimessay that musichas sense, or structure.To the extent that in musicnothing is isolated,and everythingonly becomes what it is in its physicalcontact with what is closestand its spiritual contactwith what is farthestaway, in remembranceand expectation, that statementmay be allowedto pass. But the senseof its coherence is not of the type that is madeby signifyinglanguage. The whole is realizedagainst the intentions;it integratesthem by meansof the negationof each individual,indeterminate intention. Music as a whole rescuesthe intentions,not by dilutingthem into a more abstract,higher intention, but by readyingitself, in the instantin which it crystallizes,to summonthe intentionless.Thus, it is almost the antithesisof the kind of coherencethat makessense, even though it mayappear as such in comparisonto sensualimmediacy. This is the sourceof its temptation,in the fullnessof its power,to pull backfrom all sense, to behaveas if it werein fact the name immediately. Schenkerhas cut the Gordianknot of the old controversyand declaredhimself against the aestheticsof expressionas well as the aestheticsof form.Instead--like Schoenberg, whom he scandalously underrates-hehas aimedat a conceptof musicalcontent. The aes- theticsof expressionmistakes the individual,ambiguously escaping intentionsfor the intentionlesscontent of the whole;Wagner's theory falls short because it imagines the content of music as following from the expression of all musical moments infinitely extended; whereas to speak the whole is qualitatively different than to commit a single act of signification. The aesthetics of expression, where it is consistent, Music,Language, and Composition 405 ends with the temptinglyarbitrary act of substitutingwhat has been understoodephemerally and by accidentfor the objectivityof the thing itself. The oppositethesis, however,that of the formsset in motionby sounding,4comes down to emptystimulus or the mere existenceof somethingthat reverberates,where this stimuluslacks the relationshipof the aestheticGestalt to somethingthat is not itself, throughwhich it firstconstitutes itself as aestheticGestalt. Its simplis- tic and thus once againpopular criticism of signifyinglanguage is paid for with the priceof the artistic.Music does not exhaustitself in intentions;by the sametoken, however,no musicexists without expressiveelements: in musiceven expressionlessnessbecomes an expression."Sounding" and "in motion"are almostthe samething in music,and the conceptof "form"does not explainanything about what is concealed,but merelythrusts aside the questionof what is representedin the sounding,moving context that is morethan mere form.Form is only the formof somethingthat has been formed.The specificnecessity, the immanentlogic of that act eludesthe grasp:it becomesmere play, in which literallyeverything could be otherwise. But in truth, the musicalcontent is the wealthof all those things underlyingthe musicalgrammar and syntax.Every musical phenome- non pointsbeyond itself, on the strengthof what it recalls,from what it distinguishesitself, by what meansit awakensexpectation. The essenceof such transcendenceof the individualmusical event is the "content":what happensin music.If musicalstructure or form,then, are to be consideredmore than didacticschemata, they do not enclose the content in an externalway, but are its very destiny,as that of somethingspiritual. Music may be said to makesense the moreper- fectly it determinesits destinyin this way-not only when its individ- ual elementsexpress something symbolically. Its similarityto language is fulfilledas it distancesitself from language.

Within musicitself, musicand languageexist in a state of mutual tension. Musicis reducibleneither to the merebeing-in-itself of its sound,nor to its merebeing for the subject.Music is a meansof cog- nition that is veiled both for itself and for the knowingsubject. But it has this much, at least, in commonwith the discursiveform of knowl- edge:it cannot be fullyresolved in the directionof eitherthe subject or the object, and each of them is mediated by the other. Just as those musics in which the existence of the whole most consistently absorbsand moves beyond its particularintentions seem to be the most eloquent, so music's objectivity, as the essence of its logic, is inseparablefrom the element within it that is similar to language, 406 TheMusical Quarterly

fromwhich it deriveseverything of a logicalnature. These categories are so thoroughlycomplementary that it is not, for instance,possible to maintaintheir balance by conceivingmusic as occupyinga position equidistantbetween them. Rather,its successdepends on the abandon with which it relinquishesitself to its extremepoles. This has been forcefullydemonstrated in the historyof the new music.Where it avoidsthe tensionbetween music and language,it suffersthe conse- quences. The movementthat is subsumedunder the nameof the new musiccould easily be representedfrom the perspectiveof its collective allergyto the primacyof similarityto language.At the sametime, preciselyits most radicalformulations have tendedmore toward the extremeof similarityto languagethan towardthe impulsethat is hos- tile to it. With these formulations,the subjecttook aim againstthe burdensome,conventionalized weight of traditionalmaterial. But todayit is evidentthat even those elementsof the new musicthat, to a conventionalway of thinking,are consideredsubjectivistic contain within them a secondelement that tendsto workagainst the notion usedin the nineteenthcentury to designatemusical similarity to language- expression.The emancipationof dissonanceis often identi- fiedwith the untrammeleddesire for expression,and the aptnessof this equationis confirmedby the developmentfrom Tristan to Elektra to Schoenberg'sErwartung. But preciselyin Schoenberg,the opposite also makesitself known early on. In one of his firstworks, the now much-belovedVerktirte Nacht, a chordoccurs that sixty yearsago was veryshocking. According to the rulesof harmony,it is not allowed: the ninth chord, in major,in an inversionthat placesthe ninth in the bass,so that the resolution,the primeto that ninth, comesto lie aboveit; whereasthe ninth, ostensibly,is meantto be heardas a meresuspension before the tonic. This chord,with its variouspossible resolutions,appears repeatedly in VerklarteNacht at decisiveturning points in the formin an intentionallynonorganic way. It createscae- surasin the idiom. In the FirstChamber Symphony, Schoenberg pro- ceeds in a similarway with the famousfourth chord, which is also not treatedin traditionalharmonic theory. It becomesthe leadinghar- monyand marksall the importantdivisions and articulationsof the form.But it is preciselythe expressivevalue of these chordsthat, in the context, is not essential.What is expressiveand similarto lan- guage, rather, is that context itself. Eloquence of this nature tends to flow, so much so that it must have sounded to the composer'scritical form-awarenesslike an unre- sistant merging. The musical material of the chromaticismdoes not Music,Language, and Composition 407 containthe strongopposing forces of articulationrequired for plastic- ity of formand constructive"logic." In fact, the articulationof the chromaticsin Tristanhad remainedproblematic, and Wagneronly did justiceto it, in his laterworks, in a ratherrough and restorativeway by alternatingdiatonic and chromaticcomplexes. This resultsin dis- continuitieslike the one betweenthe wildnessof most of Strauss's musicin Elektraand its blissfullytriadic conclusion. Schoenberg dis- dainedany such option;hence, he had to find meansof composition that wouldrise abovethe glidingof the chromaticswithout reverting back to a lack of differentiation.The solutionlay preciselyin those extraterritorialchords that had not yet been occupiedby musical- linguisticintentions--a kind of musicalnew-fallen snow in which the subjecthad not yet left any tracks. The whole fieldof resolutionmade up entirelyof fourthchords and their melodictranscription in the orchestralversion of the First ChamberSymphony has been veryaptly compared to a glacialland- scape. In the last movementof the F-sharpminor quartet, the new chordshave been insertedas literalallegories of "anotherplanet."5 It followsthat the originof the new harmonymust be soughtin the realmof the emphaticallyexpressionless, as much as in the realmof expression,as much in hostilityto languageas in language--even thoughthis hostile element,which is alien to the continuumof the idiom,repeatedly served to realizesomething that was linguisticin a higherdegree, namely the articulationof the whole. If the dissonant harmonicshad not alwaysalso soughtthe expressionless,it would scarcelyhave been possiblefor it to be transformedinto the twelve- tone technique,in which, afterall, the linguisticvalues at firstrecede verystrongly in favorof constructiveones. This is how profoundlythe antitheticalelements are intertwinedwith each other. But this intertwininghas not been realizedin all new music. Muchof the latterhas absenteditself, with modishphrases, from the dialecticaleffort and merelyrebelled reactively against the linguistic element. It is not only to the earsof rancorousphilistines that the musicof the nineteenthand earlytwentieth century must have soundedas if it had forgottenwhat was best aboutitself, as if the progressof musicalsimilarity to languagehad been paidfor with the authenticityof musicitself. The weakeningof its constructivepowers and of the consciousness of totality in favor of vivid details, in Romanticism, was equated directly with the growth of expression and similarityto language. It was thought that simply by uprooting the latter it would be possible to regain what had been lost, without accepting the challenge of actually salvaging that best element from 408 TheMusical Quarterly

the irrevocablestate of both consciousnessand material.Composers fell into a state of what Hegel wouldhave termedabstract negation, a techniqueof consciouslyinduced primitivism, of mereomission. Throughan ascetictaboo against everything that was linguisticin music,they hopedto be able to grasppure musicality in itself--a musicalontology, so to speak-as the residue,as if whateverwas left over was the truth.Or, lookedat in a differentway, they repressed the nineteenthcentury instead of transcendingit in the mannerin which Plato'sDiotima describes dialectics: "the old worn-outmortality leavinganother new and similarone behind."6If music'ssimilarity to languagereally fulfills itself by distancingitself from language, then this is attributableonly to its immanentmotion, not to subtractionor the imitationof prelinguisticmodels that are alwaysrevealed, in turn, as previousstages of the processbetween music and language. The attemptto do awaywith music'ssimilarity to languagewas undertakenin two directions.One is the path takenby Stravinsky.By meansof an archaicreversion to musicalmodels that seemedarchitec- tonic and farremoved from language, and a furtherprocess of alien- ation that eliminatedfrom them everythingthat todaysounds similar to language,pure music, purified of all intentions,was supposedto result.But its intention-lesscharacter can only be maintainedby doingviolence to the originsthat are soughtafter in this way. Wher- ever the weightof the musicalidiom is apparentin the models,for examplein the regularsequence of cadentialforms, the modelsare tweakedand twisteduntil they no longerdisavow the attempt.In this way, the pureessence of musicis itselfturned into a subjectiveperfor- mance.The scarsthat resultare accompaniedby expression,ferments of an idiommade of conventionthat is by turnsaffirmed and negated. The parodisticelement--something eminently mimetic and thor- oughlysimilar to language--isinseparable from such musicalhostility to language.It couldnot sustainitself at the apex of its own paradoxi- calness,where it had once executedthe most astonishingbalancing acts. Becomingmore moderate, it revertedto sheerhistoricism and sank, in its receptionby broadermusical consciousness, to the depths of sanctimoniouspseudomorphosis, the unaffirmedgesture of affirma- tion. The substitutionof parodisticnegation as absolutepositivity, liberatedfrom the superstructureof the subject,ends in mereideology. In its second, later form, the rebellion against musical similarity to language desires nothing less than to catapult itself out of history altogether. It is difficult to exaggeratethe rage against the musical element: prisonersshaking the bars of their cells or people robbed of languagedriven mad by the memory of speech. The indestructible Music,Language, and Composition 409 traitsof musicthat compriseits similarityto languageare ostracizedas the alien elementin music,as meredistraction from its immanent logic, as if they, immediatelyand in themselves,were its perversion into a systemof signs. In the heroicperiods of the new music,the vehemenceof the escapeattempts- comparableto the tendencyof earlyradical painting to absorbmaterials that mock all attemptsat subjectiveinspiration, the fundamentalphenomenon of montage- presentsitself as an anarchicrebellion against the senseof musical coherencein general;the young[Ernst] Kienek's eruptions around the time of his SecondSymphony are a case in point. Whereasthis ges- ture, in Krenek,later manifests itself only in certainlatent character- isticsof composingagainst the grain,after the SecondWorld War the sameintention was revivedand systematizedby youngcomposers whosestarting point was theirexperience with the twelve-tonetech- nique. In the Philosophieder neuen Musik, I had once observedthat in Schoenbergthe elementsthat are similarto language,to the extent that they formpart of a musicalcoherence, remain essentially the sameas in the traditionand thus containa certaincontradiction to the changesin the material.From this sameobservation, the young composersjump to the conclusionof a tabularasa. They want to liq- uidatethe elementof musicallanguage in music,to end subjectively mediatedmusical coherence itself and createtonal relationshipsdomi- natedby exclusivelyobjective, that is, mathematicalrelationships. Considerationof any reproduciblemusical sense, indeedof the possi- bility of musicalimagination itself, is irrelevant.The remainderis supposedto be the cosmicallysuperhuman essence of music.Finally, the processof compositionitself is renderedphysical: diagrams replace the notes;formulas for the generationof electronicsound replace the act of composition,which, itself, is ultimatelyseen as an arbitrarily subjectiveact. But this objectivismin musicturns into its opposite.The force that imaginesit is overcomingthe arbitraryrule of the subject,that obviouselement of the possibilityof doingeverything differently-the very thing that had been strikingfear into composersever since its emergenceduring the Romanticera, which, nevertheless,encouraged it-is identicalwith completereification: the desireto be purenature correspondsto the purelymanufactured thing. The ontologicalregion that lies beyond subjective accident is exposed as subjective mastery over nature that has been absolutizedas a mere technique, in which the subject of absolute rule only divests itself of its own humanity and simultaneouslyfails to recognize itself. Nothing can sound more acci- dental than music that ostracizesthe ultimate act of discrimination; 410 TheMusical Quarterly

the electronicproduction of sound,which thinksof itselfas the voice- less voice of being itself, sometimessounds like the droningof machinery.The utopiaof a quasisupra-artistic art, which is to be had, it is true, only for the suspiciouslylow priceof the substitutionof alienatedmechanical procedures for subjectiveeffort, falls back into philistinetinkering of a sortnot unlikethe experimentswith tone- color compositionthat werepopular thirty years ago. Aestheticlawful- ness, the essenceof which consistsprecisely in its antithesisto causality,is confusedwith the latter;autonomy with heteronomy.The hope is that a naturallaw that is takenliterally and, moreover,misun- derstoodwill replacemusical language's lost aestheticauthoritative- ness. But with the proscriptionof everythingthat is even remotely similarto language,and thus of everymusical sense, the absolutely objectiveproduct becomes truly senseless: objectively absolutely irrele- vant. The dreamof a whollyspiritualized music removed from the sullyinginfluences of the animalisticnature of humanbeings awakens amongrough, prehuman material and deadlymonotony. Musicsuffers from its similarityto languageand cannotescape fromit. Hence, it cannotstop with the abstractnegation of its simi- larityto language.The fact that music,as language,imitates-that on the strengthof its similarityto languageit constantlyposes a riddle, and yet, as nonsignifyinglanguage, never answersit-must, neverthe- less, not misleadus into erasingthat elementas a mereillusion. This qualityof being a riddle,of sayingsomething that the listenerunder- standsand yet does not understand,is somethingit shareswith all art. No art can be pinneddown as to what it says, and yet it speaks.Mere dissatisfactionwith this fact will only underminethe principleof art withoutsalvaging it as somethingelse, for examplediscursive knowl- edge. While the idea of truthliberated from illusion remains essential to art, it is not within art'spower to escapefrom appearance. Art comescloser to the idea of freedomfrom appearance by perfecting that appearancethan it wouldby arbitrarilyand impotentlysuspend- ing it. Musicdistances itself from language by absorbingits peculiar strength. The allergyto the linguisticelement in musicis inseparable, historically,from the turnaway from Wagner. It refers,to use a meta- phorfrom the Wagnerianworld, to a woundthat awakensthe most violent emotions,at once unhealedand guilt-ridden.In fact, Wagner, with his radical demand for a declamation that would do justice to language, not only drew vocal music much closer to language than it had ever been before, and did so in a specificallymimetic way, but also assimilatedmusical construction itself to the gesture of language Music,Language, and Composition 411 to the point of exaggeratedclarity. What musiclost in the way of autonomousdevelopment, and what surrogatequalities it assumedas a resultof the unbrokenrepetition of gesturessimilar to language,I do not need to say. True, anti-Wagnerianismof the ordinaryvariety is less incensedabout regressive, compositionally amorphous traits than aboutexplosive characteristics and the unleashingof the languageof music, its emancipationfrom innumerable conventional elements that no longersatisfied the criticalear; whereas, nowadays, the preference, in manycases, is for restoringthat veryconvention by force, as it were, outwardly,to serveas a bond. Followingthe irreparablecollapse of the traditionalformal cos- mos, however,it was only the adaptationto languagethat salvaged for musicsomething of the powerit had possessedat the height of the Beethovenianattempt to reconcilethe autonomoussubject, from within that subject,with the traditionalforms. Music's turn toward languagein Wagnernot only createdhitherto unimagined expressive values,not only gave the musicalmaterial a wealthof the most highly differentiatedqualities without which it can no longersurvive, but also gave this musica dimensionof bottomlessdepth. It mayhave been characterizedby a boastfultragicality, something theatrical and self-dramatizing.It is easy to hold up the comparisonof Bach, Beethoven,and Mozart,as moremetaphysically substantial, but all this does is to drownout, with difficulty,the truthof its own particu- lar moment.The devalorizationof metaphysicalsense, which was reflectedin Wagner'srelationship to Schopenhauer,was appropriateto the state of socialconsciousness under developed capitalism; the thing that makesit inauthentic,the murkyand despairingconflation of such negativitywith the positivityof redemption,still did morehonor to the determininghistorical experience than the fictionthat humanity had been sparedthis experience.For Wagner, however, this experi- ence was not some mereWeltanschauung lacking in compellingforce; it left its stampon the musicalform7 itself. The idea of greatmusic, of musicas a seriousmatter instead of ornamentor privateamuse- ment, survivedthe nineteenthcentury solely as a resultof the Wagne- rian turnof musictoward language. The most recentnegation of the linguisticelement in musicreveals the need of weaknessto abscond fromthat seriousmatter, as froman "unfoldingof the truth."It was only thanks to the Wagnerian finds that the middle Straussand then Schoenberg were able to plow over the field of the musical material in such a way that it finally became fertile again, of itself and not merely as decreed by an autonomous logic. Only music that has once been language transcendsits similarity to language. 412 TheMusical Quarterly

Let us recallthe operasof Alban Berg.In them, autonomous musicallogic reignsside by side with the elementof Wagnerianmusi- cal language.But the two principlesgenerate each other in alterna- tion. The purelymusical articulation, the dialectical,sonata-like form throughwhich Bergretrieves those veryelements--present in Vien- nese Classicismand sacrificedby Wagner-succeedsprecisely on the strengthof the ruthlessimmersion of musicin language,both literally and figuratively.If, amidstall its constructiveunity, Berg'smusic, as distinguishedfrom the levellingtendencies that can be observedin the most diverseregions of the new music,insistently maintained the varietyof individualmusical contents that rendersthat unity a result, and substantial,then the sole reasonis becausehis musicobeys the text's intentionsin everysingle one of its motionsin orderto tearthe musicloose fromthem once morethrough the organizationof its coherence.In this way, it gainsa kind of intervention,something like a processinvolving contending elements, and this is whatconstitutes its seriousness. At any rate, the positionof contemporarymusic toward the similarityof musicto languagecan be indicatedclearly enough to suggestthe shapeof what is needed.There is still a considerable divergencebetween the tonal material,which has been rationalized and disqualifiedin the nameof the twelve-tonetechnique, and the musical-linguisticstructures-from music's large forms down to its tiniest units, the typicalmotivic gestures-which those persevering and most advancedcomposers Schoenberg, Berg, and Webernhave generatedwith this materialand its qualitiesderived from tradition. But the problem--toemploy this much-misusedword, for once, in the strictsense--would be to resolvethat divergenceby advancingthe compositionalprocess. This undertakingcan beginat eitherpole. On the one hand, like the idea of formthat fits the material,in architecture,or of func- tional form,the rationalizedtonal materialitself presses for principles of musicalform, a musicallanguage sui generis.This had only been neglecteddue to the preoccupationwith preparingthat materialas an end in itself. The fact, for example,that developmentand developing variationbecame superfluous and werethrust back into the predisposi- tion of the materialbespeaks a compositionalprocess that proceedsby segments and is articulatedby "intonations,"a stratificationof the large forms according to their parts, each of which tends to be equidis- tant from the center. The result would be a music in which the imme- diacy of every moment outweighs the musical perspective and its form as mediated by expectation and memory. Before the discovery of the Music,Language, and Composition 413 twelve-tonetechnique, Schoenberg had occasionallyattempted some- thing similar.Today, when one of the most giftedyoung composers, PierreBoulez-who as one of the leadingrepresentatives of construc- tivismhas alwaysmaintained a certainindependence from its dogmas -takes his cue fromDebussy as well as Webem, his instinctseems to lead him towardcomposition in segments.Such a reorganizationof the musicalstructure according to the immanentlaws of the material, as it unfolds,would also alterthe entire languageof music.Even the subtlestsmall articulations would be the resultof tiny differentiations within the series,along with equallyfine differentiationsof the various formsof the seriesitself, and serialmusic would no longerhave to speakas if its syntaxwere the one it inheritedfrom tonality. In the oppositecase, the musical-linguisticforms can be similarly separatedfrom the materialand followedin theirdevelopment, can be "constructedout," so to speak.This correspondsto Berg'spractice and aboveall to that of the late Schoenberg,and also, oddlyenough, to functionalforms of musicsuch as filmscores. The task, in conscious masteryof the musicallanguage, would be to crystallizeout characters of a linguisticnature in themselves,Platonic ideas, as it were-of themes, transitions,questions and answers,contrasts, continuations abstractedfrom the musicalmaterial that waspreviously provided by tonality.Such a procedureis not withoutprecedent; one couldvery easilyfind in Beethoven,whose compositional technique is much morerational than the irrationalismof our educationalcanon would have it, atomistictypes of musicalforms8 that resemblea musical puzzleand are usedover and over againand that are by no means conventional.They appearrelatively independently of the flowof tonality,indeed of the progressof the individualcompositions, and one of the elementsof his art was to bringeven these formsinto har- monywith the harmonicand formalprogress of the whole. But the attemptsto wringits own separatelanguage from the material,in the firstcase, and to treatlanguage itself as materialand makeit self-reliant,in the second, convergein the freedisposition over the meansof composition.This is attainedby the individualwho abandonshimself, in a kind of activereceptivity, to that toward which the materialsare strivingon their own. This, however,would be nothingless than the mediationof subjectand object. As one hears within the mere material the language that is enclosed within it, one becomes aware of the subject that lies concealed in that material; and as one breaks the linguistic elements, which without exception representsedimented subjective feelings, out of their blind, quasi- primitive natural coherence and constructs them out oneself, purely, 414 TheMusical Quarterly

one does justiceto the ideaof objectivitythat characterizesall lan- guagein the midstof its subjectivesignification. So, in the end, music and language,in their mostextreme dissociation, may once more mergewith one another.

Notes TheodorW. Adorno,"Musik, Sprache, und ihrVerhiltnis im gegenwirtigenKompo- nieren,"in GesammelteSchriften, Vol. 16 (Frankfurtam Main:Suhrkamp, 1978) 649- 64. Adorno'sthoughts on this subjectwere originally published in 1953 in the volume Musikund Dichtung. 50 JahreDeutsche Urheberrechtsgesellschaft (Munich) under the title "Fragmentiiber Musik und Sprache."The versionthat is givenhere includesminor revisionsto the firsthalf and a new secondhalf; it appearedtwice in 1956 underthe title "Musik,Sprache, und ihr Verhiltnisim gegenwirtigenKomponieren" in a publi- cationof the Archivodi Folosofiain Romeand in Jahresring56-57, Stuttgart,1956. The firsthalf, whichwas includedin the 1956collection Quasi una fantasia, has recentlybeen publishedin a collectionbearing the sametitle, translatedby Rodney Livingstone(Verso, 1992). 1. In German,the wordfor a musicalmovement, "Satz," is the sameas the wordfor sentence.-Trans. 2. Throughoutthis essay,Adorno uses the phrasemeinende Sprache to referto ordi- naryspoken language. Meinend, in this usage,is quite idiosyncratic,which lends the phraseheightened importance. Semantically, it is relatedto Meinung(opinion); it shouldnot be translatedby its Englishcognate meaning, which is closerto the Ger- manBedeutung. In the following,meinende Sprache has been renderedthroughout as "signifyinglanguage. "-Trans. 3. Gestalt.-Trans. 4. Adornorefers to EduardHanslick's definition in his treatiseVom Musikalisch- Schdnen(1854), here in the translationby MartinCooper, from the collectionMusic in EuropeanThought, 1851-1912, ed. by BojanBajic (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press,1988).--Trans. 5. The fourthmovement of Schoenberg'sstring quartet No. 2, Op. 7, is basedon a poemby StefanGeorge entitled "Entrackung," which contains the words"Ich fiihle Luftvon anderenPlaneten" [I feel air fromother planets]. -Trans. 6. FromPlato's "Symposium," in: TheDialogues of Plato,translated by B. Jowett, New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905, vol. I, p. 500.-Trans. 7. Gestalt.-Trans. 8. Gestalten.-Trans.