Adorno and Musical Analysis Author(s): Andrew Edgar Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Autumn, 1999, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 439-449 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/432150 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.com/stable/432150?seq=1&cid=pdf- reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Wiley and The American Society for Aesthetics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism This content downloaded from 68.4.47.192 on Fri, 08 Jan 2021 02:16:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ANDREW EDGAR Adorno and Musical Analysis Nicholas Cook has defined musical analysis as dently of the act of analysis. The achievement of "the practical process of examining pieces of this goal is prevented only by the lack of refine- music in order to discover, or decide, how they ment in analytic techniques. work."' Analytical methods "ask whether it is The purpose of this essay is to outline a re- possible to chop up a piece of music into a series sponse to these issues, in part through reference of more-or-less independent sections. They ask to a late essay by Adorno on analysis. The first how components of the music relate to each other, section of the essay will briefly outline how two and which relationships are more important than contemporary analysts, Joseph Kerman and Ed- others. More specifically, they ask how far these ward T. Cone, articulate the problem of analysis. components derive their effect from the context In the second part, the tensions found in contem- they are in."2 Joseph Kerman has borrowed a porary analysis will be traced back to a nineteenth- definition from the Harvard Dictionary of Music, century prehistory of analysis, articulated through arguing that the focus of analysis is "the syn- the work of Herbart and Hanslick. In the final thetic element and the functional significance of section, a radio address by T. W Adorno is ar- the musical detail." Analysis sets out to discern gued to offer a deliberately paradoxical formu- and demonstrate the functional coherence of in- lation of the goal of analysis, which demands dividual works of art, their "organic unity."3 that reflection on these tensions becomes an ex- Analysis is concerned with form. The formal- plicit part of analysis (as an awareness, not merely ist approaches that have dominated musical analy- of the cultural and political grounding of com- sis since the beginning of this century have in- position, but also of the cultural and political creasingly come into question. On the one hand, grounding of analysis and the way in which analy- formalism tends to isolate the musical work from sis informs and constitutes the composition). any extramusical context. Analysis refers to ex- clusively musical parameters, seeing no need to invoke the cultural or political context within which works are produced or reproduced. The Joseph Kerman comments upon what he sees as "meaning" of the work is expressed in terms of the superficiality of what is called music criti- the relationships between elements within the cism, in contrast to criticism in the literary and work. This position may rest on the assumption visual arts, and the corresponding isolation of that music is in itself incapable of depicting or what should be at least the foundation of a pro- referring to the nonmusical world, and that any found music criticism, that is to say, the isola- such reference was the result of a purely subjec- tion of analysis.4 Kerman argues that the prob- tive attribution. On the other hand, there has been lems of contemporary analysis may be traced to a more or less explicit assumption that an objec- a number of presuppositions that serve to define tive, and therefore definitive, analysis of a work the goal of analysis, but also thereby to construct could be produced. In effect, the task of analy- analysis as an ideology, legitimating a canon of sis is presented in terms of the identification of Austro-German major works. The key presup- the inherent properties of the work itself, pre- position is that of organicism.5 The work of art supposing that these properties existed indepen- is presumed to be an organic unity, so that the The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57:4 Fall 1999 This content downloaded from 68.4.47.192 on Fri, 08 Jan 2021 02:16:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 440 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism task of analysis is to trace the relationship be- to a format of strictly corrigible propositions, tween parts (with the relationship being expressed mathematical equations, set-theory formulations, in terms of the part's function in the whole). and the like-all this, apparently, in an effort to Analysis demonstrates its own worth by demon- achieve the objective status and hence the au- strating that given works can be accounted for as thority of scientific inquiry."9 He similarly com- functional wholes; but ideologically, the demon- ments of total serial music that "every pitch, stration of organicism serves to legitimate the rhythm, timbre, dynamic, envelope, and so on aesthetic primacy of those organic works. The can be derived from the work's 'precomposi- major works by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beetho- tional assumptions' by means of ... mathemat- ven, and Brahms are readily analyzed in terms ics.... The answer provided by serial analysis is, of their organic unity. Schenker and Tovey, in undeniably, objective."'0 These comments sep- the early years of the twentieth century, are pre- arate an evaluative critical enterprise from a de- sented as the modern founders of this approach. scriptive and explanatory analysis. The intimate As Kerman notes, "the ideology did not receive relationship of serial composition and analysis its full articulation until the music in which it leads to the possibility, with respect to a small was rooted came under serious attack" by mod- corpus of works, of descriptions and explanations ernism.6 that correspond to the musical object. "Objec- Kerman illustrates the limitations of organi- tivity," in the sense of correspondence to the ob- cism by countering Schenker's reading of Schu- ject, is highly problematic outside of this cor- mann's second Dichterliebe song, "Aus meinen pus. The criteria by which an analysis is judged Thranen spriessen." Schenker's concern with the to be correct, let alone right, are unclear. music alone serves to reduce the song to a "back- Edward T. Cone, in contrast to Kerman, be- ground sketch" of, in this case, a mere twelve gins from irresolvable ambiguities within the notes. At the heart of this background is the analyses of serial works."I Specifically, he is Urlinie, the arpeggiated tonic triad. Schenker concerned with a number of aspects of serial and finds this "chord of nature" to be manifest, albeit total serial works of which current analytical tech- with slight variation, in all works of the Austro- niques appear to be incapable of providing ade- German canon.7 quate explanations. Notably, analysis cannot ex- Crucially, Kerman notes that Schenker' s analy- plain why the composition as a whole could not sis serves to remove certain ambiguities in the be subjected to the serial techniques of inversion song, and "ambiguities such as those set up by and retrograde (crudely, that the composition Schumann's cadences are likely to strike a critic could not be played upside down or backward) as a good place to focus his investigation, to begin without any loss in quality or coherence. His sug- seeing what is special and fine about the song."8 gestion of three responses to this uncertainty are Kerman begins from the ambiguity of the three instructive as to the presuppositions that ground "rather haunting, contradictory" cadences at bars analysis. First, one can merely accept what the 4, 8, and 16-17 of the song, and pursues his composer did, as their choices may not always analysis outward through reference to the poem, be open to a rational account, and as such are to the song's place within the cycle, to Schumann's left unexplained. Cone finds this to be too ready personal symbolism, to the cycle as a traditional an admission of failure. Second, one can assume genre, and to what Cone has analyzed as the that analytical theory is currently incomplete. "personae" of vocal music. Further development of the theory will encom- Kerman's interpretation is left incomplete. This pass even these seemingly ambiguous dimen- challenges organicism not least by leaving the sions. It is therefore also presupposed that de- initial ambiguity unresolved. It begs the ques- finitive, which is to say exhaustive, analysis is a tion of whether or not a definitive and objective possibility. Finally, one can assume that the com- analysis can be given of a work. It was suggested poser's choices are underpinned by what Cone above that analysis has tended to assume that it calls "absolute decisions." Such decisions allow can account for an objective musical reality that for no adequate analytical explanation, but can pre-exists analysis and is unaffected by analy- still be rationally justified (unlike the purely sis.