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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. 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]. Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Musical Quarterly. 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