120 Part II: A Change of Scene
early concert reviews and critiques of musical works, followed by his
theoretical articles and miscellaneous writings towards the end of the
1920s, allowed the gradual build-up of a philosophical theory of con-
temporary music. This theory included certain fundamental elements,
among them the maxim that truth in music is possible only when a
composition is thoroughly structured. A further principle was his insist-
ence that musical expression must oppose the constraints of tradition.
This led to the conviction that artistic methods and social development
are dialectically interrelated. This philosophy of music was very far from
being the justification of a philosophy with which Adorno might have
been identified. He had made an intensive study of Kant and German
idealism as a whole even before he started studying and subsequently
during his university course. For his dissertation he had made an initial
foray into Husserl’s phenomenology. And, of course, he had read a fair
amount of Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx, as can be seen from the intel-
lectual echoes in his published writings and his use of concepts. He was
able to articulate his reservations about Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
and also to apply the methodology and terminology of psychoanalysis.
Finally, he was familiar with the various current trends in philosophy
and was in a position to express strikingly trenchant judgements about
them. Despite the breadth of his philosophical learning, however, it was
no false modesty that led him to tell Alban Berg that his academic
aspirations came second to his musical ambitions.
During the months in which he poured his energies into the debates,
written and oral, with Krenek, as well as into the revitalization of
Anbruch, he had to come to terms with two further setbacks, on top of
those he had already suffered. The lesser of the two was that, after a
year’s interval, his hopes of an editorial position with the Ullstein Press’s
Berliner Zeitung am Mittag were dashed once more. In a letter of 29
April 1929, Adorno had again asked Berg to recommend him to Ullstein.
His chief competitor this time was Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, and it
was Stuckenschmidt who ended up as the preferred candidate. So, once
again, an extended stay in Berlin (in which he lived in the Violetta guest
house in the Joachimsthalerstraße) turned out to be fruitless, at least
from the point of view of a career. Did Adorno really have to worry
about money at this time? It appears that, in addition to what must
have been rather meagre earnings from his fees as music critic, he could
always depend on financial support from his parents. When he applied
for the position in Berlin, his father wrote to him from Frankfurt telling
him not to worry about money, and that Adorno could rely entirely on
his father. The most important thing for him was to have the oppor-
tunity to spend as much time with his son as possible. In a language
redolent of military imagery, he told his son to apply to ‘headquarters’
for ‘reinforcements’ should that prove necessary.^2
Since it soon became clear that it would take Ullstein months to
reach a decision, Adorno felt increasingly reluctant to expect too much