The Institute of Social Research 153vacuity, and personality against anonymity.’ Internally, music of this
kind is reactionary because ‘it rejects the further dialectic movement of
musical material as “individualistic” or “intellectual”.’^72
Adorno’s reflections on the sociology of musical reproduction link up
with his initial arguments on this subject from his days in Vienna. He
uses the figure of the ‘great conductor’ or the ‘celebrity performer’ to
show how the apparent subjectivism of such figures is in reality the
mouthpiece of objective social imperatives. The critique of ideology
that underpins the essay as a whole applies also to his sociological analysis
of music consumption, which he sees as fixated on the external snob
value of the musical commodities offered in the marketplace or on what
is universally acceptable or fashionable. The fetishist nature of con-
sumption is most clearly visible in the case of popular music, or ‘common
music’ (vulgär), as he calls it: ‘No matter how their products look and
sound, they are “successes”; listeners are forced to sing them to them-
selves.’^73 Jazz, too, according to Adorno, is to be classified as ‘common
music’. Its claim to the liberty to improvise is purely ornamental and
hence illusory. ‘Beneath the opulent surface of jazz lies – barren, un-
changed, clearly detachable – the most primitive harmonic-tonal scheme
with its breakdown into half and full cadences and equally primitive
metre and form.’^74 Adorno exposes critically the ideological contents
of the musical surrealism of a Kurt Weill, as well as the progressive
proletarian workaday music (Gebrauchsmusik) of a Hanns Eisler. The
fact that this music aims to have a collective impact, to appeal to the
consciousness of the working class, acts as a brake on musical creativity.
When the first part of his sociology of music appeared, Adorno sent
offprints to both Berg and Krenek, among others. Krenek immediately
responded, in March 1932, with a lengthy letter containing objections in
principle. Adorno should not be surprised, he wrote, to find his basic
premise questioned by the argument that this social dimension of music
is essentially external to it. Music must be viewed as ‘existing in its own
right’.^75 Krenek also pointed out that the commodity character of music
did not explain its social co-optation, since musical works have always
been exchanged and payments have always been made to composers
and performers. What was crucial in Krenek’s view was that, along
with the destruction of human dignity under capitalism, the interest in
authentic music would necessarily die out. Referring to the creativity
of the composer, he again attacked Adorno’s conception of the laws
governing musical material that are said to be realized in the successful
composition.
Adorno was fully occupied with preparing his Kierkegaard book
for the press and so was forced to delay his reply to Krenek for over
six months. All the lengthier was his response when it finally came, on
30 September 1932. He wrote from Prinzenallee 60 in Berlin, so he was
evidently living with Gretel Karplus. His reply to Krenek’s first criticism
was that the aim of a sociological analysis of music must be to trace the