202 Part III: Emigration Years
What characterized jazz, he believed, was the use of vibrato as well as
the increasing simplification of structural features such as the elimina-
tion of improvisation. Jazz had become very popular among all classes
and sections of society, he wrote. This made it a suitable means for
obscuring class distinctions in the sphere of culture. Jazz had long since
become completely commercialized and in this form was distributed by
monopolistic concerns in the entertainment industry which endowed
it with the specific image of erotic emancipation and a modern lifestyle
in general. The model of the jazz enthusiast was ‘the eccentric’ who used
it to dramatize his nonconformism and whose external distinctiveness
served to camouflage his adjustment to society’s expectations. Adopting
a psychoanalytical standpoint, Adorno ventured the astounding thesis
that the jazz band represented a paradoxical synthesis of castration
machine and copulation machine.^65 He also interpreted the use of
syncopation as the expression of premature ejaculation induced by the
fear of impotence.^66
Adorno sent his draft to Horkheimer and also to Seiber, asking the
latter for his comments as an expert on the subject. Seiber obliged and
in autumn 1936 responded with cautious but unambiguous criticism of
Adorno’s arguments.^67 He attempted to correct Adorno’s caricature
of jazz point by point. He rejected Adorno’s assertions about the place
of particular instruments in the jazz band, singling out the latter’s dis-
cussion of saxophone players and their alleged musical amateurishness.
Nor did he accept the diagnosis that anarchic rhythms were being sacri-
ficed to the demands that the music be danceable or that improvisation
was being sacrificed to the arrangement. Nor was the claim tenable that
the commercial success of standardized jazz was something that could
be largely planned in advance. Lastly, he criticized Adorno for setting
up false analogies between psychoanalytical theories and subjective
impressions about jazz. He advised Adorno to listen to the latest products
of jazz on the radio or gramophone records.
We do not know how Adorno reacted to this criticism of both his
draft plan for the research project and his recently published essay ‘On
Jazz’. Doubtless, he stood by his own view that jazz was a variant of
amateur music-making (Musikantenmusik), something he rejected even
in the sphere of high culture. A few months after reading Seiber’s
criticisms Adorno wrote to him with the news that Horkheimer and the
institute had decided against supporting the planned project on jazz
because all the human and financial resources of the institute were
committed to bringing the Studies on Authority and the Family to a con-
clusion. He noted that he had in the meantime made various additions
to his theory of jazz, but ‘without any intention to publish, mainly for
our own archive’.^68 These additions consisted of notes that remained
unpublished until 1964, when they appeared in the essay collection
Moments Musicaux with the title ‘Oxford Afterthoughts’. From them
we can see that Adorno remained unimpressed by Seiber’s objections.