Adorno

248 Part III: Emigration Years

direct discussions, he tried to convince him that valid results from the
research as originally conceived could hardly emerge from a primarily
quantitative study.

My suggestion is simply to ask whether under certain circumstances

it would not be more meaningful to keep the questioning of

individuals on an individual basis, that is to say, without regard to

the quantification of the results – something that plays a decisive

role in all the American studies of this subject I have come across

up to now.... I mean that we should be able to agree readily that

truly universal insights are more likely to emerge from the indi-

vidual himself than from general statements that do not amount to

much more than an analytical proposition. Of course, this assumes

that we already possess in a sense this universality in the form of a

‘theory’; but this method is one I think of as dialectical because it

attempts to apply the theory to probe individual factuality as deeply

as possible, while subsequently using what has been discovered to

modify the theory, where necessary.... The practical implication

of such considerations is to conduct individual interviews at the

risk that they will not prove representative for the ‘average’...

These interviews should be completely individual, i.e., if possible

independent of all questionnaires, and they should try to explore

the reactions of each individual as thoroughly and deeply as is

at all possible.... If only we are able to give an account of the

relation of the individual to society, and if only we are able to

focus on the individual sharply enough to see him as being socially

determined, I believe that the results will have greater significance

than if, in our desire to produce quantifiable results, we restrict

ourselves to generalities that yield nothing of value for theory.^32

Against the background of this attempt to win Lazarsfeld round,
efforts that Adorno persisted in with scarcely flagging intensity, we can
gain a picture of the long-running dispute between a musical theorist
and a sociologist. This was evidently a disagreement of principle
between Adorno, with his European cultural background and his inter-
pretative view of method, and Lazarsfeld, with his pragmatic approach.
But we can see more in it than this. It also provides proof that Adorno
was more than ready to involve himself fully in his new tasks. He
was very far from willing to take lightly his unaccustomed activity as a
social researcher. A mere three months after first meeting Lazarsfeld
he produced a memorandum, ‘Music in Radio’, of no fewer than 160
typewritten pages.^33
In four meticulously organized chapters, Adorno sketched in the
scaffolding for a sociological theory of radio music which he linked with
a specific plan for research on the medium. In chapter 1 he asked how
subjective listener needs could be uncovered, how communication needs