Adorno’s Path to Social Research 253that Adorno should be asked to produce a publication on music educa-
tion. ‘It seems to me that if all Dr. Adorno’s interesting ideas were
related to current efforts in mass education, they would find quite a
substantial following.’^57
Lazarsfeld was evidently successful in this proposal. As late as
1940, Adorno developed a scheme for providing highly concrete and
illuminating answers to the question of how music could be brought to
the interested radio listener without making the mistake of didactic
oversimplification. Under the title ‘What a Music Appreciation Hour
Should Be’, he designed twelve units for a New York radio station,
four of which were edited into programme format by Paul Kresh and
Flora Schreiber. Adorno treated melody using Schubert’s B minor
symphony as an example; the concept of musical unity was illustrated
by the first movement of Haydn’s C major symphony; he proposed to
explain musical form by discussing the hit song Avalon, the form of a
song with reference to Schumann, sonata form as exemplified by Mozart
and musical style by focusing on Beethoven. These musical illustra-
tions were not to be understood as quotations, however, since one of
Adorno’s main criticisms of radio music was that ‘the quotation... was
the decadent form of reproduction’.^58 His listening models were pre-
ceded by an explanation, and at the heart of this there was the idea of
‘right listening’, which consisted in ‘comprehending the relevant piece
directly, spontaneously as a coherent meaning, a meaningful unity in
which all the parts have a function in the totality. The musical logic of
every piece, a logic specific to it, must be spontaneously grasped.’^59
The listener should be brought to the point ‘of virtually composing the
piece for himself as he listens’. This was what Adorno understood
by structural listening, which he contrasted with culinary virtuosity.^60
In fact, Adorno regarded his programme as an alternative to the NBC
Music Appreciation Hour conducted by Walter Damrosch, a didactic
radio series that was highly popular at the time and was regarded as
exemplary. In order to clarify his own programme, Adorno referred
polemically to the recommendations in Siegmund Spaeth’s Great Sym-
phonies: How to Recognize and Remember Them: ‘To the beginning
of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, one is told to sing the words: “I am
your Fate! Come let me in!”’ Advice of this type is contrasted with
examples of right listening: ‘It is hardly an exaggeration to say that
any person who applies the tactics recommended by Mr Spaeth when
listening to music, is, to say the least, completely lost to any musical
understanding.’^61
The disagreements with Lazarsfeld did not prevent Adorno from
being highly productive during the two years in which he collaborated
on the radio research project. Moreover, media research undoubtedly
profited from his socially orientated theoretical approach. This can
be seen from the texts that he completed in this brief phase. In ‘The
Radio Symphony’, an essay he published in the journal Radio Research,