68 Part II: A Change of Scene
albeit not for ever, as we shall see. His boundless passion for music in
no wise yielded to the fascination that philosophy had for him all his
life. The die was cast after his first encounter with Alban Berg, whom
he met after a production of Berg’s opera Wozzeck in Frankfurt. Later
on, after studying composition in Vienna, Adorno again found himself
at a crossroads.
He began by returning to his home town. Because he firmly believed
that aesthetic expression was a function of theory, he went on to pursue
a completely independent line of thought: the idea of a philosophy of
music. This synthesis of philosophy and music was no facile comprom-
ise; Adorno always abhorred the idea of a golden mean. After the
victory of the Nazis and his move into exile in Oxford, he devoted his
energies to what he thought of as a ‘definitive’ critique of Husserl’s
phenomenology. But simultaneously he concentrated with equal intens-
ity on the interpretation of Berg’s music in order to be able to convey to
the public something of the importance of the composer who had died
so prematurely.