328 music, philosophy, and modernity(ibid.: 182 ).^14 The notation that is ‘revoked’ is at the same time that
without which the music could not exist, hence the antinomy. A sim-
ilar conception can apply to written texts. The words of which they
consist are, by the very fact of their being words, standardised, and
the most effective interpretations may be those which take one beyond
established meanings and associations to what the texts reveal by their
individual combination of elements. This is what Wittgenstein meant
when referring to ‘these words in these positions’.
For Adorno score and performance must remain in a tension with
each other in a way that need not apply to many verbal texts, such as the
instructions for the use of a mechanism. He goes on to insist, however,
that ‘reification by the notation, a central moment of rationalisation,
is notonlyexternal to the composition [i.e. to the locus of the ‘idea’]’
(ibid.). Significant performances often result precisely from the way in
which the resistance occasioned by the reification intrinsic to the score
is overcome. Interpretation in this sense should seek both to realise the
musical idea and yet also to manifest the resistance which is encoun-
tered in engaging with the score. Adorno praises Furtw ̈angler for how
he conveys the sense of the impossibility of realising what he seeks in
the great classical and Romantic works, because what he seeks is no
longer fully available to the interpreter. Furtw ̈angler’s interpretations
thus possess a historical truth which is manifest in their admission of
failure. The ‘core of the question of interpretation’ (ibid.: 183 )isthat
thereisno final way of succeeding in both being true to the demands
involved in playing technically correct note-lengths, etc., and yet ren-
dering the music the expression ofa–historically mediated – subjective
individuality which overcomes the objectified aspect of the music.
There are obvious differences between how we conceive of truth as
what is conveyed in or by assertions, and the idea of true interpretation
of music, but these differences should not be regarded as absolute.
Adorno himself sums up the differences in his dictum in the ‘Fragment
on Music and Language’ that ‘interpreting language means: under-
standing language; interpreting music means: making music’ ( 16 : 253 ).
However, he also says the following, which deconstructs the differences:
‘Whether a phrase is played in a meaningful manner can be precisely
converted into technical correlates like accents, pauses for breath, etc.14 In the case of a ‘musical idea’ Adorno does not just mean a theme which is the basis of a
piece, but rather the significance generated by that theme’s relationships to its contexts.
In this sense the ‘idea’ of theEroica, for example, is not just its musical themes, but what
the work means in history by being realised in performance.