adorno 359world-disclosive aspect of language is at least as important as what can be
grasped in terms of the difference between the literal and the metaphor-
ical. The connection to music here is clear, insofar as music can make
us notice aspects of inner and outer life, and has no literal meaning.
Metaphor is based on the capacity to pick out characteristics; music’s
non-intentionality has to do with its very limited capacity to do this.
Once again the difference is not absolute, because the ‘as structure’
involved in picking out characteristics is also involved in making things
noticeable, and both metaphor and music make this possible. Music
accompanying a film might therefore be said to ‘pick out’ the mood of
a scene, or pick out the nature of a character, e.g. in the manner of a
Wagnerian leitmotif. It can also change how we regard the events that
we see on screen by making us see them as sinister when they would oth-
erwise appear benign. The referential dimension of music is, though,
clearly restricted, not least because it lacks the apparatus of singular
terms, predicates, etc., which language employs to pick out concrete
objects and characteristics. If, however, as Charles Taylor contends, we
must also see language as expressive, then performative, gestural, rhyth-
mic and other dimensions of language are indeed shared with music.
Most importantly, effective metaphors employed to talk about music
enable us to understand and play music better, and music can reveal
aspects of verbal texts which might otherwise not come to light.
It may therefore be best, as Schleiermacher suggested, to see the
music/language difference in terms of degree, rather than of kind.
Similarly, Davidson’s contention that communication is a condition of
language, not vice versa, should allow for musical communication play-
ing a role in what we think of as meaning. In our context it is crucial to
examine the ways in which the difference between music and language
appears in changing historical contexts, rather than to seek an analyti-
cal way of dividing language and music. Adorno’s remarks on musical
logic should not, therefore, be understood as proposing a philosophical
account of judgementless synthesis. The ‘logic’ of judgementless syn-
thesis is manifested in historical changes inmusicthat involve a truth,
of the kind we considered in relation to mimesis and suffering, which
is not ‘apophantic’, and so is not reducible to what philosophy can say
about it. Why, then, should forms which have analogies in logic, but
which do not function in the way they do in referential language, take
on new cultural significances in modernity?
This question returns us to an issue encountered in earlier chapters.
Are the musical forms derived from the logical forms, or is it the other