118 Part II: A Change of Scene
audible as a technique and drew attention to itself. In the letter to
Krenek on 29 October 1934, he gave a definitive and quite unambigu-
ous statement about it. This was accompanied by the first expression of
a critical view of Schoenberg’s own practice as a composer at this time:
‘Twelve-tone technique today is nothing but the principle of motivic
elaboration and variation, as developed in the sonata, but elevated now
to a comprehensive principle of construction, namely transformed into
an a priori form and, by that token, detached from the surface of the
composition.’ The concrete danger of a commitment to twelve-tone tech-
nique was ‘a certain impoverishment, as I am aware from my own work.’^31
This passage makes it very clear that in his compositions Adorno looked
at what he was doing from above, as it were, from the vantage point of
his own music theory. In addition, moreover, the abstract problems of
twelve-tone technique had their echo in the compositions that he wrote
in parallel to his attempts to refine that theory.