Adorno

152 Part II: A Change of Scene

it submits to market conditions or whether it resists them by finding a
dissonant expression for the contradictions of society. Music that is not
produced according to the rules of commodity production pays for its
exclusivity with its social isolation, an isolation it is unable to eliminate
by its own efforts or by purely internal musical methods.
Written in a dense style, this essay focuses on the social conditions
governing the production, reproduction and reception of music. ‘Not
only is the consciousness of the audience dependent upon the change in
social conditions and not only is the consciousness of those involved in
reproduction dependent upon the state of the total musical constitution
of society at a given time; the works themselves and their history change
within that constitution.’^69 Adorno illustrates this process of shaping
and changing by looking at the transition from pre-capitalist musical
practice to the point where the capitalistic production of music came to
dominate. Before this time, thanks to the traditions of music-making,
there was a direct interaction between the composition of a work and
listening to it. The mark of the production of music under capitalism
is that the text becomes fixed, leaving no freedom for the virtuoso
conductor or instrumentalist to interpret the music, any more than there
is freedom for autonomous individuals in society. ‘Now the text is annot-
ated down to the last note and to the most subtle nuance of tempo, and
the interpreter becomes the executor of the unequivocal will of the
author.’^70 Adorno interprets this development as proof that the link
has been broken between subjective expression in music and a society
determined by individuals. Authentic music brings this breakdown to
our consciousness through the use of atonality, which by this means
processes the pathologies of society in the practice of musical composi-
tion. This is done exclusively in the non-ornamental music of modernity,
of the kind composed by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Their music

has annulled the expressive music of the private bourgeois indi-

vidual, pursuing – as it were – its own consequences, and put in its

place a different music, one to which no social function can be

ascribed – indeed, a form of music which even severs the last

communication with the listener. However, this music leaves all

other music of the age far behind in terms of immanently musical

quality and the dialectic clarification of its material. It thus offers

such a perfected and rational total organization that it cannot

possibly be compatible with the present social constitution.^71

In Adorno’s view, in contrast to atonal music, all other forms of
music, from folk music via operetta to jazz, are to be regarded more or
less as commercial art. Their ideological function consists in diverting
the listener from class contradictions in society. The quasi-communal
music of the petty bourgeoisie corresponds to the fascist world-view.
‘The organic is played off against the mechanical, inwardness against