154 Part II: A Change of Scene
specific historical shape of the antinomies of society in actual modes of
composition. The interest in this was far removed from a vulgar socio-
logical curiosity about the function of music in contemporary society.
Adorno went on to give a more detailed account of the exchange rela-
tion in music by giving his view of the total impact of capitalism on life:
‘the commodity character of art as the objective side and the destruc-
tion of “human dignity” as the subjective side are equivalents and
cannot simply be separated.’^76 Interestingly, on the question of how to
overcome reification in capitalism, he had recourse to Kierkegaard’s
idea of ‘despair as the sickness unto death... , the idea that dialectic-
ally the sickness is also the cure.’^77 Finally, Adorno once again leapt to
the defence of his concept of musical material. It referred to the prob-
lems that the composer had to solve within the framework of what was
historically possible. Composition was ‘a kind of deciphering’.^78 Towards
the end of the letter, he conceded that art, and hence music, had some-
thing ornamental, and hence illusory, about it. But he rebelled against
the idea that art was superfluous in a classless society. Only the imman-
ent perfection of art could be expected to lead to its abolition.
Not only this fundamental sociological analysis of music, but also
Adorno’s subsequent work on musical styles was conducted as ideology
critique. His intention was to counter the study of music as part of the
history of ideas with a sociology of existing musical genres based on
historical materialism. This meant arguing within the framework of a
materialist notion of ideological superstructures which he in fact thought
inadequate, because it was mechanistic. On the one hand, he clung
to his ideal of reflexive theory-formation as rational construction, to his
desire to go against ‘the order of things’^79 and create a (formal) lan-
guage of his own for both artistic genres and philosophy in their rela-
tions to the sciences. On the other hand, in his writings at this time he
made increasing use of the language of historical materialism, in par-
ticular of such concepts as reification and false consciousness. This gave
rise to a tension with the idea of philosophical interpretation (as found
in the inaugural lecture). Not that he had abandoned this approach
entirely in favour of sociology. Instead, by carrying out the ideological
critique of internal musical contents, he imported the concept of ideo-
logy into his philosophical interests. By ideology he meant socially
necessary illusion, and this idea of making it productive for theory and
above all for empirical analysis was of course part of the programme
Adorno shared with the director of the Institute of Social Research.
Adorno’s interest in it was primarily in its potential use in the socio-
logical analysis of cultural phenomena. Horkheimer, on the other hand,
wished to conduct an empirical analysis of society based on Marx’s
critique of capitalism, and in this project he found himself forced to
defend his position against a powerful personality and a rival in the
same university. This was Karl Mannheim with his sociology of know-
ledge. Mannheim’s conception of the sociology of knowledge was a