534 Notes to pp. 206–210
apparatus of exploitation, means an opportunity. People who want to get
somewhere must early acquire beliefs which enable them to have a good
conscience as they do what reality demands, for if they do it contre coeur,
it will be noticed by others and they will perform badly. The system affects
everything, down to the most delicate tendrils of the individual’s soul. It
has placed a premium on vileness’ (M. Horkheimer, Dawn and Decline,
p. 30f.).
93 Adorno to Horkheimer, 25 February 1935. Horkheimer, GS, vol. 15,
p. 131; Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 57.
94 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 46.
95 Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 81f.
96 Adorno and Krenek, Briefwechsel, p. 91.
97 Linguistically, this essay is very different from an older one with the
title ‘Mahler Today’ that appeared in Anbruch in 1930. There, in opposi-
tion to a premature classification of Mahler’s works as romantic, he
described them as ‘salvaging the formal cosmos of Western music...by
combining the ruins of its basest elements with its supreme truths.’ In
this first analysis of Mahler’s music Adorno tried to establish a link with
Arnold Schoenberg. Both composers were said to use different methods
to protest ‘against the bourgeois symmetry of form’. Both shared
the technique of variation. Adorno, ‘Mahler heute’, GS, vol. 18, pp. 228
and 232.
98 Adorno, ‘Marginalien zu Mahler’, GS, vol. 18, pp. 235 and 238.
99 See Adorno, Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, pp. 32–3.
100 Adorno and Berg, Briefwechsel 1925–1935, p. 324.
101 Only the Symphonic Pieces from Lulu were played in Berlin in November
1934, in a performance conducted by Erich Kleiber.
102 Soma Morgenstern, Alban Berg und seine Idole, p. 368.
103 Alban Berg was superstitious about numbers. He thought 23 was a lucky
number. When he survived the 23rd of December in hospital, even though
he had a high fever, he had every hope that he would recover, despite the
worsening of his condition. See Willi Reich, Alban Berg, 1963, p. 95ff.
104 Soma Morgenstern, Alban Berg und seine Idole, p. 371.
105 Adorno was uncertain later on who had been the first to mention
Wedekind’s plays to Berg. ‘I cannot say with certainty whether it was
I who first pointed him towards Lulu, as it now seems to me upon reflec-
tion; in such cases it is easy to err out of narcissism. In any case I brought
all my arguments to bear on behalf of the Wedekind opera’ (Adorno,
Berg: The Master of the Smallest Link, p. 26). Morgenstern wrote to Berg
as early as 28 August 1928: ‘I feel... as responsible for Lulu as if I had
seduced her for you and would soon have to be shot by her’ (Soma
Morgenstern, Alban Berg und seine Idole, p. 215).
106 Ibid., p. 112f.
107 Adorno, Berg: The Master of the Smallest Link, p. 11.
108 Adorno and Krenek, Briefwechsel, p. 105.
109 Soma Morgenstern, Alban Berg und seine Idole, p. 376.
110 Constantin Floros, Alban Berg und Hanna Fuchs, p. 77.
111 Ibid.
112 Adorno was in fact one of the few people Berg had initiated into his
secret. Even when he was still studying with Berg in Vienna he knew of