pro and contra wagner 237this separation is questionable: why can a motif not do something simi-
lar to a chord? InTristan, the combination of pleasure and pain is often
inscribed in both chord and motif, from the very opening of the work
onwards, where the famous dissonant chord is linked to a yearning,
lead-note based melodic pattern.
Adorno’s desire to give philosophical expression to the truth of musi-
cal techniques once again produces a rigidity that is not always adequate
to the music. How, then, does Adorno’s philosophical difficulty relate to
Wagner’s shift of theoretical perspective? In both Wagner and Adorno
verbal assertion and musical articulation come to be at odds: the same
music is construed in opposed ways in differing situations. This oppo-
sition relates to something we explored in chapter 2 , namely the idea
that in modernity it ceases to be clear what language is. In the present
case the concern is with a concomitant uncertainty about how to char-
acterise what differing forms of articulationdo. This uncertainty relates
to questions about the status of conceptual language itself in a – con-
ceptual – characterisation of the relationship between itself and other
forms of articulation. The instructive problem is that if one rejects the
idea that theoretical accounts of Wagner should represent an essential
truth about their object of investigation, and instead adopts the idea of
renewed contextualisations that seek to disclose both work and world
in new ways, one is likely to be accused of relativism. What is at stake in
this charge?
The issue of relativism clearly goes far beyond the present discussion,
but the following remarks by Albrecht Wellmer illuminate the question
of conflicting theoretical responses on the part of the same thinkers with
regard to musical works. Wellmer argues that the ‘battle for truth’ is con-
cerned with ‘the appropriateness of our understanding of the world, of
problems, of issues, and of ourselves, or the concepts and connections of
concepts which are fundamental to these understandings: intentional-
ity, understanding, meaning, truth, morality, knowledge, justice, justifi-
cation etc.’ (in Wingert and G ̈unther 2001 : 25 ). Because these aspects
can never be wholly isolated from each other ‘the concept of truth
points of its own accord to a normative horizon which always already
goes beyond that of an argumentative dispute about the truth of sin-
gle utterances’ (ibid.: 52 ). The problem is how this normative horizon
is constituted: there can be no norm for deciding on the appropriate
norms, as this would either require a dogmatic founding norm, or lead
to a regress of norms for norms. In relation to Wagner and the problem
of contradictory verbal characterisations one is therefore involved in an