240 music, philosophy, and modernity
of the technical contradictions which have to be mastered in each case,
rather than expressing immediately, of its own accord, the truth of
philosophical consciousness’ (ibid.: 16 , 192 ). The crucial factor here is
music’s combination of ‘naming’ with transcendence of what is ‘named’
via the composer’s engagement with technical and other internal musi-
cal problems. Naming cannot be meant in the sense of ‘intentional’
language, and has to do with how themusicis a response to social con-
tradictions. Wagner can be understood in terms of the danger that
results from the individual’s powerlessness in the face of modern his-
tory being thought of in ontological, rather than historical terms. How-
ever, his music’s combination of bombast and brutality with poignant
expressiveness transcends the ‘historico-philosophical’ issue by evoking
both the forces which destroy human individuality (along with what can
make those forces appealing), and the very substance of that individu-
ality. Adorno does not here claim access to ‘the truth of philosophical
consciousness’ and the value of Wagner’s works lies in their being ‘true
as expression of a consciousness which in itself is false’. This stance
offers a more apt approach to Wagner than the direct link Schopen-
hauer, because it leaves open a way for the works not to be merely a
repetition of the falsity which they ‘express’. Elsewhere Adorno claims
that the ‘truth content’ of Wagner can be formulated as ‘a dark music,
despite all its colour, which points to the ruin (‘Verh ̈angnis’) of the world
by representing the ruin’ (ibid.: 563 ), and not conjuring it away. Such
truth content in great art ‘manifests itself in [the works’] fractures and
contradictions no less than in their success’ (ibid.: 18 , 214 ). How can it
be shown that the work’s fractures and contradictions are what make it
significant, without falling into the traps we have observed in Adorno?
Wagner and DahlhausI have not sought to give an account of just what each of Wagner’s
music dramas might be said to ‘be about’. Characterising the dramas
too exclusively in terms of their librettos can occlude the ways in which
the music changes how words and action are to be interpreted. The plots
often turn on highly questionable issues like a woman’s need to sacrifice
herself to redeem a man: the conclusion of theRing, when Br ̈unnhilde
rides onto Siegfried’s funeral pyre, is, after all, a kind of suttee, and the
figure of Kundry inParsifalincorporates some of the worst mythical
stereotypes that have dogged women through the centuries. The para-
dox of Wagner is that he manages to make such problematic material