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Review: [untitled]Author(s): Brian KaneSource: Qui Parle, Vol. 15, No. 1 (FALL / WINTER 2004), pp. 169-174Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20686196 .
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BOOK REVIEWTia DeNora, AfterAdorno: RethinkingMusic SociologyCambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2003.176 pages, $23 (paperback)
"To speak of the sociology of music is to perpetuate a notionof music and society as separate entities" (131). Simply put, thesociology ofmusic, and musicology as well, tend to view the relations between music and society inone of threeways: music iscaused by society, society is reflected inmusic, or music determines social practice.InTia DeNora's After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology,all three of these conceptions are critiqued. Her corrective is topropose a "dynamic" model of the socio-musical relation underthe name ofmusic sociology. And here is the rub: the forefatherofthis new music sociology isTheodor Adorno.DeNora's brand of music sociology, as evidenced inher lasttwo books, Beethoven and theConstruction of Genius, and Musicin Everyday Life,with its heavy reliance on empirical research,transcribed interviews and first-personaccounts, could not contrastmore strikinglywith Adorno's methods. One finds inDeNora noneof the critical negation thatmakes Adorno's sociological essays(such as "On Jazz," or "On the Fetish-Character inMusic and theRegression fListening")o appealingtohissupportersnd so irritating to his detractors. Yet, the question remains, how can Adornobe theprogenitorf DeNora's music sociology? he answer:byQui Parle,vol. 15, No. 1 Fall/Winter2004
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plucking themethodological kernel, while discarding the husk.According toDeNora, Adorno made two great contributionstomusic sociology. First,Adorno articulated not only how social
practices shape music, but how musical procedures (the specificways inwhich music handles itsmaterials) possess a moral dimension and become exemplary forpraxis. This is just as apparent inAdorno's high esteem for Schoenberg's music, which provides "acontrast structure against which 'all the darkness and inclarityofthe world' could be illuminated" (152), as it is in his critique ofpopular music mass produced by the culture industry. Second,Adorno's musically dynamic conception emphasized listenerresponse, and not just the musical text: it mbraced detailed analyses of Beethoven, Berg, and Mahler, and a typology of listeners.These contributions are balanced against two problems withAdorno's work: 1) itsprejudicial dismissal of jazz, popular music,and Stravinsky, and 2) a high level of abstraction and generality,without a grounding inempirical research. DeNora chides Adornoforusing examples to illustrate a theory, not to support one.With thismethodology inplace, DeNora develops her theoryof musical affordance. Balancing and articulating the dynamicrelation between music and society requires neither ignoringmusic's ability to shape its wn reception, nor ignoring the creativeand unique ways inwhich listeners appropriate music to theirownends. The "right level" of generality
consists of a focus on music-as-practice, and music asproviding a basis forpractice. Itdeals with music as aformative medium in relation to consciousness andaction, as a resource for rather than a medium about- world building. Within this dynamic conception ofmusic's social character, focus shifts from what musicdepicts, orwhat it an be "read" as saying about society,towhat makes itpossible. And to speak of "what musicmakes possible" is to speak ofwhat music "affords." (46)
The proviso is that musical affordances must be analyzed within
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the confines of specific environments, situations, and local conditions. Moreover, "music" can be anything from entire works, tofragments, toMuzak, towhistling while you work. "What is keyhere ishow themusic is,or comes to be, meaningful to the actorswho engage with it, including such matters as whether the relevantactors notice it" (49).
As an illustrationwhat music affords, DeNora reprises aninterview fromMusic in Everyday Life. Lucy, an amateur musicianwho sings alto in choir, described toDeNora her attraction to certain "juicy" chords inBrahms' music because these chords containmiddle voices, which afford Lucy an opportunity for self-knowledge. The middle voices are:
Lucy: . . .part of the background ... It'sthe sopranos and the tenors that carry the song, ifyou like, andthe basses and the altos that fillout tomake it sort of- [she stops and looks atme questioningly]
DeNora: A sonic whole?Lucy: Yeah. And I think thatmaybe that characterizes me in life,that Idon't like being in the limelight, Ilike ... being part of a group. And, you know, pressingforward and doing my bit but not [pause]DeNora: Filling in,as itwere, the needed middle?Lucy: Yeah. Seeing what needs doing and doing itbut not being spotlighted and being "out front" sort ofthing.'
Glossing this dialogue, DeNora writes, "For Lucy,music provideda templateor model againstwhich self-knowledge ould befleshed out ormapped. And it ishere thatwe can see how an individual's conception of some particular musical structure or set ofmusical properties omes to be projectedby that ndividual s agrid rguide for heworkof tracingut (articulating)wareness fsome other realm" (67).
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The theory of musical affordance focuses on how actorsappropriate music to theirown ends, making connections, as Lucyputs it,between the "me in life" and the "me in music" (67). InLucy's case, music affords "a map or model of who she isand alsoof who she wishes to be. . . . Lucy shapes up a form of understanding, produces knowledge (about herself in this case) againstthe structures ofwhat she finds inmusic" (67).But how relevant isthis fact? Perhaps the emphasis should notmerely stress thatmusic affords opportunities forself-discovery, butratherhighlight the quality of this self-discovery. DeNora overlooksthis point when she compares Lucy's musical affordances toAdorno's: "I described how Lucy found joy inhearing 'juicy' chordsbecause within these moments she was able to 'see herself' or herrole in life.So too, as Adorno put it ith reference to Schoenberg,'passions are no longer simulated ... [but] are registeredwithoutdisguise" (104). Imust admit my puzzlement at this sentence. Inthis passage fromAdorno's Philosophy ofModern Music, the claimis being developed that Schoenberg's works no longer makeexpression intoa character-type, espressivo, which iscontained asone trope among others mediated by musical form; rather, througha critique of musical form, Schoenberg brings immediate expression forward. Inparticular, Adorno is referringto the terse, explosiveworks of Schoenberg's free atonal period, works like the FiveOrchestral Pieces and the Six LittlePiano Pieces, whose aphoristic,highly condensed, musical form criticizes the merely rhetoricalRomantic espressivo. "Schoenberg's espressivo ... differs inquality from Romantic expression precisely by means of that intensification which thinks this espressivo through to its logical conclusion."2 Similarly, the model of critical theory that Schoenberg'smusic affordsAdorno isdifferent inquality from the reified "me inmusic" which Brahms' music affords Lucy.By plucking ut thegreat contributions"fAdorno tomusicsociology, hile abandoningthenegative omponent f hiscriticaltheory, DeNora is forced into converting Adorno's qualitativeclaims intomerely quantitative norms. For example, in summarizingAdorno's project of negative dialectics, DeNora produces this
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misreading: "The [critical] taskof reason was to accommodate, andthrough formulation as knowledge, arrange (without suppressing)complexity, diversity, heterogeneity - to hold as much 'material'as is possible within compromised consciousness" (10). It strikesme that it isnot the quantity, rather the quality of the contradictionbetween "materials" which is significant to reason's critical task.
The quantitative impulse also lurks behind DeNora's goal formusic sociology: "Music sociology will have achieved itsultimateaim, in therwords, when - in ll realms of social life we cometo attend to the sounds thatare all around us, to know these as ouraccomplices (and opponents) in the doing, being, and feeling thatis social life" (157). The great aim ofmusic sociology is total attentiveness to themanner inwhich we cause, reflect, and are determined, bymusic. But quantity and completeness of attention isnota substitute fora qualitative praxis. No lighthas been shed to legitimate the application of DeNora's musico-sociological method.In this age of trying to "absorb Adorno" inorder to "get pasthim," one must remember that the critical negativity and the highlevel of generality and abstraction present in the author's musicsociology are not blind spots of which he was unaware. Nor canthey be wiped away with value-free, empirical sociology. Thus, "asociology which iscommitted to the 'positive' is indanger of losingall critical consciousness whatsoever ... but only a critical spiritcan make science more than a mere duplication of reality bymeans of thought."3 Any music sociology which positions itselfafter Adorno has two options: either have the veracity to useAdorno's negative dialectical method against Adorno (and critiqueAdorno's claims from some distinct, interested perspective), orhave the courage and confidence to set forth itsown substantive,
methodological principles, which can stand on their own againstAdorno's findingswithout claiming a false patrimony. The sociologistwho comes after dornomust remember: Thegivenwill onlyoffer tselfp to theviewwhich negates itfrom perspective ftrue interest."4-Brian Kane
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1 Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2000), 69. This passage isquoted again with some severe cuts inAfterAdorno, 67.2 Theodor Adorno, Philosophy ofModem Music, tr. . G. Mitchell andW. Blomster,(New York: Continuum, 1973), 38.
3 ~TheFrankfurt Institute forSocial Research, Aspects of Sociology, with a preface byMax Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 11.4 Ibid.,11.
