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Adorno on modern music -- just discovered


Larry Kart

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Passage from Theodor Adorno’s just discovered early 1940s attempt to render into English a key passage from his “The Philosophy of Modern Music”:

‘The shocks of being ununderstandable dealt by artistic technique during the age of their senselessness tilt over. They enlighten the senseless world. Advanced music sacrifices itself for this purpose. It has all its happiness in gaining the cognition of unhappiness. It has all its beauty in renouncing the illusion of beauty. It is liked by nobody, by individualists as little as by collectivists. It resounds [dies away, lingers] (verhallt) unheard, without an echo. If time gleamingly (strahlend) crystallizes around music that has been heard, unheard music falls into the empty time like a pernicious ball (globe) (Kugel). Advanced music aims spontaneously though unconsciously at this last experience which is made hour by hour by mechanical music, the experience of being totally forgotten. Its hope lies with the doom of the world. It is the true manuscript in the bottle.’

Batshit in some semi-comic respects, but one gets (at least I do) what Adorno is trying to say much better than later translations from English-speakers manage to convey.

More on this discovery:

https://persistentenlightenment.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/adornoms/

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Maybe the Who's Odorono was a jab at Adorno, makes about as much sense as any of the above.

As much as we'd both surely like this to be...

http://beachpackagingdesign.com/boxvox/donald-deskeys-odorono-jar

odorono.jpg

Odorono-BeautifulButDumb-1939.jpg

And still to this day: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Odorono-Powder-Fresh-Antitranspirante-Y-Desodorante-2.5-fl-oz/10850105

What a beautifully named product. The emphasis on calamity is so good.

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Maybe the Who's Odorono was a jab at Adorno, makes about as much sense as any of the above.

As much as we'd both surely like this to be...

http://beachpackagingdesign.com/boxvox/donald-deskeys-odorono-jar

odorono.jpg

Odorono-BeautifulButDumb-1939.jpg

And still to this day: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Odorono-Powder-Fresh-Antitranspirante-Y-Desodorante-2.5-fl-oz/10850105

What a beautifully named product. The emphasis on calamity is so good.

For that reason alone, you might enjoy The Who Sell Out, if you've not already done so. Not too often that I steadfastly recommend a 60s rock album for a nostalgia-free (as can be) a sustained/perfect balance between attitude and music and lyrics and performance, but this one, yeah, I do. All the other Who records in the world, YMMV, understood, mine definitely do (especially on the ones I haven't been motivated to listen to), but this one, yeah. But that's just me.

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Maybe the Who's Odorono was a jab at Adorno, makes about as much sense as any of the above.

As much as we'd both surely like this to be...

http://beachpackagingdesign.com/boxvox/donald-deskeys-odorono-jar

odorono.jpg

Odorono-BeautifulButDumb-1939.jpg

And still to this day: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Odorono-Powder-Fresh-Antitranspirante-Y-Desodorante-2.5-fl-oz/10850105

"Armhole" - what a great word. Immediately you think of what the real holes in your body smell like

.

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the above by Adorno is extremely similar to something Han Bennink said in an interview not too long ago; I paraphrase but essentially he said 'our music has no future.'

sometimes one has to take a stand against middle class aesthetic values.

Edited by AllenLowe
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