Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music

This introduction to the aesthetics and sociology of music of the German philosopher and music theorist T. W. Adorno is the only book to deal comprehensively with this topic and it has quickly established itself as a classic text.

• The first book to discuss the musical aesthetics of this famous German philosopher • It relates Adorno’s musical writings to the big philosophical themes of the first half of the twentieth century • Sets out by tackling the difficulties of reading Adorno

1. Constellations: towards a critical method; 2. The development of a theory of musical material; 3. The problem of mediation; 4. A material theory of form; 5. Social content and social function; 6. The historical dialectic of musical material; 7. The disintegration of musical material.

‘Paddison guides responsible readers back and forth between his own work and Adorno’s in a stunning process of dialectical illumination. In addition, Paddison’s control of his material has given him the perspective to go beyond mere emulation of Adorno’s methods to a useful critique of his musical enterprise … It is a book that one can present without embarrassment to graduate students conversant with the most up-to-date intellectual currents; even in the shifting sands of the increasingly postmodernist university, Paddison’s book, like Adorno’s work, has not only the sharp intelligence but also the irreducible multivalence to hold its own as a focus of study … [this] is a book that both in its contents and in its example constitutes an utterly reliable as well as endlessly rich guide to what may be the most important and most difficult musical thought of the century now passing. Max Paddison has written a magnum opus.’

– Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Journal of the Royal Musical Association