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Essence and Context: Process of Becoming and Dialectical Temporality in Adorno and Nono

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Of Essence and Context

Part of the book series: Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ((NAHP,volume 7))

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Abstract

Adorno emphasizes the processual nature of works of art, in contrast to the notions of essences as static formal structures. Essence and context of music can be configured in terms of Adorno’s understanding of dialectical temporality as the interweaving of subjective and objective dimensions of temporality. The central concepts of Adorno’s aesthetics (works of art as processes of becoming, the autonomy and social significance of music, and the fragmentary nature of truth) are at the foundation of Nono’s understanding of the essence of music as an “intervention in the sonic reality of our time” and are aligned with his exploration of musical material transcending the boundaries of tonality and atonality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is elaborated in Adorno’s criticism of Stravinsky:

    Stravinsky’s music remains a peripheral phenomenon […] because it avoids the dialectical confrontation with the musical progress of time. (Adorno 1973: 187)

  2. 2.

    The libretto is available at Fodazione Archivo Luigi Nono website: http://www.dicoseunpo.it/N_files/Prometeo.pdf [last checked 2 July 2018].

  3. 3.

    Phillips (2009) states that Nono shares Adorno’s thinking on historical consciousness in his lecture, “History and the Present in the Music of Today” (1959).

  4. 4.

    Quoted in Petazzi 2000.

  5. 5.

    Jürgen Vogt’s discussion of Adorno’s interpretation of Schoenberg is illuminating (Vogt 2014).

  6. 6.

    Ce n’est pas avec des idées qu’on fait des vers, c’est avec des mots (Maria Elisabeth Kronegger, Literary Impressionism, Rowman & Littlefield, 1973: 77).

  7. 7.

    I am indebted to Professor Richard Taruskin’s comments on clarifying Adorno’s views on autonomy and social dimensions of art.

  8. 8.

    Jarvis refers to Lukács’ theory of reification (Jarvis 1998: 9).

  9. 9.

    Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 7: 138. Phillips has observed that:

    Adorno is […] less skeptical about utopian promise in his aesthetic theory. (Phillips 2009: 169)

  10. 10.

    Bürger has noted that Walter Benjamin upheld this concept of criticism (Bürger 1984: 40, 46). This positive view of the task of criticism is also sustained by Adorno as well as Ernst Bloch in Geist der Utopie (1918).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Hyun Höchsmann

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  1. Hyun Höchsmann
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Correspondence to Hyun Höchsmann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Music History, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Rūta Stanevičiūtė

  2. University of Hull, Kingston upon Hull, UK

    Nick Zangwill

  3. Department of Music Theory, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Rima Povilionienė

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Höchsmann, H. (2019). Essence and Context: Process of Becoming and Dialectical Temporality in Adorno and Nono. In: Stanevičiūtė, R., Zangwill, N., Povilionienė, R. (eds) Of Essence and Context. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14471-5_22

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