ADORNO On Popular MusicWord文档下载推荐.docx

1、With the assistance and collaboration of George SimpsonThe Musical MaterialThe Two Spheres of Music1 Popular music, which produces the stimuli we are here investigating, is usually characterized by its difference from serious music. This difference is generally taken for granted and is looked upon a

2、s a difference of levels considered so well defined that most people regard the values within them as totally independent of one another. We deem it necessary, however, first of all to translate these so-called levels into more precise terms, musical as well as social, which not only delimit them un

3、equivocally but throw light upon the whole setting of the two musical spheres as well.2 One possible method of achieving this clarification would be a historical analysis of the division as it occurred in music production and of the roots of the two main spheres. Since, however, the present study is

4、 concerned with the actual function of popular music in its present status, it is more advisable to follow the line of characterization of the phenomenon itself as it is given today than to trace it back to its origins. This is the more justified as the division into the two spheres of music took pl

5、ace in Europe long before American popular music arose. American music from its inception accepted the division as something pre-given, and therefore the historical background of the division applies to it only indirectly. Hence we seek, first of all, an insight into the fundamental characteristics

6、of popular music in the broadest sense.3 A clear judgment concerning the relation of serious music to popular music can be arrived at only by strict attention to the fundamental characteristic of popular music: standardization.1 The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the at

7、tempt is made to circumvent standardization. Standardization extends from the most general features to the most specific ones. Best known is the rule that the chorus consists of thirty two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note. The general types of hits are also standardized:

8、 not only the dance types, the rigidity of whose pattern is understood, but also the characters such as mother songs, home songs, nonsense or novelty songs, pseudo-nursery rhymes, laments for a lost girl. Most important of all, the harmonic cornerstones of each hitthe beginning and the end of each p

9、art-must beat out the standard scheme. This scheme emphasizes the most primitive harmonic facts no matter what has harmonically intervened. Complications have no consequences. This inexorable device guarantees that regardless of what aberrations occur, the hit will lead back to the same familiar exp

10、erience, and nothing fundamentally novel will be introduced.4 The details themselves are standardized no less than the form, and a whole terminology exists for them such as break, blue chords, dirty notes. Their standardization, however, is somewhat different from that of the framework. It is not ov

11、ert like the latter but hidden behind a veneer of individual effects whose prescriptions are handled as the experts secret, however open this secret may be to musicians generally. This contrasting character of the standardization of the whole and part provides a rough, preliminary setting for the ef

12、fect upon the listener.5 The primary effect of this relation between the framework and the detail is that the listener becomes prone to evince stronger reactions to the part than to the whole. His grasp of the whole does not lie in the living experience of this one concrete piece of music he has fol

13、lowed. The whole is pre-given and pre- accepted, even before the actual experience of the music starts: therefore, it is not likely to influence, to any great extent, the reaction to the details, except to give them varying degrees of emphasis. Details which occupy musically strategic positions in t

14、he frameworkthe beginning of the chorus or its reentrance after the bridgehave a better chance for recognition and favorable reception than details not so situated, for instance, middle bars of the bridge. But this situational nexus never interferes with the scheme itself. To this limited situationa

15、l extent the detail depends upon the whole. But no stress is ever placed upon the whole as a musical event, nor does the structure of the whole ever depend upon the details.6 Serious music, for comparative purposes, may be thus characterized: Every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete

16、totality of the piece which, in turn, consists of the life relationship of the details and never of a mere enforcement of a musical scheme. For example, in the introduction of the first movement of Beethovens Seventh Symphony the second theme （in C-major） gets its true meaning only from the context. Only through the whole does it acquire its particular lyrical and expressive qualitythat is, a whole built up of its ve