Adorno’s musical training came from his mother and aunt, not his merchant father

Evidence

His mother seems to have had a more profound effect on his ultimate interests. The daughter of a German singer and a French army officer (whose Corsican and originally Genoese ancestry accounts for the Italian name Adorno), she pursued a highly successful singing career until her marriage. Her unmarried sister, who lived in the Wiesengrund household, was a concert pianist of considerable accomplishment who played for the famous singer Adelina Patti. With their encouragement the young “Teddie” took up the piano and studied composition at an early age, under the tutelage of Bernhard Sekles. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 141

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Adorno’s mature career began in music criticism, not philosophy — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 277; Adorno’s family combined Jewish, Catholic, and Corsican aristocratic origins around music — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 262