Adorno’s Vienna years fixed Schoenberg’s music as central to his aesthetics

Evidence

Adorno, apparently more suited to writing about music than composing it, feeling that he was not properly recognized by the Schoenberg circle, and unhappy with Vienna, which he accused of economic backwardness and cultural giddiness, was homesick for Frankfurt and longed to be with his friend Kracauer. He returned to his home town in the summer of 1925, and after that only visited Vienna occasionally. He had not yet entirely given up his plan to become a musician, but it was shrinking more and more into the background in favour of his hopes for an academic career as a philosopher, possibly with an emphasis on aesthetics. Nevertheless, his stay in Vienna had finally established the key role of the New Viennese Music for Adorno’s aesthetic and philosophical thought, and as a contributor to important musical journals such as the Zeitschrift für Musik, Die Musik, Pult und Taktstock and Musikblätter des Anbruch he remained a champion of the Schoenberg school. One of his most fundamental experiences continued to be the fact that a man like Schoenberg, who was only interested in culture and who believed in the monarchy and the nobility, had nevertheless managed to bring about a revolution in music. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 326

Categorization

• XREF: The political-conservatism-produces-formal-revolution paradox connects to broader Critical Theory’s treatment of the avant-garde and political reaction (cf. Benjamin’s later essays on fascism and aesthetics). — connects to: Adorno placed Schoenberg’s artistic project on par with Freud and Karl Kraus — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 980; Adorno read Schoenberg’s atonality as the rational endpoint of Wagner’s musical nominalism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1267; Vienna’s cultural avant-garde permanently fixed Adorno’s uncompromising cultural elitism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 143 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno placed Schoenberg’s artistic project on par with Freud and Karl Kraus #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 980
• Adorno read Schoenberg’s atonality as the rational endpoint of Wagner’s musical nominalism #responds-to (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1267
• Vienna’s cultural avant-garde permanently fixed Adorno’s uncompromising cultural elitism #exemplifies (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 143
• Adorno’s Vienna years were shaped by musical modernism, not Austro-Marxist politics #corroborates (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 142
• Adorno read Schoenberg’s atonality as refusing social compromise. #responds-to (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 555
• Stefan Zweig commissioned Adorno to write a book on Schoenberg #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 978