Adorno argued broadcasting offered only an image of live music, not the real thing

Evidence

Adorno’s association with the Princeton Radio Research Project finally came to an end, therefore, in the summer of 1940. Lazarsfeld considered only one of the essays written by Adorno for the music study to be suitable for inclusion in the project’s publications: The Radio Symphony'. It was published in 1941 in Radio Research 1941, edited by Lazarsfeld and Stanton. In the text, which was a continuation of his study of Benjamin's article The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Adorno took the position that symphonies broadcast on radio only represented an image of the live performance, just as a film of a play was merely a picture of the live performance. For that reason, the radio industry’s claim to be bringing serious music to the masses was fundamentally questionable. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 265

Categorization

• XREF: Explicit continuation of Adorno’s engagement with Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ — directly links the two Frankfurt figures’ media theory. — connects to: Making good music widely popular seemed meaningless to Adorno under existing broadcast conditions. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1014; Adorno outlined a dialectical and social theory of broadcasting to critique commercial radio. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 261; Adorno argued radio broadcasting neutralizes symphonies while claiming to democratize them. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1016 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Making good music widely popular seemed meaningless to Adorno under existing broadcast conditions. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1014; Adorno outlined a dialectical and social theory of broadcasting to critique commercial radio. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 261; Adorno argued radio broadcasting neutralizes symphonies while claiming to democratize them. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1016 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno held that broadcast symphonies neutralize music except for trained specialists #expands (0.92)