Adorno read Mahler’s ambiguous endings allegorically as signs of possible redemption within destruction
Evidence
Mahler leaves what exists in its place, but burns it out from within. The old barriers of form now stand as allegories not so much for what has been but for what is to come … Both are present, perhaps, in Mahler’s music: in a crumbling allegory stretched beyond its limits, the final gesture of Lucifer-like defiance may in fact signify reconciliation; and for those who are without hope, the flames of destruction blazing nearby may in fact be the distant light of salvation shining upon them. The fine snowfall at the end of the Lied von der Erde is ambiguous in just this way. Just as a lonely person could die of cold in it, dissolved into the panic of mere existence, it might also be the blessed whiteness of rapture, snow as the last remnant of being that links one who has been saved to existence and stirs those who remain behind like a star of hope, drawing them to the window. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 762
Categorization
- QUESTION: Interesting how Adorno’s reading of the Lied von der Erde snowfall stands as a model of ‘ambiguous allegory’ — worth chasing how this connects to his later dialectical method of reading artworks.
- SEED: An essay angle: how critical theorists read musical ambiguity as social critique — the technical analysis of classical works as covert political commentary.
- XREF: connects to: Mahler transmutes regressive, vulgarized musical fragments into genuinely new wholes — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 112
Broader Connections
- Mahler transmutes regressive, vulgarized musical fragments into genuinely new wholes
#expands(0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 112