Adorno read Schoenberg’s atonality as refusing social compromise.

Evidence

His major focus was on the opposition between the music of Schonberg and that of Stravinsky. Understood more as the embodiment of certain aesthetic principles than as personalities, these were the two composers who were to play the central roles in his later work on the Philosophy of Modern Music.” As might be expected, Adorno’s sympathies lay with the man in whose school he had been tutored in Vienna. Schonberg’s development of the possibilities of atonality, Adorno argued, expressed a refusal to compromise with the unresolved dissonances of contemporary society. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 555

Categorization

• XREF: The Schoenberg/Stravinsky polarity prefigures the central structure of Adorno’s ‘Philosophy of Modern Music’ and connects to the broader culture-industry critique. — connects to: Adorno’s refusal of postmodernism stems from his commitment to social justice and truth — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 27; Adorno fused Lukács, Kracauer, and Benjamin to justify Schoenberg’s musical revolution. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 365; Adorno’s Vienna years fixed Schoenberg’s music as central to his aesthetics — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 326 (+2 more)