Adorno redefined musical material as untamed sounds beyond grasp

Evidence

Adorno gave the word material' a new sense in this context. Previously it had meant either mere nature, the blind domination of tonal matter; or the secondary nature found in conventional constraints; or disqualified material, which was in itself meaningless. Now it was used to indicate what could not be grasped’, untamed sounds'. It was with sounds of this sort that the composer of the emerging music’ was concerned. He involved himself with them, and they yielded to him. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1272

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Adorno’s redefinition of ‘material’ in music, distinguishing it from prior senses of tonal nature, convention, or disqualified matter.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s wider aesthetics of negative dialectics and the notion of ‘what cannot be grasped’ resisting commodified culture. — connects to: Serial music extended rational organization while dropping Adorno’s subjective complement — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2190; Adorno advocated free atonal music at a post-serial stage in his 1961 Kranichstein lecture — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2201
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1272

Broader Connections

• Serial music extended rational organization while dropping Adorno’s subjective complement #qualifies (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2190