Adorno reversed himself, presenting twelve-tone technique as necessary progress after denouncing it as domination.

Evidence

Adorno drew his critical standards from the premature reconciliation between mind and nature which had taken place in atonal music, and he did not even attempt to explain its development in terms of social theory. He paid tribute to the real power of progress' by allowing the phase of atonal music, as a phase of expressionist statements, to transform itself necessarily’ into one of objectivity. He justified twelve-tone technique as a narrow discipline through which all music must pass if it is not to fall victim to the curse of contingency'. Now that free composition seemed to have been achieved, now that twelve-tone technique had been denounced as a system of musical domination over nature and as the symptom of a flight from freedom, he interpreted it as being the precondition for a genuinely free form of composition, since the objective spirit had progressed’ towards it. This was a dialectical view of musical progress which raised the suspicion that it was furnishing the growth of one school in music with the solemnities of dialectical necessity. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1274

Categorization

• QUESTION: How does Adorno’s self-justifying turn on twelve-tone technique fit or strain the Critical Theory reading purpose of tracing dialectical method?
• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment theme of instrumental reason turning into domination even within art. — connects to: Adorno saw twelve-tone technique as domination over nature that rebounds against its creators — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1269; Adorno changed his evaluation of serial technique from rejection to approval — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2206

Broader Connections

• Adorno changed his evaluation of serial technique from rejection to approval #corroborates (1.00) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2206