Adorno saw the charismatic conductor as a musical authoritarian dictator

Evidence

In the rationalized, administered world of the present, the public still yearned for the “soul” of the nineteenth-century artist. The organic was glorified over the mechanical, personality over anonymity, and inwardness over emptiness. Objectivism attempted to capture these traits in its composition, but without success, because, for reasons Adomo did not explain, they should be the attributes more of reproduction than of production itself. Efforts to redress this situation, Adorno argued, were failures: the “soulful” conductor with his imperious gesture of command was a poor substitute for genuine spontaneity. In fact, he represented the musical equivalent of the authoritarian dictator. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 561

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows the authoritarian personality research the Institute pursued in exile, linking musical charisma to fascist authority. — connects to: The conductor embodies norm and individualization in a totalitarian figure

Broader Connections

• The conductor embodies norm and individualization in a totalitarian figure #corroborates (0.95)