Adorno saw twelve-tone technique as domination over nature that rebounds against its creators
Evidence
Twelve-tone technique is a system of domination over nature within music. It corresponds to a longing present from the beginnings of the bourgeois period: to `grasp’ whatever sounds appear and set them in order, dissolving the magical essence of music in human reason … Conscious disposition over the material provided by nature has two aspects: it is the emancipation of humanity from natural necessity within music, and the subjection of nature to human purposes … However, the oppressive moment of subjugating nature reverses itself and turns against the subjective autonomy and freedom in whose name domination over nature has been achieved. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1269
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The dialectical reversal claim - rational technique emancipating then turning against the subject - is a tight, paradigm-shaped compression of the whole Adornian critique of instrumental reason.
- DEFINE: Defines what Adorno meant by linking musical technique to ‘domination over nature’.
- XREF: connects to: Adorno read twelve-tone music through humanity’s domination of nature; Music represents Adorno’s utopia of reconciled mind and nature — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1263; For Adorno, conceptual identification itself constitutes domination over nature. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1264 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Adorno rejects mastery of nature as progress because domination entangles humanity in nature
#expands(0.82) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1585 - For Adorno, conceptual identification itself constitutes domination over nature.
#expands(0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1264 - Adorno reversed himself, presenting twelve-tone technique as necessary progress after denouncing it as domination.
#contradicts(0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1274 - Adorno reads reification as human self-domination through self-created compulsion
#corroborates(0.72) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 88