Adorno studied composition with Berg and piano with Steuermann in Vienna

Evidence

Adorno was taught composition by Alban Berg and piano by Eduard Steuermann, one of the leading performers in the Schoenberg circle, along with the violinist Rudolf Kolisch, Schoenberg’s brother-in-law. Berg was the friendliest and most liberal of those in the Schoenberg circle, and what he taught Adorno unmistakably had the character of a doctrine, the authority of "our school"'. Everything Schoenbergian is holy,’ Adorno wrote to Kracauer in March 1925, the only other contemporary music which counts is Mahler, and anyone who is against this will be crushed.' — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 288</cite> (#expands`, via linked claim)

Adorno, apparently more suited to writing about music than composing it, feeling that he was not properly recognized by the Schoenberg circle, and unhappy with Vienna, which he accused of economic backwardness and cultural giddiness, was homesick for Frankfurt and longed to be with his friend Kracauer. He returned to his home town in the summer of 1925, and after that only visited Vienna occasionally. He had not yet entirely given up his plan to become a musician, but it was shrinking more and more into the background in favour of his hopes for an academic career as a philosopher, possibly with an emphasis on aesthetics. Nevertheless, his stay in Vienna had finally established the key role of the New Viennese Music for Adorno’s aesthetic and philosophical thought, and as a contributor to important musical journals such as the Zeitschrift für Musik, Die Musik, Pult und Taktstock and Musikblätter des Anbruch he remained a champion of the Schoenberg school. One of his most fundamental experiences continued to be the fact that a man like Schoenberg, who was only interested in culture and who believed in the monarchy and the nobility, had nevertheless managed to bring about a revolution in music. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 326 (#expands, via linked claim)

Frankfurt, however, offered little beyond traditional musical training, and Adorno was anxious to immerse himself in the more innovative music issuing at that time from Vienna. In the spring or summer of 1924 he met Alban Berg at the Frankfurt Festival of the Universal German Music Society and was captivated by three fragments from his yet unperformed opera, Wozzeck. He immediately decided to follow Berg to Vienna and become his student. Delayed only by his university studies in Frankfurt, he arrived in the Austrian capital in January, 1925. … The Vienna to which he moved was less the city of Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, Rudolf Hilferding and Max Adler (the milieu Grunberg had left to come to Frankfurt) than the apolitical but culturally radical Vienna of Karl Kraus and the Schonberg circle. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 142 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Berg taught Adorno composition as part of a quasi-religious Schoenberg school doctrine — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 288; Adorno’s Vienna years fixed Schoenberg’s music as central to his aesthetics — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 326; Adorno’s Vienna years were shaped by musical modernism, not Austro-Marxist politics — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 142

Broader Connections

• Berg taught Adorno composition as part of a quasi-religious Schoenberg school doctrine #expands (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 288
• Adorno’s Vienna years fixed Schoenberg’s music as central to his aesthetics #expands (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 326
• Adorno’s Vienna years were shaped by musical modernism, not Austro-Marxist politics #qualifies (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 142