Emancipated parts reduce music to particular sensory pleasures and treatment over material

Evidence

The emancipation of the parts from their cohesion, and from all moments which extend beyond their immediate present, introduces the diversion of musical interest to the particular sensory pleasure. Typically, the listeners show a preference not merely for particular showpieces for instrumental acrobatics, but for the individual instrumental colours as such. This preference is promoted by the practice of American popular music whereby each variation, or ‘chorus’, is played with emphasis on a special instrumental colour, with the clarinet, the piano, or the trumpet as quasi-soloist. This often goes so far that the listener seems to care more about treatment and ‘style’ than about the otherwise indifferent material, but with the treatment validating itself only in particular enticing effects. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 96

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The preference for ‘treatment and style over material’ is a direct precursor of today’s producer-as-brand, beat-switch, and ‘this version reworked’ culture — a bridging claim for testing on post-Adorno artifacts.