Horkheimer pushed Adorno’s music criticism to become direct social critique

Evidence

If I ever felt enthusiasm for anything in my life, it was while reading this,’ Horkheimer had written to Adorno two months after moving into the bungalow at Pacific Palisades, on reading his manuscript The Philosophy of Modern Music'. 97 A feeling of happiness had come over him. The passive power with which Adorno experienced music would have to be directed against society itself’; his categories would have to be confronted with reality. Instead of being satisfied with giving a critical description of the riposte music offered to prevailing trends in cultural phenomena, one would have to deliver the riposte oneself. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 324

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the earlier chapter material on Adorno’s music sociology and the Dialectic of Enlightenment project; this is the origin point of that pivot from aesthetics to social theory. — connects to: Adorno’s core project was the possibility of art, not social theory like Horkheimer’s. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 207; Horkheimer criticized Adorno for assimilating music to society as identical spheres. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1258; Horkheimer’s dominance paralyzed Adorno’s empirical and institutional work into the 1960s — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 520
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno’s core project was the possibility of art, not social theory like Horkheimer’s. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 207; Horkheimer criticized Adorno for assimilating music to society as identical spheres. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1258; Horkheimer’s dominance paralyzed Adorno’s empirical and institutional work into the 1960s — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 520

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer’s dominance paralyzed Adorno’s empirical and institutional work into the 1960s #complicates (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 520