Modern canned sound degrades the general ability to listen, forcing composers’ audibility.

Evidence

In this situation, therefore, the new in the older sense is not enough: art no longer has to do with a change in taste resulting from the succession of the generations alone, but with one intensified and raised to the second power by a new commercial exploitation of artistic techniques in every facet of our culture. The new music must come to terms not only with our hearing, as did the old, but with our non-hearing as well. Hence concrete music, which seeks to transform the unconscious contents of our daily perceptual life, the unheard aural stress of the industrial city, into a conscious object of perception. Hence the willed “ugliness” of modern music in general, as if, in this state of pathological hebetude and insensibility, only the painful remained as a spur to perception. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 68 (#expands, via linked claim)

Because music had been invaded by the capitalist ethos, its fetishization was almost total. On one level, that of production, it appeared in the inordinate focus on arrangements rather than composition, in the frequent introduction of coloristic effects, and in the nostalgic resurrection of outdated musical styles for their evocative value. On another, the reception of the music, it manifested itself in the stress on “stars,” in both classical (for example, Toscanini) and popular music; in the cult of instruments such as Stradivarius and Amati violins; in the importance of being at the “right” concert rather than going to hear the music itself; and in the empty ecstasy of the jazz enthusiast who listens for the sake of listening alone. To verify fetishization, however, by normal social scientific techniques was impossible - here was the crux of his conflict with Lazarsfeld. Questionnaires or interviews were inadequate because the opinions of the listeners themselves were unreliable. Not only were they incapable of overcoming the conformity of cultural norms, but even more fundamentally, their ability to hear had itself degenerated. It had regressed, not physiologically, but psychologically. The regression was not to an earlier musical era, but rather to an infantile state in which the listener was docile and afraid of anything new, a state similar to the passive dependency Fromm had described in his article “The Feeling of Impotency.” Like children who demand only food they have enjoyed in the past, the listener whose hearing had regressed could respond only to a repetition of what he had heard before. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 578 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

But if the film as a whole seems to be apprehended in a distracted manner, deconcentrated listening makes the perception of a whole impossible. All that is realized is what the spotlight falls on - striking melodic intervals, unsettling modulations, intentional or unintentional mistakes, or whatever condenses itself into a formula by an especially intimate merging of melody and text. Here, too, listeners and products fit together; they are not even offered the structure which they cannot follow. If atomized listening means progressive decomposition for the higher music, there is nothing more to decompose in the lower music. The forms of hit songs are so strictly standardized, down to the number of beats and the exact duration, that no specific form appears in any particular piece. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 95 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modern music’s ugliness is a deliberate strategy against a commercially desensitized hearing — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 68; Capitalist commodification of music causes listeners’ hearing to regress psychologically to infantile passivity. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 578; Deconcentrated listening makes perception of a musical whole impossible — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 95

Broader Connections

• Modern music’s ugliness is a deliberate strategy against a commercially desensitized hearing #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 68
• Capitalist commodification of music causes listeners’ hearing to regress psychologically to infantile passivity. #corroborates (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 578
• Deconcentrated listening makes perception of a musical whole impossible #corroborates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 95