Stravinsky’s technique encodes demagoguery through extrinsic categories rather than total structure

Evidence

This ultrasophisticated primitivism or musical demagoguery (Adorno will go so far as to compare it as a phenomenon to Fascism) is inscribed in the technique of the works themselves, which, as opposed to the total organizational principles of Schoenberg, favors a kind of massive and discontinuous verticality. Its ritualistic beats and repetitions are broken by lapses and silences which create a syncopation with the returning shock waves of the listener’s bodily reactions. Unlike Schoenberg, Stravinsky organizes the elements involved according to categories extrinsic to the musical structure, such as the isolated colors or qualities of the instruments themselves, or the psychological effects of their oppositions (loud and soft, piercing or massive). — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 82

Categorization

• XREF: The extrinsic-vs-total organizational opposition is Jameson’s own late-Marxist dialectic being run through musical technique — connects to his Adorno/containment discussion elsewhere and the recurring regulative-ideal of totality. — connects to: Adorno saw Stravinsky’s neoclassicism as reactionary ideological escape — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 558; Objectivity in art requires building forms from the self rather than borrowing them — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 280
• QUESTION: Does the syncopation from ritualistic beats ‘broken by lapses and silences’ echo Jameson’s broader claim about silence/rupture elsewhere — worth checking how the musical structuration argument maps onto his theory of the modern text.

Broader Connections

• Adorno saw Stravinsky’s neoclassicism as reactionary ideological escape #expands (0.90) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 558
• Objectivity in art requires building forms from the self rather than borrowing them #corroborates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 280