How do we understand modern art in music?

Sergi Puig
Clemens Nachtmann
28 de febrero de 2020

How do we understand modern art in music?

Theodor W. Adorno & Pierre Boulez

During the first years of the twentieth century, a very deep war wound was opened in
the art scene - not just in music - that was very present at different stages, throughout the
century. I would even dare to say that today we still have not been able to overcome the
fracture that originated more than 100 years ago. Maybe to understand this rupture, we have
to go back to the end of the 18th century, known as the century of Enlightenment.
Revolutions and disappointment at the situation of not having reached the goals that the
bourgeoisie set out to improve society, perhaps was one of the causes of questioning the
meaning and beauty in art. These changes in artistic thinking - and if we focus on music - not
only are they reflected in musical material or gestures but can also be perceived in form, in
narrative discourse. If we think about the Sonata Form as the maximum representation of the
18th century, it is because in the narrative a spirit of improvement by the protagonist -
musical material - is explicit. An overcoming through confronting their fears, their opposites,
a dialectical discourse that ends in a positive learning and a happy ending.
However, we can see at the end of the middle stage of Beethoven how he begins to
question this whole process. As far as the protagonist's journey within the dialectical
discourse becomes more complex, we can see how serious injuries arise that reconciliation is
increasingly an utopia. In fact, Adorno himself mentions how "imposted" results the
recapitulations in the middle period of Beethoven. And it is already evident in the late period,
which Beethoven leaves behind the need to reconcile the subject with external world. And it
does so through a procedure similar to what Schönberg will use during the 20th century;
looking back at certain "archaic" elements of the composition, to implement them in a new

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 How do we understand modern art in music?

musical thought. On the other hand, to destroy the musical discourse of the illustration, other
musical elements come into play such as harmony or chromatism. The relationships between
the tonalities, for example, become more and more distant and the whole chromatic range
available in the tonal system is gradually achieved. And all these artistic changes are clearly a
reflection of social changes. Maybe we should consider Beethoven as the first great modern
artist.
In this work we analyze through two writings of Adorno and Boulez - Night Music and
Stravinsky: Style or Idea? - some of the issues that arise after the gradual change of thought
during the 19th century that explodes in its last years, and that leaves a feeling of uncertainty,
of fear of what It is yet to come and a confusing path for artists. Night Music is part of a
collection of essays from 1928 to 1962, where the German philosopher talks about various
topics since the last period of Beethoven, Wagner, jazz, modern musical thinking, etc.
One of the great problems that arise in the artistic thought of the twentieth century, is
whether we should preserved or continued a building that is sustained with political and
social ideas that have been totally destroyed in the recent past.
Adorno begins his writing, questioning the interpretation of period music today. It must
be taken into account that Adorno's present is already far from "our" present, and yet there are
many points that remain valid in the reflection. According to Adorno, this interpretation
implies a lack of historical basis both in the interpreters or composers and in the works
themselves. He sees an immanent relationship between the original essence of the musical
work and its point in historical time. And precisely over the years, the history strips these
original essences of musical works, undresses them before the eyes of the musician, the critic
or the general public.
That context that the musical work once had - ideal for the most "pure" interpretation -
becomes forced, the interpretation only recognizes fragments of past essences. In the same
way that many other thinkers or artists have said, the objectivity of a work of art can be
evidenced in its own material, immanent to the creation itself, because it is found in it even
before it is created. And that objectivity reflects a "the immediate and valid experience of
nowness”. When this objectivity loses the value of the "nowness", a part of the essences are
blurred and entails the danger that freedom in interpretation really becomes a private will of
the interpreter.

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 How do we understand modern art in music?

The interpretation according to Adorno is supplanted by an attempt of mechanical

fidelity of the representation, which creates a dead image of what it once was. As an example
of this, the famous example of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and the characters of Sarastro and
Papageno. Because they embody the possible coexistence between a bourgeois society that
wants to achieve happiness through human rights, and a people who blindly believe in that
possibility. However, none of this happened. The Enlightenment years were destroyed
through disappointments, revolutions and false hopes. Therefore, a state of joy in art against a
completely fractured society was not credible and had no value. And if it any case, we would
want to reflect it, we could only get an appearance of what society wanted to be - or rather
from an individualistic point of view - a lie. And thus, Adorno thinks that in the face of the
social fracture that is generated during the 19th century, what we call "light music" takes on
an important relevance, and in turn, "serious music" is expelled from the protection it had had
during years.
Adorno mentions Chopin or Bizet as examples of composers who felt more comfortable
in the individual forms that embodied collective sources - folk dances, songs, etc. - and who
took advantage of it to become popular. We will see later that Boulez - but also Stravinsky
himself - reflects on the individuality of the composer towards society, something that
becomes evident in a part of the artists and that is precisely one of the motives of the eternal
dispute during the 20th century.

“Individual caprice and intellectual anarchy, which tend to control the world in which we live, isolate
the artist from his fellow-artists and condemn him to appear as a monster in the eyes of the public; a
monster of originality, inventor of his own language, of his own vocabulary, and of the apparatus of
his art. The use of already employed materials and of established forms is usually forbidden him. So
he comes to the point of speaking an idiom without relation to the world that listens to him. His art
becomes truly unique, in the sense that it is incommunicable and shut off on every side. The erratic
block is no longer a curiosity that is an exception; it is the sole model offered neophytes for
emulation. “ 1

1Stravinsky Igor, Poetics of Music, in the form of six lessons (Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1947),
78-79. 


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 How do we understand modern art in music?

Adorno insists on the imminence of the material in relation to history, talks about the freedom
of the creative artist should not be that of free choice, but of realizing what is said free
choice, beyond abstract reflections and focus more in the nature of the material that always
has a close relationship with historical development. And although we know that the
interpretation can draw the outline of the "pure" elements of the musical work, it is not
enough to save it from its self-disintegration. Somehow, he mentions that denying the
disintegration of the work in history is reactionary from the point of view of the ideology of
the privileged upbringing which does not wish to disintegrate the noble relics of human
creation and wishes that its eternal nature be the conduit to eternal continuity.
When Adorno speaks of the middle period of Beethoven he mentions several examples of
these "real essences" of a particular era, such as the intensified dramatic dialectic, the depth
of the individual that travels through the form - seen from a Hegelian point like society - their
own experiences, the property of heroic mentality, spiritual content, etc. All these essences
are separated from the work at the moment their time comes, and when they can no longer
return naturally to it, the work ceases to be current.
However, what happens when the disintegration itself as a concept is part - or is - of the
essence of the work? This happens in Beethoven's latest works, when the material has
nothing left to say and his journey has been so extensive that reconciliation with the form and
with himself ceases to make sense, the disintegration takes on a completely new role in the
philosophy of the creator.
Perhaps the best example of a music whose main essence is "disintegration" is the first
movement of Gustav Mahler's 9th symphony, which Adorno has written a lot about her,
especially in Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy.

“In Mahler, the antithesis of disintegration and integration at the same time includes their identity: the
centrifugal elements of the music, no longer to be restrained by any clamp, resemble each other and
are articulated into a second whole. The disintegrating element of the introduction continues to exert
its influence at the beginning of the first theme, over the tonic and in a distinct D major.”2

2 Theodor W. Adorno. Mahler. A Musical Physiognomy (University of Chicago Press: 1996), 160

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 How do we understand modern art in music?

But returning to the previous point, Adorno is very critical in the current interpretation of
historical works. It mainly accuses conformism on the part of the industries that control
classical music. Festivals and organizers who prefer to economically safeguard themselves
and the comfort of a safe repertoire rather than taking risks in favor of promoting modern art.
At this point I must say that the problem is still present in the great concert halls and on the
programmes. It would be a long debate to place ourselves in favor or against continuing to
program classical-romantic repertoire and yet it is fully compatible with demanding greater
importance in the modern repertoire.
Perhaps as Adorno comments, the great rupture between society and the individual has been
exploited to install a massive capitalism that precisely aims at comfort, the culture of no
effort, passivity in the contemplation of art, passivity in reflection and in self-reflection as
well.
I would add the problem goes beyond interpreting more or less contemporary music. If you
look at the most classic repertoire there are also decisions that exclude certain composers or
certain works within the same composer. If we look at Beethoven's example - possibly one of
the most interpreted composers in history - we will see how following the same excluding
parameters, there is a big difference between the number of times certain Symphonies are
played instead of others. And much more evident with Piano sonatas or String quartets. I
would say that perhaps, Beethoven's late period is almost completely suppressed in concert
halls.
Adorno continues talking about the decline of subjectivism in the culture of the twentieth
century, and it is precisely that subjectivism that is generated by belonging to the same
"historical time" that the creation of the work and perhaps is what remains when the
disintegration of the work it is unavoidable. In the same way the music criticism must take
into account that separation of the two bodies - subjectivism and objectivism - separated
through historical time. In the last part of the text, Adorno provides a small light about the
disintegration of the main essence, since it comments that when it happens, a new stage of
analysis is created from the outside. This stage involves new approaches and problems that
must be solved. In other words, the disintegration of the inner part illuminates the true
appearance of music. And yet for Adorno, today we should talk more about musical
materialism than affirm that music is materially determined in any sense alien to history.

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Adorno has showed us the fracture of the twentieth century from the point of view of validity
in historical interpretation, but at the same time raises reflections on the position of the
creator against his creations at present and the position - passive or not - of the audience and
what they want to experience when they approach a work of art. And this fracture in
contemporary creation is divided mainly into two sides. The artists who, according to
Adorno, would continue to long for the era of the Enlightenment and the artist's approach to
the population that wishes to know and cultivate through the works of art, and on the other
hand, artists with a more individualistic vision and that gradually moves away from the great
masses.
And this is a good starting point to address the following text written by one of the most
important figures in twentieth-century music; the french composer and conductor Pierre
Boulez. This text called "Stravinsky: Style or Idea?" It is part of a series of writings that
Boulez collected over the years, and specifically this, is part of a mature stage where the
composer recognizes an artistic reconcilation with Igor Stravinsky.
Boulez introduces us fully in the early years of the twentieth century and tells us about the
battle of "styles" or "ideas" that would increase the distances between two sides. Part of this
fracture was to Boulez, a reason to have an artistic confrontation against some of Stravinsky's
works. Boulez names two sides; the "simplifiers" - Stravinsky - and the "exaggerators" -
Schönberg - and although we realize that the french composer was for a time closer to the
second side, he mentions that they were not free from the sin of "historicism" just as
"simplifiers".
Does the style generate ideas or vice versa? Boulez wonders, with the phrase that Baudelaire
tells Manet.
In the first quarter of a century, the great revolutions laid the foundations for a feverish
investigation of the limits of creative research and despite the exuberant feeling of novelty
and brilliance, they were also restricted in themselves.
He says that the two points of view turned out to be more impulsive because of the
circumstances in which they originated, rather than being calculated. They were taken by a
survival instinct. He speaks that the artists of that time put all their effort exhaustively into
any type of invention, new creation, but left the style completely forgotten, quite the opposite
of the years before that.

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To define Stravinsky's musical work, Boulez uses the words "violence" and "irony", which
embody - according to him - the two faces of the "simplification" that Stravinsky used in
most of his career. The singularities and the language used by Stravinsky have an integrating
function despite the "irony" and naivety that seem to stand out, unlike the Germanic tradition,
where there is usually a need to carry out some grammatical synthesis to reduce the possible
incongruities. This process is quite the opposite in Stravinsky's music. It exaggerates
consciously the incongruities and the linguistic absurdities explode with apparent absence of
control, they become more sharp.
If we want to approach Stravinsky's thought, perhaps we must keep in mind his relationship
as creator with creation. Later in the text, Boulez speaks of Stravinsky as the image of a child
dismantling a toy, experimenting with it, to sum up: a more impulsive temperament, less
aware of the need to analyze their resources to get the most out of them.
This temperament is assigned by Boulez to the side he calls “simplifiers". On the other hand,
the "exaggerators" - Second Viennese School, Kandinsky, Klee, Joyce, etc. - have an explicit
need to show technically of what they are trying to create. However, the creative impulse
generated by both sides was of great quantity and of great quality, and as a consequence there
was a pause for self-reflection. A breath for introspection and an analysis of the validity of
your work. This pause turned out to have many points in common between the two sides, but
different in the way of taking the next step.
Part of this re-connection came from a yearning for concepts that would allow them to take
their artistic work beyond the limits of an individual work. Here Boulez speaks in the same
way as Adorno in "Night Music" about the artist's desire to return to a more "comfortable"
framework for the invention, approaching a common point to fight against of creative chaos
left by the 19th century discover or establish a rule to reinforce again the musical elements,
and they even came to think that this rule could generate the creation of a new music style.
The forced attempts to create new stylistic models to forge a modeled future and an idealized
vision of the past, were for Boulez an erroneous vision of the artists who nevertheless,
affirms that in the middle of that “artistic chaos”, they achieved their style without being
aware of it, and of course they were capable of realised that many years later.

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Another important point where Boulez approaches the words of Adorno, is when he talks
about how dangerous the intrusion of the past can be in current music. Dangerous in the sense
of staying only in a universe of multiple references and in a certain creative comfort. And it
does not seem that Boulez wants to avoid any look back in history to enrich the creation in
the present, but rather in how to do it in order to be "authentic", not to end up creating an
artificial world of something that is no longer possible - ethically - today .
To explain this concept, Boulez shows several examples, starting with how the last Mozart
absorbed Bach's contrapuntal style and technique. In this case, despite the "archaism" evident
as a reference, it is clear that Mozart's music reached greater magnitude and knew how to
stylize those elements of the past in its forms of classicism.
Two other examples of Berlioz - L'Enfance du Christ - and Wagner - Die Meistersinger - are
more problematic due to an attempt to idealize past through nostalgia. Nevertheless Boulez
comments that in Berlioz's example, the composer himself emphasizes the contempt for
“authenticity” and seems to take refuge from the doubts and problems of his time by creating
an artificial paradise of “his” old style and that in the same way , has no concrete connection
with any defined period.
And at this point, Boulez enters fully into the main debate of his writing; compare the modern
vision of art in - possibly - the two most influential composers of the twentieth century,
Arnold Schönberg and Igor Stravinsky.
First, Boulez considers Schönberg - despite popular belief - as a traditional composer; he
wants his music and deep analysis to extend the musical experience, never to be contradicted
or locked in a dead end. Somehow we can say that his exploration in language was totally
new and at the same time, totally recognizable in the musical tradition. In Schönberg there is
no problem with the historical relationship because its adherence to it is total and visible.
Boulez speaks of a "simple" change of the fundamental hierarchies in language by other
"provisional" ones. Quickly the Austrian composer realized that these new hierarchies could
lead to a certain artistic chaos, here Boulez seems to refer to the period of free atonality.
During this period, Schönberg realizes that he cannot escape the immanent order of music
and that he needs a deeper change, that is not individual or provisional of each linguistic
problem. Therefore, he establishes a basic rule that imposes discipline on the anarchy of
individuality and establishes an order.

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In dodecaphonism, Schönberg rescues classical forms and the new hierarchies in the musical
material gradually adapt to them. Perhaps that is why Schönberg needs his material to be a
“reflection” of the past to adapt to these forms, therefore the relationship with the thematic
models is no longer the same as in his stage of free atonalism, it is not so direct. This leads us
to the conclusion that perhaps in the period of free atonality, he achieved much more organic
and interesting results when he found himself in a world that was totally uninhabited, and on
the other the approach to musical elements was more direct and honest. Boulez comments
that this attitude despite being a clear sign of respect for tradition, can also be seen as a lack
of self-confidence in the time, in his present, in the value of their discoveries, in not wanting
to go further or deepen in the details.
Somehow we can say that in this new approach - dodecaphony - there is a mixture between
the present and the past, between turning the elements, their status within the music, but
without moving away from classical forms and gestures. It seems as if in Schönberg's own
dodecaphonic period, the stylistic "battle" that is to come during the twentieth century is
reflected.
According to Boulez, Schönberg seems to be looking for an ideal “classicism” within a new
perfect model. The style is not a quality in itself, it is the inevitable consequence of a
language, when this language reaches a degree of maturity in the different elements of the
composition, both at elementary levels and at more elaborate levels. The task of the composer
must be to establish a homogeneity and forge a unity between the different elements with
which he deals and these have a tendency that varies according to the material with which it
is treated.
When the idea depends on the style, there is a risk of being artificially extracted from a
foreign historical context and as a result, it produces a superficial homogeneity due to a
distortion between stylistic intention and elements that reject this intention.
About this, Stravinsky thinks the following:

“The attire that fashion prescribes for men of the same generation imposes upon its wearers a
particular kind of gesture, a common carriage and bearing, that are conditioned by the cut of the
clothes. In a like manner the musical apparel worn by an epoch leaves its stamp upon the language,
and, so to speak, upon the gestures of its music, as well as upon the composer's attitude towards tonal
materials. These elements are the immediate factors of the mass of particulars that help us to

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determine how musical language and style are formed. There is no need to tell you that what is called
the style of an epoch results from a combination of individual styles, a combination which is
dominated by the methods of the composers who have exerted a preponderant influence on their
time.” 3
And precisely - as we have already said - Stravinsky is on the other side, which Boulez called
“simplifiers.” Despite the labels associated with the different periods of Stravinsky -
especially his neo-classical stage - he reflected much less the Schönberg's neoclassical ideal:
Far from ratifying the legacy of romanticism and absorbing it, he rejected it without more,
perhaps not only because of a question of personality, but also of nationality.
In any case, by rejecting the aesthetics of romanticism, Stravinsky can be deprived and at the
same time, to be free himself from the resources of the evolution of musical language and the
formal complexities of the latest romanticism. And I want to say "to be free" because
probably for this reason, he found a more primitive plane of invention that gave new meaning
to language, words or more trivial gestures, which became "necessity" in his musical style.4
And we can say that the only explicit reference we find in his music - the "irony" or
"caricature" - is magnified, exaggerated, becomes sharper through mockery.

“Since I myself have so often borrowed academic attitudes with no thought of concealing the pleasure
I found in them, I have not been spared becoming the chosen victim of these gentlemen's corrective
rod. My greatest enemies have always paid me the honor of recognizing that I am fully aware of what
I am doing. The academic temperament cannot be acquired. One does not acquire a temperament.
Now, I do not have a temperament suited to academicism; so I always use academic formulas
knowingly and voluntarily. I use them quite as knowingly as I would use folklore. They are raw
materials of my work. And I find it quite comical that my critics take an attitude that they cannot
possibly maintain. For some day, willy-nilly, they will Lave to grant me what, out of preconceived
notions, they have denied me. I am no more academic than I am modern, no more modern than I am
conservative. Pulcinella would suffice to prove this. So you ask just what I am?”5

3 Stravinsky Igor, Poetics of Music, in the form of six lessons (Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1947),
70-71. 


4 objet-trouvé
5Stravinsky Igor, Poetics of Music, in the form of six lessons (Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1947),
84-85.

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Boulez compares the image of Stravinsky as that of a curious "child" who has fun
manipulating and playing with the material despite not being part of his tradition. His first
approach to Pergolesi was perhaps so, without the seriousness of the commitment or a simple
casual investigation. Stravinsky seems to get carried away by the inner world of the work, he
has fun walking his paths and is enchanted. It is possible that personalities of the French
artistic world like Jean Cocteu or Paul Valéry had a great impact on the composer, however
French intellectualism with the obsessive specifics of the material also did not go in
Stravinsky's way of being.

“For myself, I am too much aware of the responsibility incumbent upon me not to take my
task seriously.” 6

Returning to style or idea, in Stravinsky's case, style is not so much a concern as a game. A
game that can be born from the human necessity for curiosity and fun, although sometimes
the game can be very serious because it questions the need for creation itself. It can both
elude fundamental questions and go directly to our hearts and our restlessness.
And perhaps it is due to the exhaustion of this game, that we can understand the last period of
Stravinsky. We know that it was the most surprising period of all, he was also accused of
desperately clinging to being modern, to remaining "contemporary" as Boulez said.
Another point in common between the texts of Adorno and Boulez is the partial loss in artists
during the 20th century, of the sense of "universality" in creation, somehow we can affirm
that capitalism has adopted this role and the artist is "forced" to be cosmopolitan within his
own individuality if he wishes to remain honest with his work. Stravinsky also comments on
this:

“Whether he wills it or not, the contemporary artist is caught in this infernal machination. There are
simple souls who rejoice in this state of affairs. There are criminals who approve of it. Only a few are
horrified at a solitude that obliges them to turn in upon themselves when everything invites them to
participate in social life. The universality whose benefits we are gradually losing is an entirely
different thing from the cosmopolitanism that is beginning to take hold of us. Universality
presupposes the fecundity of a culture that is spread and communicated everywhere, whereas

6 Stravinsky Igor, Poetics of Music, in the form of six lessons (Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1947), 4.

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cosmopolitanism provides for neither action nor doctrine and induces the indifferent passivity of a
sterile eclecticism.” 7

For Boulez, the only way to face a fundamental truth like facing the problems of musical
language, means having to reject all aesthetic motivation and everything that is superficial.
And this can also mean abandoning "the game" and trying to rediscover the idea, he considers
that style is the consequence of the idea. That is why, according to Boulez, Stravinsky had no
choice but to reconsider all his basic concepts, adjust each structure or each element in the
creative process. The “game” was no longer a “game”.
To sum up, both Stravinsky and Schönberg - as well as other important composers of the first
half of the twentieth century - found a panorama where chaos lurked at every step, but at the
same time, was a panorama with a huge need to invent, of create and investigate beyond the
limits that by one circumstance or another had collapsed. Perhaps because of this context that
violently dragged any artist to creation, none of them realized that they were making history
or that their ideas were creating styles. The two sides traveled similar paths, of a rampant
creative explosion, followed by a need to re-generate an order in the composition elements
and finally, with a deep and serious self-reflection.

----------------------------------------------------

Bibliography

. Stravinsky Igor, Poetics of Music, in the form of six lessons (Harvard University Press.
Cambridge, 1947)

. Adorno, Theodor W. , Mahler. A Musical Physiognomy (University of Chicago Press: 1996)

7Stravinsky Igor, Poetics of Music, in the form of six lessons (Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1947), 74,
75

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