Night Music: Essays on Music 1928-1962

by Theodor W. Adorno, Wieland Hoban (Translator)

Overview

Although Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, he began his career as a composer and successful music critic. Night Music presents the first complete English translations of two collections of texts compiled by German philosopher and musicologist Adorno—Moments musicaux, containing essays written between 1928 and 1962, and Theory of New Music, a group of texts written between 1929 and 1955.

In Moments musicaux, Adorno echoes Schubert’s eponymous cycle, with its emphasis on aphorism, and offers lyrical reflections on music of the past and his own time. The essays include extended aesthetic analyses that demonstrate Adorno’s aim to apply high philosophical standards to the study of music. Theory of New Music, as its title indicates, presents Adorno’s thoughts and theories on the composition, reception, and analysis of the music that was being written around him. His extensive philosophical writing ultimately prevented him from pursuing the compositional career he had once envisaged, but his view of the modern music of the time is not simply that of a theorist, but clearly also that of a composer. Though his advocacy of the Second Viennese School, comprising composer Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, is well known, many of his writings in this field have remained obscure. Collected in their entirety for the first time in English, the insightful texts in Night Music show the breadth of Adorno’s musical understanding and reveal an overlooked side to this significant thinker.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857427090
Publisher:	Seagull Books
Publication date:	11/15/2019
Series:	The German List
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	699,581
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) was the author of Minima Moralia, Philosophy of Modern Music, and Prisms, among many other books. 


Wieland Hoban is a British composer who has translated several works from German, including Night Music, a collection of essays by Theodor W. Adorno.

Table of Contents

Translator’s Introduction

I           Moments Musicaux

 

Foreword

Beethoven’s Late Style

Schubert

Homage to Zerlina

The Pictorial World of Der Freishütz

The Tales of Hoffmann in Offenbach’s Motives

On the Score of Parsifal

Night Music

Ravel

New Tempi

On Jazz

Physiognomy of Krenek

Mahagonny

Zillig’s Verlaine Songs

Reaction and Progress

Schönberg’s Wind Quintet

Alienated Magnum Opus: The Missa Solemnis

II         Theory of New Music

Nineteen Encyclopaedia Articles on New Music

Atonal Intermezzo?

Against the New Tonality

Excursuses on an Excursus

Why Twelve-Note Music?

The Development and Forms of New Music

New Music Today

On the State of Composition in Germany

On the Relationship between Painting and Music Today

On the Current Relationship between Philosophy and Music

Editorial Reviews

Wonderfully displaying the verve and richness of Adorno's provocative ideas on the composition and development of classical and modern music and their necessary relationship to historical and material contexts, this volume brings together two significant collections of essays, Moments Musicaux and Theory of New Music, from the German collected works of one of the 20th century's most dazzling yet perplexing philosophers. The fidelity to the ordering of the original German editions allows some of the less well-known essays (such as those on Ravel and Offenbach) to thematically and stylistically resonate in the company of the famous (and infamous) works on Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg and jazz. With only a short introduction and occasional footnotes, the collection would perhaps have benefited from a preliminary consideration of the author's complex notions of subjectivity, objectivity and historical materialism that underpin his understanding of the development of music from Beethoven to the new music of 12-tone composition and beyond. Nonetheless, despite their undeniable and frequent difficulty, the blend of precise music analysis, sociohistorical awareness and stylized writing in the individual texts is always engrossing reading. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Wieland Hoban's fine translation marks the first time these two collections have been published as Adorno and Tiedemann intended. . . . His essay on Weber's Der Freischutz sent me racing back to renew acquaintance with this glorious opera, and he convincingly expounds on how Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande owes much to the orchestration of Parsifal. . . . There is much musical treasure to be found in these pages."

Opera News - Arlo McKinnon

"Wieland Hoban's fine translation marks the first time these two collections have been published as Adorno and Tiedemann intended. . . . His essay on Weber's Der Freischutz sent me racing back to renew acquaintance with this glorious opera, and he convincingly expounds on how Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande owes much to the orchestration of Parsifal. . . . There is much musical treasure to be found in these pages."—Arlo McKinnon, Opera News

Opera News