Review: [untitled] Author(s): Brian Kane Source: Qui Parle, Vol. 15, No. 1 (FALL / WINTER 2004), pp.

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BOOK REVIEW

Tia DeNora, AfterAdorno: Rethinking Music Sociology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 176 pages, $23 (paperback)

of music

"To speak of the sociology of music is to perpetuate a notion and society as separate entities" (131). Simply put, the sociology of music, and musicology as well, tend to view the rela tions between music

caused mines

In Tia DeNora's After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology, all three of these conceptions are critiqued. Her corrective is to relation under propose a "dynamic" model of the socio-musical the name of music this new music sociology. And here is the rub: the forefather of sociology isTheodor Adorno.

and society in one of three ways: music is in or is reflected music deter music, by society, society social practice.

more

DeNora's brand of music sociology, as evidenced in her last two books, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius, and Music in Everyday Life, with its heavy reliance on empirical research, transcribed interviews and first-person accounts, could not contrast

with Adorno's methods. One finds inDeNora none strikingly of the critical negation that makes Adorno's sociological essays Music and the (such as "On Jazz," or "On the Fetish-Character in tating to his detractors. Yet, the question remains, how can Adorno

of Listening") so appealing to his supporters and so irri Regression be the progenitor of DeNora's music sociology? The answer: by
Qui Parle, vol. 15, No. 1 Fall/Winter2004

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BOOK REVIEW

First,Adorno articulated not only how social (the specific practices shape music, but how musical procedures which music handles its materials) possess a moral dimen ways in to music sociology. exemplary for praxis. This is just as apparent in Adorno's high esteem for Schoenberg's music, which provides "a contrast structure against which 'all the darkness and inclarity of the world' could be illuminated" (152), as it is in his critique of sion and become popular music mass produced by the culture industry. Second, listener Adorno's musically conception dynamic emphasized response, and not just the musical text: itembraced detailed analy Berg, and Mahler, and a typology of listeners. These contributions are balanced against two problems with Adorno's work: 1) itsprejudicial dismissal of jazz, popular music, ses of Beethoven,

plucking the methodological According to DeNora,

kernel, while Adorno made

discarding the husk. two great contributions

and Stravinsky, and 2) a high level of abstraction and generality, without a grounding inempirical research. DeNora chides Adorno for using examples to illustrate a theory, not to support one. in place, DeNora develops her theo With this methodology ryof musical affordance. relation between music music's

ability to shape which listeners appropriate music and unique ways in ends. The "right level" of generality

Balancing and articulating the dynamic and society requires neither ignoring itsown reception, nor ignoring the creative to their own

in relation to consciousness and a as a resource about than medium for rather action, world building. Within this dynamic conception of formative medium music's social character, focus shifts from what music depicts, or what itcan be "read" as saying about society, towhat makes itpossible. And to speak of "what music makes possible" is to speak ofwhat music "affords." (46) The proviso is that musical affordances must be analyzed within

consists of a focus on music-as-practice, and music as a It music as a deals with basis for practice. providing

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171

the confines of specific environments, situations, and local condi tions. Moreover, "music" can be anything from entire works, to you work. "What is key or comes to is, be, meaningful to the actors who engage with it, including such matters as whether the relevant actors notice it" (49). affords, DeNora reprises an in Everyday Life. Lucy, an amateur musician who sings alto ina choir, described to DeNora her attraction to cer tain "juicy" chords in Brahms' music because these chords contain illustration what music Music interview from middle voices, which afford Lucy an opportunity for self-knowl edge. The middle voices are: . . . ... It's the sopra Lucy: part of the background nos and the tenors that carry the song, ifyou like, and the basses and the altos that fill out to make looks at me questioningly] ita sort of [she stops and DeNora: As an fragments, to Muzak, here is how the music to whistling while

A sonic whole?

Lucy: Yeah. And I think thatmaybe that character izes me in life, that I don't like being in the limelight, I like ... being part of a group. And, you know, pressing forward and doing my bit but not[pause] DeNora: were, Filling in, as it the needed middle?

Lucy: Yeah. Seeing what needs doing and doing it not but being spotlighted and being "out front" sort of

thing.'
Glossing

a templateor model againstwhich self-knowledge could be

fleshed out or mapped. And it is here thatwe can see how an indi structure or set of conception of some particular musical

this dialogue,

DeNora

writes, "For Lucy, music

provided

vidual's

comes to be projectedby that individual musical properties as a work of tracing out (articulating) awarenessof gridor guide forthe
some other realm" (67).

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BOOK REVIEW

Lucy's case, music affords "a map or model of who she is and also of who she wishes to be. . . . Lucy shapes up a form of under (about herself in this case) against standing, produces knowledge the structures of what she finds inmusic"

affordance focuses on how actors theory of musical as Lucy appropriate music to their own ends, making connections, (67). In puts it,between the "me in life" and the "me in music" The

(67). But how relevant is this fact? Perhaps the emphasis should not merely stress thatmusic affords opportunities for self-discovery, but

rather highlight the quality of this self-discovery. DeNora overlooks affordances to she compares this point when Lucy's musical how Lucy found joy inhearing 'juicy' chords moments she was able to 'see herself' or her within these "I described

Adorno's: because

at this sentence. In disguise" (104). Imust admit my puzzlement this passage fromAdorno's Philosophy ofModern Music, the claim that Schoenberg's works no longer make is being developed as expression into a character-type, espressivo, which is contained musical one trope among others mediated by form; rather, through a critique of musical form, Schoenberg brings immediate expres

with reference to Schoenberg, role in life. So too, as Adorno put it ... are no simulated [but] are registered without longer 'passions

sion forward. In particular, Adorno is referring to the terse, explo sive works of Schoenberg's free atonal period, works like the Five Orchestral Pieces and the Six Little Piano Pieces, whose aphoristic,

sion."2 Similarly, the model of critical theory that Schoenberg's music affords Adorno is different in quality from the reified "me in music" which Brahms' music affords Lucy.

form criticizes the merely rhetorical highly condensed, musical Romantic espressivo. "Schoenberg's espressivo ... differs in quali means of that intensifi ty from Romantic expression precisely by cation which thinks this espressivo through to its logical conclu

is forced into converting Adorno's qualitative theory, DeNora claims intomerely quantitative norms. For example, in summariz produces this ingAdorno's project of negative dialectics, DeNora

out thegreat"contributions" ofAdorno tomusic By plucking while abandoningthenegative componentof his critical sociology,

BOOK REVIEW

173

and misreading: "The [critical] task of reason was to accommodate, through formulation as knowledge, arrange (without suppressing) to hold as much 'material' complexity, diversity, heterogeneity as is possible within compromised consciousness" (10). It strikes me that it is not the quantity, rather the quality of the contradiction between

"materials" which is significant to reason's critical task. The quantitative impulse also lurksbehind DeNora's goal for itsultimate music sociology: "Music sociology will have achieved - we come in in when all other realms of social life words, aim, to attend to the sounds that are all around us, to know these as our in the doing, being, and feeling that (and opponents) accomplices is social life" (157). The great aim of music sociology is total atten tiveness to the manner inwhich we cause, reflect, and are deter mined, by music. But quantity and completeness of attention is not a substitute for a qualitative praxis. No lighthas been shed to legit imate the application of DeNora's musico-sociological method.

In this age of trying to "absorb Adorno" in order to "get past one must remember that the critical negativity and the high him," of level generality and abstraction present in the author's music

means

of thought."3 Any music after Adorno has two options:

sociology are not blind spots of which he was unaware. Nor can they be wiped away with value-free, empirical sociology. Thus, "a sociology which is committed to the 'positive' is in danger of los ... but ingall critical consciousness whatsoever only a critical spir it can make science more than a mere duplication of reality by

Adorno's Adorno's

have the courage

itself sociology which positions either have the veracity to use negative dialectical method against Adorno (and critique claims from some distinct, interested perspective), or and confidence to set forth itsown substantive, can stand on their own against

methodological principles, which Adorno's findings without claiming a false patrimony. The sociolo

who comes after Adornomust remember: "Thegiven will only gist a perspective offeritself of up to theview which negates itfrom
true interest."4 -Brian Kane

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BOOK REVIEW

1 2 3 4

1973), 38. (New York: Continuum, ~TheFrankfurt Institute for Social Research, Aspects of Sociology, with a preface by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 11. Ibid.,11.

in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge Tia DeNora, Music University Press, isquoted again with some severe cuts inAfterAdorno, 67. 2000), 69. This passage A. G. Mitchell and W. Blomster, Theodor Adorno, Philosophy ofModem Music, tr.