- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press; New Ed edition (29 Sep 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0521338840
- ISBN-13: 978-0521338844
- Product Dimensions: 2.3 x 1.5 x 0.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,112,367 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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' … a remarkable document; a personal memoir and a study of the composer's works, it is also something more: a revelation of Adorno's belief that modern philosophy ought to be modelled on modern music. Adorno's Berg, one of his most provocative books, has been beautifully translated by Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey.' The Times Literary Supplement
Product Description
Adorno's study of Alban Berg is a unique document. Itself now a part of music history, it is a personal account, by a pre-eminent philosopher and aesthetician, of the life and musical works of his mentor, friend and composition teacher. Shortly after Berg's death in 1935, Adorno contributed several analyses to the first Berg biography. Thirty years later he incorporated these chapters and several subsequent essays into one volume. Beyond analyses of individual pieces, the book explores the historical and cultural significance of Berg's music, its relationship to that of other twentieth-century composers, and to the larger issues of contemporary life. This is a classic study, made available here for the first time in English, and it provides a key to understanding Adorno himself as well as offering an individual perspective on one of the major composers of the twentieth century.
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First Sentence
Familiar from childhood is the last movement of Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony, that F # minor piece in which one instrument after another ceases to play and departs, until finally only two violins remain to extinguish the light. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Familiar from childhood is the last movement of Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony, that F # minor piece in which one instrument after another ceases to play and departs, until finally only two violins remain to extinguish the light. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a collection of Adorno's essays written throughout his life, compiled and edited by the author in the year before his death. Adorno is better known as a philosopher of Marxist persuasion, but here he returns to the area of writing with which he began his career (music criticism), and to the composer who was his friend and mentor.
It is quite difficult to describe just how a collection of essays on the life and works of a particular composer manages to transcend its genre and become such an astonishing piece of literature. The Times Literary Supplement, quoted in the Amazon description, make a good attempt, but still doesn't come close. I bought this book expecting to learn something about some music I liked, but the book is not about that at all - or rather what the music meant to Adorno was so much more than what I was expecting.
This book changed my understanding of what a piece of critical writing can be. If you have any interest at all in music, the arts or just human beings in general, I would recommend that you read this book!
It is quite difficult to describe just how a collection of essays on the life and works of a particular composer manages to transcend its genre and become such an astonishing piece of literature. The Times Literary Supplement, quoted in the Amazon description, make a good attempt, but still doesn't come close. I bought this book expecting to learn something about some music I liked, but the book is not about that at all - or rather what the music meant to Adorno was so much more than what I was expecting.
This book changed my understanding of what a piece of critical writing can be. If you have any interest at all in music, the arts or just human beings in general, I would recommend that you read this book!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Adorno first met Alban Berg in Frankfurt during a festival of new music in June 1924. Excerpts from Berg's opera "Wozzeck" was being performed. Adorno ultimately studied composition with Berg but did not pursue a career as a composer rather Adornor became a brilliant philosopher of negative dialiectics with a profound work on aesthetics,his last major statement. In these short essays on Berg written over the course of his life, Adorno is at his weakest link. They are analytical in content traversing all of Berg.The "First Piano Sonata", The"Lyric Suite" for string quartet. Although brilliant, the complexity of thought we usually encounter in Adorno, dense loci of continuous cross-referencing, and associations of images interspersed with other artisitic genres is not to be found here. And in terms of pure musical analysis this is fairly basic representations,and ultimately not Adorno's possessive thinking realm.Academia today hates Adorno for his philosophical more socially-bound emphasis away from just this kind of note-for-note, moment-to-moment analysis along Schenkerian dimensions. Still there are conceptual meeting places in the center as George Perle's excellent work on the two Berg operas. And academia has much to fear given Adorno's impressive legacy of his writings on music . In this brief volume Adorno's thoughts on Berg's opera "Lulu" is the high point.And in a way we meet the more personal,conversational Adorno, a rare treat.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
7 of 11 people found the following review helpful
not entirely vintage Adorno,yet lightyears beyond academia
22 Jun 1999
Format:Paperback
Adorno first met Alban Berg in Frankfurt during a festival of new music in June 1924. Excerpts from Berg's opera "Wozzeck" was being performed. Adorno ultimately studied composition with Berg but did not pursue a career as a composer rather Adornor became a brilliant philosopher of negative dialiectics with a profound work on aesthetics,his last major statement. In these short essays on Berg written over the course of his life, Adorno is at his weakest link. They are analytical in content traversing all of Berg.The "First Piano Sonata", The"Lyric Suite" for string quartet. Although brilliant, the complexity of thought we usually encounter in Adorno, dense loci of continuous cross-referencing, and associations of images interspersed with other artisitic genres is not to be found here. And in terms of pure musical analysis this is fairly basic representations,and ultimately not Adorno's possessive thinking realm.Academia today hates Adorno for his philosophical more socially-bound emphasis away from just this kind of note-for-note, moment-to-moment analysis along Schenkerian dimensions. Still there are conceptual meeting places in the center as George Perle's excellent work on the two Berg operas. And academia has much to fear given Adorno's impressive legacy of his writings on music . In this brief volume Adorno's thoughts on Berg's opera "Lulu" is the high point.And in a way we meet the more personal,conversational Adorno, a rare treat.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant! ....simply...
18 Sep 2008
Format:Paperback
This is the definitive work on Berg I believe. This is Adorno at his best. You might already know that Adorno is notoriously difficult to read- as in his Philosophy of Western Music- but this is wonderful.
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