Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Quasi una Fantasia contains Adorno's own selection from his essays and journalism over more than three decades. In its analytical profundity it can be compared to his Philosophy of Modern Music , but in the range of its topics and the clarity of its arguments it stands alone among Adorno's writings on music. At the book's core are illuminating studies of the founders of modern music: Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg, as well as sympathetic rediscoveries of Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker. Especially significant is Adorno's "dialectical portrait" of Stravinsky in which he both reconsiders and refines the damning indictment he gave in Philosophy on Modern Music . In 'Vers une musique informelle', an influential essay, he plots a course for a music of the future 'which takes up the challenge of an unrevised, unrestricted freedom'. More unexpectedly, there are moving accounts of earlier works, including Bizet's Carmen and Weber's Der Freischutz , along with an entertainingly caustic "Natural History of the Theatre." Which explores the hierarchies of the auditorium, from upper circle to foyer.

'The positive element of kitsch', Adorno remarks, 'lies in the fact that it sets free for a moment the glimmering realization that you have wasted your life.' Musical kitsch is the target of several of the shorter pieces: on Gounod's Ave Maria or Tchaikovsky's 'clumsy naivety'; on the 'Penny Serenade' of the transformation of Mozart into chocolate-box rococo. Yet even while Adorno demolishes 'commodity music' he is sustained by the conviction that music is supremely human because it retains the capacity to speak of inhumanity and to resist it. It is a conviction which reverberates throughout these writings. For Adorno, music and philosophy were inextricably linked: Quasi una Fantasia will enlarge our understanding of both.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Adorno was a prominent essayist on the topic of 20th-century culture and philosophy. This book, first published in 1963 and newly translated, arranges 13 of Adorno's essays into three categories: Improvisation, Evocations, and Finale, a formal design analogous to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata , from which the title is taken. The middle section consists of weighty monographs on Mahler, Zemlinsky (Schoenberg's teacher), Schreker (a minor composer in Berlin during the early years of the century), and Stravinsky, the latter subtitled ``A Dialectical Portrait.'' The other sections contain essays on sundry topics related to 20th-century musical thought, the lone exception being a singular, reflective glance at Bizet's Carmen . Throughout, Adorno makes thoughtful and revelatory observations, though his famous admonition that serious music must be difficult and unpleasurable often finds an unfortunate resonance in his prose. Recommended for academic libraries.-- Larry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, Pa. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

A veritable gold mine of information and perspicacity from the viewpoint of a German "insider"--an articulate critic, philosopher, and musical analyst who knew the artists personally and who was immersed in the aesthetic currents stemming from art nouveau (1890s) to electronic music (1960s). Adorno's revealing comparisons of Berg and Schoenberg, contrasting Berg's passivity (he could take the tone-row or leave it alone) and Schoenberg's dogmatic strictness, lead up to Webern, whom Adorno places at the fountainhead of composers all who would follow were to emulate. Critical assessment of Stravinsky and these stars of the Viennese School has moved significantly away from preoccupation with dodecaphony. They are programmed more and more infrequently. The latest essay in the book is dated 1961; few critics there were indeed who could foretell the sweeping stylistic and aesthetic changes electronic composition would bring. Of especial interest are studies of Alexander Zemlinsky (Schoenberg's teacher) and Franz Schreker, names that have virtually disappeared from the firmament of modern music. The writing, particularly in sections 2 and 3, is brilliant. Readers will need a specialist's knowledge of the period, but this is an important book, indispensable to any music lover who would strive to understand modern music in the first half of the 20th century. Undergraduate; graduate; faculty. G. Muns; emeritus, Eastern Kentucky University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Theodor W. Adorno is the progenitor of critical theory, a central figure in aesthetics, and the century's foremost philosopher of music. He was born and educated in Frankfurt, Germany. After completing his Ph.D. in philosophy, he went to Vienna, where he studied composition with Alban Berg. He soon was bitterly disappointed with his own lack of talent and turned to musicology.

In 1928 Adorno returned to Frankfurt to join the Institute for Social Research, commonly known as The Frankfurt School. At first a privately endowed center for Marxist studies, the school was merged with Frankfort's university under Adorno's directorship in the 1950s. As a refugee from Nazi Germany during World War II, Adorno lived for several years in Los Angeles before returning to Frankfurt. Much of his most significant work was produced at that time.

Critics find Adorno's aesthetics to be rich in insight, even when they disagree with its broad conclusions. Although Adorno was hostile to jazz and popular music, he advanced the cause of contemporary music by writing seminal studies of many key composers. To the distress of some of his admirers, he remained pessimistic about the prospects for art in mass society.

Adorno was a neo-Marxist who believed that the only hope for democracy was to be found in an interpretation of Marxism opposed to both positivism and dogmatic materialism. His opposition to positivisim and advocacy of a method of dialectics grounded in critical rationalism propelled him into intellectual conflict with Georg Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and Heideggerian hermeneutics.

(Bowker Author Biography)