"On Popular Music" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adorno Theodor W)

Theodor W. Adorno

On Popular Music

With the assistance and collaboration of George Simpson


The Musical Material


The Two Spheres of Music

[1] Popular music, which produces the stimuli we are here investigating, is
usually characterized by its difference from serious music. This difference is
generally taken for granted and is looked upon as a difference of levels
considered so well defined that most people regard the values within them as
totally independent of one another. We deem it necessary, however, first of all
to translate these so-called levels into more precise terms, musical as well as
social, which not only delimit them unequivocally but throw light upon the whole
setting of the two musical spheres as well.

[2] One possible method of achieving this clarification would be a historical
analysis of the division as it occurred in music production and of the roots of
the two main spheres. Since, however, the present study is concerned with the
actual function of popular music in its present status, it is more advisable to
follow the line of characterization of the phenomenon itself as it is given
today than to trace it back to its origins. This is the more justified as the
division into the two spheres of music took place in Europe long before American
popular music arose. American music from its inception accepted the division as
something pre-given, and therefore the historical background of the division
applies to it only indirectly. Hence we seek, first of all, an insight into the
fundamental characteristics of popular music in the broadest sense.

[3] A clear judgment concerning the relation of serious music to popular music
can be arrived at only by strict attention to the fundamental characteristic of
popular music: standardization.<1> The whole structure of popular music is
standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization.
Standardization extends from the most general features to the most specific
ones. Best known is the rule that the chorus consists of thirty two bars and
that the range is limited to one octave and one note. The general types of hits
are also standardized: not only the dance types, the rigidity of whose pattern
is understood, but also the "characters" such as mother songs, home songs,
nonsense or "novelty" songs, pseudo-nursery rhymes, laments for a lost girl.
Most important of all, the harmonic cornerstones of each hit--the beginning and
the end of each part--must beat out the standard scheme. This scheme emphasizes
the most primitive harmonic facts no matter what has harmonically intervened.
Complications have no consequences. This inexorable device guarantees that
regardless of what aberrations occur, the hit will lead back to the same
familiar experience, and nothing fundamentally novel will be introduced.