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

happiness. What is supposed to be wish fulfillment is only the scant liberation
that occurs with the realization that at last one need not deny oneself the
happiness of knowing that one is unhappy and that one could be happy. The
experience of the shop girl is related to that of the old woman who weeps at the
wedding services of others, blissfully becoming aware of the wretchedness of her
own life. Not even the most gullible individuals believe that eventually
everyone will win the sweepstakes. The actual function of sentimental music lies
rather in the temporary release given to the awareness that one has missed
fulfillment.

[43] The emotional listener listens to everything in terms of late romanticism
and of the musical commodities derived from it which are already fashioned to
fit the needs of emotional listening. They consume music in order to be allowed
to weep. They are taken in by the musical expression of frustration rather than
by that of happiness. The influence of the standard Slavic melancholy typified
by Tchaikowsky and Dvorak is by far greater than that of the most "fulfilled"
moments of Mozart or of the young Beethoven. The so-called releasing element of
music is simply the opportunity to feel something. But the actual content of
this emotion can only be frustration. Emotional music has become the image of
the mother who says, "Come and weep, my child." It is catharsis for the masses,
but catharsis which keeps them all the more firmly in line. One who weeps does
not resist any more than one who marches. Music that permits its listeners the
confession of their unhappiness reconciles them, by means of this "release," to
their social dependence.


NOTES

<1> The basic importance of standardization has not altogether escaped the
attention of current literature on popular music. "The chief difference between
a popular song and a standard, or serious, song like 'Mandalay,' 'Sylvia,' or
'Trees,' is that the melody and the Iyric of a popular number are constructed
within a definite pattern or structural form, whereas the poem, or Iyric, of a
standard number has no structural confinements, and the music is free to
interpret ~he meaning and feeling of the words without following a set pattern
or form. Putting it another way, the popular song is 'custom built,' while the
standard song allows the composer freer play of imagination and interpretation."
Abner Silver and Robert Bruce, How to Wvite and Sel/ a Song Hit (New York,
1939), p.2. The authors fail, however, to realize the externally superimposed,
commercial character of those patterns which aims at canalized reactions or, in
the language of the regular announcement of one particular radio program, at
"easy listening." They confuse the mechanical patterns with highly organized,
strict art forms: "Certainly there are few more stringent verse forms in poetry
than the sonnet, and yet the greatest poets of all time have woven undying
beauty within its small and limited frame. A composer has just as much
opportunity for exhibiting his talent and genius in popular songs as in more
serious music" (pp. 2-3). Thus the standard pattern of popular music appears to
them virtually on the same level as the law of a fugue. It is this contamination
which makes the insight into the basic standardization of popular music sterile.
It ought to be added that what Silver and Bruce call a "standard song" is just