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

[4] The details themselves are standardized no less than the form, and a whole
terminology exists for them such as break, blue chords, dirty notes. Their
standardization, however, is somewhat different from that of the framework. It
is not overt like the latter but hidden behind a veneer of individual "effects"
whose prescriptions are handled as the experts' secret, however open this secret
may be to musicians generally. This contrasting character of the standardization
of the whole and part provides a rough, preliminary setting for the effect upon
the listener.

[5] The primary effect of this relation between the framework and the detail is
that the listener becomes prone to evince stronger reactions to the part than to
the whole. His grasp of the whole does not lie in the living experience of this
one concrete piece of music he has followed. The whole is pre-given and pre-
accepted, even before the actual experience of the music starts: therefore, it
is not likely to influence, to any great extent, the reaction to the details,
except to give them varying degrees of emphasis. Details which occupy musically
strategic positions in the framework--the beginning of the chorus or its
reentrance after the bridge--have a better chance for recognition and favorable
reception than details not so situated, for instance, middle bars of the bridge.
But this situational nexus never interferes with the scheme itself. To this
limited situational extent the detail depends upon the whole. But no stress is
ever placed upon the whole as a musical event, nor does the structure of the
whole ever depend upon the details.

[6] Serious music, for comparative purposes, may be thus characterized: Every
detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece which,
in turn, consists of the life relationship of the details and never of a mere
enforcement of a musical scheme. For example, in the introduction of the first
movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony the second theme (in C-major) gets its
true meaning only from the context. Only through the whole does it acquire its
particular Iyrical and expressive quality--that is, a whole built up of its very
contrast with the cant us hrmus-like character of the first theme. Taken in
isolation the second theme would be disrobed to insignihcance. Another example
may be found in the beginning of the recapitulation over the pedal point of the
first movement of Beethoven's "Appassionata." By following the preceding
outburst it achieves the utmost dramatic momentum. By omitting the exposition
and development and starting with this repetition, all is lost.

[7] Nothing corresponding to this can happen in popular music. It would not
affect the musical sense if any detail were taken out of the context; the
listener can supply the "framework" automatically, since it is a mere musical
automatism itself. The beginning of the chorus is replaceable by the beginning
of innumerable other choruses. The interrelationship among the elements or the
relationship of the elements to the whole would be unaffected. In Beethoven,
position is important only in a living relation between a concrete totality and
its concrete parts. In popular music, position is absolute. Every detail is
substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine.

[8] The mere establishment of this difference is not yet suffcient. It is
possible to object that the far-reaching standard schemes and types of popular