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

music are bound up with dance, and therefore are also applicable to dance
derivatives in serious music, for example, the minuet to and scherzo of the
classical Viennese School. It may be maintained either that this part of serious
music is also to be comprehended in terms of detail rather than of whole, or
that if the whole still is perceivable in the dance types in serious music
despite recurrence of the types, there is no reason why it should not be
perceivable in modern popular music.

[9] The following consideration provides an answer to both objections by showing
the radical differences even where serious music employs dance types. According
to current formalistic views the scherzo of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony can be
regarded as a highly stylized minuet to. What Beethoven takes from the
traditional minuet to scheme in this scherzo is the Idea of outspoken contrast
between a minor minuet to, a major trio, and repetition of the minor minuet to;
and also certain other characteristics such as the emphatic three-fourths rhythm
often accentuated on the first fourth and, by and large, dance like symmetry in
the sequence of bars and periods. But the specific form-idea of this movement as
a concrete totality transvaluates the devices borrowed from the minuet to
scheme. The whole movement is conceived as an introduction to the hnale in order
to createtremendous tension, not only by its threatening, foreboding expression
but even more by the very way in which its formal development is handled.

[10] The classical minuet to scheme required first the appearance of the main
theme, then the introduction of a second part which may lead to more distant
tonal regions--formalistically similar, to be sure, to the "bridge" of today's
popular music--and finally the recurrence of the original part. All this occurs
in Beethoven. He takes up the idea of thematic dualism within the scherzo part.
But he forces what was, in the conventional minuet to, a mute and meaningless
game rule to speak with meaning. He achieves complete consistency between the
formal structure and its specific content, that is to say, the elaboration of
its themes. The whole scherzo part of this scherzo (that is to say, what occurs
before the entrance of the deep strings in C-major that marks the beginning of
the trio), consists of the dualism of two themes, the creeping figure in the
strings and the "objective," stone like answer of the wind instruments. This
dualism is not developed in a schematic way so that first the phrase of the
strings is elaborated, then the answer of the winds, and then the string theme
is mechanically repeated. After the first occurrence of the second theme in the
horns, the two essential elements are alternately interconnected in the manner
of a dialogue, and the end of the scherzo part is actually marked, not by the
first but by the second theme, which has overwhelmed the first musical phrase.

[11] Furthermore, the repetition of the scherzo after the trio is scored so
differently that it sounds like a mere shadow of the scherzo and assumes that
haunting character which vanishes only with the afffirmative entry of the Finale
theme. The whole device has been made dynamic. Not only the themes, but the
musical form itself have been subjected to tension: the same tension which is
already manifcst within the twofold structure of the first theme that consists,
as it were, of question and reply, and then even more manifest within the
context between the two main themes. The whole scheme has become sub ject to the
inherent demands of this particular movement.