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

[12] To sum up the difference: in Beethoven and in good serious music in
general--we are not concerned here with bad serious music which may be as rigid
and mechanical as popular music--the detail virtually contains the whole and
leads to the exposition of the whole, while, at the same time, it is produced
out of the conception of the whole. In popular music the relationship is
fortuitous. The detail has no bearing on a wholes, which appears as an
extraneous framework. Thus, the whole is never altered by the individual event
and therefore remains, as it were, aloof, imperturbable, and unnoticed
throughout the piece. At the same time, the detail is mutilated by a device
which it can never influence and alter, so that the detail remains
inconsequential. A musical detail which is not permitted to develop becomes a
caricature of its own potentialities.


Standardization

[13] The previous discussion shows that the difference between popular and
serious music can be grasped in more precise terms than those referring to
musical levels such as "lowbrow and highbrow," "simple and complex," "naive and
sophisticated." For example, the difference between the spheres cannot be
adequately expressed in terms of complexity and simplicity. All works of the
earlier Viennese classicism are, without exception, rhythmically simpler than
stock arrangements of jazz. Melodically, the wide intervals of a good many hits
such as "Deep Purple" or "Sunrise Serenade" are more diffficult to follow per se
than most melodies of, for example, Haydn, which consist mainly of
circumscriptions of tonic triads and second steps. Harmonically, the supply of
chords of the so-called classics is invariably more limited than that of any
current Tin Pan Alley composer who draws from Debussy, Ravel, and even later
sources. Standardization and non standardization are the key contrasting terms
for the difference.

[14] Structural Standardization Aims at Standard Reactions. Listening to popular
music is manipulated not only by its promoters but, as it were by the inherent
nature of this music itself, into a system of response mechanisms wholly
antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society. This has
nothing to do with simplicity and complexity. In serious music, each musical
element, even the simplest one, is "itself," and the more highly organized the
work is, the less possibility there is of substitution among the details. In hit
music, however, the structure underlying the piece is abstract, existing
independent of the specific course of the music. This is basic to the illusion
that certain complex harmonies are more easily understandable in popular music
than the same harmonies in serious music. For the complicated in popular music
never functions as "itself" but only as a disguise or embellishment behind which
the scheme can always be perceived. In jazz the amateur listener is capable of
replacing complicated rhythmical or harmonic formulas by the schematic ones
which they represent and which they still suggest, however adventurous they
appear. The ear deals with the diffficulties of hit music by achieving slight
substitutions derived from the knowledge of the patterns. The listener, when
faced with the complicated, actually hears only the simple which it represents