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

and perceives the complicated only as a parodistic distortion of the simple.

[15] No such mechanical substitution by stereotyped patterns is possible in
serious music. Here even the simplest event necessitates an effort to grasp it
immediately instead of summarizing it vaguely according to institutionalized
prescriptions capable of producing only institutionalized effects. Otherwise the
music is not "understood." Popular music, however, is composed In such a way
that the process of translation of the unique into the norm is already planned
and, to a certain extent, achieved within the composition itself. [16] The
composition hears for the listener. This is how popular music divests the
listener of his spontaneity and promotes conditioned reflexes. Not only does it
not require his effort to follow its concrete stream; it actually gives him
models under which anything concrete still remaining may be subsumed. The
schematic buildup dictates the way in which he must listen while, at the same
time, it makes any effort in listening unnecessary. Popular music is "pre-
digested" in a way strongly resembling the fad of "digests" of prmted Material.
It is this structure of contemporary popular music which in the last analysis,
accounts for those changes of listening habits which we shall later discuss.

[17] So far standardization of popular music has been considered in structural
terms--that is, as an inherent quality without explicit reference to the process
of production or to the underlying causes for standardization. Though all
industrial mass production necessarily eventuates in standardization, the
production of popular music can be called "industrial" only in its promotion and
distribution, whereas the act of producing a song-hit still remains in a
handicraft stage. The production of popular music is highly centralized in its
economic organization, but still "individualistic" in its social mode of
production. The division of labor among the composer, harmonizer, and arranger
is not industrial but rather pretends industrialization, in order to look more
up-to-date, whereas it has actually adapted industrial methods for the technique
of its promotion. It would not increase the costs of production if the various
composers of hit tunes did not follow certain standard patterns. Therefore, we
must look for other reasons for structural standardization--very different
reasons from those which account for the standardization of motor cars and
breakfast foods.

[18] Imitation offers a lead for coming to grips with the basic reasons for it.
The musical standards of popular music were originally developed by a
competitive process. As one particular song scored a great success, hundreds of
others sprang up imitating the successful one. The most successful hits types,
and "ratios" between elements were imitated, and the process culminated in the
crystallization of standards. Under centralized conditions such as exist today
these standards have become "frozen."<2> That is, they have been taken over by
cartelized agencies, the final results of a competitive process, and rigidly
enforced upon material to be promoted. Noncompliance with the rules of the game
became the basis for exclusion. The original patterns that are now standardized
evolved in a more or less competitve way. Large-scale economic concentration
institutionalized the standardization, and made it imperative. As a result,
innovations by rugged individualists have been outlawed. The standard patterns
have become invested with the immunity of bigness--"the King can do no wrong."