72    Frederick Engels
dynastic power of Austria). Without making oneself ridiculous it would be a difficult thing to explain in terms of economics the existence of every small state in Germany, past and present, or the origin of the High German consonant permutations which widened the geographic wall of partition formed by the mountains from the Sudetic range to the Taunus, making a regular division across all of Germany.
In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a variety of particular conditions of life. Thus, there are innumerable crisscrossing forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant - the historical event. This may again in turn be regarded as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For that which each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one wanted. Thus history, up to the present, has proceeded in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But from the fact that the wills of individuals — each of whom desires what he is impelled to by his physical constitution and external, in the final analysis economic, circumstances (either his own personal circumstances or those of society in general) — do not believe what they want, but are merged into an aggregate mean, common resultant, it must not be concluded that their value is equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it.
I would furthermore ask you to study this theory from the original sources and not at second hand; it is really much easier. Marx hardly ever wrote anything in which it did not play a part. But especially The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a very excellent example of its application. There are also many allusions to it in Capital. I may also refer you to my writings: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science* and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in which I have given the most detailed account of historical materialism which, as far as I know, exists.
Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize the main principle over and against our adversaries, who denied it. We had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to let the other factors involved in the interaction be duly considered. But when it came to presenting an era of history, i.e. to making a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error could be permitted. Unfortunately, however, it happens all too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without further ado from the very moment they have mastered its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent 'Marxists' from this reproach, since some of the most amazing stuff has been produced among them, as well. . . .
* [Published in English as Anti-Duhring.]
11
ON POPULAR MUSIC
Theodor W. Adorno
The Musical Material
The Two Spheres of Music
ular music, which produces the stimuli we are here invesigating, is usually charac-zed by its difference from serious music. This difference is generally taken for granted is looked upon as a difference of levels considered so well defined that most people ard the values within them as totally independent of one another. We deem it essary, however, first of all to translate these so-called levels into more precise
:, musical as well as social, which not only delimit them unequivocally but throw t upon the whole setting of the two musical spheres as well. .One possible method of achieving this clarification would be a historical analysis of division as it occurred in music production and of the roots of the two main spheres.
, however, the present study is concerned with the actual function of popular music 'ts present status, it is more advisable to follow the line of characterization of the nomenon itself as it is given today than to trace it back to its origins. This is the e justified as the division into the two spheres of music took place in Europe long American popular music arose. American music from its inception accepted division as something pre-given, and therefore the historical background of the ision applies to it only indirectly. Hence we seek, first of all, an insight into the (Jamental characteristics of popular music in the broadest sense.
clear judgment concerning the relation of serious music to popular music can be
at only by strict attention to the fundamental characteristic of popular music:
dardization.1 The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where
attempt is made to circumvent standardization. Standardization extends from the
St general features to the most specific ones. Best known is the rule that the chorus
sists of thirty-two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note.
general types of hits are also standardized: not only the dance types, the rigidity yŕhose pattern is understood, but also the 'characters' such as mother songs, home gs, nonsense or 'novelty' songs, pseudo-nursery rhymes, laments for a lost girl. Most iortant of all, the harmonic cornerstones of each hit - the beginning and the end
'.ms.
nee,
lore
'lved ;
irno, T., 1941, 'On popular music', Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, no. 9.
74    Theodor W. Adorno
of each part - must beat out the standard scheme. This scheme emphasizes the mos primitive harmonic facts no matter what has harmonically intervened. Complication-have no consequences. This inexorable device guarantees that regardless of wha aberrations occur, the hit will lead back to the same familiar experience, and nothin fundamentally novel will be introduced.
The details themselves are standardized no less than the form, and a whole ter minology 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 latte but hidden behind a veneer of individual 'effects' whose prescriptions are handle as the experts' secret, however open this secret may be to musicians generally. Thi contrasting character of the standardization of the whole and part provides a rough, preliminary setting for the effect upon the listener.
The primary effect of this relation between the framework and the detail is that th listener becomes prone to evince stronger reactions to the part than to the whole. Hi grasp of the whole does not lie in the living experience of this one concrete piece o music he has followed. The whole is pre-given and pre-accepted, even before the actua 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. Detail which occupy musically strategic positions in the framework - the beginning of th chorus or its reentrance after the bridge - have a better chance for recognition an favourable 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.
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 Sevenť Symphony the second theme (in C-major) gets its true meaning only from the context. Only through the whole does it acquire its particular lyrical and expressive quality ~ that is, a whole built up of its very contrast with the cantus firmus-Mke. character of th first theme. Taken in isolation the second theme would be disrobed to insignificance. 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 precedin outburst it achieves the utmost dramatic momentum. By omitting the exposition and development and starting with this repetition, all is lost.
Nothing corresponding to this can happen in popular music. It would not affec 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. Th beginning of the chorus is replaceable by the beginning of innumerable other choruses. The interrelationship among the elements or the relationship of the elements tö 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
On Popular Music    75
solute, ine.
Every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a
Jie mere establishment of this difference is not yet sufficient. It is possible to object the far-reaching standard schemes and types of popular music are bound up -dance, and therefore are also applicable to dance derivatives in serious music, for pie, the minuetto and scherzo of the classical Viennese School. It may be main-d either that this part of serious music is also to be comprehended in terms of detail r than of whole, or that if the whole still is perceivable in the dance types in serious Jc despite recurrence of the types, there is no reason why it should not be perceiv-•^n modern popular music.
he following consideration provides an answer to both objections by showing the
»1 differences even where serious music employs dance types. According to cur-
formalistic views the scherzo of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony can be regarded as
ghly stylized minuetto. What Beethoven takes from the traditional minuetto
ie in this scherzo is the idea of outspoken contrast between a minor minuetto, a
■ trio, and repetition of the minor minuetto; and also certain other characteristics
:as the emphatic three-fourths rhythm often accentuated on the first fourth and,
d large, dancelike symmetry in the sequence of bars and periods. But the specific
j-idea of this movement as a concrete totality transvaluates the devices borrowed
['the minuetto scheme. The whole movement is conceived as an introduction
' e finale in order to create tremendous tension, not only by its threatening, fore-
'fig expression but even more by the very way in which its formal development is
died.
Ihe classical minuetto scheme required first the appearance of the main theme, then
'ntroduction of a second part which may lead to more distant tonal regions -
alistically similar, to be sure, to the 'bridge' of today's popular music - and finally
flcurrence of the original part. All this occurs in Beethoven. He takes up the idea
ematic dualism within the scherzo part. But he forces what was, in the conven-
1'minuetto, a mute and meaningless game rule to speak with meaning. He achieves
plete consistency between the formal structure and its specific content, that is to
íhe elaboration of its themes. The whole scherzo part of this scherzo (that is to
'.hat occurs before the entrance of the deep strings in C-major that marks the begin-
of the trio) consists of the dualism of two themes, the creeping figure in the strings
he 'objective', stonelike answer of the wind instruments. This dualism is not
.oped in a schematic way so that first the phrase of the strings is elaborated, then
swer of the winds, and then the string theme is mechanically repeated. After the
^occurrence of the second theme in the horns, the two essential elements are altern-
»interconnected in the manner of a dialogue, and the end of the scherzo part is
ally marked, not by the first but by the second theme, which has overwhelmed
irst musical phrase.
rthermore, the repetition of the scherzo after the trio is scored so differently that
nds like a mere shadow of the scherzo and assumes that haunting character which
les only with the affirmative entry of the Finale theme. The whole device has
wmade dynamic. Not only the themes, but the musical form itself have been
76    Theodor W. Adorno
subjected to tension: the same tension which is already manifest within the twofol structure of the first theme that consists, as it were, of question and reply, and the even more manifest within the context between the two main themes. The whole schem has become subject to the inherent demands of this particular movement.
To sum up the difference: in Beethoven and in good serious music in general — w are not concerned here with bad serious music which may be as rigid and mechanica as popular music - the detail virtually contains the whole and leads to the expositio of the whole, while, at the same time, it is produced out of the conception of the whol In popular music the relationship is fortuitous. The detail has no bearing on a whol which appears as an extraneous framework. Thus, the whole is never altered by th individual event and therefore remains, as it were, aloof, imperturbable, and unnotice throughout the piece. At the same time, the detail is mutilated by a device which it ca never influence and alter, so that the detail remains inconsequential. A musical detai which is not permitted to develop becomes a caricature of its own potentialities.
Standardization
The previous discussion shows that the difference between popular and sériou music can be grasped in more precise terms than those referring to musical level 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, th wide intervals of a good many hits such as,'Deep Purple' or 'Sunrise Serenade' are more difficult 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 nonstandardization are the key contrasting terms for the difference.
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
On Popular Music    77
Still suggest, however adventurous they appear. The ear deals with the difficulties
-music by achieving slight substitutions derived from the knowledge of the pat-
■ The listener, when faced with the complicated, actually hears only the simple
it represents and perceives the complicated only as a parodistic distortion of
jmple.
o such mechanical substitution by stereotyped patterns is possible in serious Here even the simplest event necessitates an effort to grasp it immediately instead marizing it vaguely according to institutionalized prescriptions capable of pro-g only institutionalized effects. Otherwise the music is not 'understood'. Popular however, is composed in such a way that the process of translation of the unique e norm is already planned and, to a certain extent, achieved within the com-tion itself. e composition hears for the listener. This is how popular music divests the lis-:of his spontaneity and promotes conditioned reflexes. Not only does it now require ffort to follow its concrete stream; it actually gives him models under which any-concrete still remaining may be subsumed. The schematic buildup dictates the ")mn which he must listen while, at the same time, it makes any effort in listening ecessary. Popular music is 'pre-digesteď in a way strongly resembling the fad of ests' of printed material. It is this structure of contemporary popular music which, e last analysis, accounts for those changes of listening habits which we shall later ;uss.
So far standardization of popular music has been considered in structural terms -
* čis, as an inherent quality without explicit reference to the process of production
ö the underlying causes for standardization. Though all industrial mass production
essarily eventuates in standardization, the production of popular music can be
ed 'industrial' only in its promotion and distribution, whereas the act of producing
'ng-hit still remains in a handicraft stage. The production of popular music is highly
tralized in its economic organization, but still 'Individualistic' in its social mode of
"auction. The division of labor among the composer, harmonizer, and arranger is
^industrial but rather pretends industrialization, in order to look more up to date,
ereas it has actually adapted industrial methods for the technique of its promotion.
would not increase the costs of production if the various composers of hit tunes
not follow certain standard patterns. Therefore, we must look for other reasons for
uctural standardization - very different reasons from those which account for the
dardization of motor cars and breakfast foods.
Imitation offers a lead for coming to grips with the basic reasons for it. The
I standards of popular music were originally developed by a competitive process.
one particular song scored a great success, hundreds of others sprang up imitating
successful one. The most successful hits, types, and 'ratios' between elements
re imitated, and the process culminated in the crystallization of standards. Under
htralized conditions such as exist today these standards have become 'frozen'.2 That
they have been taken over by cartelized agencies, the final results of a competitive
ocess, and rigidly enforced upon material to be promoted. Noncompliance with the
les of the game became the basis for exclusion. The original patterns that are now
78    Theodor W. Adorno
standardized evolved in a more or less competitive way. Large-scale economic coih centration institutionalized the standardization, and made it imperative. As a result, innovations by rugged individualists have been outlawed. The standard patterns hav become invested with the immunity of bigness - 'the King can do no wrong'. This also accounts for revivals in popular music. They do now have the outworn character of standardized products manufactured after a given pattern. The breath of free competition is still alive within them. On the other hand, the famous old hits which are revived set the patterns which have become standardized. They are the golden age of the game rules.
This 'freezing' of standards is socially enforced upon the agencies themselves. Popular music must simultaneously meet two demands. One is for stimuli that provoke the listener's attention. The other is for the material to fall within the category of what the musically untrained listener would call 'natural' music: that is, the sum total of all the conventions and material formulas in music to which he is accustomed and which he regards as the inherent, simple language of music itself, no matter how late the development might be which produced this natural language. This natural language for the American listener stems from his earliest musical experiences, the nursery rhymes, the hymns he sings in Sunday school, the little tunes he whistles on his way home from school. All these are vastly more important in the formation of musical language than his ability to distinguish the beginning of Brahms's Third Symphony from that of his Second. Official musical culture is, to a large extent, a mere superstructure of this underlying musical language, namely, the major and minor tonalities and all the tonal relationships they imply. But these tonal relationships of the primitive musical language set barriers to whatever does not conform to them. Extravagances are tolerated only in so far as they can be recast into this so-called natural language.
In terms of consumer demand, the standardization of popular music is only the expression of this dual desideratum imposed upon it by the musical frame of mind of the public - that it be 'stimulatory' by deviating in some way from the established 'natural', and that it maintain the supremacy of the natural against such deviations. The attitude of the audiences toward the natural language is reinforced by standardized production, which institutionalizes desiderata which originally might have come from the public.
Pseudo-individualization
The paradox in the desiderata - stimulatory and natural - accounts for the dual character of standardization itself. Stylization of the ever identical framework is only one aspect of standardization. Concentration and control in our culture hide themselves in their very manifestation. Unhidden they would provoke resistance. Therefore the illusion and, to a certain extent, even the reality of individual achievement must be maintained. The maintenance of it is grounded in material reality itself, for while administrative control over life processes is concentrated, ownership is still diffuse.
In the sphere of luxury production, to which popular music belongs and in which no necessities of life are immediately involved, while, at the same time, the residues of
On Popular Music    79
Vidualism are most alive where in the form of ideological categories such as taste r'free choice, it is imperative to hide standardization. The 'backwardness' of ical mass production, the fact that it is still on a handicraft level and not literally ndustrial one, conforms perfectly to that necessity which is essential from the .point of cultural big business. If the individual handicraft elements of popular ic were abolished altogether, a synthetic means of hiding standardization would ■to be evolved. Its elements are even now in existence.
7;he necessary correlate of musical standardization is pseudo-individualization. By
do-individualization we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of
.choice or open market on the basis of standardization itself. Standardization of song
fkeeps the customers in line by doing their listening for them, as it were. Pseudo-
$ividualization, for its part, keeps them in line by making them forget that what they
tfeli to is already listened to for them, or 'pre-digested'.
«The most drastic example of standardization of presumably individualized features o be found in so-called improvisations. Even though jazz musicians still improvise .practice, their improvisations have become so 'normalized' as to enable a whole Tninology to be developed to express the standard devices of individualization: a ftiinology which in turn is ballyhooed by jazz publicity agents to foster the myth of i/neer artisanship and at the same time flatter the fans by apparently allowing them peep behind the curtain and get the inside story. This pseudo-individualization is escribed by the standardization of the framework. The latter is so rigid that the free-fthi it allows for any sort of improvisation is severely delimited. Improvisations -ssages where spontaneous action of individuals is permitted ('Swing it boys') - are onfined within the walls of the harmonic and metric scheme. In a great many cases, uch as the 'break' of pre-swing jazz, the musical function of the improvised detail is etermined completely by the scheme: the break can be nothing other than a disguised "■dence. Here, very few possibilities for actual improvisation remain, due to the neces-1ty-of merely melodically circumscribing the same underlying harmonic functions. Since '■"ese possibilities were very quickly exhausted, stereotyping of improvisatory details idily occurred. Thus, standardization of the norm enhances in a purely technical standardization of its own deviation - pseudo-individualization. '.This subservience of improvisation to standardization explains two main socio-sychological qualities of popular music. One is the fact that the detail remains openly -connected with the underlying scheme so that the listener always feels on safe ground, le choice in individual alterations is so small that the perpetual recurrence of the i'Sa'me variations is a reassuring signpost of the identical behind them. The other is the ^'function of 'substitution' — the improvisatory features forbid their being grasped as ,^. musical events in themselves. They can be received only as embellishments. It is a well-jl^'known fact that in daring jazz arrangements worried notes, dirty notes, in other words, false notes, play a conspicuous role. They are apperceived as exciting stimuli only because >they are corrected by the ear to the right note. This, however, is only an extreme instance of what happens less conspicuously in all individualization in popular music. Any harmonic boldness,  any chord which does not fall strictly within the simplest Harmonic scheme, demands being apperceived as 'false', that is, as a stimulus which
80    Theodor W. Adorno
carries with it the unambiguous prescription to substitute for it the right detail, or rathe the naked scheme. Understanding popular music means obeying such commands fo listening. Popular music commands its own listening habits.
There is another type of individualization claimed in terms of kinds of popular mus: and differences in name bands. The types of popular music are carefully differentiate in production. The listener is presumed to be able to choose between them. The mos widely recognized differentiations are those between swing and sweet and such nam bands as Benny Goodman and Guy Lombardo. The listener is quickly able to distin guish the types of music and even the performing band, this in spite of the fundamenta identity of the material and the great similarity of the presentations apart from thei emphasized distinguishing trademarks. This labelling technique, as regards type of musi and band, is pseudo-individualization, but of a sociological kind outside the realm o strict musical technology. It provides trademarks of identification for differentiatin between the actually undifferentiated.
Popular music becomes a muliple-choice questionnaire. There are two main type^ and their derivatives from which to choose. The listener is encouraged by the inexor able presence of these types psychologically to cross out what he dislikes and chec' what he likes. The limitation inherent in this choice and the clear-cut alternative it entail provoke like-dislike patterns of behavior. This mechanical dichotomy breaks dow; indifference; it is imperative to favor sweet or swing if one wishes to continue to listen to popular music.
Theory about the Listener
Popular Music and 'Leisure Time'
In order to understand why this whole type of music (i.e. popular music in general) maintains its hold on the masses, some considerations of a general kind may be appropriate.
The frame of mind to which popular music originally appealed, on which it feeds, and which it perpetually reinforces, is simultaneously one of distraction and inattention. Listeners are distracted from the demands of reality by entertainment which does not demand attention either.
The notion of distraction can be properly understood only within its social setting and not in self-subsistent terms of individual psychology. Distraction is bound to the present mode of production, to the rationalized and mechanized process of labor to which, directly or indirectly, masses are subject. This mode of production, which engenders fears and anxiety about unemployment, loss of income, war, has its 'nonproductive' correlate in entertainment; that is, relaxation which does not involve the effort of concentration at all. People want to have fun. A fully concentrated and conscious experience of art is possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in their spare time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously. The whole sphere of cheap commercial entertainment reflects this dual desire. It
On Popular Music    81
s relaxation because it is patterned and pre-digested. Its being patterned and
feested serves within the psychological household of the masses to spare them the
of that participation (even in listening or observation) without which there can
receptivity to art. On the other hand, the stimuli they provide permit an escape
the boredom of mechanized labor.
e promoters of commercialized entertainment exonerate themselves by refer-
o' the fact that they are giving the masses what they want. This is an ideology
;priate to commercial purposes: the less the mass discriminates, the greater the
bility of selling cultural commodities indiscriminately. Yet this ideology of vested
cannot be dismissed so easily. It is not possible completely to deny that mass
"iousness can be molded by the operative agencies only because the masses 'want
ruff.
why do they want this stuff? In our present society the masses themselves are ded by the same mode of production as the arti-craft material foisted upon them, customers of musical entertainment are themselves objects or, indeed, products same mechanisms which determine the production of popular music. Their time serves only to reproduce their working capacity. It is a means instead of an jt The power of the process of production extends over the time intervals which 'he surface appear to be 'free'. They want standardized goods and pseudo-vidualization, because their leisure is an escape from work and at the same time aided after those psychological attitudes to which their workaday world exclusively 'tuates them. Popular music is for the masses a perpetual busman's holiday, s, there is justification for speaking of a preestablished harmony today between duction and consumption of popular music. The people clamor for what they are ig to get anyhow.
"To escape boredom and avoid effort are incompatible - hence the reproduction of
'>ery attitude from which escape is sought. To be sure, the way in which they must
k on the assembly line, in the factory, or at office machines denies people any
slty. They seek novelty, but the strain and boredom associated with actual work
to avoidance of effort in that leisure time which offers the only chance for really
jv experience. As a substitute, they crave a stimulant. Popular music comes to offer it.
timulations are met with the inability to vest effort in the ever-identical. This means
edom again. It is a circle which makes escape impossible. The impossibility of escape
šes the widespread attitude of inattention toward popular music. The moment of
Dgnition is that of effortless sensation. The sudden attention attached to this
ment burns itself out instanter and relegates the listener to a realm of inattention
ľ distraction. On the one hand, the domain of production and plugging presupposes
traction and, on the other, produces it.
in this situation the industry faces an insoluble problem. It must arouse attention ^means of ever-new products, but this attention spells their doom. If no attention is en to the song, it cannot be sold; if attention is paid to it, there is always the pos-Jlity that people will no longer accept it, because they know it too well. This partly ounts for the constantly renewed effort to sweep the market with new products, to und them to their graves; then to repeat the infanticidal maneuver again and again.
82    Theodor W. Adorno
On the other hand, distraction is not only a presupposition but also a product of popular music. The tunes themselves lull the listener to inattention. They tell him not to worry, for he will not miss anything.3
The Social Cement
It is safe to assume that music listened to with a general inattention which is only inter-* rupted by sudden flashes of recognition is not followed as a sequence of experiences that have a clear-cut meaning of their own, grasped in each instant and related to all the precedent and subsequent moments. One may go so far as to suggest that mos' listeners of popular music do not understand music as a language in itself. If they did it would be vastly difficult to explain how they could tolerate the incessant supply o" largely undifferentiated material. What, then, does music mean to them? The answer is that the language that is music is transformed by objective processes into a languag which they think is their own - into a language which serves as a receptacle for thei institutionalized wants. The less music is a language sui generis to them, the more do it become established as such a receptacle. The autonomy of music is replaced b a mere socio-psychological function. Music today is largely a social cement. And th meaning listeners attribute to a material, the inherent logic of which is inaccessible tö them, is above all a means by which they achieve some psychical adjustment to th mechanisms of present-day life. This 'adjustment' materializes in two different ways corresponding to two major socio-psychological types of mass behavior toward musi in general and popular music in particular, the 'rhythmically obedient' type and th 'emotional' type.
Individuals of the rhythmically obedient type are mainly found among the youth the so-called radio generation. They are most susceptible to a process of masochisti adjustment to authoritarian collectivism. The type is not restricted to any one polit ical attitude. The adjustment to anthropophagous collectivism is found as often amon left-wing political groups as among right-wing groups. Indeed, both overlap: repre-sion and crowd-mindedness overtake the followers of both trends. The psychologi tend to meet despite the surface distinctions in political attitudes.
This comes to the fore in popular music which appears to be aloof from politica partisanship. It may be noted that a moderate leftist theater production such as Pi and Needles uses ordinary jazz as its musical medium, and that a Communist yout organization adapted the melody of 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' to its own lyric Those who ask for a song of social significance ask for it through a mediu which deprives it of social significance. The uses of inexorable popular musical medi is repressive per se. Such inconsistencies indicate that political conviction and socio psychological structure by no means coincide.
This obedient type is the rhythmical type, the word 'rhythmical' being used in i everyday sense. Any musical experience of this type is based upon the underlying, unaba ing time unit of the music - its 'beat'. To play rhythmically means, to these peopl to play in such a way that even if pseudo-individualizations — counter-accents an other 'differentiations' - occur, the relation to the ground meter is preserved. To b
On Popular Music    85
sical means to them to be capable of following given rhythmical patterns without
nff disturbed by 'individualizing' aberrations, and to fit even the syncopations into
basic time units. This is the way in which their response to music immediately
ŕesses their desire to obey. However, as the standardized meter of dance music and
^arching suggests the coordinated battalions of a mechanical collectivity, obedience
his rhythm by overcoming the responding individuals leads them to conceive of
selves as agglutinized with the untold millions of the meek who must be similarly
UGome. Thus do the obedient inherit the earth.
et if one looks at the serious compositions which correspond to this category of
listening, one finds one very characteristic feature: that of disillusion. All these
posers, among them Stravinsky and Hindemith, have expressed an 'antiromantic'
ng. They aimed at musical adaptation to reality — a reality understood by them in
is of the 'machine age'. The renunciation of dreaming by these composers is an
ex that listeners are ready to replace dreaming by adjustment to raw reality, that
' reap new pleasure from their acceptance of the unpleasant. They are disillusioned
4t any possibility of realizing their own dreams in the world in which they live, and
equently adapt themselves to this world. They take what is called a realistic atti-
■ and attempt to harvest consolation by identifying themselves with the external
1 forces which they think constitute the 'machine age'. Yet the very disillusion upon
Ji their coordination is based is there to mar their pleasure. The cult of the
■•ine which is represented by unabating jazz beats involves a self-renunciation
cannot but take root in the form of a fluctuating uneasiness somewhere in the
'nality of the obedient. For the machine is an end in itself only under given social
itions - where men are appendages of the machines on which they work. The
ration to machine music necessarily implies a renunciation of one's own human
and at the same time a fetishism of the machine such that its instrumental
cter becomes obscured thereby.
to the other, the 'emotional' type, there is some justification for linking it with a -jpf movie spectator. The kinship is with the poor shop girl who derives grati-'on by identification with Ginger Rogers, who, with her beautiful legs and unsullied cter, marries the boss. Wish fulfillment is considered the guiding principle in ocial psychology of moving pictures and similarly in the pleasure obtained from tonal, erotic music. This explanation, however, is only superficially appropriate, föllywood and Tin Pan Alley may be dream factories. But they do not merely categorical wish fulfillment for the girl behind the counter. She does not imme-identify herself with Ginger Rogers marrying. What does occur may be s^ed as follows: when the audience at a sentimental film or sentimental music become of the overwhelming possibility of happiness, they dare to confess to themselves the whole order of contemporary life ordinarily forbids them to admit, namely, j,ey actually have no part in happiness. What is supposed to be wish fulfillment ", the scant liberation that occurs with the realization that at last one need not neself the happiness of knowing that one is unhappy and that one could be happy, ücperience of the shop girl is related to that of the old woman who weeps at the "•g services of others, blissfully becoming aware of the wretchedness of her own
84    Theodor W. Adorno
life. Not even the most gullible individuals believe that eventually everyone will wi the sweepstakes. The actual function of sentimental music lies rather in the temporar release given to the awareness that one has missed fulfillment.
The emotional listener listens to everything in terms of late romanticism and of th musical commodities derived from it which are already fashioned to fit the needs o emotional listening. They consume music in order to be allowed to weep. They are take in by the musical expression of frustration rather than by that of happiness. The influ ence of the standard Slavic melancholy typified by Tchaikovsky and Dvořák is by fa 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 somethin But the actual content of this emotion can only be frustration. Emotional musi has become the image of the mother who says, 'Come and weep, my child.' It i catharsis for the masses, but catharsis which keeps them all the more firmly in linei One who weeps does not resist any more than one who marches. Music that permit-its listeners the confession of their unhappiness reconciles them, by means of thi 'release', to their social dependence.
Note§
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 lyric o" a popular number are constructed within a definite pattern or structural form, whereas the poem, or lyric, of a standard number has no structural confinements, and the music is free to interpret the 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 Write and Sell a Song Hit (New York, 1939), p. 2. The authors fail, however, to realize the external 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 the opposite of what we mean by a standardized popular song.
2.    See Max Horkheimer, Zeitschrift fúr Sozialforschung 8 (1939), p. 115.
3.    The attitude of distraction is not a completely universal one. Particularly youngsters who invest popular music with their own feelings are not yet completely blunted to all its effects. The whole problem of age levels with regard to popular music, however, is beyond the scope of the present study. Demographic problems, too, must remain out of consideration.
12
EGEMONY, INTELLECTUALS AND THE STATE
Antonio Gramsci
1 Hegemony
['he methodological criterion on which our own study must be based is the folding: that the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as 'dammars and as 'intellectual and moral leadership'. A social group dominates antagonistic
ps, which it tends to 'liquidate', or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it kindred and allied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise
ěrship' before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal Jiitions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it rcises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to 'lead' as
(pp. 57-8).
<[A] class is dominant in two ways, i.e. 'leading' and 'dominant'. It leads the classes ch are its allies, and dominates those which are its enemies. Therefore, even before íning power a class can (and must) 'lead'; when it is in power it becomes dominant, continues to 'lead' as well. . . there can and must be a 'political hegemony' even
fere the attainment of governmental power, and one should not count solely on power and material force which such a position gives in order to exercise political
äérship or hegemony (p. 57).
/The 'normal' exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliament-
- regime is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance
h other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent. Indeed,
attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent
the majority, expressed by the so-called organs of public opinion - newspapers
ü associations - which, therefore, in certain situations, are artificially multiplied
•80).
om Gramsci, A., 1971, Selections from Prison Notebooks (trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey bwell-Smith), London: Lawrence & Wishart.