Adorno's Praxis of individuation Through Music Listening

Resumo

Theodor W. Adorno's Anweisungen zum Hören neuer Musik (Guidelines for Listening to Modern Music) contain instructions not only for how to listen but also for how to have experience in general. The psycological, perceptual, and cognitive structures involved are existential structures, i.e. guidelines as to how to be as a modernist or post-modern self. Since listening involves abandoning oneself to the immanent logic of musical works, it is these works that provide the model for how to be. Adorno's work also shows, in contradistinction to some views of Adorno, his commitment to the unity of theory and practice and demonstrates that his musical writing is a completely independent and novel strand of critical theory because of is attempt to articulate the ineffable. However, Adorno's explicit theory of listening ("structural listening") is itself inadequate to Adorno's implicit theory of listening as contained in the practice of his actual musical writings.