Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:27:00.484Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The jazz essays of Theodor Adorno: some thoughts on jazz reception in Weimar Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Theodor Adorno's writings on jazz remain at best a puzzle, and to many an acute embarrassment. To jazz historians they merely contain ‘some of the stupidest pages ever written about jazz’ (Hobsbawm 1993, p. 300) and are generally dismissed without further comment. Adorno scholars, on the other hand, are unlikely to see in them anything more than preliminary steps to his later and more substantial studies in the sociology of music, or – in the words of Martin Jay (1984, p. 132) – a ‘gloss on The Authoritarian Personality’. Nor are matters helped by Adorno's own attitude. In the preface to volume 17 of his Gesammelte Schriften he clearly distances himself from his early jazz writings, referring to his ignorance of the specifically American features of jazz, his dependence on the German-Hungarian pedagogue Mátyás Seiber in matters of jazz technique, and his willingness to draw hasty psycho-sociological conclusions without clear knowledge of the institutions of the commercial music industry. If these essays are belittled by their own author, why should we bother to study them at all?

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, Theodor. 1933. ‘Abschied vom Jazz’, Europäische Revue, 9, pp. 313–16. Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, XVIII (1984), pp. 795–9Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1937a. 'Über Jazz. [pseud. Hektor Rottweiler], Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 5. Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, XVII (1982), pp. 70100Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1937b. ‘Oxforder Nachträge’ [1937], Gesammelte Schriften, XVII (1982), pp. 100–8Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1941. Reviews of American Jazz Music by Wilder Hobson [1939] and Jazz: Hot and Hybrid by Winthrop Sergeant [1938] in Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 9, pp. 167–78. German original in Gesammelte Schriften, XIX (1984), pp. 382–99Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1946. ‘Jazz’ [1942], in Encyclopedia of the Arts, ed. Runes, D. and Shrikel, H. (New York), pp. 511–13. Original German in Gesammelte Schriften, XVIII (1984), pp. 70–3Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1953a. ‘Zeitlose Mode’, Merkur (06 1953). Reprinted in Prismen and Gesammelte Schriften, X/1 (1977), pp. 123–37Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1953b. ‘Für und wider den Jazz’, Merkur (09 1953). Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, X/2 (1977), pp. 805–9Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1962. Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (Frankfurt). English trans. by Ashton, E. B. (1988)Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. 1982 ‘Vorrede’, Gesammelte Schriften, XVII (Frankfurt)Google Scholar
Baresel, Alfred. 1925. Das Jazz-Buch, (Leipzig)Google Scholar
Baresel, Alfred. 1929. Das Neue Jazz-Buch (Liepzig)Google Scholar
Baresel, Alfred. c.1930. 77 Klavier-Breaks (Leipzig)Google Scholar
Barnouw, Dagmar. 1976. “Beute der Pragmatisierung”: Adornos ästhetische Theorie in der Retrospektive', in Die USA und Deutschland: Wechselseitige Spiegelungen in der Literatur der Gegenwart, ed. Paulsen, W. (Berlin)Google Scholar
Bernhard, Paul. 1927. Jazz: Eine musikalische Zeitfrage (Munich)Google Scholar
Drew, David. 1987. Kurt Weill: A Handbook, (Los Angeles and Berkeley)Google Scholar
Ernst, Henry. 1926. 'Meine Jagd nach der “Tschetzpend”, Der Artist, no. 2134, pp. 45Google Scholar
Evans, O. A. 1928a. 99 Breaks für Alt-Saxophon, (Leipzig)Google Scholar
Evans, O. A. 1928b. 99 Breaks für Trompete (Leipzig)Google Scholar
Grosz, George. 1955. Ein kleines Ja und ein grosses Nein (Hamburg)Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1993. The Jazz Scene (New York)Google Scholar
Höchstötter, Ernst. 1987. ‘Als der Jatz nach München kam…’, Fox auf 78, ed. Krüger, Klaus (Autumn 1987), pp. 54–7Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Bernd. 1987. ‘Jazz im Radio der frühen Jahre’, in Rock/Pop/Jazz: Vom Amateru zum Profi, ed. Rösner, H. (Hamburg), pp. 4359Google Scholar
Jay, Martin. 1984. Adorno (Cambridge, Massachusetts)Google Scholar
Kracauer, Siegried. 1930. Die Angestellten: Aus dem neuesten Deutschland (Frankfurt)Google Scholar
Mehring, Walter. 1919. ‘Grotesksong’ [1919], Die Weltbühne, 17/13 (1921), p. 364Google Scholar
Pollack, Heinz. 1922. Die Revolution des Gesellschaftstanzes (Dresden)Google Scholar
Polster, Bernd (ed.). 1989. ‘Swing Heil’: Jazz im National-sozialismus (Berlin)Google Scholar
Ritzel, Fred. 1987. ‘“Hätte der Kaiser Jazz getanzt …”: US-Tanzmusik in Deutschland vor und nach dem ersten Weltkrieg’, in Ich will aber gerade vom Leben singen …: Über populäre Musik vom ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert bis zum Ende der Weimarer Republik, ed. Schutte, S. (Reinbek)Google Scholar
Robinson, J. Bradford. 1994. ‘Jazz Reception in Weimar Germany: In Search of a Shimmy Figure’, in Music and Performance in Weimar Germany, ed. Gilliam, Bryan (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Schulz-Köhn, Dietrich. 1940. Die Schallplatte auf dem Weltmarkt (Berlin)Google Scholar
Seiber, Mátyás. 1929. Schule für Jazz-Schlagzeug (Mainz)Google Scholar
Seiber, Mátyás. 1931. ‘Welche Rolle spielt die Synkope in der modernen Jazzmusik?’, Musik-Echo, 2/3, p. 14Google Scholar
Seiber, Mátyás. 1945. ‘Rhythmic freedom in jazz? A study of jazz rhythms’, Music Review, 6, pp. 3041, 8994, 160–71Google Scholar
Strobel, Heinrich and Warschauer, Frank. 1930. ‘Interessante Jazzschallplatten’, Melos, p. 482Google Scholar
Weill, Kurt. 1926. ‘Tanzmusik’, Der deutsche Rundfunk, 4/11, pp. 732–3Google Scholar
Wulf, Joseph. 1983. Musik im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin)Google Scholar