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For his cultural goals he wasn't wrong. His aim wasn't to just give more people access to classical music with whatever means (a la "worse is better"), but to

For his cultural goals he wasn't wrong. His aim wasn't to just give more people access to classical music with whatever means (a la "worse is better"), but to give more people the appreciation of classical music that refined educated listeners had. To treat them as capable for that, as opposed to needing "dumbing down". Part of that was maintaining the primacy of music over unrelated attached things, like the televised image. Given how songs could be made hits because of their video in the MTV era, this was still prescient for popular too.

vikramkr 2y ago
Given songs could be made hits because of their videos - that's arguably the opposite of prescient, because it turned out that the televised image was not actually unrelated but in fact a new core integral aspect of a new art form, the music video!
- ds_opseeker 2y ago
  which killed the ...
- coldtea 2y ago
  >because it turned out that the televised image was not actually unrelated but in fact a new core integral aspect of a new art form, the music video! Or rather a parasite on the music, which killed the music for cool shots, "I'm badass" poses, and girls in bikinis.
  - vikramkr 2y ago
    that's art too, and a pretty narrow selection of it. Music videos are awesome. Pretty good short video essay type deal that I think captures some of the highlights of what makes them tick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FdMkgxOPlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FdMkgxOPlo I think you'll find that simply pointing to how TV enabled a whole bunch of new music videos that are fun and speak to a popular demand while ignoring the explosion of other music videos that push the boundaries of the art isn't actually that compelling an argument that new forms of art are bad. Music went from a luxury to something that soundtracks everyday people's everyday lives - there's more of everything and that's awesome.
  - otterley 2y ago
    It also spawned groundbreaking artistic and creative videos such as those for “Take on Me” and “Money for Nothing,” so it wasn’t all dreck. Those videos are probably more widely and fondly remembered today than all the hair-band ones are.
LiquidSky 2y ago
Except in the opening question Adorno also dismisses radio music. This is just snobbish idiocy. Clearly the only REAL way to experience music is in your private box at a grand symphony hall dressed in full evening wear.
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  >clearly You are being disingenuous and setting up a false dichotomy
  - cheema33 2y ago
    > You are being disingenuous and setting up a false dichotomy Or he is taking the argument to an extreme to highlight the absurdity of its trajectory.
    - Almondsetat 2y ago
      It's not its extreme
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Clearly the only REAL way to experience music is in your private box at a grand symphony hall dressed in full evening wear. Clearly is closer to the connection with the moment and the expression than in canned form.
rpdillon 2y ago
> This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. I've never been a fan of the word 'problematic' because it says so little about what the problem actually is. Regardless, he seems to have disdain for the tastes of the public, which doesn't quite jibe with the idea that he's treating the public as capable of appreciating music without it being dumbed down. I see a lot of defense of his arguments in this discussion, and I don't have much to add, other than to say I really don't understand it at all. I think it's really just a blind spot in how I think about art, but asserting that a televised performance of an orchestra playing some classical music is 'pointless' doesn't make sense to me.
- cafard 2y ago
  A quibble: A 1983 Webster's Collegiate gives the definition of problematic as "1: a. difficult to settle or decide b. not definite or settled c. open to question or debate 2: expressing or supporting a possibility". (Bold type, proffered synonyms, and examples omitted.) The sense of "problematic" as in "you've got a problem" developed after 1968, perhaps after 1990.
  - rpdillon 2y ago
    I had no idea, thanks for pointing this out! I'm mostly frustrated with the modern usage, usually when used in reference to someone or some entity's behavior. Every time I hear it I want to understand what exactly the issue is. So if I go back and reread the quote that I had posted, is the critique that the public's tastes are not fixed, and change across geography and time? I'm still not sure what he was really getting at, I guess.
    - d1sxeyes 2y ago
      > This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. This sentence scores as 'extremely difficult' or 'difficult' on most readability scores, and it's just unnecessarily flowery. Basically, I think the point is that the idea of the 'taste of the public' is just a shorthand for 'something that appeals to lots of people with differing tastes'. The author's key point (I think) is that 'engineering' music somehow makes it less artistic, and the 'problematic taste of the public' is a tangent which explores why sound engineers do what they do, rather than being part of the main argument.
bee_rider 2y ago
They really didn’t know what they were doing back then. Art so obtuse you ned to be educated on how to enjoy it. Modern stuff is much better, you don’t even need so much as an instruction manual. We’ve come quite far really. I think the problem is that they didn’t produce enough culture. So, they had to stretch each bit out by pretending the process of sitting around and trying to figure out how to enjoy it was in and of itself enjoyable.
- coldtea 2y ago
  Why, Taylor Swift and Nicky Minaj which you don't need any education to enjoy, is so much better than Mahler or even Bach.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    I sort of assume any classical musician I’ve ever heard of would be regarded by somebody like Adorno as popular tripe. I dunno. I don’t like either of those artists, Swift or Minaj, but I’m sure they’ve brought a lot of joy into people’s lives. By what metric can we call them not good? Happiness provided? They score quite well. Some kind of complexity? Sure, not great… but if we pick that metric the high scores list will presumably be dominated by nonsense jazz inspired electronics artists with super fast drum machines, or something like that.

vikramkr 2y ago

Given songs could be made hits because of their videos - that's arguably the opposite of prescient, because it turned out that the televised image was not actually unrelated but in fact a new core integral aspect of a new art form, the music video!

ds_opseeker 2y ago
which killed the ...
coldtea 2y ago
>because it turned out that the televised image was not actually unrelated but in fact a new core integral aspect of a new art form, the music video! Or rather a parasite on the music, which killed the music for cool shots, "I'm badass" poses, and girls in bikinis.
- vikramkr 2y ago
  that's art too, and a pretty narrow selection of it. Music videos are awesome. Pretty good short video essay type deal that I think captures some of the highlights of what makes them tick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FdMkgxOPlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FdMkgxOPlo I think you'll find that simply pointing to how TV enabled a whole bunch of new music videos that are fun and speak to a popular demand while ignoring the explosion of other music videos that push the boundaries of the art isn't actually that compelling an argument that new forms of art are bad. Music went from a luxury to something that soundtracks everyday people's everyday lives - there's more of everything and that's awesome.
- otterley 2y ago
  It also spawned groundbreaking artistic and creative videos such as those for “Take on Me” and “Money for Nothing,” so it wasn’t all dreck. Those videos are probably more widely and fondly remembered today than all the hair-band ones are.

LiquidSky 2y ago

Except in the opening question Adorno also dismisses radio music. This is just snobbish idiocy. Clearly the only REAL way to experience music is in your private box at a grand symphony hall dressed in full evening wear.

Almondsetat 2y ago
>clearly You are being disingenuous and setting up a false dichotomy
- cheema33 2y ago
  > You are being disingenuous and setting up a false dichotomy Or he is taking the argument to an extreme to highlight the absurdity of its trajectory.
  - Almondsetat 2y ago
    It's not its extreme
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
coldtea 2y ago
>Clearly the only REAL way to experience music is in your private box at a grand symphony hall dressed in full evening wear. Clearly is closer to the connection with the moment and the expression than in canned form.

rpdillon 2y ago

> This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. I've never been a fan of the word 'problematic' because it says so little about what the problem actually is. Regardless, he seems to have disdain for the tastes of the public, which doesn't quite jibe with the idea that he's treating the public as capable of appreciating music without it being dumbed down. I see a lot of defense of his arguments in this discussion, and I don't have much to add, other than to say I really don't understand it at all. I think it's really just a blind spot in how I think about art, but asserting that a televised performance of an orchestra playing some classical music is 'pointless' doesn't make sense to me.

cafard 2y ago
A quibble: A 1983 Webster's Collegiate gives the definition of problematic as "1: a. difficult to settle or decide b. not definite or settled c. open to question or debate 2: expressing or supporting a possibility". (Bold type, proffered synonyms, and examples omitted.) The sense of "problematic" as in "you've got a problem" developed after 1968, perhaps after 1990.
- rpdillon 2y ago
  I had no idea, thanks for pointing this out! I'm mostly frustrated with the modern usage, usually when used in reference to someone or some entity's behavior. Every time I hear it I want to understand what exactly the issue is. So if I go back and reread the quote that I had posted, is the critique that the public's tastes are not fixed, and change across geography and time? I'm still not sure what he was really getting at, I guess.
  - d1sxeyes 2y ago
    > This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. This sentence scores as 'extremely difficult' or 'difficult' on most readability scores, and it's just unnecessarily flowery. Basically, I think the point is that the idea of the 'taste of the public' is just a shorthand for 'something that appeals to lots of people with differing tastes'. The author's key point (I think) is that 'engineering' music somehow makes it less artistic, and the 'problematic taste of the public' is a tangent which explores why sound engineers do what they do, rather than being part of the main argument.

bee_rider 2y ago

They really didn’t know what they were doing back then. Art so obtuse you ned to be educated on how to enjoy it. Modern stuff is much better, you don’t even need so much as an instruction manual. We’ve come quite far really. I think the problem is that they didn’t produce enough culture. So, they had to stretch each bit out by pretending the process of sitting around and trying to figure out how to enjoy it was in and of itself enjoyable.

coldtea 2y ago
Why, Taylor Swift and Nicky Minaj which you don't need any education to enjoy, is so much better than Mahler or even Bach.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I sort of assume any classical musician I’ve ever heard of would be regarded by somebody like Adorno as popular tripe. I dunno. I don’t like either of those artists, Swift or Minaj, but I’m sure they’ve brought a lot of joy into people’s lives. By what metric can we call them not good? Happiness provided? They score quite well. Some kind of complexity? Sure, not great… but if we pick that metric the high scores list will presumably be dominated by nonsense jazz inspired electronics artists with super fast drum machines, or something like that.