Final Blog Post: What Music Adorno Would Like

NEW POST:

Nature considered as music would manage to avoid the temporal problem that avant-garde has with satisfying Adorno; that avant-garde is only fresh and exciting for the instant it is released and a short while afterwards. Moreover, nature considered as music could potentially battle against reinforcing comfort. Because Adorno despises music that places humanity in a state of regressive listening, I argue that he would enjoy simply listening to the sounds of nature in sequences, which are dependent on a myriad of unpredictable factors like weather and positioning, cannot ever be repeated. It would be as if nature is playing a new song to Adorno every time he tuned into listen.

While I still agree that Adorno would enjoy the sounds of nature as music, I also have to question whether or not Adorno would consider nature as music. Nature does not contain distinct patterned structures and bridges like most popular songs, and it does not understand which certain melodies, chords or sequences of notes generally appease popular crowds.

Regardless, I still believe that Adorno would love to listen to the sounds of nature because of the fact that there is absolutely no willed intention behind the sounds that nature “plays”. Adorno despises jazz in particular because of the fact that jazz is deceptive, or at least it attempts to be. His critique of jazz stems from the fact that jazz depicts itself as supposedly improvised, although he believes that any type of performance can be purely improvised. With nature, there is no pre-determined artistic approach that allows for deception. Nature is nature so nature’s sounds are nothing more than nature’s sounds.

OLD POST:

One of the reasons that Adorno dislikes jazz music is because jazz music, regardless of its improvisation, is always formulaic. If we consider the the ordinary sounds happening around us as music, then perhaps music of daily life, as a process, could be considered music that remains outside Adorno's critique. The class silence that makes Professor Naddaff feel uncomfortable and the sounds of papers being passed around in class are not subject to a formulated pattern that appeals to emotion. We do not ask or desire for the natural sounds/music that occurs around us. These sounds/music come in different patterns that make us feel uncomfortable because no pattern is ever predictable and act as a force that helps us realize how to be. Moreover, music as a natural process is similar to air. Both are distributed freely and are not able to be packaged, sold and perpetuated onto others--they are nature itself.