Adorno on Schoenberg and Rachmaninov
example · Adorno / Schoenberg ·
retold in 3 talks
Adorno argues that after Schoenberg's atonal revolution, traditional tonal music (like Rachmaninov's) loses its innocence and becomes 'kitsch' or a negation of itself, mediated by the new break.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 2
“This new tonal music has lost its innocence. It is already mediated by the atonal break and thus functions already as its negation.”
“Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony is nonetheless not total shit... Fourth Symphony go to the third movement and it’s I think even better than Adagietto of Mahler.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
historical experience at its zero level
×1
illusory return to the origins
×1
romanticism proper
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
John McTaggart2Sergei Rachmaninoff2Gérard Lebrun3Robert Schumann2Napoleon III1John Malkovich1opera: Parsifal1film: They Live1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Adorno argues that after Schoenberg's atonal revolution, traditional tonal music (like Rachmaninov's) loses its innocence and becomes 'kitsch' or a negation of itself, mediated by the new break., illustrating historical experience at its zero level,illusory return to the origins
Adorno attacks Sibelius and Tchaikovsky as 'bad guys,' but Žižek argues Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony captures the 'painful struggle for melody' better than Mahler’s Adagietto, validating the romantic struggle., illustrating romanticism proper
Slavoj Žižek - Hegel at Middlesex (2010) [Remaster]2010 · 1:09:44
Adorno's claim that after Schönberg, writing old tonal music is kitsch (like Rachmaninoff); Žižek applies this to Hegelians: playing Hegel after the break is a 'fake' or kitsch., illustrating post-Hegelian break,kitsch