Adorno’s Ideas on Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism Meet the Pianist’s Work : Reflecting Playing Experience with Adorno’s Key Concepts

Abstract

Theodor W. Adorno’s ideas on jazz and Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassicism (1936; 1949; 1963) are notorious for their strident criticism, pathologizing metaphors and prejudicial language. What has been overlooked, however, is the value of Adorno’s ideas from the music performer’s perspective, his cultural background and the genre of post-war French neoclassicism. In this article, I discuss Adorno’s commentaries side-by-side with my own observations as a pianist. For this purpose, I use two methods: conceptual analysis and embodied intertextuality, in which research premises are based not on the notated score but primarily on analyzing and re-conceptualizing the playing experience. Despite the embodied aspect, praxis in this context is not treated as an object but as a tool for conducting research. Characteristic of Adorno in Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949) is his distinctive conceptual thinking. The latter main chapter of the work, “Stravinsky and restauration” proceeds through thematic subheadings, each representing different aspects of Stravinsky’s intentions, aesthetics and psychology. My article follows a similar conceptual-based procedure with the exception that I reflect on my playing experiences through the lens of Adorno’s key concepts in such neoclassical works as Piano-Rag-Music (1919). Finally, Adorno’s critical ideas on Stravinsky’s neoclassicism and its main manifestation, hybrid intertextuality, encounter the pianist’s playing experience on a conceptual level. The most significant difference between Adorno’s and the performer’s view is condensed in Adorno’s interpretation of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism as alienated from its own material. For the performer, Stravinsky’s neoclassicism represents a historically rich intertextual network in which the previous and contemporary styles perform side by side.