# "The Aesthetics of Popular Music"-Adorno



## Bledjan Stufi (Oct 26, 2010)

"The Aesthetics of Popular Music
Popular music is widely assumed to be different in kind from the serious music or art music that, until very recently, monopolized attention in philosophical discussions of music. In recent years, however, popular music has become an important topic for philosophers pursuing either of two projects. First, popular music receives attention from philosophers who see it as a test case for prevailing philosophies of music. Even now, most philosophy of music concentrates on the European classical repertoire. Therefore, if there are important differences between popular and art music, widening the discussion to include popular music might encourage us to reconsider the nature of music. Second, popular music increasingly serves as a focal point in general debates about art and aesthetic value. A growing number of philosophers regard popular music as a vital and aesthetically rich field that has been marginalized by traditional aesthetics. They argue that popular music presents important counterexamples to entrenched doctrines in the philosophy of art. Similar issues arise for the aesthetics of jazz, but the special topic of jazz is beyond the scope of this article."

The "popular classical style" is in progress.But where's the real way in the history about this?
Are we musicians, composers, musicologists or audiences in a concert hall?


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

With classical music being essentially brain food and popular music standing basically for junk food, I wonder what the metaphor for the “popular classical style” would be, “cheap brain food substitute”? Still, given the choice, I think I would much rather go for the authentic junk food: at least it can satisfy some of my stubborn, if not very healthy, taste buds urges without making a pretentious fool out of me.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I prefer to think of popular music as musical fast food and classical as slow food from a deluxe gourmet restaurant. My attitude has always been why eat at McDonalds when you can dine in style at a fabulous gourmet restaurant? Please don't misconstrue this as snobbism.


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## PicklePepperPiper (Aug 3, 2010)

superhorn said:


> My attitude has always been why eat at McDonalds when you can dine in style at a fabulous gourmet restaurant? Please don't misconstrue this as snobbism.


Give me a gormet meal for $1.95 and I'll gladly abandon my Macca-ish tendencies! I do like this analogy though - popular music is quite definitely junk in my books.

-PPP


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

That is fine (dining)  but I think the focal point of the OP, the so called “popular classical style”, is still being missed. (Whatever animal it is: some of that new age music, some of that crossover genre, or something else entirely?) But it was over the aforementioned genres that I stated my preference for pop music (that I don’t really listen to either), just to make it clear. Not unlike junk food, pop is unpretentious, everywhere, and sometimes you just can’t help. Can be quite authentic as well. But, most importantly, it’s not that godawful imitation farm-raised salmon! Mmm, salmon…


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Bledjan Stufi said:


> "The Aesthetics of Popular Music
> Popular music is widely assumed to be different in kind from the serious music or art music that, until very recently, monopolized attention in philosophical discussions of music. In recent years, however, popular music has become an important topic for philosophers pursuing either of two projects. First, popular music receives attention from philosophers who see it as a test case for prevailing philosophies of music. Even now, most philosophy of music concentrates on the European classical repertoire. Therefore, if there are important differences between popular and art music, widening the discussion to include popular music might encourage us to reconsider the nature of music. Second, popular music increasingly serves as a focal point in general debates about art and aesthetic value. A growing number of philosophers regard popular music as a vital and aesthetically rich field that has been marginalized by traditional aesthetics. They argue that popular music presents important counterexamples to entrenched doctrines in the philosophy of art. Similar issues arise for the aesthetics of jazz, but the special topic of jazz is beyond the scope of this article."
> 
> The "popular classical style" is in progress. But where's the real way in the history about this?
> Are we musicians, composers, musicologists or audiences in a concert hall?


I think you are almost completely off the mark in your basic premise - popular music is perhaps of interest to philosophers because of its sociopolitical VERBAL content. I suppose your emphasis is, after all, on the text 'floated' on the vehicle of music.

There is much alternative pop music which is absolute, no sung text, which is 'all about music,' and that does get accordingly appraised as 'music' alone.

The simpler of pop music, however, is a mere vehicle for delivering the text. The music, no matter how 'creative' is in the way if one begins to listen to it more than pay attention to the text. That is the most fundamental 'aesthetic' of the most popular of pop music.

There is nothing at ALL new about the necessary simple immediacy of the musical material in the most-consumed of pop music - it is as incidental as cabaret music, which is also there as an innocuous vehicle for text, not made as music to be listened to for its own meaning without the text.

If there is any 'argument' at all, there is more of an argument for the similarity of good alternative pop music with no text to 'absolute' classical music - the aesthetics being very near the same.

If you want to politicize the notion of performing tradition, formality of presentation, venue, etc. just go to that God-awful and terribly dated book "Musiking," which is a reaction to the 1950's (as manifest up through the late 1970's.) I hear it is lately 'quite the thing' in many a music grad school. I suppose it has value for college music students who have never given a thought at all about for whom they are playing and where: i.e. if you have not visited the thought then it may not seem dated, but the book, and its premise is dated in actuality, and severely.

But, as some regular member has as their favorite quote -- and I think it extremely important you take the maxim to heart before you waste your brain on this further, at least without much revising your premise --
"Music is not philosophy."


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## sah (Feb 28, 2012)

> Theodor Adorno offers an influential, philosophically sophisticated account of the nature of twentieth-century popular music. He is the single best source for the view that popular music is simplistic, repetitive, and boring, and that it remains this way because commercial forces manipulate it in order to placate and manipulate the masses who passively respond to it.


http://www.iep.utm.edu/music-po/#H2


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

"Theodor Adorno offers an influential, philosophically sophisticated account of the nature of twentieth-century popular music. He is the single best source for the view that popular music is simplistic, repetitive, and boring, and that it remains this way because commercial forces manipulate it in order to placate and manipulate the masses who passively respond to it."

It is my carefully considered opinion that Adorno was an *******.

[the asterisks are not mine]


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