The Language-Character of Music: Some Motifs in Adorno

Abstract

Questions concerning Western art music's relation to language can be seen to arise directly from the most fundamental paradox of so-called ‘autonomous’ or ‘absolute’ musical works: that they seem to say something, the precise meaning of which remains concealed. It is the aim of this article to explore the ‘linguisticality’ of autonomous music – its similarity to, and yet difference from, language – through a close reading of certain motifs in the work of T. W. Adorno. Crudely stated, Adorno identifies the fundamental polarity underlying autonomous music's ‘language-character’ ( Sprachcharakter ) as that between the internal relations of the hermetically sealed musical work and the external social relations of music's production, reproduction, distribution and consumption. It is the tension between these extremes which generates music's dynamic context or ‘complex of meaning’ ( Sinnzusammenhang ). Implicit in the approach taken here, therefore, is the argument that linguistic (or indeed any other) theories applied to music make sense only in the context of a larger cultural theory.