Critical theory of music revisited: remarks on Theodor W. Adorno’s Introduction to the sociology of music

Abstract

The article proposes revisiting certain fundamental problems of Adorno's critical theory of music from the perspective of one of his late works scarcely discussed in the secondary literature: the Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1968). We argue that the book provides a privileged retrospective view of Adorno's musical writings, allowing for the reconsideration of theoretical categories developed in the 1930s and 1940s, related both to the diagnosis of popular music within the culture industry and to the critical potential of avant-garde music and its limits. As we try to claim, such reconsideration allows us to move away from interpretations that attribute to Adorno's theory a prescriptive and rigid character, evidencing instead that his critical theory of music consists primarily in the question of the concrete social conditions of a non-reified and non-regulated relation to music.