What are Adornos key points about the difference between art music and commercial music?

In what
way are they supported or challenged by aspects of 1960s musical production? Choose a specific musical or 1
performance item to support your argument.

Adorno does not explicate the characteristic differences between art and popular music in On
the Fetish-character in Music beyond the ideological disjuncture. To find a detailed summary
of the specific characteristics of each musical set, Adornos On Popular Music is a good place
to start. Here, he claims that the fundamental difference between art music and commercial
music is the latters emphasis on standardization, and the formers consideration of the whole.
In other words, standardization aims at standard reactions, while in serious music, every
detail contains the whole. In many ways, Adorno suggests, it is the diversion of interest away
from the whole which characterises most commercial art, including film music as referenced by
Walter Benjamin.2 In On the fetish-character in music, Adorno argues that aspects of music
production appear to both challenge, and enable the regression of listening and brainwashing of
the masses. Advertisement in particular removes the freedom of choice from listening, creating a
culture of the imperative, whereby consumers feel that they identify with specific hit songs
and therefore must have it. Arguably, though, Adornos criticism of commercial music
specifically has little relevance beyond the context of 1940s California, given that parts of the
industry had become barely recognisable from that which he describes in these essays.
Nonetheless, we may consider some music from the decade and ask in what ways it reflects
Adornos hypotheses. To this ends, I will use George Harrisons Love you to as an example of
the explicit contradictions in Adornos characterisation of commercial music, some of which he
recognises in On the fetish-character, and others which are highlighted by this track from The
Beatles 1966 album, Revolver. It will be suggested that, when extricated from their contextual
inflammatory rhetoric, and refocussed somewhat, Adornos criticisms remain pertinent today.
Although Adorno does not move to specifics in On the fetish-character, we are clear
about the fundamental conceptual differences between art music and commercial music, in his
eyes. The sentiment is patently clear: art music is oppositional (i.e challenging) and important
music, while popular music is simply an escape for the infantile listener. If we are aware of
the direction Adorno is taking us down, then On Popular Music outlines more distinctly his
criteria for each type of music. Popular music, according to Adorno, is characterised by its

1
Theodor Adorno, On Popular Music, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science (New York: Institute of
Social Research, 1941, IX, 17-48).
2
Theodor Adorno, On the fetish-character in music and the regression of listening, 1938.
difference from serious music. There we have it, then. But what specifically differentiates the
two?
Standardization defines popular music, Adorno claims. A chorus of 32 bars and a range
of an octave are requirements for any hit song or piece of commercial music. The aim of this
standardization is standard reaction, which aid the dissemination of commercial music, to the
wishes of large-scale economic systems. Certainly, by the 1960s, some commercial music still
conformed to these rules, and these were indeed some of the most popular numbers of the
decade. The Everly Brothers All I Have to Do is Dream (1958), and The Beach Boys Surfer
Girl (1963) are two examples of adherence to this norm. Vanilla groups like The Everly
Brothers were the best-selling artists throughout the 1960s, a fact which might act as a defence
to Adornos claim that commercial music remained consistently standardized, however it is
difficult to claim that The Beatles later, less standardized work was not nonetheless part of a
commercial system.
In contrast to popular music, Adorno claims that serious music emphasises the whole.
In other words, Adorno has constructed an abstract criterion which the standardized forms of
commercial music can never fulfil. The detail, he claims contains the whole, and derives its
musical sense from the concrete totality, while in popular music, this relationship is
fortuitous. What exactly Adorno means by concrete totality is never made clear, but what is
certain is that he conceives of this in a contrasting way to the independent form of commercial
music which is unaffected by any single detail; in pop music, the structure is a fixed form, which
continues dogmatically along its course with no relevance to the surrounding material. The
problem with Adornos argument here is not that he is constructing a straw man, but rather that
he is focussing only on one specific type of popular music, a subset which is so narrow that he
does not allow for the heterogeneity of the industry. This is an argument which becomes
increasingly difficult to defend in the face of more relevant and contemporary work.
Nonetheless, the music which Adorno describes certainly exists, music where the composition
hears for the listener, requiring very little effort on the part of the audience. The apparent
passivity of the listener, enabled by the means of production in the commercial mass culture
industry, is a difficult pill to swallow.
Aspects of music production are also of concern to Adorno. In his 1938 essay, Adorno
claims that the production of popular music is highly centralized in economic organization,
and that advertising makes the distribution and imperitivization of hits easier, by giving them a
compulsory character. Adorno admits that the actually musical production of pop remained an
individualistic handicraft, but that economic concentration institutionalized the
standardization, meaning that innovations by rugged individualists [were] outlawed. In other
words, the artists themselves may have shown some individual character and prerogative, but this
is crushed by the will of the culture industry. This reference to production underlines a key
difference between art and commercial music: there is freedom in the reception, production and
composition of art music, but popular music removes this freedom through introducing
purposiveness. This purposiveness references Kant and Schillers definitions of the
autonomous work, whereby purposiveness necessitates a lack of autonomy. However, Peter
Brger defines autonomous, non-purposive music as bourgeois, as opposed to avant-garde,
while Adorno sees art music as simultaneously autonomous, anti-bourgeois and avant-garde.
Nonetheless, Adorno is essentially in agreement with both Kant and Schiller in arguing that art
music is the model for helping a fractured society reintegrate, not popular music.
How might the means of production in the 1960s challenge Adornos hypotheses? In an
immediate sense, smaller, independent record labels such as Chess and Aladdin gained traction
in the late 1950s and early 1960s, challenging the hegemony of Columbia and Capitol. This
allowed unsigned and less privileged artists to record and easily disseminate their work. These
labels gave the public the music which they couldnt access through large corporations -
although Adorno claims that these members of the public made up the radio ham listeners, who
purported to seek out independent artists but were in fact stumbling upon music which the
industry wanted them to find. A modern parallel might be Spotifys new Discover widget.
Accordingly, many of these smaller labels found the market saturated and even when they did
find success with an artist, were often absorbed into larger, established labels, such as Imperial
Records merger with Liberty and EMI. This seems to support Adornos notion of rugged
independents having their freedoms stamped-out by the large-scale economic organizations and
their corporate imperatives.
I do not disagree with Adornos argument that much popular music was, at the time,
standardized, formulaic, and its production aimed at the most profitable, standard reaction.
But what relevance does this have to the majority of popular music in the 1960s? George
Harrisons Love You To from The Beatles 1966 Revolver is an example of a commercial work
which challenges as much of Adornos claims as it does confirm them. Revolver contained a
number of Top 10 tracks, so it is impossible to argue that The Beatles 1966 album is an
exception to the rule. The lyrics extol the sort of philosophical, anti-western greed values which
Adorno might himself adhere to, and certainly do not conform to the standardized and infantile
vocabulary of the commercial music about which he laments. Neither is the musical vocabulary
standardized. There is an unmeasured 35 second introduction, before the tempo is properly
established, and corresponds not to any standardized Western framework, but instead to the
Indian alap. In an alap, it is the musicians role to imaginatively recreate the mood and
atmosphere of the upcoming rag, climbing to a psychological climax in melody, pitch and
rhythm. The lamented 32 bar standard of Adornos nightmares seems far away.
Adorno also claims that popular music makes use of unimaginative and standardized
harmonic progressions. The unconventional opening section, with its unusual tone colour of
volume-pedal-controlled distorted guitar fuzz, centers around bVII. As the song evolves, bVII
is shown to be the neighbour to I, and as this is the only significant harmonic change in entire
piece, any sense of conventional harmonic motion is precluded by this, and by the
Indian-inspired intoning.
The increased opportunities afforded by the advent of new technologies and more ready
access to sophisticated techniques means that Adornos comments regarding the commercial
music of his age are less relevant to music of the 1960s. As I have observed, music of a similar ilk
persisted, through artists such as The Everly Brothers and Engelbert Humperdinck, however
The Beatles, among others, took advantage of the new technology. Multiple channels are
utilised to different ends: in the unmeasured opening section, a number of Indian musicians are
heard through the center channel, Harrisons open fifths are heard to the right, and the
distorted, bVII chords to the left. If Adornos criticism of popular music is that the
compositions hear for the listener, then Love You To is certainly an opposition to this point.
Likewise, Adorno objects to the incessant beat in popular music, a parallel to the
imperativization imbued by the commercial industry, and the opening section to Love You
To starkly contrasts this assessment.
If George Harrison in recording Love You To is Adornos rugged independent
thinker, quashed by the commercial industry, then there are certainly ways in which his example
fulfil the philosophers requirements. The radio ham listener described by Adorno as a
self-consciously intrepid listener, seeking out the best, newest or most different musics on the
radio - whom I imagine to be somewhat like a modern hipster - might have been receptive to
Revolver and its hip references to Indian culture. Just as Adorno describes, the industry are in
fact willing this listener to discover the music they want; in this case, EMI records benefit from
the apparent individuality of Love You To. In the end, the big industry label always wins.
Furthermore, Adorno voices distaste for the avid fan, or self-proclaimed expert, dedicated to
one particular type of music or artist, who helps fuel the advertisement business creation of an
imperative culture. When these listeners identify with the music, Adorno claims, this is a state
of false consciousness, and again the industry benefits. This is certainly difficult to dispute.
And so we arrive at the conclusion that George Harrisons Love You To might not in
fact be any exception to Adornos rule. While The Beatles Revolver defies categorization with
the popular music of the 1930-40s which Adorno admonishes, it nonetheless exists within a
society with the same capitalist economic model, where the same imperatives take precedent and
corporate interests succeed. However, we must not hesitate to separate Adornos basic principles
from their rhetorical context, and indeed from their historical contexts, as comments about the
specific characteristics of commercial music are increasingly irrelevant. Similarly, his claim that
the guitar is an infantile instrument for those who cannot read music is laughable when
considering the oeuvre of virtuoso such as Hendrix and Clapton. If it is possible to extricate the
fundamentals from this context, then Adornos observations regarding the contradictions and
eventual impossibility of individuality in commercial music remain pertinent to this day.

Bibliography

Adorno, T., On Popular Music, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science (New York: Institute of Social
Research, 1941, IX, 17-48)

Adorno, T., On the fetish-character in music and the regression of listening, 1938

Everett, W., The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver Through The Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999)