The Form of the Phonograph Record

Author(s): Theodor W. Adorno and Thomas Y. Levin

Source: October, Vol. 55 (Winter, 1990), pp. 56-61
Published by: MIT Press
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 The Form of the
Phonograph Record*

THEODOR W. ADORNO

TRANSLATED BY THOMAS Y. LEVIN

One does not wantto accord itany formotherthanthe one it itselfexhibits:

a black pane made of a compositemass whichthesedays no longerhas itshonest
name any more thanautomobilefuelis called benzine; fragilelike tablets,witha
circularlabel in the middle thatstilllooks mostauthenticwhenadorned withthe
prewar terrierhearkeningto his master'svoice; at the verycenter,a littlehole
thatis at timesso narrowthatone has to redrillit widerso thatthe record can be
laid upon the platter. It is covered with curves, a delicatelyscribbled,utterly
illegiblewriting,whichhere and thereformsmore plasticfiguresforreasonsthat
remain obscure to the layman upon listening;structuredlike a spiral, it ends
somewherein the vicinityof the titlelabel, to whichit is sometimesconnectedby
a lead-out groove so that the needle can comfortablyfinishits trajectory.In
terms of its "form," this is all that it will reveal. As perhaps the firstof the
technological artisticinventions,it already stems from an era that cynically
acknowledgesthe dominanceof thingsover people throughthe emancipationof
technologyfromhumanrequirementsand human needs and throughthepresen-
tationof achievementswhose significanceis not primarilyhumane; instead,the
need is initiallyproduced by advertisement,once the thingalready existsand is
spinningin its own orbit. Nowhere does there arise anythingthat resemblesa
formspecificto the phonographrecord- in the way thatone was generatedby
photographyin itsearlydays.Justas the call for"radio-specific"musicremained
necessarilyempty and unfulfilledand gave rise to nothing better than some

* This essay,"Die Form der Schallplatte,"was firstpublishedin 23: Eine WienerMusikzeitschrift

17-19 (December 15, 1934), pp. 35-39 [signed"Hektor Rottweiler"].It is reprintedin Theodor W.
Adorno, Gesammelte vol. 19 (Frankfurta.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984), pp. 530-34, ?
Schriften,
1984, SuhrkampVerlag. More recently,thistexthas been reprintedin BrokenMusic:Artists'Record-
works,ed. Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier(Berlin: DAAD and gelbe Musik, 1989), pp. 47-48,
togetherwithtranslationsinto French by Carole Boudreault ("La Forme du disque," pp. 51-52)
and into an oftenclumsyand inaccurateEnglishbyJohn Epstein ("The Form of the Record," pp.
49-50) [thisand subsequent notes are by the translator].

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The Formof thePhonographRecord 57

directionsfor instrumentation that turnedout to be impracticable,so too there

has never been any gramophone-specific music.1Indeed, one ought to creditthe
phonograph record with the advantage of having been spared the artisanal
transfiguration of artistic in the artyprivatehome. Furthermore,from
specificity
theirphonographicoriginsup throughthe electricalprocess (which,for better
and forworse,maywell be closelyrelatedto the photographicprocessof enlarge-
ment), the phonograph records were nothing more than the acoustic photo-
graphs thatthe dog so happilyrecognizes. It is no coincidence that [in German]
the term"plate" is used withoutany modificationand withthe same meaningin
both photographyand phonography.2It designatesthe two-dimensionalmodel
of a realitythat can be multipliedwithoutlimit,displaced both spatiallyand
temporally,and traded on the open market.This, at the price of sacrificingits
thirddimension:its heightand its abyss.
According to every standard of artisticself-esteem,this would implythat
the formof the phonographrecord was virtuallyits nonform.The phonograph
record is not good for much more than reproducingand storinga music de-
privid of itsbestdimension,a music,namely,thatwas alreadyin existencebefore
the phonographrecord and is not significantly altered by it. There has been no
of
development phonographiccomposers; even Stravinsky,despite all his good
will towardsthe electricpiano, has not made any effortin this direction.3The

1. The stakesinvolvedin Adorno's resistanceto the possibilityof compositionspecificto what he

himselfcalled "the mostimportantof all the musicalmass media" are articulatedin the opening lines
of his essay "On the Musical Employmentof Radio":
In the early 1920s, when radio was becoming generallyestablished,there was much talk of
radio-specificmusic. Such compositionshad to be particularlylightand transparentsince it
was held thatnot onlyanythingmassivebut also everythingcomplex could onlybe transmitted
badly. Individualacoustic timbressuch as the flutewould stickout so badly thatone would do
well to avoid them. On the surface,such rules recalled those contemporaryimperativesfor
both constructionand functionalformsthatdid justice to theirmaterials.In truth,however,
theyran parallel with the enthusiasticcommunity-oriented slogans calling for simplification
that had been launched around the same time in reaction to the alienating aspects of new
music.

"Uber die musikalischeVerwendungdes Radios," Gesammelte Schriften,vol. 15 (1976), p. 369.

2. In German this linguisticcoincidence still resonates clearly since, analogous to the photo-
graphic plate, the word for the phonograph record is Schallplatte(literally"sound-plate").
3. Stravinsky,whose interestin mechanical musical instrumentsof all sorts dated back to his
childhood, composed a studyfor pianola in 1917 for the Aeolian Company, London, whose exhibi-
tion of pianolas he had seen a fewyearsearlier. This short,barelytwo-minute-long piece (whichthe
composer orchestratedin 1928 under the title "Madrid" as the last section of his "Quatre Etudes
pour Orchestre") was performedon October 13, 1921, in the Aeolian Hall in London and was
subsequentlypublishedas roll #T-967B. In 1923, the yearhe signeda six-yearcontractwithPleyel in
Paris to record his entirecorpus on pianola rolls,Stravinskyalso wrote an early instrumentation of
"Les Noces" for two cymbalons,harmonium,pianola, and drums. In a statemententitled "My

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58 OCTOBER

only thing that can characterize gramophone music is the inevitable brevity
dictatedbythe size of the vinylplate. Here too a pure identityreignsbetweenthe
form of the record disc and that of the world in which it plays: the hours of
domestic existence that while themselvesaway along with the record are too
sparse for the firstmovementof the Eroica to be allowed to unfold without
interruption.Dances composed of dull repetitionsare more congenial to these
hours. One can turnthemoffat any point. The phonographrecord is an object
of that "daily need" whichis the veryantithesisof the humane and the artistic,
since the lattercan not be repeated and turnedon at willbut remaintied to their
place and time.
Nevertheless,as an article,the record is already too old not to presentus
with its riddles, once one forgoes consideringit as an art object and explores
insteadthe contoursof its thingness.For it is not in the play of the gramophone
as a surrogatefor music but ratherin the phonographrecord as a thingthatits
potentialsignificance - resides.As an artistic
- and also itsaestheticsignificance
product of decline, it is the firstmeans of musical presentationthat can be
possessedas a thing.Not like oil paintings,whichlook down fromthe wallsupon
the living.Justas these can hardlyfitany more in an apartment,there are no
trulylarge-formatphonographrecords. Instead, records are possessed like pho-
tographs;the nineteenthcenturyhad good reasons for coming up withphono-
graph record albums alongside photographicand postage-stampalbums, all of
themherbariaof artificiallifethatare presentin the smallestspace and ready to
conjure up every recollection that would otherwise be mercilesslyshredded
between the haste and hum-drumof private life. Through the phonograph
record, timegains a new approach to music. It is not the time in which music
happens,nor is it the timewhichmusic monumentalizesby means of its "style."
It is time as evanescence, enduring in mute music. If the "modernity" of all
mechanicalinstruments gives musican age-old appearance- as if,in the rigidity
of its repetitions,it had existed for ever, having been submittedto the pitiless
eternityof the clockwork-then the evanescence and recollectionthat is asso-
ciated withthe barrel organ as a mere sound in a compellingyet indeterminate
way has become tangibleand manifestthroughthe gramophone records.

Position on the Phonograph Record," published in 1930, Stravinskycalls not only for recording
practicesthat take advantage of the plastic capabilitiesof phonographicreproduction,as the com-
poser claimsto have done in hisrecordsforthe Columbia label; he also insiststhat"it would be of the
greatestinterestto produce musicspecificallyfor phonographicreproduction,a music whichwould
only attain its true image-its original sound-through the mechanical reproduction. This is
probablythe ultimategoal for the gramophoniccomposer of the future" (Igor Stravinsky,"Meine
Stellungzur Schallplatte,"Kulturund Schallplatte9 [1930], cited in Musikund Gesellschaft,
vol. 1, no.
8 [1931], p. 32).

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The FormofthePhonographRecord 59

The key to the proper understandingof the phonographrecords ought to

be provided by the comprehensionof those technologicaldevelopmentsthat at
one pointtransformedthe drumsof the mechanicalmusicboxes and organsinto
the mechanism of the phonograph. If at some later point, instead of doing
"historyof ideas" [Geistesgeschichte],one were to read the state of the cultural
spirit[Geist]off of the sundial of human technology,then the prehistoryof the
gramophone could take on an importance that mighteclipse that of many a
famous composer.4There is no doubt that,as music is removed by the phono-
graph record from the realm of live production and from the imperativeof
artisticactivityand becomes petrified,it absorbs into itself,in this process of
petrification,the verylifethatwould otherwisevanish.The dead art rescuesthe
ephemeral and perishingart as the only one alive. Therein may lie the phono-
graph record's most profoundjustification,which cannot be impugned by an
aestheticobjectionto itsreification.For thisjustificationreestablishesby the very
means of reificationan age-old, submergedand yetwarrantedrelationship:that
between music and writing.
Anyone who has ever recognized the steadilygrowingcompulsionthat,at
least during the last fiftyyears,both musical notationand the configurationof
the musical score have imposed on compositions- (the pejorative expression
"paper music" betrays this drastically)-will not be surprised if one day a
reversal of the followingsort occurs: music, previouslyconveyed by writing,
suddenlyitselfturnsinto writing.This occurs at the price of its immediacy,yet
withthe hope that,once fixedin thisway,it willsome day become readable as the
"last remaining universal language since the constructionof the tower,"5 a
language whose determinedyet encryptedexpressionsare contained in each of
its "phrases."6 If, however, notes were still the mere signs for music, then,
throughthe curves of the needle on the phonographrecord, musicapproaches
decisivelyits true character as writing.Decisively,because this writingcan be
recognized as true language to the extent that it relinquishesits being as mere
signs:inseparablycommittedto the sound thatinhabitsthisand no otheracoustic
groove. If the productiveforceof musichas expired in the phonographrecords,
if the latterhave not produced a formthroughtheir technology,they instead

4. As early as the mid-1920s,articlesdiscussingthe prehistoryof the gramophone were in fact

being published in increasingnumber in the more progressivemusicjournals of the time: see, for
example, H. H. Stuckenschmidt,"Maschinenmusik,"Der Auftakt, vol. 7, no. 7/8 (1927), pp. 152-
56; K. Marx, "Schallplatten-Geschichte,"Der Auftakt,vol. 10, no. 11 (1930), pp. 241-43; and
GiintherZiegler, "Musikautomaten,"Der Auftakt, vol. 13, no. 9/10 (1933), pp. 131-33.
5. See Walter Benjamin,Ursprungdes deutschenTrauerspiels,in vol. 1 of the Gesammelte Schriften
(Frankfurta.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974), p. 387; translatedby John Osborne as The Origin of
GermanTragicDrama (London: New Left Books, 1977), p. 214; translationslightlymodified.
6. A play on the German word Satz, which means "phrase" and-in a musical context-the
"movement" of a composition.

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60 OCTOBER

transformthe mostrecentsound of old feelingsintoan archaic textof knowledge

to come. Yet thoughthe theologianmay feel constrainedto come to the conclu-
sion that"life" in the strictestsense-the birthand death of creatures- cannot
be ascribed to any art,he mayalso tend to hold thatthe truth-content of art only
arises to the extent that the appearance of livelinesshas abandoned it; that
artworksonly become "true," fragmentsof the true language, once lifehas left
them;perhaps even only throughtheirdecline and thatof art itself.It would be
then that,in a seriousnesshard to measure,the formof the phonographrecord
could finditstruemeaning:the scriptalspiralthatdisappearsin the center,in the
opening of the middle, but in returnsurvivesin time.
A good part of thisis due to physics,at least to Chladni's sound figures,7to
which- according to the discoveryof one of the mostimportantcontemporary
aesthetictheorists-Johann WilhelmRitterreferredas the script-likeUr-images
of sound.8 The most recenttechnologicaldevelopmenthas, in any case, contin-
ued what was begun there: the possibilityof inscribingmusic withoutit ever
having sounded has simultaneouslyreifiedit in an even more inhumanmanner
and also broughtit mysteriously closer to the characterof writingand language.9
The panicked fear thatcertaincomposersexpress regardingthisinventioncap-

7. ErnstFlorens FriedrichChladni (1756-1827), a German physicistoftencalled the "fatherof

acoustics" forhis pioneeringstudiesof the transmissionof sound. The firstto examine sound waves
mathematically -as in his 1802 study entitledDie Akustikpublished in Leipzig by Breitkopfund
Hertel--Chladni experimentedwith vibratingplates of thin glass and metal covered with sand,
notingthat the sand remained in curved lines at the points where the plates did not quiver. These
symmetricalpatterns,the so-called Chladni figures,attracted popular attention,and in 1809 a
demonstrationwas staged for Napoleon. In 1790 Chladni inventeda musical instrumentcalled the
"euphonium," whichwas composed of glassrods and steel bars made to sound throughrubbingwith
moistened fingers.Along with its contemporary,the "aiuton," invented by Charles Clagget, the
euphonium was the firstof numerous frictionbar instruments,some with piano keyboardsand
horizontalfrictioncylindersor cones thatacted on verticalbars,and otherswithbars strokedby the
player's fingersor witha bow. For more on Chladni, see Mary Desiree Waller, Chladni Figures:A
Studyin Symmetry (London: G. Bell, 1961).
8. The German physicistJohann Wilhelm Ritter (1776-1810), often called the "father of
electrochemistry," is credited withthe discoveryin 1801 of the ultravioletregion of the spectrum
and in 1803 of the polarizationof electrodesin batteries.Adorno here extends a concealed compli-
ment to Walter Benjamin, who reviewed Ritter'streatmentof Chladni in the OriginoftheGerman
TragicDrama. For furtherremarkson Ritterby Benjamin,see the introductorynote to Ritter'sletter
to Franz von Baader included in Benjamin's epistolarycompilationDeutscheMenschen(1936), in
Benjamin, Gesammelte vol. 4, pp. 176-77. For Ritter'sdiscussionof Chladni, see Johann
Schriften,
WilhelmRitter,Fragmenteaus demNachlasseeinesjungen Physikers: Ein Taschenbuch fir Freundeder
Natur, ed. J. W. Ritter [Editorshipfictitious],vol. 2 (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1810), pp.
227ff. For a detailed study of Ritter, see Walter D. Wetzels,Johann WilhelmRitter:Physikim
Wirkungsfeld der deutschenRomantik(Berlin/New York, Walter de Gruyter,1973).
9. Adorno here is most likely referringto the more recent variationson the possibilityof
composingformechanicalpianos by inscribingdirectlyupon the scrolls.This had been demonstrated
as early as 1926 at a "Festival of Mechanical Music" in Donaueschingen where Ernst Toch and
Gerhard Miinch had composed pieces in thismannerfora Welte-Mignonpianola. These workswere
"performed" by Paul Hindemith (who serviced the machine) togetherwith a similarlygenerated
work by Hindemiththat served as an accompanimentto Oskar Schlemmer's "Triadic Ballet." See

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tures preciselythe extraordinarythreatto the life of artworksthat emanates

from it just as it already did from the gentlerbarbarismof the phonograph
recordalbums.What maybe announcingitselfhere,however,is the shockat that
transfiguration of all truthof artworksthat iridescentlydiscloses itselfin the
catastrophictechnologicalprogress.Ultimatelythe phonographrecordsare not
artworksbut the black seals on the missivesthatare rushingtowardsus fromall
sides in the trafficwith technology;missiveswhose formulationscapture the
sounds of creation,the firstand the lastsounds,judgmentupon lifeand message
about that whichmay come thereafter.

Dr. Erich Steinhard,"Donaueschingen: MechanischesMusikfest,"Der Auftakt, vol. 6, no. 8 (1926),

pp. 183-86; on the historyof the pianola, see Peter Hagmann, Das Welte-Mignon-Klavier, die
Welte-Philharmonie-Orgelund die Anfiinge der Reproduktion von Musik,(Bern/Frankfurt/New York:
Peter Lang, 1984). In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the musicjournals were regularlyreportingon
a host of newly"invented,"largelyelectricinstruments such as Theremin's "Atherwellenapparat,"
Dr. FriedrichTrautwein's "Trautonium," Helberger's "Hellerton," and Jirg Mager's "Spharo-
phon": see, for example, Herbert Weisskopf,"Sphirophon: Das Instrumentder Zukunft,"Der
Auftakt,vol. 6, no. 8 (1926), pp. 177-78; Hans Kuznitzky,"Neue Elemente der Musikerzeu-
gung,"Melos6 (April 1927), pp. 156-60; Frank Warschauer, "Neue Moglichkeitenelektrischer
Klangerzeugung,"Der Auftakt, vol. 10, no. 11 (1930), pp. 233-35; and Edwin Geist, "Bedeutung
und Aufgabe der elektrischenMusikinstrumente," Melos 12 (February 1933), pp. 49-52.

ErnstFlorensFriedrichChladni. Tonefiguresfrom
Die Akustik.1802.

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