Adorno's Bach-Schoenberg Connection: Frivolity and Expectation
Theodor Adorno’s 1967 essay on Arnold Schoenberg1 makes an
excellent case for the great composer as a spiritual successor
to J.S. Bach, the 18th century composer generally acclaimed as
the father of modern tonality. However, while Adorno’s analysis
of the treatment of the subject through this 200 year period is
fairly accurate, he makes numerous problematic assumptions that
denigrate the works of Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, etc., and also
Bach himself: (1) Adorno accuses composers of bowing to an
audience’s expectation for ‘pleasurable sensations’ at the
expense of meaning. This view is contingent upon an
anachronistic view of music’s public acceptance, as well as an
unjustifiable set of aesthetic standards; moreover, it ignores
social and economic factors of artistic production. (2) In
Adorno’s examination of forms he refers generally to Bach’s
fugues and specifically to Beethoven’s use of sonata form in the
Eroica, and declares that Beethoven’s u