SOCIOL 102 Chapter 1: On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening
Document Summary
Sociology 102: on the fetish-character in music and the regression of listening adorno. Music represents the immediate manifestation of impulse and locus of its taming. Responsible art adjusts itself to criteria which approximate judgments. Pockets of silence that develop between people that is molded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility. Musical balance between partial stimulus and totality is as unstable as moments of balance between supply and demand in capitalist society. Impulse, subjectivity, and profanation were adversaries of materialistic alienation, but now succumb to it. Concept of ascetic is itself dialectical in music. Asceticism has become the sign of advanced art by exclusion of all culinary delights which seek to be consumed immediately for their own sake. New phase of musical consciousness of the masses is defined by displeasure in pleasure. Illusion of a social preference for light music (vs serious) is based on passivity of masses which make consumption of light music contradict object interest of its consumers.
