NEW MUSIC, LATE STYLE: ADORNO's 'FORM IN THE NEW MUSIC'

Form in the New Music', which was originally published in a volume of Darmstadter Beitrage zur Neuen Musik devoted to the issue of form, engages with most of Adorno's earlier essays on new music, modifying and developing those ideas. In it, Adorno maintains the important perspective that a focus on technique cannot transcend subjectivity, but he depends less on the achievements of the Second Viennese School than in some earlier articles. He also contemplates contemporary approaches to composition, particularly as expressed by Gyorgy Ligeti, drawing out the wider aesthetic implications of these ideas. Furthermore, as in many of Adorno's writings in the 1960s, the author explores themes that were to become prevalent in the posthumously published Aesthetic Theory. In general, the essay exhibits the characteristics of Adorno's late style: it returns to ideas located elsewhere in the author's oeuvre, but does so with altered nuances, which create an incremental shift in perspective.