and political contexts.
1.5.1 Music for More Than Music’s Sake: On the Credibility of Politically Engaged Artists
In his essay on art and criticism in Adorno’s aesthetics, Geuss concludes that for Adorno, any form of art which attempts to convince people that “[…] this world or life in it was worthwhile would not just be doing something unhelpful, but would be misguided in the most fundamental way possible” (Geuss 300). This pessimistic view of artistic reality cannot be enough to explain all dimensions of the relationship between art and society. The artistic work of Joan Baez indicates a great level of compliance to my more optimistic argument. Bodenschatz, for example, refers to Baez by explaining that “[…] she [Baez] thinks that music cannot be seen from a l’art-pour-l’art standpoint only […]” (Bodenschatz 11). Baez, in this sense, personifies a politicization of Adorno’s complex analysis:
The idea of beauty advocated by l’art pour l’art […] did indeed exclude […] all content [Inhalt] as disruptive that did not, before undergoing the law of form and thus precisely anti-artistically, submit to a dogmatic canon of beauty […]. This idea of beauty is limited because it sets itself up as directly antithetical to a society rejected as ugly […] (Adorno 237).
Joan Baez’s work does not indicate such a flagrant contradiction to society. She artistically addresses (what she refers to as) problems in society and underlines her point of view via offering her efforts to the work of various social movements. Such a mixture of political and artistic activities is not possible with an antithetical stand on social problems. The combination of art and activism—as it can be seen in Baez’s work—is not promising without taking part in society, without being politically active. In his book about his own version of an aesthetic theory, Adorno describes this problematic relationship between political attempts to change society and any form of art and comes to the conclusion that this relationship is a dangerous dependence, which for him—particularly in the face of modernity—turned into a vicious circle. This kind of vicious circle generally puts art in a doubtful position, where Adorno is even no longer sure if it still has got the right to exist (see also Adorno 1). Adorno expert Sauerland summarizes his definition of this complex connection between art and society:
On the one hand, all problems […] melt into art, on the other hand, works of art can still criticize the poor state of society without having to get involved with it […]3 (see Sauerland 1, transl. by Jaeger).
For Adorno, artists who criticize society in their artistic work can not be trusted, because they do not need to get involved in the solution of social problems. As a consequence, ‘true’ artists—in Adorno’s diction—can only reach artistic credibility when their art becomes autonomous, that is, separated from social mechanisms (see also Adorno 335). Aesthetically radical autonomous forms of art for him bear the only possible potential to produce authentic pieces of art (see also Geuss 300 pp.). New Music of the 20th century for him expresses the most radical and therefore most convincing criticism of modern culture and society (see also Said 41). The essence of such radical artistic means necessarily has to be a vehement artistic turning away from traditional forms and styles. Milner and Browitt formulate Adorno’s conviction:
Authentic art […] involves a necessary confrontation with already established traditional styles; ‘inferior’ work is merely the practice of imitation […] (Milner and Browitt 72).
For Adorno—due to what he and his colleague Max Horkheimer referred to as ‘Culture Industry’ (see also chapter 1.5.2.1)—modern capitalist markets (which are necessary to sell music records) and political authenticity of artistic expression can not be combined (see also Adorno 306). Particularly during the first years of her career, Baez had to face this dilemma, when she suffered from a serious “[…] confusion about being rich and famous […]” (Baez Voice 128), which was deeply rooted in this question of political credibility, as her work as a popular singer demands from her to record and to sell music albums. This is exactly the problem which Adorno articulates in his critique of the Culture Industry. Only many years after the beginning of her career was Baez able to find a certain kind of calmness and independence from this continuing expectancy of a popular artist to function as nothing but the producer of a means of trade. In her 1977 self-penned song “Time rag”, she sings that
[…] I really should tell that deep in my heart, I don’t give a damn where I stand on the charts not as long as the sun sinks into the West and that’s going to be a pretty serious test of time […]4.
Adorno would heartily disagree on Baez’s credibility regarding this statement. Artifacts of popular culture—like songs written and/or sung and/or performed by a singer like Joan Baez—for him are artistically interchangeable and therefore not practical for criticism towards society. For Adorno, “[…] popular music is mechanical in the sense that a given detail can be shifted from one song to another without any real effect on the structure as a whole […]” (Storey 106). Adorno is convinced that in popular culture, listeners of songs have to ruminate on (see also Adorno 285) what the Culture Industry enforces upon them, because
[…] the listener can supply the ‘framework’ automatically, since it is mere musical automatism itself. […] Every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine […] (Smith Reinventing 44-45).
Adorno is convinced that any audience—while consuming popular songs—becomes “[…] socialized to passively accept simple formulas and so becomes susceptible to authoritarian messages […]” (Ibid. 46). This argument a priori implies that every listener to popular music is not able to defend oneself against systematic stultification, not to mention his total negation of popular culture’s potential to be of political relevance (apart from the transformation of politically engaged artists into ideological instruments). Adorno does not even consider the possibility that songs can be capable of the contrary, of supporting the conviction of the audience to stand up against authoritarianism. He is not willing to take into account the slightest chance that artifacts of popular culture could possibly be able to offer a pool of protest against social misfortune (see also jourfixe 2006).
Adorno passionately disagrees with such an assumption—particularly in regard to popular songs—because for him, songs are generally something that he would not consider to be of artistic value at all. In Adorno’s opinion, songs as artifacts of popular culture promote passive listening and merely serve to adjust the audience to society’s status quo (see also Storey 106-107). Böning accentuates Adorno’s disparaging attitude in this respect and exposes the criticism he evoked with his unsuccessful academic attempt to silence politically critical singers:
In his criticism of musicians Theodor W. Adorno wrote in 1956: 'Nowhere is it written that singing was necessary'. Walter Moßmann and Peter Schleuning—one a singer of political songs, the other one a musicologist - later spoke of an ‘adornite silence’ and ‘ideology-critical refusal to sing’5 (see Böning 2004, transl. by Jaeger).
Following this estimation, Adorno—deliberately or without intention—promotes a process of ‘silencing’ himself. Adorno expresses this point of view in a generalizing manner, which could easily be described as authoritarian itself. The decisive nature of his rigid elaborations throws a critical light on his own work, which, as already mentioned above, is said to have only one target: authoritarianism. Adorno is a representative for the idea “[…] that music is a ‘force’ in social life, a building material of consciousness and social structure […]” (DeNora 2). Nevertheless, politically engaged artists (a popular singer in our case) for him—consciously or unconsciously—always
