Adorno’s Meaning in his sociology of music
Social mediation: Music is historically and socially constituted, not isolated from society
Commodity: Music becomes subject to exchange, marketing, and consumption
Culture industry: Cultural production becomes industrialized and standardized
Standardization: Musical forms become predictable and repetitive
Pseudo-individualization: Surface novelty disguises underlying conformity
Fetishization: Musical objects, performers, and recordings acquire commodity-like prestige
Regression in listening: Listening becomes increasingly passive and recognition-based
Autonomy: Art’s relative independence can allow it to resist social domination
Alienation: Modern social contradictions become audible in musical form
Musical form as social content: Society can be embodied within formal structures
Schoenberg: Radical formal innovation becomes a refusal of false reconciliation
Stravinsky: Restoration of older forms can represent regression
Negative dialectics: Contradiction should not necessarily be resolved into harmony
Utopian potential: Art can preserve the possibility of a society different from the existing one
Art by Kate W 