June 13, 2005
Adorno: aesthetics of rock music
Is rock and rock/jazz fusion music best when it apes the standards of European classical music? Should we conceive of musical value in terms of its structural complexity and independence from the market economy?
This is the aesthetic heritage bequeathed to us by Adorno:
Stefan Moses, T. W.Adorno, 1964
A response by Theodore Gracyk:
"Many efforts to dismiss rock music as derivative, primitive, and musically simple will strike us as misguided attempts to grasp rock exclusively as an allographic art form. Those who disdain rock typically respond only to the songs and performances, ignoring relevant properties and values like instrumental mix, stereo placement of various elements, echo on the voice, and even how ragged or nasal the singer's voice was at the time of the recording." Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock (p.36)
What the judgements about the music of the Grateful Dead indicate is that it is the particular performance of Dark Star on the night that is what is musically valued; not the written down musical structure of Dark Star so that any accurate performance is a genuine instantiation of that work.
Maybe the dichotomy between "commercial" music and "artistic" music is a false one. One pathway.
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