Access provided by UFSC-Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (17 Jun 2013 06:11 GMT)
porary, that variously inform this study. But in
arguing against Richard Gilman’s assertion
that the term decadence is a ‘portmanteau
stuffed with emptiness’ (p. 30), he risks ending
up with a portmanteau stuffed withçstuff.
One passing but concise example suggests
this challenge early on, in the discussion of
Parsifal in the book’s opening chapter (pp. 17
ff.). It isn’t difficult to accept that Wagner’s last
work is imbued with images and expressions
that may be characterized as decadent, from
the exhaustion and enervation of the ritual-
bound Acts I and III, punctuated with pas-
sages that dwell obsessively on the lingering
suffering of the sick Amfortas, through the
sensuous and eroticized effusions in Act II’s
lush and overripe score. But then, if all these
are symptoms of a decadent complex, how to
account analytically for the potently significant
differences between the musical languages of
Act II and Acts I and III? This is a relatively
minor point; as already stated, Downes’s
analyses are both astute and convincing and
his interpretations are nuanced; he clearly dem-
onstrates a critical awareness of the delicacy of
his decadent dialectic. Yet this question of
analysis actually points directly towards the
second danger confronting a study that views
decadence as both decline and renewal. Trad-
itionally, music analysis is, essentially, a norma-
lizing enterpriseçnaming, systematizing, cate-
gorizing, not to mention the priorities of com-
pletion and resolution in traditional formal
and diatonic-based harmonic theoriesçsuch
that the task of analysis almost necessarily
rubs against a notion of decadence that is
‘abnormal’ virtually by definition. This is
possibly one of the greatest challenges facing
Downes’s attempt to provide an analytical
portrait of musical decadence: that of explain-
ing the decadent without robbing it of its
extraordinariness.
The task of choosing an analytical methodol-
ogy throws this conundrum into relief. Downes
relies principally on traditionally diatonic-based
harmonic theory, which asserts that the chro-
maticism of the period is decadent, deviant
from expected norms. Yet the tools of neo-
Riemannian theory are arguably much more
apt for analysis of this repertory, and in
avoiding the typical expectations of diatonic
‘norms’ they also align with Downes’s central
ideal of viewing decadence as not merely disrep-
utable. Downes does make mention of neo-
Riemannian analytical methodology and its
interpretative potential, yet without taking it up
for his own analytical endeavour. But then,
would using such a theoretical approach, one
177
that does not highlight as ‘abnormal’ or ‘unusual’
that which was formerly understood as ‘deviant’,
create a problem for identifying, hearing, or
defining decadence at all?
Ultimately, in extending the concept of
decline to include also its opposite, the risk is
that decadence becomes rehabilitated, in a way
that goes against the decadent intention to
evade and subvert conventionality. The poten-
tial result, in other words, is that decadence is
not reallyçor at least, not merelyçdecadent
any longer. From this perspective, this book’s
achievement starts to appear as ambivalent as
only a book on an ambivalent subject such as
decadence can be. At which point it is time to
hasten to assert that the conundrum is
probably, in essence, unavoidable. The question
is whether Downes succeeds in performing an
interpretative expansion of the idea of deca-
dence and its significance in musical modern-
ism without neutralizing it and depriving it of
the expressive capacities that arise precisely
through its difference. The answer is that it
would be a mistake to miss the nuance and
critical self-awareness that characterize
Downes’s negotiation of the dialectic of product-
ive negativity that he argues is constitutive of
decadence as a vital musical-cultural facet of
its era. It is this intelligence that ultimately
yields a finely drawn and innovative under-
standing of its subject, and renders Music and
Decadence in European Modernism a study of such
importance.
SHERRY D. LEE
University of Toronto
doi:10.1093/ml/gct020
Night Music: Essays on Music 1928^1962. By
Theodor W. Adorno and edited by Rolf
Tiedemann. Trans. by Wieland Hoban. pp.
xv þ 473. (Seagull Books, London, New
York, and Calcutta, 2009, »20. ISBN 978-1-
906497-21-7.)
Wieland Hoban’s Adorno translations collected
under the title Night Music: Essays on Music 1928^
1962 are unalienated masterpieces. Consider the
title and first sentences of a key Adorno text in
the original German wording against Susan H.
Gillespie’s rendering from 2002 and the transla-
tion under review here:
Theodor W. Adorno, Verfremdetes Hauptwerk: Zur Missa
Solemnis: ‘Neutralisierung der Kultur ç das hat den
Klang eines philosophischen Begriffs. Er zeigt mehr
oder minder allgemeine Reflexion darauf an, da
geistige Gebilde ihre Verbindlichkeit eingebu«t
haben, weil sie aus jeder mo«glichen Beziehung zur
Praxis sich lo«sten und das wurden, was ihnen die
A«sthetik nachtra«glich zugute schreibt, Gegensta«nde
reiner Anschaung, bloer Kontemplation.’ (Gesammelte
Schriften 17, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main,
1982), 145^161 at 145)
Susan H. Gillespie, Alienated Masterpiece: The Missa
Solemnis: ‘Neutralisation of cultureçthe words have
the ring of a philosophical concept. They posit as a
more or less general reflection that intellectual con-
structs have forfeited their intrinsic meanings
because they have lost any possible relation to social
praxis and have become that which aesthetics retro-
spectively claims they areçobjects of pure observa-
tion, of mere contemplation.’ (Essays on Music, ed.
Richard Leppert (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002),
569^83 at 569)
Wieland Hoban, Alienated Magnum Opus: The Missa
Solemnis: ‘Neutralisation of cultureçthe phrase has
the ring of a philosophical concept. It indicates a
more or less general reflection on the fact that intel-
lectual constructs have lost their binding nature
because they have given up any possible connection
to social practice and become what aesthetics retro-
spectively terms them: objects of pure observation,
mere contemplation.’ (p. 239)
To be sure, Gillespie’s version is not an extreme
example of imprecision. The trophy for the
greatest howler in the history of Adorno transla-
tion remains firmly in the hands of the pioneers
responsible for the Philosophy of Modern rather
than New Music (tr. Wesley V. Blomster and
Anne G. Mitchell (New York, 1973)). Early
Adorno translations abound with mistakes of
this kind. But in the work of Gillespie and some
other exponents of the more recent, much
improved set of Adorno translators, alienation
of the meaning of Adorno’s carefully chosen
words is still commonplace. ‘Masterpiece’ for
‘Hauptwerk’ is a strong case in point. Of course,
Hoban’s ‘Magnum Opus’ comes as a relief to
the Germanophone Adorno reader, just like his
‘binding nature’ for Gillespie’s ‘intrinsic
meanings’ and Adorno’s ‘Verbindlichkeit’.
Our two examples sufficiently highlight
Hoban’s superior semantic and syntactical faith-
fulness and it would be nit-picking to dwell on
all the points in the excerpt cited above where
Hoban scores against Gillespie & Co. Following
in the footsteps of Robert Hullot-Kentor, who
caused a bit of a stir with his authoritative
(re)translations of Aesthetic Theory and Philosophy
of New Music (London, 1997 and 2006 respect-
ively), Hoban demonstrates that even the most
demanding Adorno texts can indeed be
translated into sensible English.
Even more importantly, Hoban (again, follow-
ing Hullot-Kentor) puts a stop to the view, at-
tractive in some quarters, that philosophically
accurate translations of Adorno lose what some
178
scholars have termed the ‘poetic substratum’ of
his writing. The most extravagant example of
such translation work has been performed
by Jonathan Dunsby and Beate Perrey, who
incongruously yet consistently rendered ‘concepts’
as ‘metaphors’ in their English version of the
‘Schubert’ text from Moments musicaux (19th-
Century Music, 29 (2005), 3^14), which is also
included in Hoban’s collection, but with the
‘concepts’ reinstated. The ornamental layout of
Hoban’s volume may raise some anxiety among
readers familiar with the idiosyncrasies of
Adorno reception around the 2003 centenary of
his birth, and there is a moment in Hoban’s
introduction where the ‘literary quality’ (pp. x^
xi) of Adorno’s writing is also mentioned, but
Hoban never exploits valid and important
insights of this kind as pretexts for undue
beveling of conceptual edges.
However, since the translations now available
render it quite unproblematic for most scholars
to read Adorno in English without constant
recourse to the German originals, translations be-
come more than just translations: they become
English-language editions that, on account of a
persistent Adorno craze in Anglophone aca-
demia, may well attract a larger readership
than the German originals. Consequently, these
master translators acquire greater status than
those who gave the Anglophone reader the Phil-
osophy of Modern Music instead of the Philosophy of
New Music and alienated the ‘Magnum Opus’ by
calling it a ‘Masterpiece’. Translators nowadays
become quasi-editors, take on more wide-
ranging responsibilities for the works at hand,
and arguably have more fun. Hullot-Kentor
seemed to be mindful of this when he provided
an introduction and notes to his translations. Gil-
lespie restricted herself to translating Adornoç
not too faithfully, as we have seençbut worked
in collaboration with an editor, Richard
Leppert, who selected the texts and explained
them competently and at some length (whether
he also checked the translations is of course a
moot point).
Hoban, however, asks us in his introduction
to agree to differ on the commendable scholarly
practice of presenting translations of such influ-
ential texts as editions. This has the unfortunate
consequence that he steps into pretty much all
the philological traps created by the epigones
who seized control of Adorno’s legacy after his
death in 1969. Hoban exclusively and uncritic-
ally draws upon Adorno’s Gesammelte Schriften,
the Leseausgabe or ‘reading edition’ of the
writings published during Adorno’s lifetime.
Along with allçindeed, all!çhis colleagues,
he seems to be oblivious to the fact that serious
source work on Adorno has never been
undertaken. Rolf Tiedemann and his team
have researched only printing dates, and in
most cases neglected writing dates. Thus little
reliable information is available about Adorno’s
writing process and the chronological evolution
of his thought. As regards Moments musicaux,
the wide chronological range of the first publi-
cationsçfrom 1928 to 1962çwas already estab-
lished by the early 1970s (Klaus Schultz, ‘Vor-
la«ufige Bibliographie der Schriften Theodor W.
Adornos’, in Theodor W. Adorno zum Geda«chtnis:
Eine Sammlung von Hermann Schweppenha«user
(Frankfurt am Main,1971),177^239). But the im-
portant follow-on questions, normally a matter
of philological routine, about the correlation of
printing and writing dates as well as differences
between original versions and reprints remain
enigmatic.
Some of the texts that Hoban chose to
(re)translate have a highly problematic publica-
tion history indeed. Moments musicaux is elevated
by Hoban to the status of ‘a cycle, an integrated
work’ (p. ix) because, well, Adorno presented it
as such in the volume’s introduction, which
Hoban takes at face value. The philological
gaze, however, reveals that Moments musicaux is a
hodgepodge of disparate texts from quite differ-
ent phases in Adorno’s development as well as in
German political and intellectual history. And
what is more, those in the know have never
made much of the fact that Adorno interfered
with some of these texts prior to republication.
Of course this is well within his authorial rights,
but anyone’s philological sensors should buzz
when reading that ‘[c]hanges have been made
only where the author’çin most cases, young
Adornoç‘was too ashamed of old inadequacies’
(p. 3). These include about one dozen astounding
instances of Heideggerian jargonçthe ‘jargon of
authenticity’, as mature Adorno would call it
with unconcealed abhorrenceçin the original
1928 version of the oft-quoted ‘Schubert’ text.
Hoban, Dunsby, and Perry give us the 1962
version, where ‘echt’ gives way to ‘genuin’ or
‘wahr’, ‘ontologisch’ to ‘ansichseiend’, and the ap-
palling ‘seinsgewaltig’ to the rather less passion-
ate and fraught ‘nachdru«cklich’.
The release date of a German-language
critical edition of Adorno’s texts is written in
the stars, in a hand that is even harder to
decipher than Adorno’s own (his annotations
suggest that he was involved in a writer’s feud
with Thomas Mann and Walter Benjamin in a
competition for the worst scrawl among the
literary elite). Suhrkamp currently seem to be
in no hurry to prepare a Critical Adorno
Edition, perhaps because a good deal of cash
179
can still be made from the flawed reading
edition. For this edition is flawed indeed, and it
is a shame that master translations like
Hoban’s provide nothing more, in the final
analysis, than meticulous and faithful duplica-
tions of these authorially alienated magna opera.
A glance at the available sources could have
made all the difference and extended the shelf
life of this and other recent Adorno translations
considerably.
NIKOLAUS BACHT
Humboldt-Universita«t Berlin
doi:10.1093/ml/gct014
American Muse: The Life and Times of William
Schuman. By Joseph W. Polisi. pp. xiii þ 595.
(Amadeus Press, Milwaukee, 2008, $32.95.
ISBN 987-1-57467-173-5.)
Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the
Shaping of America’s Musical Life. By Stephen
Swayne. pp. xv þ 692. (Oxford University
Press, New York and Oxford, 2011, »27.50.
ISBN 978-0-19-538852-7.)
The Music of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti,
and Peter Mennin: Voices of Stone and Steel. By
Walter Simmons. pp. x þ 425; CD. (Scare-
crow Press, Lanham, Md., Toronto, and
Plymouth, 2011. »44.95. ISBN 978-0-8108-
5748-3.)
For William Schuman to acquire two well-
researched biographies and a major portion of
a further book within three years is a consider-
able step forward in the documentation of both
him and his work. His position can be
compared to that of Samuel Barber. In some
respects it puts him ahead of his friend and
exact contemporary, who has a biography by
Barbara Heyman (Samuel Barber: The Composer
and his Music (Oxford, 1992); a new edition is in
progress)çalthough for Schuman there’s
nothing like the exhaustive Samuel Barber: A
Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Works, also by
Heyman (Oxford, 2012). And on the interna-
tional scene Schuman has not had the same rec-
ognition as Barber, who has a substantial biog-
raphy in French (Samuel Barber: Un nostalgique
entre deux mondes (Paris, 2011)) by Pierre
Bre¤vignon, who also established Capricorn:
Association des amis de Samuel Barber in
2009. However, in an age of blockbuster
biographiesçconsider Howard Pollack’s magis-
terial studies of Copland, Gershwin, and Marc
BlitzsteinçSchuman entered the lists in time
for his centenary.
Joseph Polisi came first, and he writes as a
friend and professional colleague. Schuman