"No less characteristic of the regressive musical language is the quotation. Its use ranges from the conscious quotation of folk and children’s songs, by way of ambiguous and half accidental allusions, to completely latent similarities and associations" (Adorno, The Culture Industry pp. 52).
"Such phonetics (Am I alone in hearing it? Am I hearing voices in the voice? But is it not the truth of the voice to be hallucinated? Is not the entire space of the voice an infinite space? No doubt this was the meaning of Saussere's work on anagrams)—such phonetics does not exhaust signifying (which is inexhaustible); at least it imposes a limit on those efforts of expressive reduction made by a whole culture upon the poem and its melody" (The Grain of the Voice pp. 272).
What are the different conceptions of the two author's understanding of the relation of the audience to music?
Adorno seems to put the audience in a group that consumes the product, shaping and shaped by that consumption. It retards our musical listening ability, but the demand for success necessitates both recognizability and enough difference not to be seen as the same song. All top 20 hits might be the same, but if they were literally covers of the previous top 20 no one would listen and they would fail. Barthes sees the relationship as that of listening being reading, and the music becomes a text to be interpreted within their individuals specific politicized experiences. Despite the limitation imposed by culture on possible significations, the range of "correct" interpretations does not limit the possibility of individual readings of the text.
How is music produced as an artifact, is it language or is it ideology?
For Adorno music is the result of the culture industry as a commodity for consumption, functioning as an ideology in that it's ease of consumption helps to retard the public's demand for anything better. Barthes looks as music as yet another language, albeit one with different rules of signification and possibilities of meaning.
How does reference and quotation work in the musical production?
The atomistic consumption of music, especially in America, highlights for Adorno how vastly retarded the consumption of music has become. It's the fetishization of not just the song, but certain moments and movements within it. Barthes remains silent on this subject and this silence is a loud presence which indicates that, frankly, he has better things to talk about. Like Panzera and his eliding consonants and rolling his R's better than a Canadian could ever hope.
While Adorno's answers sufficiently answers the practical experience of every day life and explains how it is we got here it does not retard the potential truthiness of Barthes' views. Therefore we will engage in the wisdom of Solomon and split the difference, they are both right. Ambivalence, yay!
Go Team Awesome!
- signed -
Sir Birney Richard Young II, KoB
Mitchell Khurin
Sarah Mosby
Dennis Wong
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