Group Three: Against Regressive Listening

According to Adorno, the question posed seems to be is there a type of music that exists outside of the culture industry that can be used to combat the regressive listening?

For Adorno, certain music “proposes to consciously resist the phenomenon of regressive listening...[this] music gives form to that anxiety, that terror, that insight into the catastrophic situation which others merely evade by regressing.” Within popular music, we unconsciously fall to regressive listening. In this regression, we shield ourselves from being conscious of our “catastrophic situation”–the reality of our condition and our manipulation by the culture industry. In contrast, Adorno proposes that certain music terrifies us and exposes to us our reality. This consciousness of our “catastrophic” makes us anxious and agitates us. We can no longer evade the reality of our condition.

Perhaps Barthes conception of “the grain” answers Adorno’s challenge for this music.

Barthes writes, “This evaluation will be made outside of the law. It will baffle the law of culture but also the law of anti-culture; it will develop beyond the subject all the value which is hidden behind “I like” or “I don’t like.” Barthes’ answer to Adorno’s query regarding music for the non-regressive listener is music that is valued based on enjoyment, what we like or don’t like; also known as the concept of the ‘grain of the voice.’ It is music that we develop an erotic relationship with. Music with a grain of the voice can effect us so bodily that the individual power of “I like” or “don’t like” of the individual defies the laws of culture.

Adorno proposes the music of Anton Webern is precisely the type of music that combats regressive listening. The atonality of the the piece “Five Masterpieces for Orchestra” goes against the Western listener’s expectations and sensibility. Its rubs against the grain of the laws of Western musical culture and therefore has a grain in and of itself. Instruments are not played conventionally. There are sudden bursts and crashes of sound. We cannot predict how the music will move, and if we begin to think we can, what we imagine or long for is disrupted. We are rapt, we become anxious, and our body is constrained in discomfort.

Elaine, Karina, Jessica, & James