ABOUT THIS BOOK

Essays by Adorno on art and cinema, available in English for the first time.

In Without Model, Theodor W. Adorno strikingly demonstrates the intellectual range for which he is known. Taking the premise of the title as his guiding principle, that artistic and philosophical thought must eschew preconceptions and instead adapt itself to its time, circumstances, and object, Adorno presents a series of essays reflecting on culture at different levels, from the details of individual products to the social conditions of their production. He shows his more nostalgic side in the childhood reminiscences of ‘Amorbach’, but also his acute sociocultural analysis on the central topic of the culture industry. He criticizes attempts to maintain tradition in music and visual art, arguing against a restorative approach by stressing the modernity and individuality of historical works in the context of their time. In all of these essays, available for the first time in English, Adorno displays the remarkable thinking of one both steeped in tradition and dedicated to seeing beyond it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69) was the author of In Search of Wagner, Aesthetic Theory, and Negative Dialectics, among many other books. Wieland Hoban is a British composer who has translated several works from German, including Night Music, a collection of essays by Theodor W. Adorno.

REVIEWS

‘A volume of Adorno is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature.’—Susan Sontag

‘Adorno expounds what may be called a new philosophy of consciousness. His philosophy lives, dangerously but also fruitfully, in proximity to an ascetic puritanical moral rage, an attachment to some items in the structure and vocabulary of Marxism, and a feeling that human suffering is the only important thing and makes nonsense of everything else . . . Adorno is a political thinker who wishes to bring about radical change. He is also a philosopher, with a zest for metaphysics, who is at home in the western philosophical tradition.’—Iris Murdoch

Praise for Night Music (Seagull, 2019):
‘Wonderfully displaying the verve and richness of Adorno’s provocative ideas on the composition and development of classical and modern music and their necessary relationship to historical and material contexts, this volume brings together two significant collections of essays, Moments Musicaux and Theory of New Music, from the German collected works of one of the 20th century’s most dazzling yet perplexing philosophers. . . . The blend of precise music analysis, sociohistorical awareness and stylized writing in the individual texts is always engrossing reading.’—Publishers Weekly

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Without Model
2. Amorbach
3. On Tradition
4. Scribbled at the Jeu de Paue
5. From Sils Maria
6. Non-Conciliatory Proposal
7. The Culture Industry: A Résumé
8. Obituary for an Organizer
9. Transparencies on Film
10. Chaplin Times Two
11. Theses on The Sociology of Art
12. Functionalism Today
13. Luccan Memorial
14. The Misused Baroque
15. Vienna, After Easter 1967
16. Art and the Arts