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Music History & Criticism

Friendly Remainders

Essays in Music Criticism after Adorno

by (author) Murray Dineen

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2011
Category
History & Criticism
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773538849
    Publish Date
    Sep 2011
    List Price
    $110.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773539198
    Publish Date
    Sep 2011
    List Price
    $37.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773585768
    Publish Date
    Sep 2011
    List Price
    $95.00

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Description

Friendly Remainders draws on Adorno's concept of the negative dialectic, examining its importance in Adorno's thought and its critical application to musical forms. Moving beyond a positivist view where musical object and appreciation operate as a synthesis, the negative dialectic method focuses on divergence and dissonance in musical forms and in society. Contradictions and divergent details and concepts become "remainders," friendly because of the fresh perspective they offer on musical forms. Dineen examines these contradictory remainders in subjects such as the fascist element in Wagner's character, the torpor of Schoenberg's twelve-tone method, the self-contradiction implicit in Beethoven's Late Style, Frank Zappa's attempt to define himself as a "serious" composer, the reactionary stasis in Marilyn Manson's DVD "Guns, God and Government World Tour," and the death motive in John Coltrane.

Friendly Remainders takes seriously the project of making Adorno accessible, asking the same questions of classical and popular music - taking the measure of Mahler as much as Manson - for the value of the critical insights they provoke.

About the author

Murray Dineen is professor of music theory and musicology at the University of Ottawa.

Murray Dineen's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"Dineen moves effortlessly from one topic, style, or composer to another, between worlds classical, modernist, and pop. I don't know of any work on Adorno which is so enjoyably discursive, allusive, and personal." Michael Spitzer, University of Liverpool