Elias and/or Adorno: a short personal reflection and perspective from a musicologist

Abstract

This article focus on the epistemological problems faced when writing a history of music in the 18th century. It discusses the different ways in which Norbert Elias and Theodor W. Adorno understood the life and works of respectively Mozart and Beethoven. It is argued that, even though Adorno had a far greater knowledge of music, his Marxist inspired dialectical view on music’s and art’s position ends in a dead end, where as Elias’ more open theoretical perspectives gives the scholar an opportunity to understand interdependencies of man’s use of music, the ongoing changes of music’s structures, the changes of the mindsets of man, and the general different changes in the societies of the major countries in the 18th century.