Obsolescence of the category of musical material?

The objections to Adorno's philosophy of music by the second generation of Critical Theory and a possible response through his late musical writings

Abstract

In this paper we try to claim that the obsolescence of Adorno's philosophy of music, diagnosed in an exemplary way by the second generation of Critical Theory in the Adorno Konferenz of 1983, is problematic because it is based on a partial reading of Adorno's musical writings, one that fixes the conception of musical material presented on the Philosophy of New Music (1949) as a paradigm for the whole of the philosopher's work. In order to support such hypothesis, we first reconstruct the main objections raised by Albrecht Wellmer and Peter Bürger in the aforementioned conference and then confront them with reflections present in Adorno's later musical writings. In this confrontation, we seek to highlight that the limitations pointed out by the authors are, rather, the result of the partiality of their reading paradigm itself, whose overcoming would allow a renewed view on the potentials of Adorno's critical theory of music for the present.