Mediations of Music

<p>Adorno believed that a circular relationship was established between immediacy and mediation. Should we now say that this model with its clear Hegelian influence is outdated? Or does it need some theoretical integration? This volume addresses these questions by covering the performance of music, its technological reproduction and its modes of communication – in particular, pedagogy and dissemination through the media. Each of the book’s four parts deal with different aspects of the mediation process. The contributing authors outline the problematic moments in Adorno’s reasoning but also highlight its potential. In many chapters the pole of immediacy is explicitly brought into play, its different manifestations often proving to be fundamental for the understanding of mediation processes. The prime reference sources are Adorno’s <em>Current of Music</em>, <em>Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction</em> and <em>Composing for the Films</em>. Critical readings of these texts are supplemented by reflections on performance studies, media theories, sociology of listening, post-structuralism and other contiguous research fields.</p> <p>1 Popular Culture and Post-Traditional Arts: Debates and Controversies During Adorno’s Exile in the USA </p><p>GIANMARIO BORIO</p><p>PART I: The Dynamics of Musical Mediation</p><p>2 The Logic of Judgement-less Synthesis: Theodor W. Adorno on Vermittlung and the Language of Music </p><p>DIETER MERSCH</p><p>3 Beyond Mediation </p><p>ESTEBAN BUCH</p><p>4 Media, Mediation and ‘Bildung’ in Adorno’s Current of Music </p><p>MICHELA GARDA</p><p>PART II: Notation and Performance </p><p>5 ‘Every written note is the image of a beat’: Rethinking Adorno’s Critique of Notation </p><p>ANDREAS MEYER</p><p>6 Towards a Practice of Musical Performance Creativity </p><p>DANIEL LEECH-WILKINSON</p><p>7 Exploring the Text-Performance Continuum in Music: Reflections on Immediate Mediation </p><p>ALESSANDRO CECCHI</p><p>PART III: Music on Screen </p><p>8 Instrumentalizing Music for the Movies: Comedy, Portability, Labor, Critique </p><p>LYDIA GOEHR</p><p>9 Composing for the Films in the Age of Digital Media </p><p>JAMES BUHLER</p><p>PART IV: Recorded Sound in Changing Environments </p><p>10 Adorno and Jazz: A Dialogue with the Philosopher from an Audiotactile Perspective </p><p>VINCENZO CAPORALETTI</p><p>11 Adorno, the Jitterbug and the Becoming Insect of Music </p><p>MAKIS SOLOMOS</p>