ABSTRACT
Theodor W. Adorno, celebrated member of the Frankfurt School, an outstanding musical scholar, philosopher, and critic who developed some provocative theories of art: that Western art has tended toward increasing autonomy from society. For the American musicologist interested in understanding Adorno's musical thought in spite of such difficulties, the logical place to start is with one of the two composers about whom Adorno's musical writing centers, Beethoven and Schoenberg. Implicit in Beethoven's late style, as Adorno analyzes it, is the eventual dissolution of all the values that made bourgeois humanism the hope of a human civilization. Comprehensive survey of the critical literature about Beethoven's music, Hans Eggebrecht suggests that Adorno's interpretation represents the only semblance of a new direction in modern Beethoven criticism. Donald Kuspit links truly doing justice to Adorno with objecting to him, and, no doubt, doing justice to Adorno's agonized humanism requires refuting his fatal diagnosis of humanity.
