ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an exposition and development of Adorno's concept of artistic material as characterized by constraints and 'inner compulsion', focusing on the critical dimension of his late musical aesthetics. Adorno's perspective demands our attention in that, in our climate of postmodern nihilism, it does not hold back from raising issues concerning both the conditions of musical creation as well as the problem of musical creation itself. The chapter explores that form gains its validity and legitimacy through the idea of a community of shared values, and it also shows how this hypothesis is consequently developed in Walter Benjamin's 'art of storytelling' and in Hannah Arendt's category of 'work'. The constellation of late musical writings, and in a certain sense their coherence, is organized around the problem of musical creation and it is in this context that we need to understand Adorno's work on the concept of material.
