ABSTRACT
The nature of music is now a theory and practice of a nature that is itself ecological, not in the sense that it consciously evokes thoughts of the sublime terror of dark forests’ consuming shadows or the pleasant sensibilities of meadows renewed by the lightest of springtime showers; rather, the ecological is an at once abstract yet also practised system of material relations and environments that are both internally dynamic yet also bounded only permeably. Adorno wrote extensively about both music and nature. His dialectical thinking about both – apart and taken together – enables one to consider the paradoxes implied with our twin readings of Hindemith’s comments in sight. In particular, an anti-hylomorphic language of affordances promises to allow material to speak in conversation with the craftsperson, rather than only convey – materially – the craftsperson’s ephemeral message.
