ABSTRACT
With a few notable exceptions, student interest in Marxist thought and in sociological theory in general, which had never been great to begin with, had for the past several years been waning. The subject matter of "the Frankfurt School" is difficult and far ranging, involves many philosophical, cultural, political, and historical perspectives as well as those of psychoanalysis and esthetic theory, and is grounded in German sociology, principally that of Marx and Max Weber. It would not be possible to examine more than a very small part of this material in one semester. Max Weber was essentially self-taught in musical matters. Yet it is instructive to compare his sociology of music with that of the formally trained and far more technically sophisticated Adorno. The ubiquity of alienation as a major theme among the Frankfurt scholars is unique among neo-Marxist thinkers. There is little in the writings of the French, Italian, English, Russian, Chinese, Indian, African, American, and South American Marxists.
