Transcendence of avant-garde negativity as a determinant of the social position of European music in the 20th century

Abstract

Starting with Adorno’s negative dialectic and his consideration of musical material as the crucial theoretical notion that implies the negative dialectic core, we examine in this study the deconstructive potential of materialization of some musical antinomies of the 20th century. We follow this materialization from the aspect of transcendence of the antinomy considered as a certain musical ‘unit’ of negativity. This process is investigated here in reference to the concepts of musical material and the dual determination of music and musical-aesthetic experience, as well as to the musically concrete levels regarding musical substance and language of the avant-garde and post modernity, as representatives of a further possible antinomy: respectively, between the phenomenological and the hermeneutical. Functioning within all these levels individually, the process of transcendence brings about consequences which in our view can be considered as general criteria affecting the social position of European music of the 20th century.