Adorno's distinction between serious and popular music and his criticisms of the latter are legitimately debatable. Yet, this philosopher offers a profound insight into the evolution music that is still, and probably even more, relevant nowadays. Music holds a central place in Adorno's critical theory, serving as both a reflection of societal conditions and a potential medium for resistance against cultural commodification. He viewed music as a powerful social force, capable of either reinforcing or challenging the status quo. Through his analysis, Adorno explored how music could either succumb to the pressures of the culture industry or maintain its autonomy and critical potential.

In this exploration, I seek to engage with the intricate and often provocative musings of Theodor W. Adorno on the subject of music. We shall traverse the landscape of his critiques of popular music, his profound appreciation for the classical canon, and his expansive philosophical insights into music's societal role. As Edward Said said, “Adorno's insistence on the autonomy of the artwork, its resistance to commodification, and its potential for critical reflection” can better shape our “understanding of music's role in cultural critique." (Said, Musical Elaborations, p. 56).

It should be added that Adorno's criticisms of popular music, while formulated in a different era, give us a departure counterpoint to reevaluate the relation between music and society, even if they invite fresh scrutiny and critical examination.

On popular music

Adorno initially states that “popular music [...] is usually characterized by its difference from serious music.” He considers that there are two distinct spheres of music, with one sphere (that of, indeed, serious music) being more valuable than the other. To sum up his thought, the sphere of serious music would be characterized by creativity, while that of ‘popular music’ would be that of standardization. Popular music would comply with rigid rules that would prevent composers and performers from being truly creative and innovative. Indeed, they are supposedly constrained to follow such rules as “the chorus consists of thirty-two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note.”

So is standardized “the ‘characters’ such as mother songs, home songs, nonsense or ‘novelty’ songs, pseudo-nursery rhymes, and laments for a lost girl.” In this set of possible themes within which the “hit’ must fit, Adorno delineates the emphasis placed on “the most primitive harmonic facts no matter what has harmonically intervened.” Thus, complications (if any occurred) should bear no consequences because “this inexorable device guarantees (that) the hit will lead back to the same similar experience, and nothing fundamentally novel will be introduced.”

Standardization is thus well illustrated in the details, written down on scores and played with sets of “breaks, blue chords, and dirty notes,” which are hidden behind a hollow of pseudo-mystery, handled as the experts’ secret, however open this secret may be to musicians generally. ” Being not much more than an effect of a marketing strategy to sell the hit, pieces of popular music are thus delivered as ‘pre-given and pre-accepted' by listeners who become prone to evince stronger reactions to the part more than the whole.”

We could illustrate this idea by asking ourselves, “What do I like in this song?” or “What makes this song great?” The answer to such questions is in reality, more complex and depends on many factors, and there are degrees of understanding music, whether ‘serious’ or ’popular’, according to one’s social, economic, and cultural background. We eventually will reconsider this aspect. Yet, if we consider a song, or ‘hit,’ as a constructed piece of music, we may agree that many features are strategically placed to summon specific reactions from the listener’s brain. Only, we may wonder whether this applies to ‘popular music’ exclusively.

Adorno himself would admit that music is indeed a construct based on rules of harmony and know-how of intervals between tones according to tonalities. Whether one considers ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ Miles Davis’ play of ‘Summer Time,’ or Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (to quote Adorno’s example), one may relevantly argue that these tunes are constructions that obey and disobey some prefixed rules. Certainly enough, “serious music’ (a label that ought to be more finely defined, as ‘popular music’ still needs so) has its way to derive “its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece, which, in turn, consists of the life relationship of the details,” thus never being—in Adorno’s thought—“a“ mere enforcement of a musical scheme.”

While this may be true for such lengthy pieces as Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, one may, however, wonder if (notwithstanding their intrinsic beauty) ‘Für Elise’ or the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ are not fitting this definition too. Moreover, they now tend to provoke standardized reactions because of their overuse in TV commercials, films, and media at large.

This statement may oversimplify Adorno's nuanced understanding of music. Adorno acknowledged that music is constructed based on certain rules. What he emphasized, however, was the dialectical relationship between structure and expression. In effect, Adorno believed that true art transcends mere adherence to rules, achieving a balance between form and content that resists commodification. Indeed, Adorno's critique was more about the commodification that causes this standardization prevalent in popular music.

The issue of ‘popular music’ as a critique of capitalist alienation

“Standardization and non-standardization are the key contrasting terms for the difference between ‘serious’ and ‘popular music.’ As he already stated earlier in his demonstration, the aim is, for the latter, to provoke ‘standard reactions’ thanks to a process of ‘structural standardization’ operated by the promoters of this kind of music. Adorno thought that it was the” inherent nature” of this music itself that manipulated the action of listening “into a system of response mechanisms wholly antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society.”

In substance, a composition of popular music, Adorno says, “hears for the listener.” And this “is how popular music divests the listener of his spontaneity and promotes conditioned reflexes.” In other terms, this kind of music “makes any effort of listening (attentively) unnecessary.” It is “predigested’ in a way strongly resembling the fad of “digest’ material”. This is how ‘popular music’ is supposedly opposed to ‘serious music,’ which would require a major intellectual effort to be truly understood, appreciated, and assimilated.

Popular music, in Adorno’s time, had already started to integrate the patterns of industrialization in terms of economic organization and division of labor. In this process, popular music undergoes a characterization that is that of a commodity and, in Adorno’s Marxist perspective, vests the aspects of exchange value. As a commodity, a hit is worth another, and this is the reason why it must comply with standards and follow the rules he delineated.

It has to be admitted that this criticism is particularly relevant when thinking of many hits of contemporary ‘pop’ music. Perhaps it has even become more so since the advent of 1980s hit music and its evolution till nowadays. There are trends of similarity and standardization that could be followed since the hits by Madonna to those by Lady Gaga or A. Grande, passing by B. Spears and C. Aguilera, or, again, from M. Jackson to J. Timberlake or B. Mars. Just like the tunes they interpret, like those by the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys, and the like, there are interchangeable characters who are more the image of the spectacle they participate in than the real people they can be in private. In short, both their hits and their figures are commodities that are valued and can be exchanged between each other.

If one applies Adorno’s reasoning, those icons are part of the generalized leisure promoted by this Society of the Spectacle, ferociously criticized by Guy Debord and the Situationist movements. In their view, leisure is the counterpart and the paramount expression of the ultimate alienation operated by the capitalist mode of production. What Adorno may have well anticipated is that pop icons and their pre-made music work as a “catharsis for the masses, but a catharsis that keeps them all the more firmly in line. [...] Music that permits its listeners the confession of their unhappiness reconciles them, using this ‘release,’ to their social dependence.”

Limitations of Adorno’s criticisms

The model that is elaborated by Adorno has, however, some limitations. Some are due to the historical context in which he lived when he wrote his article, eventually developing his views further in his ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment.’ The 1960s and the 1970s witnessed the surge of types or styles of popular music that evidenced a set of issues with Adorno’s contentions.

First, Adorno dismissed historical inquiries into the origins of both ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ spheres of music from the very beginning. Doing so, he is unable to evidence the connections that they may have had with one another. This consideration leads to a second limitation of his criticism, which is the too clear-cut separation that he makes between the spheres, as though there had never been any interaction and influence between them. To make but a short example, who knows that the introductions of the Beatles ‘Black Bird’ and Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ are constructed based on Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Bourrée’ or that the main riff of ‘Smoke on the Water’ is an inversion of the so-famous first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony?

We could add to these examples that of Jimmy Page’s interpretation of Chopin’s ‘Prelude’ or his use of the violin bow on the electric guitar on the tune ‘Dazed and Confused.’ This statement can be valid the other way around. Consider how Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) used some movements from ‘Frère Jacques’ in his Symphony No. 1. Where would Adorno locate the above-mentioned ‘Bourrée’ created by he who is revered as one of, if not ‘the’ greatest composers of classical—therefore ‘serious’—music, i.e., Bach?

Quite similarly, we may wonder what Adorno could think of Frank Zappa’s music. What would be his feelings and his judgment regarding the utter commercialization of a music that was nevertheless challenging the codes and rules of pre-made, standardized music? Zappa, too, was known for his critique of the music industry and mainstream culture and often used satire and irony to expose its absurdities. Adorno might have appreciated Zappa's willingness to challenge the norms and conventions of the culture industry, aligning with his critiques of commodification and standardization.

Zappa's music was complex; it blended rock, jazz, classical, and avant-garde elements; it was highly innovative. Perhaps, Zappa’s approach to music might have resonated with Adorno's idea that music must transcend simple formulas and engage listeners on a deeper, more intellectual level.

Thirdly, Adorno’s criticism may have relevance only if one considers Western music and is fundamentally Eurocentric, as many Marxist theories have been. What is serious in many non-European cultures is also popular. Divisions between different social uses of music may be more complex than the caricatural division between music that ‘serious’/bourgeois people go listening to at the theatre, dressed very elegantly and formally, and ‘pop’ music that young people are dancing to, shaking their heads after overdrinking. Of course, this is a cliché that nevertheless epitomizes the risk of attributing the nobility of ‘classical’ music to upper classes and popular-meaning-vulgar music to alienated lower classes.

In this model, where do music of rebellion like reggae or social insurgency like punk rock stand? They too emerged as forms of challenge to the status quo, only to be swallowed by the culture industry and become mainstream commodities. Only they lost what makes up their core identities. To quote once more Edward W. Said’s ‘Musical Elaboration,’ "While popular music can be seen as a form of resistance or subversion, it is also susceptible to co-optation by the very forces it seeks to challenge." (Said, Musical Elaborations, p. 102)

Again, it is far from certain that Adorno’s model is relevantly applied to music from the Hispanophone cultures of the Americas, whose roots dive into pre-Columbian societies, their imaginary, poetry, and musical practices. Before becoming a ‘hit’ recently made even more popular by Disney’s anime film ‘Cocco,’ ‘La Llorona’ is a tale that has its roots in pre-Columbian ghost stories and legends. Neither may this distinction well apply to the practice of music in, say, West Africa, where instruments are often support for the tales told by the griot, who is the living memory of one given group.

Finally, there are historical reasons that explain why such a division between ‘serious’ and ‘popular music applies almost exclusively to Western music. Despite Adorno’s dismissal of historical analysis, it is important to consider the multiple historical processes that lead to the structuration of Western music in this kind of division between what would be serious and what is not. Moreover, it is worth considering how what is labelled as ‘Western’ music is both a social-historical construction.

In ‘A Little History of Music,’ Robert Phillip retraces Western ‘serious’ music’s heritage from Al-Andalus and, beyond it, Persia and its Mesopotamian heritage. Indeed, the whole mathematics behind the construction of harmony and melody owes much to Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon, including the ‘Pythagorean’ (natural major) scale.

These forefathers gave us the oud, or lute, the lyre, and many other instruments, which themselves came down from prehistoric times. And, if we consider more ‘popular’ music from the ‘West,’ it is not possible to pass the African legacy that gave the Blues (and thus, Jazz and the different styles of Rock N’ Roll) in silence. This is well evidenced in the documentary series that retells director Martin Scorsese’s journey from the Mississippi Delta to West Africa in search of the roots of Blues music. Thus, there is a world beyond the rather simplistic and clear-cut division between ‘serious’ and ‘popular music. This does, however, not mean that the issue of standardization is irrelevant if considering the state of contemporary music, be it either ‘serious’ or ‘popular.’

Popular music: standardization in the digital age

Although the theory elaborated by Adorno has substantial limitations, his considerations may be even more relevant nowadays. Especially in light of the surge of computing technologies. Arguably, many of the tendencies that he detected between the 1940s and the 1950s have undergone exponential developments alongside the evolution of the capitalist mode of production and its form of social development. Technological advancement, especially the rise to omnipresence of computers and software, has profoundly affected the production of music.

More than ever, music has become very easily available to the masses. Whether we are here talking about ‘serious’ (meaning ‘classical’) or ‘popular’ music does not matter in the present state of things. Both kinds have entered an age of (potentially) infinite reproducibility. In any case, what Adorno appreciated as a moment of uniqueness has irremediably gone away. Worst, the commodification of music is very likely to suffocate the creativity and authenticity of music in general.

Now is the age of autotune and artificial intelligence. Undeniably, these can be very helpful tools for some musicians and professionals. But they appear in times when musical instruments and resources to learn how to play music have never been so easily accessible, whereas musical education has remained very often neglected, notably, in schools’ curricula. This is a fact that Palestinian literary critic Edward W. Said and Israeli pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim already lamented in their conversations on music, ‘Parallels and Paradoxes.’ With social media that work as players, tunes have become mere appeals with the scope of advertisements.

To a more extreme point, platforms like Suno give their subscribers the possibility to make AI create music without any human intervention. Subscribing their creativity to what is a data management tool that combines various algorithms. The result may roughly be dubbed ‘the standard of the standards.’ Very probably, it is this kind of denial of what makes our humanity that Adorno wanted to warn us of. With AI’s rise to prominence, there is a serious risk that people give up what makes the very definition of a human being. That is, creativity.