What Adorno Makes Possible for Music Analysis

Abstract

Conceived as a commentary on four responses to Adorno's 1928 essay, "Schubert," by Esteban Buch, Jonathan Dunsby, Scott Burnham, and Beate Perrey, this article explores some of the implications of Adorno's essay as they center on notions of hybridity, the interstitial and especially the provisional. It urges a critical strategy that is self-critical, that seeks to name without naming, and that draws on rigorous formal analysis without presenting its outcomes as ends but as means toward various narrative ends.