One.
February 23, 2011, 0 comments
The two spheres of music. Popular music, which produces the stimuli we are here investigating, is usually characterized by its difference from serious music. (…) A clear judgment concerning the relation of serious music to popular music can be arrived at only by strict attention to the fundamental characteristic of popular music: standardization. The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization. Standardization extends from the most general features to the most specific ones. Best known is the rule that the chorus consists of thirty two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note. The general types of hits are also standardized: not only the dance types, the rigidity of whose pattern is understood, but also the “characters” such as mother songs, home songs, nonsense or “novelty” songs, pseudo-nursery rhymes, laments for a lost girl. Most important of all, the harmonic cornerstones of each hit — the beginning and the end of each part — must beat out the standard scheme. This scheme emphasizes the most primitive harmonic facts no matter what has harmonically intervened. Complications have no consequences. This inexorable device guarantees that regardless of what aberrations occur, the hit will lead back to the same familiar experience, and nothing fundamentally novel will be introduced. (…)
(Theodor W. Adorno, On Popular Music, New York 1941)
No fear of pop indeed. Thanks for having us.
(Photo)
Pandit – In Love With a Fool (feat. Foxes In Fiction & Coma Cinema)
