On Music and Perfection: Adorno’s Dialectics, the notion of the Sublime in Slavoj Žižek and in the Cinematography of Werner Herzog

Authors: Allaerts W*

DOI: 10.23880/phij-16000243

Volume 5, Issue 2

Abstract

This paper continues two preceding papers, devoted to (1) the notions of mathematics and computability in music, and (2) the problem of inclusiveness in music, or more specific the difficult integration of soul and jazz in so-called Western music, as experienced in certain ‘European’ circles of classic music. Also in accordance with the previous, the present paper is about what defines ‘perfection’ in music. Although the individual qualities of musicians and composers are of primary importance for an excellent performance, this is not what this paper is about. Starting from both T.W. Adorno’s dialectic analysis of Arnold Schoenberg and the music of the second Viennese school, and the notion of the Sublime in opera, as worked out by Slavoj Žižek, we elaborate on the relationship between the Sublime and perfection in music and in the literature referring to it. Moreover, S.A. Kierkegaard’s Wolf’s Glen metaphor plays an important role in this comparison between the perfect and the Sublime and in the softening and eroding work of time. L.N. Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata is a classic example of this transformation. An interesting analogue is also found in the cinematographic work of Werner Herzog.

Keywords: Adorno’s dialectics; Wolf’s Glen metaphor; Kantian Sublime; Kreutzer sonata(s); Werner Herzog and ecstatic truth in cinematography

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