KOLLOQUIUM MUSIKTHEORIE / MUSIC THEORY COLLOQUIA
with Rafael (Ardi) Echevarria
Durham University (UK)
Kolloquium Musiktheorie / Music Theory Colloquia – Early 2025 Series:
Current Questions in Philosophy of Music, Analysis and Society
This paper examines Adorno’s reception within music theory using two case studies: his ‘materiale Formenlehre’ (Paddison 1993)—especially the category of ‘Durchbruch’ (Hepokoski 1992; Buhler 1996)—and the role of ‘das Mehr’ within Horton’s (2020) ‘technical autonomy’. These concepts present competing accounts of Adorno’s social critique within music theory. While Breakthrough destabilises musical autonomy, Horton considers technical autonomy central to music theory’s socio-political function. This tension reflects underlying disagreements regarding Adorno’s account of music theory: analysis either gains its critical power through autonomy or conceals a deeper social mediation. In this paper, I reinterpret Adorno’s music-theoretical reception by examining a constellation of related ideas: contingency, critique, surplus, and especially utopia. Adorno’s social critique exposes the contingency of formal models, creating a fraught vision of an alternative world, a musical surplus accessible only through analysis. Confronting this Adornian constellation facilitates fresh reimagination of music theory’s socio-political potential.
Rafael (Ardi) Echevarria is a music theorist and musicologist specialising in nineteenth-century musical form and musicological debates surrounding analysis. Ardi is a PhD candidate at Durham University, having previously studied at the Sydney Conservatorium and Harvard. He is secretary for the Musicological Society of Australia’s Sydney chapter, student representative for the Society for Music Analysis, and chair of the SMA’s Formal Theory Study Group.
The evenings are moderated by Prof. Dr. Jan Philipp Sprick and Roberta Vidic, who both teach in the Music Theory Department at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater.
Free admission
Contact and Zoom sign-up: roberta.vidic@hfmt-hamburg.de
Overview
13 January, 6.00 pm (CET)
20 January, 6.00 pm (CET)
10 February, 6.00 pm (CET)