Adorno, T: Beethoven

"Great works of art, Adorno knew, always resist the attempt to subsume them under theoretical categories. In the case of a supreme artist like Beethoven, a lifetime of futile efforts by Adorno to complete a major philosophical study bore ironic witness to this insight. The struggle to write his impossible book left behind, however, a wealth of tantalizing fragments, which have the added value of revealing Adorno s own process of intellectual production. Masterfully reconstructed and annotated by Rolf Tiedemann, they are now available in Edmund Jephcott s elegant translation. In their very "failure" they demonstrate the abiding power of Adorno s claim that the dialectic of art and philosophy must remain unreconciled and negative." Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

"These fragments shed valuable light not only on Adorno s thinking on Beethoven, but also equally importantly on the sources of Adorno s philosophy of music. Rolf Tiedemann s sensitive editing has produced a remarkably coherent volume out of the most disparate material, while Edmund Jephcott s translation rises magnificently to a difficult task." Max Paddison, University of Durham