Adorno believed that a circular relationship was established between immediacy and mediation. Should we now say that this model with its clear Hegelian influence is outdated? Or does it need some theoretical integration? This volume addresses these questions by covering the performance of music, its technological reproduction and its modes of communication - in particular, pedagogy and dissemination through the media. The book's four parts each deal with different aspects of the mediation process. The contributing authors outline the problematic moments (...) in Adorno's reasoning but also highlight its potential. In many chapters the pole of immediacy is explicitly brought into play, its different manifestations often proving to be fundamental for the understanding of mediation processes. The prime reference sources are Adorno's Current of Music, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction and Composing for the Films. Critical readings of these texts are supplemented by reflections on performance studies, media theories, sociology of listening, post-structuralism and other contiguous research fields. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to understand the reasons for the current crisis of musical aesthetics. It examines the function of this discipline as the mediator between philosophy and musicology, it inquires into its connections with the ideals of autonomy, beauty and free subjectivity. During the 20th Century, major changes in society and their communication forms happened; anthropology and semiotics began to compete with aesthetics in explaining musical facts. The last paragraphs test the chances of resistance of musical aesthetics ; (...) musical meaning appears to be the only question which endured in spite of the considerable fragmentation and loss of profile of musical experience. (shrink)