Music and society in the 20th century: Georg Lukacs,Ernst Bloch,and Theodor Adorno

Conclusion The avant-garde has defined itself not only by what it has opposed; it has come to show a specific content and character best shown in Poggioli's masterful portrait. Lukacs-Bloch-Adorno stood in a complex but unclarified relation to the avant-garde; their failure to clarify this relation constitutes a limitation on their sociology of music. One wishes for a new Max Weber to put their broad statements to some kind of historical test. However, the condition of music today calls for a different kind of sociology than they produced; the fragmentation of music into a multiplicity of styles and audiences, the cornucopia of choices that make available almost all musics from all eras throughout the world, the specialization and fragmentation of audiences for the classics, for avant-garde experiments, for folk music, ethnic musics, for rock, punk, and whatever else, the co-existence of more than one style of composition, all require a sociology of music that is not encompassed by a single philosophical approach.