Quasi Una Fantasia

This collection covers a wide range of topics, from a moving study of Bizet’s Carmen to an entertainingly caustic exploration of the hierarchies of the auditorium. Especially significant is Adorno’s “dialectical portrait” of Stravinsky, in which Adorno both reconsiders and refines his damning indictment of the composer in Philosophy on Modern Music. Throughout, Adorno is sustained by the conviction that music is supremely human because it is capable of communicating inhumanity while resisting it. His belief in the benevolent and transformative power of music reverberates throughout these writings.“This is an extraordinary book ... one of Adorno’s most impressive, fecund and elegant works ... It will appeal to anyone who wishes to encounter one of the century’s most challenging and provocative social theorists at his most openly enthusiastic.”—Times Higher Education Supplement

“A volume of Adorno is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature.”—Susan SontagTheodor Adorno was director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt from 1956 until his death in 1969. His works include In Search of Wagner; Aesthetic Theory; Negative Dialectics; and (with Max Horkheimer) Dialectic of Enlightenment and Towards a New Manifesto.