Modern Music And Its Impact On Popular Music - 1388 Words

Popular music is an example of what cultural industries produce and also what Theodor Adorno criticizes in his essay, On Popular Music. Theodor Adorno is a German philosopher, socialist, and also a composer. He analyzes popular music with the perspective not only from music, but also from the economic system based on Marx’s idea. This paper first discusses his theory about popular music, including three important key terms and then how he develops this theory based on Marxism. Further, this paper will also apply Adorno’s theory to a Disney movie, Frozen in order to evaluate his theory. By comparing popular music with serious music, Theodor Adorno makes a theory that criticizes popular music, suggesting three key words to describe characteristics of popular music: standardization, pseudo-individualization, and social cement. In other words, because of these characteristics, Adorno thinks popular music as inferior to serious music. The first and the primary characteristic of popular music, standardization means that popular music is assimilated to successful music in both structure and content (Adorno 73). As the example of the standardized structure, he mentions the chorus because it is standardized by the limit of one octave and one note with thirty-two bars. Not only is the whole structure including the chorus standardized, but also the content of popular music is standardized. Although he does not introduce examples in his essay, one of the standardized contents is aboutShow MoreRelatedMusic has Accompanied Man through History656 Words   |  3 PagesUndoubtedly we are talking about music. 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