How to Listen to Music

Theodor W. Adorno (Author) Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was a German philosopher, social theorist, music critic, and composer, and a leading figure of the Frankfurt School. Best known for his critiques of mass culture and modern society, Adorno was also one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers on classical and modern music. His books include Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia, Negative Dialectics, Aesthetic Theory, and Philosophy of New Music. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Translator) Shierry Weber Nicholsen is a psychoanalyst and independent scholar who has translated works by Adorno and other Frankfurt School thinkers. She is the author of Exact Imagination, Late Work and The Love of Nature and the End of the World. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Translator) Jeremy J. Shapiro is professor emeritus at Fielding Graduate University. He has translated works by Herbert Marcuse and Juergen Habermas and is coauthor of Mindful Inquiry in Social Research.

"How to Listen to Music shows us an Adorno not often appreciated: the educator capable of speaking to specialist and non-specialist alike, intent on making classical and modern music accessible to a general public. Nicholsen and Shapiro do an excellent job of capturing the balance in Adorno's prose between rigorous technical analysis and vivid metaphoric evocations of the music." - Howard Eiland, coauthor of Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life "The three lectures presented in How to Listen to Music offer fresh insights into the fundamental yet often only implicit theory of listening that underlies Adorno's musicological reflections. With eloquence and calm sophistication, the translators do not simply demonstrate how Adorno's thoughts on the listening experience are in fact quite accessible, at least for the reader willing to take the time, but also indicate precisely why these reflections matter." - John T. Hamilton, Harvard University