But why should music be exempt from political viability, any more than any other art form?
I certainly don't think so, but acknowledge that others disagree. But having a particular category of 'political music' (or 'political art') implies that there is other music/art which is somehow not politcal.
"Might (as Adorno suggested) the very fact of turning explicit politics into art serve to diffuse that politics by rendering it aesthetic?"
Where does Adorno "suggest" that? Or at least insist upon the 'explicity'?
Do you mean Adorno on Brecht?
Yes, I'm thinking of his comments on Brecht and Sartre (and Picasso, and Schoenberg's
A Survivor from Warsaw) in 'Committment'. And that's at the heart of my problem with the Nono work - it purports to be some sort of musical representation of the worst horror known to man (or its victims), but succeeds in creating something abstractly beautiful. I appreciate that this may be a means of attempting to recapture the victims' humanity, but think it a very dubious aesthetic strategy at best.
