Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression

Author(s): MAX PADDISON

Source: Music Analysis , March-October 2010, Vol. 29, No. 1/3, Special Issue on Music
and Emotion (March-October 2010), pp. 126-148
Published by: Wiley

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 DOI: 10.111 1/j. 1468-2249.201 1 ,00333.x

MAX PADDISON

Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression

The question is simply: Are we dealing with a dying out of the mimetic faculty,
rather perhaps with a transformation that has taken place within it? (Benjam
[1933a] 1999a, p. 695)

Art is a refuge for mimetic behaviour. (Adorno [1970] 1984, p. 79)

Introduction

Theories of imitation and expression are as central to the history ofWestern

as they are to the history of philosophical aesthetics. In their everyday usa
however, both terms seem remarkably stuck with common-sense meanings
remain stubbornly resistant to attempts to clarify them. In this article I s
explore these otherwise over-familiar concepts in the light of the older an
familiar notion of mimesis - a concept that has been largely eclipsed on th
hand by the widespread use of terms like 'representation' and 'resemblance
on the other by the persistent and long-standing conviction that music ab
the arts is concerned with the expression of emotions.1 My aim is threefold:
to ask what we mean when we use concepts like imitation, representatio
expression; second, to broaden the concept of imitation to take on the impli
of the dynamic, historical and anthropological notion of mimesis proposed
among others, Roger Caillois, Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno
which is opposed to the largely static, ahistorical conceptions of mere 'repr
tation' and 'resemblance' common to musicology and to analytic philosophy
third, to show the dialectical relationship of mimesis to concepts of expres
construction and rationality in Adorno 's later aesthetics and in his the
musical reproduction. The concept of mimesis that is the focus of this articl
as its key features embodiment, mimetism (to use Caillois's term), movemen
in an anthropological sense, adaptation. I suggest that the larger implicatio
such a rich and interactive notion of mimesis and its relation to expression
far-reaching, not least for the performance and reception of music.
I take the view that all expression theories derive from mimetic theories
that this claim can be grounded historically. This must be immediately qua
By 'mimesis' I do not mean only, or even primarily, the 'transitive' notion
imitation (to adapt Roger Scruton's distinction in relation to expression),2
music is said 'to imitate something' (this is what I shall call the 'imitati
theory), just as I do not, by expression, mean primarily transitive noti
expression where music is said 'to express something' (this could be call

126 Music Analysis , 29/i-ii-iii (2010)

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 127

'expression of' theory). At the same time, however, it is p

transitive sense of 'to imitate something' that imitation has
us to notions of music being regarded as 'expressive of' in
senting something else, given the close affinity between the
doctrine of affects, dating from the seventeenth century and
others, Descartes, has its origins in notions of 'imitation
imitates or represents the passions, leading inevitably in the
sion theories by the end of the eighteenth century. Indeed,
this kind mean precisely that - the imitation or represen
feelings, moods and, of course, of expression itself, becau
gestural aspect of music, both in the stylised sense of the co
sentation of the gestures associated with the 'passions', and a
the performance traditions associated with such gestures.
Starting from the position that, when considered historicall
ries have their origin in mimetic theories, I argue that concep
seen to retain features of mimesis. This is not to subscribe to a version of the
essentialist fallacy, that things are to be explained solely in terms of their origins,
rather than in terms of what they have become. Instead it is to propose a quite
different thing: that key elements of their origins persist through the process of
historical change. Furthermore, in distinguishing intransitive 'expression' from
the 'expression of' something else, e.g. as the 'expression of emotion', I do so in
order to prepare the case for my argument that expression in artworks is at least in
part a structural phenomenon. I should make it quite clear, therefore, that I am not
concerned here with 'emotion' as such, but only with the concepts of imitation
and expression. I also go on to make the claim, following Walter Benjamin, that
mimesis can be seen as an impulse , a mode of 'identifying with' rather than neces-
sarily as 'imitation of' or 'representation of' something external to itself. In
support of this I draw on anthropological theories of mimicking and miming,
including that of Roger Caillois, which, together with that of Walter Benjamin, had
considerable influence on Adorno's thinking. I make a case for mimesis as an
embodied impulse which functions in relation to its opposite - what Adorno calls
the rational aspects of musical construction, and which leads me to a consideration
of Adorno's proposal that expression is what he calls an 'interference phenom-
enon' (1970, p. 174). That is to say, I argue that music (whether as musical work
or as musical event) itself oscillates between its own internal rationalised con-
structional unrationalised mimetic moments, and that the experience of its
'expressivity' arises from what could be called this internal 'force-field'.3

I. Expression, Imitation and Form: Schopenhauer and Hanslick

The Origins of Expression Theories of Art in Mimetic Theories

The case for the origins of expression theories of music in imitation theories is
not difficult to make. The historicality of both these concepts is easily demon-
strable, given that even the most cursory overview of their use at different

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 128 MAX P ADDISON

historical periods shows how cha

over a period of more than tw
centuries in the case of expression
only from mimesis to expression
their origins in mimetic theori
Hanslick). Indeed, this is most c
second half of the eighteenth cen
lehre. The doctrine of affects had
the previous 150 years, and had b
lised over the century between
Vincentino (1555), Zarlino (1558 and 1588), Descartes (1618, pub. 1650),
Kepler (1619), Mersenne (1636) and Kircher (1650), and had been codified as
a compendium of musical rhetorical 'figures' representing the passions to be
drawn on by composers and also, importantly, by performers. The culmination of
the doctrine of affects and of musical rhetoric as musica poetica is to be seen, of
course, in the most influential example from the mid-eighteenth century, that of
Johannes Mattheson's Der vollkommene Kapellmeister (1739).
However much we might wish to see a proto-theory of expression in the
Affektenlehre> it is nevertheless clear that the figures listed in the doctrine of
affects are really prescriptive models for imitation, for representing or imitating
the outward signs of emotions, rather than in any sense claiming to portray the
emotions themselves. This is also certainly how they were seen by the most
significant among the theorists of musical imitation in the second half of the
eighteenth century like Charles Batteux ( Les beaux arts reduits a un meme principe^
1747, pub. 1773) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (entries for the Dictionnaire de
musique , 1767). What both Batteux and Rousseau have in common is that (a)
they still relate to the by now rather archaic 'doctrine of affects', (b) they
interpret the doctrine of affects as an imitation theory, but (c) they seek to go
beyond its conventionalised figures by advocating the simple and direct expres-
sion of 'natural' feelings. In this they not only face backwards, but also point
forwards towards the new aesthetics of expression. Ultimately, what is being
'imitated', you might say, is the feelings themselves, as 'inner nature', and not just
'outer' nature.
But what are we to understand as the 'aesthetics of expression'? Historically,
composers and performers - frequently the same people - did not hestitate to
account for what they saw themselves doing as 'a play of passions', stirring the
passions, expressing emotions, and so on - these kinds of claims have been made
by musicians, artists and poets ever since the Renaissance. However, what is
distinctive about theories of expression across the arts, and not just in music, is
that they frequently claim that art expresses emotions, feelings or moods, and
that it does it directly rather than indirectly, as might be the case with imitating
the conventionalised appearance or effects of emotions. Indeed, one of the most
extreme examples of this is the case put forward by Leo Tolstoy in What Is Art?
(1899), in which expression is to be regarded as some form of 'contagion' or

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 129

'infection' (Tolstoy 1904, pp. 152-5) communicated directly fr

his reader, and through which the reader experiences what the
a primitive form of 'communication theory'.
A less extreme but nevertheless related category of referent
has features of such a communication theory is that put forw
cologist Deryck Cooke in his well-known book The Language o
a kind of latter-day doctrine of affects, whereby precise m
identified, located within works from the Western musical re
and correlated with the precise emotions they are considered
or stimulate. The renewed interest among musicologists in Co
thesis attests at the very least to a wish that these claims shou
even if at the same time it has been essential for theorists like
David Lidov and Robert Hatten to dismiss the crudeness of Cooke's terms of
reference in order to go beyond them and to build a more sophisticated system
of correlation and interpretation, through drawing on either semiotics, or variou
theories of mediation, or both.4 Underlying such referential approaches remain
the conviction nevertheless that music expresses emotions and that it is possibl
to identify the correlations between music and emotions with some precisio
and to interpret their meaning, even when, as is the case with Monelle, insistin
that all such codifications are culturally determined and not 'natural': '[l]anguag
itself ... is precisely that collection of formulae established by tradition - "arbi-
trary signs", the linguist would say - which Cooke rejects' (Monelle 1992, pp
1 1-12). Important as such claims are, however, I do not propose to pursue them
here because they do not for the moment concern my argument in any funda-
mental way. Whether unsophisticated, as is the case with Cooke, or more sy
tematically sophisticated, as is the case with semiotic theories, the convictio
remains in all such cases that music is primarily about expression, and that wha
it expresses can be identified and systematised. What I shall do is to addres
briefly some historical complications that arise from the aesthetics of expres-
sion, and which I consider also apply to all expression theories, whatever their
provenance.

Autonomy and the Intransitivity of Expression

What complicates the picture is the rise to historical importance at the end
eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century of the aesthet
autonomy, whereby what now becomes celebrated about art music in the W
that it apparently stands alone, freed from immediate social function, and
to be of value through its form. That is to say, viewed in its historical and c
context, the autonomy aesthetic emerges in parallel with the aesthetics of e
sion. There are, I suggest, two possible reasons for this.
The first reason is that the freeing of music from any direct social funct
church and court with the rise, for example, of middle-class subscription
certs leads to music's autonomy, but at the same time raises the quest
music is expressive, then what, if it is totally autonomous and self-contain

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 130 MAX P ADDISON

it expressing? By this I mean: is

context simply to continue to c
formulae in some way 'express'
context of music's historically
Hanslick in On the Musically B
nothing but itself - in effect,
expression of the form of the mu
in Ch. 2 of On the Musically Beau
or affect does not at all lie within
later we find: '[t]he ideas the com
musical'.6 He does not deny that
is a by-product of the experien
expressivity must therefore be
However, I shall return to Hansli
tautological theory of expression
anti-expression position, is also e
author's evident rejection of th
answer is that put forward by Pe
that 'artistic production is divo
comes to confront them abstract
being expressed is not only the
self-representation, but also, par
ation from contemporary society
transitive and intransitive modes.
The second reason for the rise of the autonomy aesthetic is the appearance of
the aesthetics of the sublime during the same period, with the conviction (to be
seen, for instance, in writings of Wackenroder, the Schlegels and E. T. A. Hoff-
mann at the beginning of the nineteenth century) that music is expressive, but
what it expresses is ineffable and beyond words, beyond conceptualisation.9 At
the same time, however, I suggest that an imitation theory still functions here, in
that the overpowering experience of the sublime had already, even in the eigh-
teenth century, led to a categorisation of the manifestations and effects of the
sublime as well as to a compendium of ways to achieve these effects in the arts,
including music. As early as the 1750s artists had already begun to imitate the
effects of indistinctness and obscurity in order to recreate the experience of the
sublime - previously a category of the experience of nature - through art. This is
clearly to be seen in Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our
Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), where we find: '[t]o make any thing
very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary' (Burke [1757] 1990, p.
54). But Burke goes further, and makes the concept of imitation central to his
case for what he calls the 'social passions', consisting of sympathy (what might be
called the social impulse to 'identify with'); imitation (which he describes as 'one
of the strongest links of society; ... a species of mutual compliance which all men
yield to each other, without constraint to themselves' [ibid., p. 44]) and ambition

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 131

(the sense of excelling and 'going beyond', the 'mind always

some part of the dignity and importance of the things which i
[ibid.]). Clearly derived from Aristotle's Poetics, Burke's concep
likewise dynamic in that it consists of a social process of identi
imitating and taking pleasure in the contemplation of the p
proposes that imitation functions in us independently of rationa
'consequently we have a pleasure in imitating, and in what
imitation merely as it is such, without any intervention of the r
but solely from our natural constitution' (ibid., p. 45).
The metaphysical aspects of the sublime experience of mu
probably a result of a transference from the religious (and espe
experience to the aesthetic experience, remained important b
exploitation of the effects of the sublime in, for example, painti
An intriguing version of this position in relation to music
volume 1, §52, of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Repr
where he claims that 'music differs from all the other arts by the fa
a copy of the phenomenon ... but is directly a copy of the w
1969, p. 257). In saying this, Schopenhauer appears also to claim
(as Nachahmung) and expression are one and the same in the
the extent that any distinction between transitivity and intransitivit
sustain. At first sight this contrasts greatly with Hanslick's pos

Residues of Mimetic Theories in Theories of Expression and Form

In Ch. 6 of On the Musically Beautiful , Hanslick dismisses the c

tion, both as representation and as imitation of nature, as i
position he is arguing. He writes: '[t]he Aristotelian thesis about
nature in art, which was still current among philosophers o
century, has been flogged to death and needs no further discus
1986, p. 73). In the process, however, he misrepresents Arist
mimesis, dismissing it merely as 'imitation of nature', whereas,
in the Poetics refers to mimesis as a kind of 'inclination', as som
which involves also the mimesis of events, actions, people, proc
tures, forms made up of beginnings, middles and ends; and as a
no means limited to the notion of art as the imitation of natur
proposed by Plato, for example, in the Laws. As Aristotle puts it
Malcolm Heath's translation):

Imitation comes naturally to human beings from childhood (and in this

from other animals, i.e. in having a strong propensity to imitation and
their earliest lessons through imitation); so does the universal pleasu
tions .... Given, then, that imitation is natural to us, and also melody a
(it being obvious that verse-forms are segments of rhythm), from the
those who had the strongest natural inclination towards these thing

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 132 MAX P ADDISON

poetry out of improvised activities

1996, pp. 6-7)

What Aristotle is referring to is

also to make and give form to
construction, for instance). For A
arts like music, poetry, drama an
movement, including the pleasur

Similarly in the case of the arts I h

imitation is rhythm, language and
separately or in combination. For ex
arts which have a similar effect, e.g.
only, while dance uses rhythm by
imitate character, emotion and act
ment). (. Ibid ., pp. 3-4)

Hanslick does not appear to re

'expressive' in the most fundame
sensuous material itself, whether
ment, and so on, or larger 'mean
ence of the drama, the poem, t
element of play, but he does emp
over it. The problem with Hansli
rationality or construction dom
trolled and in a sense 'irrational' o
While acknowledging music's sen
satisfactorily within the limitatio
In spite of his rejection of Arist
imitation of nature (like Schopen
as a translation for 'mimesis'),
that the impulse that gives rise t
not the expression of emotion,
construct. When he writes in Ch
singing, not a mere inner feeling
struct a musical artwork' ([1854]
to come to identifying mimesis a
term 'mimesis'. Hanslick is refer
intriguing footnote to Ch. 6 he at
of Aristotelian imitation, and in
means by the term 'impulse'. H
mimesis can be understood:

Two things must be kept distinct. One is the misconception ... that natural sounds
can be directly and realistically carried over into the artwork .... The other is the
case where elements [Elemente] present in nature, being to some extent musically

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 133

effective because of their rhythmic or sonorous character, are

composers, not as something to be 'imitated', but as something that
their impulse to create musical motifs out of autonomous musica
with artistic spontaneity they conceive and actualise.11

Here Hanslick is surely attempting to deepen the concept of

superficial sense of imitating or copying external nature.
sense involves the recognition that the composer as artist is in
a process of making, which is an impulse to follow and recre
nature from within, rather than imitating the superficial man
All his examples involve movement, action and rhythm. Und
Hanslick can be seen to be in agreement with Aristotle, even
not to have recognised this himself. I propose that the de
mimesis for Hanslick is closely associated for him with th
(Bewegung). When he asks: '[w]hat therefore is music able
feelings if not their content?',12 it is possible to read his an
dynamic aspect' - as a version of the 'mimetic impulse' in
have used it so far. He continues: '[i]t [music] is capable o
movement of a physical process according to its momentu
rising, falling. But movement is merely a quality, a moment o
itself'.13 The term he uses that I have translated here as 'ren
which also means £to copy', suggesting at very least some connection with
notions of imitation, although he avoids in this case the more common term
nachahmen. So, to summarise my reading of Hanslick on mimesis and move-
ment: even though Hanslick rejects what he considers to be the Aristotelian
concept of mimesis on the grounds that it refers to a superficial and static
representation of external nature, he goes on immediately to put in its place a
deeper notion of mimesis (without employing the term itself) which refers to an
active and dynamic impulse to present the movement of nature and of 'feeling' in
music purely as tonally moving forms ( tonend-bewegte Formeri). I propose that it
is this concept of movement - one that Lydia Goehr has valuably identified as the
movement of the concept in music for Adorno, tracing its history through Hegel,
Schopenhauer and Hanslick14 - that provides the all-important link between
what one might call 'mind' and 'material' within Hanslick's scheme. When
Hanslick claims that 'every art originates from and is active within the sensuous',
and that 'the forms which construct themselves out of tones ... are ... mind
[ Geist ] giving shape to itself from within' (Hanslick [1854] 1986, pp. 29-30)
suggest that it is precisely this sense of the movement of mind in sens
material as a kind of mimetic impulse that he intends. It is also where he co
close to Schopenhauer's notion of a mind representing itself dynamically
non-conceptually from within musical material, but in Hanslick's case withou
Schopenhauer's metaphysics. In this respect Hanslick is remarkably down
earth and determined to stick as far as possible with the ascertainable fa
Hanslick certainly recognises the importance of the elusive concept of m

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 134 MAX PADDISON

ment, and the extent to which

concept of movement has up to
the essence of music; it seems t
I have argued elsewhere that, i
theories come full circle and end
for Schopenhauer music as the
music as a realisation of the Wi
music as expression of emotions
of music as tonally moving forms
dealt with in both cases, howev
imitation. This brings me to a
of mimesis as a 'mimetic imp
particular Adorno. This is part
as yet little-recognised influen
Adorno's theory of mimesis and rationality might be seen as a response
both to Hanslick and Schopenhauer, drawing also as it does on the concept of
movement.

II. Mimesis as Embodied Impulse: Caillois, Benjamin, Adorno

The Case for Mimesis as a ' Mimetic Impulse '

In his essay 'Some Ideas on the Sociology of Music', Adorno writes:

By virtue of its basic material, music is the art in which the prerational, mimetic
impulses ineluctably find their voice, even as they enter into a pact with the
process leading to the progressive domination of matter and nature. This is the
material to which music owes its ability to transcend the business of mere
self-preservation, an ability that led Schopenhauer to define it as the immediate
objectification of the will and to place it at the apex of the hierarchy of the arts.
(1999b, p. 6)17

Adorno's concept of mimesis is quite distinct from the more familiar concepts
used in aesthetics and literary studies - concepts like imitation, representation,
and so on, in the sense in which we have considered them above. It has its origins
partly in an understanding of the concept to be found in Aristotle; partly in the
all-pervading influence of Walter Benjamin, especially concerning the concepts
of the 'image' and the 'mimetic faculty' or impulse; and partly in the Surrealism
of the 1920s and 1930s, when Adorno was influenced by, among others, Roger
Caillois's famous essays 'Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia' and 'The
Praying Mantis', both of which appeared originally in French in the journal
Minotaure in the 1930s. In 'Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia' Caillois
writes: c[t]he point is that there remains in the "primitive" an overwhelming
tendency to imitate, combined with a belief in the efficacy of this imitation, a
tendency still quite strong in "civilized" man, since in him it continues to be one

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 135

of the two conditions for the progress of his untrammeled th

Caillois argues that mimicry cannot be explained merely as a
to protect creatures - especially insects - from predators, be
not prevent them from being consumed as prey. He proposes
with ritual and 'magic', an assimilation by and surrender
combined with a corresponding loss of self. It is indeed a
instinct', and a regressive move towards loss of identity
nature.18 Adorno and Horkheimer take this up in Dialecti
(1947), where, talking of the tenuous boundary between the
criminal personality, they refer to 'the trend to lose oneself
instead of playing an active role in it; the tendency to let one
into nature' (1979, p. 227). 19 They then link this impulse - t
- to art, and simultaneously to what they see as the other side
as part and parcel of the same impulse. They write: 'a yielding
without which art cannot exist, is not so very remote from
criminal' (ibid.) . 20 This disturbing, and indeed surreal as we
nection, reminds one of the aphorism in Minima Moralia, wh
quite out of the blue: '[e]very work of art is an uncommit
1974, p. 1 1 1).21 1 draw attention to these aspects of Adorno'
because they emphasise the boundary-pushing elements o
the normative features that are the usual concerns of both p
psychology of art. It seems to me that an overemphasis on ae
psychological norms risks missing the really big point about
it is always strange when experienced fully, just as the world
strange and often very frightening in pre-rational and pre-hi
makes a connection with the magical idea of the invocatio
pre-rational shock, and at the same time he makes a conn
Benjamin's concept of the 'aura': '[t]he object of interpretatio
the fright inherent in each work. If it has disappeared, then t
pretable - yet at the same time requires interpretation. But th
of the historical images unfolding objectively from the work
49; emphasis in original).22 Adorno locates the concept of
something particularly distinctive to it, and where, taken on
mimetic impulse is in certain respects separated from an
dominant means-ends rationality. In Towards a Theory of Mus
find the following observation: 'there can be no doubt that m
achieves - as no other art does - a pure objectification of the
free of any concreteness or denotation; nothing but the g
placed above the physical world, yet at once sensual' (ibid.,
intend to develop the claim that music represents 'a pure obj
mimetic impulse' here, but rather to use it for the moment a
to suggest one extreme possibility for mimesis. Even though A
not use the concept of 'embodiment', I suggest that the n
impulse' carries with it the idea of an embodied, biologic

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 136 MAX P ADDISON

impulse, something clearly impli

is also implied in Adorno's anth
raises a further important dist
musical works (and I shall refer
Adorno is talking about, as opp
etc.), and the mimetic dimension

The Case for Mimesis as Embodied

In what could be called his late th

called 'The Doctrine of the Sim
nothing but a weak rudiment of
and also to behave mimetically'
of the essay from the same year
it even clearer that what he is re
faculty that we possess as human

Nature produces similarities; one need

for producing similarities, however, is
but a rudiment of the once powerfu
mimetically. There is perhaps not a s
mimetic faculty does not play a de

As in much else, Adorno was quic

and we see it appearing in his w
unfinished works. In his Aestheti
ian definition of mimesis, whi
conceptual affinity of the subj
(Adorno 1997, p. 54). 26 Mimesis
or not-yet-rationalised, mode of b
and embodied, non-conceptual re
logically speaking, for Adorno th
origins of art in ritual and totem
Adorno suggests that there is a
and specifically between actin
'[t]he relationship between mime
in the sphere of reproduction.
(Adorno 2006, pp. 158-9; empha
this 'mimic' element of perfor
performers need particularly to
ing how it works, in order for it
from his wife, Gretel, regarding
questionable intelligence and a
deliver lines that convey the mo
Faust, Mephistopheles' (Adorno

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 137

The actor's ability is mimic in the true sense: he actually imitates

gestural aspect of language. And the more perfectly he achieves t
perfectly the idea enters the representation, not least because - a
when - he does not understand it. The opposite approach would be
tory one: but to explain the intention means to kill it rather than in
could almost say that it is the prerequisite for an actor not to 'un
rather to imitate blindly. (Adorno 2006, p. 159; emphases in origin

These fragments strike me as highly significant, in that they

everyone can recognise in a good actor or mime artist: that sh
up in an instant an image through a tone of voice or a ges
immediately transports us beyond the words, especially as wo
inhabit a whole context of meaning and significance that beco
in that moment, and which at the same time also has its own
recognise and share. Indeed, in referring to 'the allegorical re
idea' (2006, p. 159), Adorno is also invoking this important an
of the 'image' in order to bring his notion of mimesis in perfo
focus (the 'image' [Bild] is a concept he had borrowed from Be
des deutschen Trauerspiels [1928], in the form of what Benjam
'allegorical image'. Adorno's example of the actor, who has
mimetic, gestural and embodied relation to the part he is play
to say that he has an 'image' of what it is he is imitating or m
quite naturally to the case of mimesis in the performance of

III. Mimesis and Performance: Adorno's Theory of Musical

Reproduction
Interpretation and Dialectical Image

In his essay 'Fragment uber Musik und Sprache' (1956), Adorno talks of the way
that some writers and poets have sought to imitate music through trying to imitate
its effects (he mentions Swinburne and Rilke as examples of this). In contrast, he
suggests, there are writers - and he mentions Kafka, but equally might have cited
Samuel Beckett - who have not sought to imitate music's effects through the
musical aspects of language as sound, but instead have more profoundly followed
music's manner of operation as movement and as structure . And indeed, Adorno
proposes, it is precisely this that distinguishes music, which is language-like but
nevertheless is not language as such, from language itself. It hinges on the process
of interpretation, which is a particular kind of active involvement both in the case
of language and in that of music, but with an important difference in the case of
music: to interpret music is to play music, and to play music is itself a mimetic
activity, a manifestation of the mimetic impulse. Adorno writes:

Interpretation is essential to both music and language, but in different ways. To

interpret language means: to understand language. To interpret music means: to
make music. Musical interpretation is performance, which, as synthesis, retains

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 138 MAX PADDISON

the similarity to language, while o

why the idea of interpretation is
integral part of it. (Adorno 1992a,

Interestingly, Adorno's notion o

transitive and intransitive sense
performance of music is regard
impulse', which is intransitive in
music correctly means first and
calls for imitation of itself, not
hand, he claims that the perfor
as Nachahmung) of the work its
the 'image' of the work:

Music only discloses itself in mim

silently in the imagination, on an a
scrutiny which would interpret it in
for a comparable act in the langua
transcribing a text, rather than de

What Adorno himself subsequ

'dialectical image', and which he
contemporary music of his tim
Image' [1962]). What is directly
mance is that Adorno uses the i
central tasks of performance - t
work as an image, albeit in acou
the presentation of the dialec
p. 49). 34
There are therefore three main aspects of the concept of mimesis as Adorno
employs it in relation to musical performance and which are discussed in Towards
a Theory of Musical Reproduction : (1) that the performance of music is the purest
manifestation of the mimetic impulse, free of any need for denotation; (2) that in
an essentially score-based tradition such as that of Western art music, it is what
he calls the 'neumic' aspect of notation (as opposed to what he labels the
'mensural' and the 'idiomatic' aspects (2006, p. 67) that retains the otherwise
suppressed mimetic element within the context of the reification of music that
the score represents; and (3) that it is the work as image that the performer seeks
to represent - to imitate - beyond the score as such. In the case of a performing
art like music, mimesis also takes on the character both of translation (Adorno
was influenced by Benjamin's writing on translation [(1968) 1973] and of an
anthropological or biological mimicry which relates it to archaic magic and ritual
(the influence of Caillois).
It is in particular the centrality of the concept of mimesis that is compelling in
Adorno's notes on musical reproduction, and what is also striking is the incom-

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 139

pletely rationalised character of the idea - not simply becaus

around to rationalising it, but because this clearly remains a
distinctive feature of the concept as he uses it, and without
function. Here as elsewhere in his writings on aesthetics (for
Theory ), mimesis belongs also to the opposing dialectical pai
the mimetic and the rationalising impulses.

Mimesis , Rationality and Expression

The concept of rationality is clear enough on one level, and at

application of reason to construct a world in which it is
autonomous and reasonable life. At the same time, of course,
reasonable, as Max Weber had shown, where the process of r
lead to a loss of freedom and autonomy, and reason may t
However, the form that rationality takes within art is different t
in society, argues Adorno, and indeed may be seen as critical
rationality of society itself: c[r]ationality in the art work is
unity-constitutive moment. While it is not unrelated to the r
the world outside, it does not reproduce the conceptual or
world' (Adorno 1984, p. 81). 35 Artworks, and the activities t
aspect of art, like performance in music, are characterised by
and the dialectic of mimesis and ratio within art transforms both
although not through some kind of balance of the two, but rat
being mediated through the other. Albrecht Wellmer has put

Rationality and mimesis must encounter each other in order for rat
freed from its irrationality. Mimesis is the name for the sensuo
expressive and communicative mode of behaviour between livin
intimately adapt to each other. The place where the mimetic mod
has been culturally/spiritually [als geistige ] preserved in the proces
is art. Art is spiritualised [vergeistigte], that is to say, rationally tr
objectified mimesis.36

But for Adorno the irreconcilability of rationality and mimesi

is something that cannot be escaped, and the oscillation (my
is what keeps the work £in movement', so to speak. The one
perpetually, but they are not reconciled. It seems to me t
powerful and credible image of the work and its dynamics w
that mimesis is always threatening to regress to its magical
while rationality, the aspect of construction and form-givin
work with its separate, unified and autonomous existence
threatens to stultify the work through reification. He writes:

The aporia of art between regression to real magic and surrender

impulse to thinglike rationality helps formulate art's law of m
dilemma must not be done away with. The process which every

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 140 MAX P ADDISON

represents is as deep as it is becaus

(Adorno 1984, pp. 80-1; translation

Adorno leaves us with this dilem

right across his writings on mus
ations of this image of irreconci
tion is to keep us on the horns
seems to be saying, to experience
open-endedness, its refusal of c
precisely here that Adorno locate
'expression is an interference p
mimesis' (ibid., p. 167; translation
expression in art, if one accepts
enon, to the extent that it is wha
way it looks, the way it sounds -
the structure of the work - its f
mimetic and its rational aspects a
This raises again the importan
understood in this way. Having m
not concerned here with the exp
to be recognised that the idea th
that this involves emotion on ou
of music. Nevertheless, expressio
confused with meaning. That is to
with emotions as if there were
Adorno makes this point when
music, particularly when such m
established expressive norms: '[
from expression. Expression is
referent, or a symbol to what
configurations and development
sive' (Adorno 1999a, pp. 16 1-2). 3
is the tension between the mime
which is to say its construction,
together as a configuration are e

Expression, the mimetic element in

the music 'resembles', is only one e
tension with a further aspect, tha
opposed elements are dialectically int
its form, the compelling nature of a
sion, no matter whether the individu
all the formal elements of music ar
versely all successful formal featur
even if it is rigorously excluded at

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 141

Mimetic Understanding of Music

Finally, it remains to say a few words about the role of mime

impulse in the reception of music - specifically the unde
experience of music. Much has been written about our im
with or move to the movement of the music itself, and in so
physically to music. As such, this could simply be a somat
rhythm and mood of the music without necessarily being
kind of reflection that is associated with understanding. Rog
the connection with the original Aristotelian and Platonic con
seen in the larger context of music in relation to dance and p
when he writes: '[t]he thing imitated in the music was, they
cally imitated by the person who "moved with" it' (1997,
Scruton remains content to understand the concept as 're
most literal and limited sense. Seen in the context of the con
we have examined it in the course of this article, however, mimesis can be
understood as a manner of following closely the movement of the musical work
as both an identification with it and a re-enactment of its process as it unfolds -
that is to say, of its form , as structure. This is both a somatic adaptation to the
movement of the music and, in the case of what Adorno calls 'mimetic under-
standing' ( mimetisches Verstehen), a cognitive process of re-enactment as experi-
ence, in Benjamin's sense of Erfahrung as the experience of the moment-to-
moment unfolding of a piece in the light of what has already happened and what
is about to happen. This, I suggest, is what Adorno means by the terms mime-
tischesVerstehen and mimetische Erfahrung . Verstehen has the sense of 'interpretative
understanding', and as mimetisches Verstehen is the partly spontaneous and
mimetic impulse that drives the performance of music as well as its reception as
experience, and which involves the re-enactment and understanding of the work
as form.

In Conclusion

I began by arguing that all expression theories have their roots in

theories. I set out to do this in order to provide a context also for an expl
Adorno's discussion of imitation and expression. It seemed to me th
problems left by both Schopenhauer and by Hanslick might well be add
Adorno's Benjaminian position on expression and form. What neither Sc
hauer nor Hanslick was able to do was to offer satisfactory arguments
expressivity of music without resorting either to metaphysics or to the
that form is expression, with no remainder. What did emerge from the d
however, was the proto-mimetic dimension of earlier expression theori
the case of Hanslick, a concept of Bewegung that is taken up by Ad
response is to propose an alternative that is a dynamic model of fo
expression that actively involves a dialectic of mimesis and rationality a

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 142 MAX P ADDISON

would appear applicable not only t

he is associated, but also to works
succeeds in doing this without es
because Adorno's theory also offe
works. Fundamental to this theo

NOTES

1. Scruton recognises the confusion inherent in the use of the terms 'im
'representation', and also their inseperabilty from expression in Ch. 5
tation', in Scruton (1997), pp. 118-39. Nevertheless, he then procee
mimesis as representation in its most literal sense.

2. I use the terms 'transitive' and 'intransitive' in this context in the sen
by Scruton, particularly as in Ch. 6, 'Expression', in Scruton (1997)
The terms have their origins in Wittgenstein. See also Rinderle (2003)

3. Adorno uses the term 'force field' or 'field of force' (. Kraftfeld ), for e
talk 'On the Problem of Musical Analysis' (1969), where he talks of th
as 'a force-field [Kraftfeld] organised around a problem9 (Adorno 1982,
likely that what he had in mind was either the idea of magnetic fields of
patterns demonstrated by Ernst Chladni's famous experiments using s
tions passed through a thin metal plate, on which the nodal curves of t
can be seen as symmetrical patterns in fine sand particles. The term '
used, of course, with a range of different senses in physics and chemist
recently in the social sciences (not to mention science-fiction movies).
should be emphasised that Adorno is employing it not in any truly sc
but as a general metaphor, and it is in this limited metaphorical sense t
it here.

4. The critique of Cooke's basic terms in the opening essay of Lidov (2005
a necessay initial stage in the elaboration of a sophisticated theory
signification determined to avoid the narrowness of Cooke's scheme. H
wise writes: 'determining such correlations could become a flawed ent
attempted to create a vocabulary of expressive types that had relative
overly precise meanings (as in Deryck Cooke, 1959)'; Hatten (1994), p. 4
writes of Cooke's claims: '[t]he central thesis of this book adheres to a
naive form of expression theory'; Monelle (1992), p. 12.

5. 'Die Darstellung eines bestimmten Gefuhls oder Affektes liegt gar

eigenen Vermogen der Tonkunst'; Hanslick ([1854] 1896), p. 26, my tra

6. 'Die Ideen, welche der Komponist darstellt, sind vor allem und zuerst rein
musikalische'; ibid ., p. 30, my translation.

7. ' [D]er zur Folge hat, dass das kiinstlerische Schaffen aus der Lebenstotalitat gesell-
schaftlicher Aktivitaten herausfallt und ihr abstrakt gegeniibertritt'; Burger (1974),
p. 57.

8. See Burger (1984), pp. 85-7.

9. See Paddison (2001).

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 143

10. Burke writes: 'Aristotle has spoken so much and so solidly upon the force of
imitation in his poetics, that it makes any further discourse upon this subject the less
necessary' ([1757] 1990, p. 46).
11. Hanslick ([1854] 1986), p. 76, translation modified. Hanslick writes 'Elemente',
which Payzant acknowledges but translates as 'material'. This is incorrect, and I
have changed it to the English 'elements'.

12. ' Was kann also die Musik von den Gefuhlen darstellen, wenn nicht deren Inhalt?
Nur das Dynamische derselben'; Hanslick ([1854] 1896), p. 32, my translation.
13. 'Sie [Musik] vermag die Bewegung eines physischen Vorganges nach den
Momenten: schnell, langsam, stark, schwach, steigend, fallend nachzubilden. Bewe-
gung ist aber nur eine Eigenschaft, ein Moment des Gefuhls, nicht dieses selbst';
ibid. , my translation.

14. See Goehr (2004) and (2008).

15. 'Der Begriff der Bewegung ist bisher in den Untersuchungen des Wesens und der
Wirkung der Musik auffallend vernachlassigt worden; er diinkt uns der wichtigste
und fruchtbarste'; Hanslick ([1854] (1896), pp. 33-4, my translation; emphasis in
original. See also Goehr (2004).
16. See Paddison (2001).

17. 'Durch ihr pures Material ist Musik die Kunst, in der die vorrationalen, mimetis-
chen Impulse unabdingbar sich behaupten und zugleich in Konstellation treten mit
den Zugen fortschreitender Natur- und Materialbeherrschung. Dem dankt sie jene
Transzendenz iiber den Betrieb blofler Selbsterhaltung, die Schopenhauer dazu
veranlafite, sie in der Hierarchie der Kiinste als unmittelbare Objektivation des
Willens am hochsten zu stellen'; Adorno (1978a), p. 14.
18. Jacques Lacan was also influenced by Caillois in the 1930s, and Caillois's notion of
mimetisme provided the starting point for Lacan's concept of mimicry, his theory of
the mirror phase in the development of the self and the identification and entrap-
ment of the self by the image outside itself. There are striking similarities between
Lacan's and Adorno's theories at this period, as discussed in Safatle (2006).
19. 'Er reprasentierte die ... Tendenz ... : sich an die Umgebung zu verlieren anstatt
sich tatig in ihr durchzusetzen, den Hang, sich gehen zu lassen'; Adorno and
Horkheimer (1981), pp. 259-60.
20. 'Die Weichheit gegen die Dinge, ohne die Kunst nicht existiert, ist der verkrampften
Gewalt des Verbrechers nicht so fern'; ibid ., p. 260.

21. 'Jedes Kunstwerk ist eine abgedungene Untat'; Adorno (1980), p. 125.
22. 'Der Gegenstand der Interpretation ist die Erweckung des dem Werke je inne-
wohnenden Schauers. Ist er erwichen, so ist das Werk uninterpretierbar - wahrend
es zugleich der Interpretation bedarf. Dieser Schauer aber ist die Aura der aus dem
Werke objektiv sich entfaltenden, geschichtlichen Bilder'; Adorno (2001a), p. 66.

23. 'Kein Zweifel kann aber daran sein, dafi Musik als Sprache, allein von alien
Kiinsten, die rein Objektifikation des mimetischen Impulses leistet, frei von Gegen-
standlichkeit wie von Bedeuten, nichts anderes als der zum Gesetz erhobene, der
Korperwelt iibergeordnete und zugleich sinnliche Gestus'; Adorno (2001a), p. 224.

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 144 MAX P ADDISON

24. On this see Cahn (1984).

25. Clearly, mimesis has a considerably broader application than Western art music.
Indeed, the anthropological dimensions of the concept are suggested in Adorno,
and implied even more strongly in Benjamin and Caillois. The limitations of space
mean that I must limit my discussion here mainly to the context of art music and
the work concept.

26. '[D]ie nichtbegriffliche Affinitat des subjektiv Hervorgebrachten zu seinem

Anderen, nicht Gesetzten'; Adorno (1970), pp. 86-7.

27. On this see Cahn (1984).

28. 'Die Beziehung von Mimik und Musik, zentral, wird offenbar in der Sphare der
Reproduktion. Musizieren und schauspielen sind nachtsverwandt, wie denn oft in
derselben Familie Schauspieler und Musiker vorkommen'; Adorno (2001a), p. 206.

29. Compare Paddison (2004).

30. 'Das Vermogen des Schauspielers ist mimisch im eigentlichen Sinne: er ahmt eben
das melisch-gestische Moment der Sprache nach. Und je vollkommener ihm das
gelingt, um so vollkommener fallt der Gedanke der Darstellung zu, auch und gerade
wenn er ihn nicht versteht. Der entgegengesetzte Weg ware der erklarende: aber die
Intention heifit sie toten anstatt beschworen. Fast konnte man sagen, es sei die
Bedingung des Schauspielers, daft er nicht "versteht" sondern blind nachmacht';
Adorno (2001b), p. 207.

31. 'Damit ist auf Interpretation verwiesen. Musik und Sprache verlangen diese glei-
chermafien und ganz verschieden. Sprache interpretieren heifit; Sprache verstehen;
Musik interpretieren heifit: Musik machen. Musikalische Interpretation ist der
Vollzug, der als Synthesis die Sprachahnlichkeit festhalt und zugleich alles einzelne
Sprachahnliche tilgt. Darum gehort die Idee der Interpretation zur Musik selber
und ist ihr nicht akzidentell.Nur in der mimetischen Praxis, die freilich zur
stummen Imagination verinnerlicht sein mag nach Art des stummen Lesens,
erschliefit sich Musik; niemals einer Betrachtung, die sie unabhangig von ihrem
Vollzug deutet. Wollte man in den meinenden Sprachen einen Akt dem musikalis-
chen vergleichen, es ware eher das Abschreiben eines Textes als dessen signifikative
Auffassung'; Adorno (1956), p. 253.

32. 'Musik richtig spielen aber ist zuvorderst, ihre Sprache richtig sprechen. Diese
erheischt Nachahmung ihrer selbst, nicht Dechiffrierung'; ibid .

33. 'Nur in der mimetischen Praxis, die freilich zur stummen Imagination
verinnerlicht sein mag nach Art des stummen Lesens, erschliefit sich Musik;
niemals einer Betrachtung, die sie unabhangig von ihrem Vollzug deutet. Wollte
man in den meinenden Sprachen einen Akt dem musikalischen vergleichen,
es ware eher das Abschreiben eines Textes als dessen signifikative Auffassung';
ibid.

34. 'Die Interpretation gilt der Darstellung des dialektischen Bildes der Komposition';
Adorno (2001a), p. 66.

35. 'Rationalitat ist im Kunstwerk das einheitstiftende, organisierende Moment, nicht

ohne Relation zu der draufien waltenden, aber bildet nicht deren kategoriale
Ordnung ab'; Adorno (1970), p. 88.

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 Mimesis and the Aesthetics of Musical Expression 145

36. 'Rationalitat und Mimesis miissen zusammentreten, um die Rationalitat aus ihrer
Irrationalitat zu erlosen. Mimesis ist der Name fur die sinnlich rezeptiven, expres-
siven und kommunikativ sich anschmiegenden Verhaltensweisen des Lebendigen.
Der Ort, an dem mimetische Verhaltensweisen im Prozefi der Zivilisation als geistige
sich erhalten haben, ist die Kunst: Kunst ist vergeistigte, d. h. durch Rationalitat
verwandelte und objektivierte Mimesis'; Wellmer (1983), p. 141, my translation.
37. 'Die Aporie der Kunst, zwischen der Regression auf buchstabliche Magie, oder der
Zession des mimetischen Impulses an dinghafte Rationalitat, schreibt ihr das Bewe-
gungsgesetz vor; nicht ist sie wegzuraumen. Die Tiefe des Prozesses, der ein jegli-
ches Kunstwerk ist, wird gegraben von der Unversohnlichkeit jener Momente';
Adorno (1970), p. 87.
38. 'Ausdruck ist ein Interferenzphanomen, Funktion der Verfahrungsweise nicht
weniger als mimetisch'; ibid., p. 174.
39. 'Auch vom Ausdruck ist der musikalische Sinn abzuheben. Dieser steht zum erk-
lingenden Phanomen nicht wie in der Sprache das Gemeinte; nicht wie Symbo
isiertes zum Symbol, sondern springt aus Konfigurationen und Entwicklunge
hervor. Sinnvolle Musik mufi nicht ausdrucksvoll sein'; Adorno (1978b), p. 18
40. Adorno (1978), pp. 188-9.

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Music Analysis , 29/i-ii-iii (20 10) © 20 1 1 The Author.

Music Analysis © 2011 Blackwell Publishing L

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 148 MAX P ADDISON

Tolstoy, Leo, 1904: What Is Art?

Wellmer, Albrecht, 1983: 'Wahr
Rettung der Modernitat', in Lu
Adorno-Konferenz 1983 (Frankf

NOTE ON CONTRIBUTOR

Max Paddison is Professor of Music Aesthetics at the University

has published extensively on Adorno, aesthetics and critical the
contemporary music, the avant-garde and the concept of m
author of Adorno's Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge University Pr
Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture (Kahn and Averill, 1996),
(with Irene Deliege) of Contemporary Music: Theoretical and
Perspectives (Ashgate, 2010).

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is threefold: first, to ask what we mean

concepts like imitation, representation and expression; second
concept of imitation to take on the implications of the dynamic
anthropological notion of mimesis as opposed to the largely s
conceptions of mere 'representation' and 'resemblance' commo
and to analytic philosophy; and third, to show the dialectica
mimesis to concepts of expression, construction, rationality
Adorno's later aesthetics and in his theory of musical reproduct
of mimesis that is the focus of this article has as its key featur
mimetism and adaptation. It is argued that concepts of expre
retain features of mimesis, and that expression in artworks is a
nomenon. The claim is made that mimesis can be seen as an emb
a mode of 'identifying with' rather than primarily as 'imitation
tation of' something external to itself. The argument draws on
theories of mimicking and miming, in particular those of Caillo
which had considerable influence on Adorno's thinking. It is arg
(whether as musical work or as musical event) oscillates between
rationalised constructional <-> unrationalised mimetic moments,
experience of its expressivity arises from this tension.

© 201 1 The Author. Music Analysis , 29/i-ii-iii (20 1 0)

Music Analysis © 20 1 1 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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