I have been very favourably impressed by works of the Kranichstein or Darmstadt School such as Stockhausen's ZeitmaBe, Gruppen, Kontakte, and Carre, as well as Boulez's Marteau sans maitre, his Second and Third Piano Sonatas and his Sonatina for Flute. I was also deeply moved by a single hearing of Cage's Piano Concerto played on Cologne Radio, though I would be hard put to define the effect with any precision. Even at the best of times precise definition is anything but straightforward with works of this kind.

Nevertheless, my reaction to most of these works is qualitatively different from my reaction to the whole tradition down to, and doubtless including, Webern's last works. My productive imagination does not reconstruct them all with equal success. I am not able to participate, as it were, in the process of composing them as I listen, as I still could with Webern's String Trio, which is anything but a simple piece. But what I am tempted at first to register as my ownsubjective inadequacy may turn out not to be that at all. It may well prove to be the case that serial and post-serial music (This Music) is founded on a quite different mode of apperception, in so far as music can be said to be based on apperception at all.

Adorno, Vers une musique informelle, p. 271

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This essay was written in 1961. Dixon was just about to get his post serial music on in a most significant way. Oddly enough, Dixon's body of work still isn't seen that way. Rather than a clinamen or critique on serial music (and at this point, post-serial music as well) it's seen (and heard) as the wide-eyed, crazy, experimental appendage growing from that odd little hedge kept in the back called 'Jazz.'

Why is that?

The whole point of this present Adorno Jag is to enable us all to equally ponder what Adorno would have made of Dixon's work--particularly Son of Sisyphus and after--and if Dixon's music in particular fulfills Adorno's definition of une musique informelle.

Wouldn't it be a laugh riot if Dixon's music did just that?

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Just how many listeners try to "participate" in the process of "composing" as they listen?

Is that common?

I remember an English teacher talking about how his relationship with Charlie Parker's work was much different than his relationship with Shakespeare's. As an English teacher naturally he could "conceive of having written" the works of Shakespeare. As he came across passages of particular resonance he would often remark "I wish I had written that."

Charlie Parker's music, on the other hand, was something he could 'just love' as he wasn't a musician. He knew he didn't know. He could simply "admire those works he didn't understand," free from the anxiety of influence.

Is that common? Enjoying that which one doesn't understand?

If it were, you would think that This Music would be staggeringly popular, or would at least be represented on American Idol.

copyright,  © 2007 Stanley Zappa

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