‘The forms of art record the history of mankind more impartially than do documents’, writes Adorno in Philosophie der neuen Musik. As we have seen, Adorno argues that the truth and authenticity of art works is not to do with the amount of ‘historical relevance’ or ‘social commitment’ consciously invested in them by their creators. It has instead to do with the extent to which the artist responds to the demands of the material ‘in itself’ – demands which are historical and social in character because the material is already historically pre-formed. Thus, the philosophical interpretation of musical works involves the deciphering of their historical and social content through tracing the mediating links between autonomous works and the heteronomy of empirical reality – links which are embedded, however, in the material and structure of the works themselves.

Although predicated on the music of Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School and viewed from the perspective of the avant-garde, Adorno's concept of musical material does not simply represent the progressive and ideological view of music history characterized by continuity which is suggested by certain commentators (for instance de la Fontaine and others, including Dahlhaus).