From Analogy to Formal Process: Collapse in the Fin-de-siècle Symphony

This project theorises Adorno's category of 'collapse' as a formal process in symphonic music of the fin-de-siècle. In present analytical discourse, collapse figures as both a narrative analogy and a formal process, but we lack the technical language to understand how moments of collapse interact with the archetypes formulated by theorists of musical form. I develop a theory which, for the first time, accounts for collapse's temporal effects, its relationship with teleological form, and its correlation with other Adornian categories like breakthrough and suspension. My approach is sympathetic to collapse's philosophical provenance, engaging Adorno's negative dialectics as an analytical framework.