Abstract

Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn erzählt von seinem Freunde arose from a cooperation between Th. Mann and and Th.W.Adorno. Adorno was not only a tutor in issues of the history of music, the theory of music and the aesthetics of music: he was in a sense, too, co-author of the novel: he was a „spiritus movens“ of the novel, who wrote analysis of music attributed to fictious musicians in the novel, to Leverkühn, Kretzschmar, and, of course, to Mefisto. We find a specific phenomenon of „fictious music“ in this novel. Adorno's task was to give a final version to Mann's notions and literary phantasies on music, to „compose“ and to depict non-existing compositions of a fictious composer Leverkühn. Adorno's „composition“ were devised in accordance to the real compositions of A.Schönberg and I. Stravinsky. Mann's/Adorno's fictious compositions are in the focus of many analysis of the novel and also the fucus of this study.