Adorno’s Symphonic Space-Time and Beethoven’s Time Travel in Space Daniel K. L. Chua A Sound Experiment Take a cell phone. To transform this device into a mid-twentieth-century radio, disconnect any earphones, headphones, or amplifcation devices. Download a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, preferably Wilhelm Furtwängler’s 1943 live recording. Set the phone at maximum volume. Imagine that there is a wireless sitting on your mantelpiece. Say to yourself in a solemn but reassur- ing radio voice: “This is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.” Play the music using the internal speakers only, with no other amplifcation. Listen to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, preferably seated in an armchair, as if the music were ema- nating from a 1940s radio. Close your eyes. Relax. What You Did Not Hear According to Adorno, what you have just heard is not Beethoven’s Fifth Sym- phony. By this, Adorno means that it is neither “Beethoven” nor a “symphony.” He calls this piece a “radio symphony.” Furthermore, he points out that the constant assurance by the radio announcer that “this is Beethoven’s Fifth Sym- phony” indicates that there is some anxiety about whether this is, indeed, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or even a symphony at all. 1 New German Critique 129, Vol. 43, No. 3, November 2016 DOI 10.1215/0094033X-3625397 © 2016 by New German Critique, Inc. 113 The research for this article was supported by the General Research Fund of the Universities Grant Committee of Hong Kong. 1. See Adorno, Current of Music, 144–62. New German Critique Published by Duke University Press