Adorno e la musica del "Doktor Faustus"

The author offers a reconstruction of Adorno's collaboration in Thomas Mann's "Doktor Faustus" by consulting existing documentary resources and literary criticism of that period. He starts the article by introducing the sources of his research and enumerates the Adornian texts read and quoted by Mann in his work. Then he analyses Adorno's contribution in conceiving and drawing the musical description of "Doktor Faustus". With this the author presents his translation of Adorno's texts in this book right after the article. At the end he tries to confront the finale of Leverkühn's last composition "Dr. Fausti Weheklag" and the finale of Alban Berg's "Lyrische Suite" citing not only Adorno's inspiration to the works but also those of the important writings of Walter Benjamin. The purpose of this confrontation is to show that Thomas Mann's use, in the so- called "montage-tecnique", of the quoted sources and models to build Leverkühn's character cannot be merely reduced as Adorno's contribution. Here, Mann gave the elements of his "montage" an artistic elaboration producing a new and original masterpiece.