German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) moved freely across academic disciplines exploring contemporary European culture and the predicament of modern man. A leading member of the influential intellectual movement known as the Frankfurt school, he was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, on September 11, 1903, the only son of an upper middle-class family. His father, Oskar Wiesengrund, was an assimilated Jewish merchant; his musically gifted mother, Maria Calvalli-Adorno, of Italian-Catholic descent. He adopted his mother's patronomic Adorno in the late 1930s.

An economically secure, artistically rich home encouraged Adorno's talents in both music and humanities. Adorno was encouraged by his mother to study piano, his mastery of which sustained his interest in music's philosophical and technical aspects. Enrolled at the Frankfurt University, Adorno was interested in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and music, and he wrote a dissertation on Husserl's phenomenology. Impressed by Wozzeck, Alban Berg's opera, Adorno began a serious study of...