Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments [1 ed.] 1527583716, 9781527583719

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part II
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part III
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part IV
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part V
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part VI
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Bibliography
Musical Scores and Discography
Contributors
Index of Names
Index of Terms

Citation preview

Nietzsche and Music

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments Edited by

Aysegul Durakoglu, Michael Steinmann and Yunus Tuncel

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments Edited by Aysegul Durakoglu, Michael Steinmann and Yunus Tuncel Series: Nietzsche Now Editors: Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Yunus Tuncel Editorial Board: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Rebecca Bamford, Nicholas Birns, David Kilpatrick, Vanessa Lemm, Iain Thomson, Paul van Tongeren, and Ashley Woodward This book first published 2022 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2022 by Aysegul Durakoglu, Michael Steinmann, Yunus Tuncel and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-8371-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-8371-9

CONTENTS

Editors’ Introduction................................................................................ viii Part I: Nietzsche’s Philosophy and Music Chapter 1 .................................................................................................... 2 The Musical Soul of the Universe: Nietzsche’s Early Poetics of Song and the Depiction of Psychological Time in Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade James Melo Chapter 2 .................................................................................................. 20 Thinking through Music: On Non-Propositional Thought in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Michael Steinmann Chapter 3 .................................................................................................. 37 Nietzsche on Emotion and Affekt in Music Yunus Tuncel Part II: Music, Other Arts, and Gesamtkunstwerk Chapter 4 .................................................................................................. 56 “La Gaya Scienza” in Music: Nietzsche’s Homage to Goethe, Italy, and Lightness in Joke, Cunning, and Revenge Martine S. Prange Chapter 5 .................................................................................................. 70 Taking a Hammer to History: The Wagnerian Leitmotif and Nietzsche as Public Intellectual Daniel H. Foster Chapter 6 .................................................................................................. 96 Leisure and Music Drama from Plato via Nietzsche to the Posthuman Paradigm-Shift Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

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Part III: Nietzsche and Composers Chapter 7 ................................................................................................ 120 Nietzsche on the ‘Music’ of Greek Tragedy: Beethoven and Prometheus Babette Babich Chapter 8 ................................................................................................ 156 Nietzsche’s Manfred Trilogy Tali Makell Chapter 9 ................................................................................................ 181 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Way of the Aesthetic Transformation of the Public: Nietzsche’s Hope of Wagner’s Magic in The Birth of Tragedy Martine Prange Chapter 10 .............................................................................................. 198 Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Nietzsche’s Art of Transfiguration Jamie Parr and Venessa Ercole Part IV: Nietzsche’s Musical Experiments and Compositions Chapter 11 .............................................................................................. 226 “This Most Glorious Gift of God”: On Some Formative Elements in Nietzsche’s Musical Upbringing Cornelis Witthoefft Chapter 12 .............................................................................................. 257 Pagan World and Christianity: Nietzsche’s Projected Oratorio and its Consequences Cornelis Witthoefft Chapter 13 .............................................................................................. 289 Nietzsche’s Use of Music as a Rhetorical Device Benjamin Moritz Chapter 14 .............................................................................................. 311 Piano Music of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Eclectic Analysis of Selected Piano Compositions Aysegul Durakoglu

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Part V: Music in Nietzsche’s Writings Chapter 15 .............................................................................................. 346 The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Preliminary Outline Graham Parkes Chapter 16 .............................................................................................. 369 Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a Score of Metaphors, Corresponding with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony Gaila Pander Chapter 17 .............................................................................................. 391 When Philosophy Yields to Music: The Case of Nietzsche’s Nachgesang Daniel Conway Part VI: Nietzsche and Contemporary Music Chapter 18 .............................................................................................. 410 Russian Musical Interpretations of Nietzsche Rebecca A. Mitchell Chapter 19 .............................................................................................. 433 Dionysian Rock David Kilpatrick Chapter 20 .............................................................................................. 442 The Heaviest Weight: Finding Nietzsche in Metal Ben Abelson Bibliography ........................................................................................... 462 Musical Scores and Discography............................................................ 492 Contributors ............................................................................................ 494 Index of Names....................................................................................... 500 Index of Terms ....................................................................................... 505

INTRODUCTION

When I don’t hear any music, everything seems dead to me. —Friedrich Nietzsche

This anthology was born out of an interest to explore in-depth Nietzsche’s relationship to music; no doubt, a complex relationship that was formed in the early stages of his life. The antecedents of this project go back to an event that the editors organized in 2014 at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. In this event, we combined Nietzsche’s music, performed live by Aysegul Durakoglu, with lectures on his philosophy. From the beginning, we felt that we had started a more than promising collaboration. It is often said that academics are too siloed and should engage more in inter-disciplinary work, but how often does such work really occur? At the first glance, the two worlds of music, or musicology, and philosophy seem very far apart as each attends to its field in a highly specialized and often arcane way. With Nietzsche, we felt that it was necessary to break down the boundaries between our respective academic worlds. We started to translate the more or less serendipitous ideas that lead to our first lecture concert into a more substantial project. Our plan was to bring musicians, performers, musicologists, philosophers, and others in related fields together to explore the mutual relationship of Nietzsche’s music and thought. We assumed, from the start, that this relationship does not just mean that, on the one hand, there is music in Nietzsche’s work, and, on the other hand, there is also philosophy. The philosophy, it seemed to us, has grown out of a musical sensibility, is grounded by it and in many ways leads back to music itself. The music, in turn, acquires additional meaning insofar as it translates itself into philosophical ideas and determines Nietzsche’s understanding of life as a whole. We hope to have achieved a conversation in which musicians, musicologists, and philosophers talk to each other, if only indirectly, with the same intensity and comprehension that music and philosophy speak in Nietzsche’s work. With twenty chapters, we can of course only cover a

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small area in this complex territory; no doubt, as musically inclined readers will sense, there is much left to explore. What follows below are remarks on Nietzsche’s background as a musician and a brief summary of each of the chapters.

Nietzsche’s Life as a Musician Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken, Saxony, part of the Prussian Empire at the time, where his first musical activities began with singing hymns at the Lutheran Church. He received his first musical education from his father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, the pastor of the church, and then his mother Franziska Nietzsche. After Nietzsche’s father passed way when he was four, the family moved to Naumburg, where Nietzsche’s mother, Franziska Nietzsche acquired a piano, and became Nietzsche’s first piano teacher in 1851. Mother and son would play duets in their back room.1 In two years he could play Beethoven’s sonatas and transcriptions of Haydn’s symphonies. In addition to these two composers, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn formed the framework of his early music education.2 Nietzsche also attended public and private concerts in Naumburg in his early teen years. It is safe to say that he grew up in a milieu pervaded by music. Naumburg, where Nietzsche spent his childhood, offered an unusually rich array of musical possibilities, from oratorios in the cathedral to chamber music in private homes. The young Nietzsche writes fondly of his best friend, Gustav Krug, and the musical riches of the Krug family home, where the Pater familias was a good friend of Mendelssohn’s and himself an accomplished amateur composer and musician. As well as playing music together, Nietzsche and the younger Krug would spend hours reading and discussing musical scores. Exposed to compositions by great musicians earlier in his life, Nietzsche found a way of expressing himself in music, through early experiments with different styles that led to early compositional works. In 1861, he composed Ermanarich, inspired by Liszt’s Hungaria. Inspired by Chopin, two Polish dances were composed in 1862, and a number of Lieder were written from 1861 to 1865, influenced by Schubert and Schumann. Between the years of

1 Joachim Köhler, Zarathustra’s Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Nietzsche tr. by R. Taylor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 15. 2 Georges Liébert, Nietzsche and Music, tr. by D. Pellauer and G. Parkes (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004), 13.

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1862 and 1871 his musical experiments resulted in a series of short piano pieces for two and four hands.3 During this time period, there had been a few important events that inspired the young Nietzsche to write music and poetry, two of which stand out: the foundation of a small society, Germania, in 1860 with his close friends Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug and the discovery of Tristan and Isolde’s piano reduction by Hans von Bülow in 1861. There have been numerous accounts of Nietzsche spending much time on playing and singing the Tristan score. Later at Schulpforta, he continued his musical activities in the school’s music room and compiled a “Book of Contemplations,” which included songs, a violin and piano piece, and an “Allegro.” In a draft of an autobiographical account from 1868 he mentioned that he had written countless compositions and acquired a more than amateurish knowledge of music theory,4 which proves that he was seriously trying to advance his skills in composition. Shortly after his twentieth birthday, having music in his mind and heart, Nietzsche departed to study philology and theology at University of Bonn. He visited Schumann’s grave and participated in the performance of Schumann’s Faust as a member of the choir. Nietzsche always felt close affiliation to Robert Schumann who was likewise a great writer and an improviser on the piano. During his stay in Bonn, Nietzsche sang in Handel’s Israel in Egypt at the Lower Rhine Festival of Cologne and in the same year, 1865, took part in the performance of J. S. Bach's St. John Passion in Leipzig. The year of 1868 marks a turning point in Nietzsche’s life, when in November he met Richard Wagner in Leipzig. Shortly after, in April 1869 when Nietzsche had moved to Basel to start teaching at the University of Basel, an intense but also controversial relationship started between the two. The first meeting had a great impression on Nietzsche who enjoyed hearing him speak of Schopenhauer and listening to him playing all parts of the Meistersinger. Wagner found in Schopenhauer’s philosophy “the true homeland of his soul,” and Nietzsche found his Dionysian spirit reawakened in Wagner’s musical drama. A year later, Nietzsche expressed his feelings in a letter to his mother saying that three things were his relaxations: Schopenhauer, Schumann’s music, and solitary walks.5 While working on ancient Greek culture and tragedy, which later led to his writing of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche also found inspiration to compose a piece, “in the 3

Nietzsche's compositions are collected, edited, and published by Curt Paul Janz in Friedrich Nietzsche. Der musikalische Nachlass (Basel: Brenreiter, 1976). 4 Nietzsche. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, Edited and translated by Christopher Middleton. (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1969), 47. 5 Ibid., 12.

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form of longish composition for two pianos, in which everything echoes a beautiful autumn, warm in the sun. Because it connects with a youthful memory, the opus is called Echo of a New Year’s Eve.”6 He was excited to make this piece, “Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht,”7 a new year’s gift to Cosima Wagner and told his friend Carl von Gersdorff that he could detect the warm and happy tone which sounds throughout the whole work. Like Wagner, Hans von Bülow also gave Nietzsche a harsh critique on his Manfred-Meditation which was finished in April 1872 and dedicated to Bülow,8 saying that his music was even more detestable than he believed. Audiences were also not well disposed towards his music. “He played one of his compositions to an audience in Basel, which was received with displeasure, according to Julius Piccard.”9 Disheartened by Wagner who looked down on his music, and von Bülow who advised him to acquire the basic elements of musical composition, Nietzsche stopped playing piano and composing music for a long time. Nietzsche’s musical inspiration came to fruition in his early and at the time highly controversial work, The Birth of Tragedy, which was dedicated to Wagner. Nietzsche’s encounter with Wagner is not only a significant event in his musical life, but also one of the most intriguing encounters of the nineteenth century. As already said, Nietzsche became familiar with Wagner’s music in 1861 at the age of sixteen when he came across Hans von Bülow’s piano reduction of Tristan. Despite Nietzsche’s later alienation from Wagner, Tristan remained a masterpiece for him. One year after their first encounter, in 1869, Nietzsche attended two performances of Wagner’s Meistersinger, one in Dresden conducted by von Bülow, the other one in Karlsruhe conducted by Hermann Levi. From April 1869 to April 1872, Nietzsche visited the Wagners twenty-three times at Tribschen, not far from Basel, Nietzsche’s new home. In May 1872, Nietzsche was present at the foundation of the “Festspielhaus” in Bayreuth, but he was not accepted as writer and editor for its press. In August 1876, he attended the Bayreuth Festival and was repulsed by its whole atmosphere. He left early. Shortly before this episode he had published his fourth Untimely Meditation: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, an intimately close and insightful analysis of the life and works of a musician within the context of a grand artistic spectacle. In November 1876, Nietzsche and Wagner saw each other in 6

Ibid., 85. Liébert, Nietzsche and Music, 48. 8 Ibid., 51. 9 Köhler, Zarathustra’s Secret, 121. 7

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Sorrento, Italy, for the last time. When Nietzsche sent a copy of his Human, All Too Human to Wagner, the latter declined to read it, out of friendship.

Nietzsche’s Ideas on Music Nietzsche’s earliest, substantial ideas on music are to be found in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (and also in his manuscript on Greek Music Drama, which was not published in his lifetime). Many of these ideas are influenced by his readings of Schopenhauer, Wagner’s aesthetic writings, and his knowledge of Greek theater. After introducing two key terms into aesthetics, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, Nietzsche goes on to interpret Greek tragedy in light of these two artistic impulses. The Apollonian is the principle of individuation and is associated with image, dream, and pleasure, whereas the Dionysian is a state beyond the sphere of individuation, which is associated with symbolization, ecstasy, intoxication and suffering. As applied to the arts, visual and plastic arts and epic poetry are Apollonian, whereas musical arts and lyric poetry are Dionysian; since Greek theater, for Nietzsche, is a synthesis of all arts like Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, it is an agonistic union of both the Apollonian and the Dionysian forces. Since the Dionysian is primordial, music is also primordial and more universal than all other arts. Music is independent and does not need any language-based medium to establish its meaning. Nietzsche expresses his ideas on music as he discusses lyric poetry within the context of Greek drama: Our whole discussion insists that lyric poetry is dependent on the spirit of music just as music itself in its absolute sovereignty does not need the image and the concept, but merely endures them as accompaniments. The poems of the lyrist can express nothing that did not already lie hidden in that vast universality and absoluteness in the music that compelled him to figurative speech. Language can never adequately render the cosmic symbolism of music, because music stands in symbolic relation to the primordial contradiction and primordial pain in the heart of the primal unity, and therefore symbolizes a sphere which is beyond and prior to all phenomena. Rather, all phenomena, compared with it, are merely symbols: hence language, as the organ and symbol of phenomena, can never by any means disclose the innermost heart of music; language, in its attempt to imitate it, can only be in superficial contact with music; while all the eloquence of lyric poetry cannot bring the deepest significance of the latter one step nearer to us.10

10

BT, §6, in BW, 56.

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In Greek drama, according to Nietzsche, the chorus was at the core of the stage and, with its musical functions, set the ecstatic mood of the whole theater as one unified happening, which brought all the different parts of the stage into a sensible whole. Many of these ecstatic functions, such as the satyr chorus, were borrowed from the cult of Dionysus, which Nietzsche considers to be the origin of Greek theater. In a way, he projects the modern symphonic orchestra onto the ancient chorus, as Liébert observes, whereas for Wagner the latter was only an incomplete pre-figuration of the former.11 Nietzsche’s early ideas on music, which are predominantly Schopenhauerian insofar as they are based on Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of will, a will that is mostly musical, are shortsighted and full of problems, which he himself would later recognize.12 To say, as part of a cosmology, that all beings come into being, live, and then disappear, that is, that all beings partake both of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and then say that music is purely Dionysian and painting is purely Apollonian is inconsistent. In his postSchopenhauerian and post-Wagnerian phase, Nietzsche saw the limitation of this dualism and the problems of Schopenhauerian metaphysics. One way of removing the difficulty, if we are still to use these two terms, is to say that music is more Dionysian than visual arts (but still has an Apollonian dimension), whereas visual arts are more Apollonian than musical arts (but still partake in the Dionysian). In addition, once Nietzsche moves away from Schopenhauer and Wagner, he also gives up the idea of a priority of music over other arts. As he declares in The Case of Wagner, one of his last books: no art should lord over other arts.13 This is not to say that music ceases to be important for Nietzsche; he was found to be improvising on the piano before he collapsed into insanity in January 1889. Nietzsche, who had idolized Wagner, turned against him after their relationship ended. He claimed, in The Case of Wagner, that Wagner was representing a great corruption in music, and that he was more of an actor, not a musician of instinct, an “artist of decadence.”14 Meanwhile, Nietzsche found new pleasure in Bizet’s music, offering a more elevating and life-affirming experience. The discovery of this new musical experience rejuvenated Nietzsche. In the preface to The Case of Wagner, he reconciled his reservations toward Wagner by saying that the later Wagner was a decayed and despairing romantic.15 11

Liebert, Nietzsche and Music, 16. BT 1886 Preface. 13 CW, §5. 14 Ibid., §5. 15 CW, Preface. 12

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From his first musical experiments in early age to his last years, music had been a leitmotif in Nietzsche’s life appearing in his philosophical thoughts and musical experiments. From 1880 until his collapse in 1889, Nietzsche had been very productive despite frequent travels between Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France. Among the works of his last period, are Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85); Beyond Good and Evil (1886); the already mentioned Case of Wagner (1888); and Ecce Homo (1888) all directly or indirectly including subjects and references on music. His last composition, “The Hymn to Life,” a musical setting for mixed chorus and orchestra, was published in 1887. Nietzsche was quite satisfied with this work and wrote to his friend Peter Gast that the “Hymn” had passion and seriousness, expressing the emotions from which his philosophy had grown.16 Nietzsche collapsed into madness in early 1889 in Turin and spent the last eleven years of his life in mental darkness; an illness that was unique and has been widely interpreted. Medicinal explanations aside, for which there is ample material from a long history of ailments, Nietzsche’s life was a perpetual struggle with himself, within himself, and with his own daemons. Nietzsche’s daemons were of musical, poetic, philosophical, and religious nature. Musical works, poetry and thoughts all wanted to flow out of his soul in an ecstatic burst. To become art works and pieces of writing they had to be mastered and a form had to be given to the indomitable Dionysian forces. As a writer and thinker, Nietzsche also embarked on other projects which then often led him away from the emphasis on Dionysian impulses. In his middle phase, we see him as a sharp-eyed and eloquent critic of modern culture, in all its aspects from epistemology and science to morality, religion, and art. The main work of this period, Human All-Too Human (1878), is dedicated to Voltaire, which was a step that allowed him to place himself in the tradition of the French moralists and enlightenment thinkers. In doing so, he also explicitly moved away from the Germanic focus that characterized Wagner and his circle. Nietzsche had become more Apollonian, one could say, if not Socratic. The mature Nietzsche, in The Gay Science (first edition 1882) and, again, Beyond Good and Evil (1886), was often ironic and prone to mockery, especially of the culture of his fellow Germans, which too brought him closer to the caustic wit of Aristophanes and his comedies than to the tragic spirit of Aeschylus and Sophocles. But 16

Nietzsche. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, 273.

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the mature thinker was also acutely aware of the need to wear masks, and he wore many of them. A truly free spirit, as Nietzsche wanted to be, is a cultural critic only where he needs to be but does not exhaust himself in the analysis of category mistakes, religious hypocrisy, mediocre art, or failed greatness in public life. The free spirit reserves his innermost insights for himself. The Dionysian inspiration was therefore never far in this phase, it resurfaced at the end of Beyond Good and Evil, among others, and in the conception of the will of power as an endless dynamic and uncontrollable desire at the foundation of all life. It also surfaced, of course, in the Zarathustra, a work that dramatizes the life-shattering insight into the eternal recurrence of everything, which either leads to complete desperation or the ability to accept life fully as it is, with all the suffering that it brings, summed up in the notion of amor fati. While Nietzsche’s conception of the Apollonian and Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music was greatly influenced by Wagner and Schopenhauer, it also had great impact in shaping the late German culture and music. Bringing back the ancient Greek culture and ritual practices allowed for a totally different perspective on art as emerging from the duality of the Apollonian and Dionysian. We can sense the impact most directly in Nietzsche’s own musical experiments since music was the driving force in his thoughts and the form of cultural expression that was most relevant for his synthesis as a composer and philosopher. In terms of musical language, bringing back ancient Greek ideals meant recovery of ancient musical practices. It means going back to modality and moving toward atonality as seen in the music of the late German Romantic composers like Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg. For example, Carl Orff whose career began in the same culture following the late Wagnerian footsteps, adopted early modal structures to ancient text in his significant composition, Carmina Burana. Nietzsche’s approach in relating music to extramusical realms of experience influenced Richard Strauss’ orchestral works, especially in his tone poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Like Nietzsche, Strauss began his musical journey as a Wagnerian, using the latter’s leitmotif techniques, and eventually departed from the traditional norms of musical form, building his structures more on extramusical aspects and conceptions. We can observe Nietzsche’s impact on his approach of distorting or dismissing formal elements by using extramusical influences as a connecting element. The same approach can be traced in early works of Schoenberg who incorporated emotional intensity with Wagnerian use of chromaticism and dissonances, but soon departed from tonality and adopted the twelve-tone system.

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Nietzsche was sufficiently equipped as a writer and a thinker to achieve this mastery of Dionysian forces, but he was not equally equipped in musical composition. Nonetheless, it was music that englobed his life as a whole and was the common element in his poetic and philosophical madness, the madness of a Dionysian thinker. After his collapse he was asked about his state at the hospital in Basel to which he responded that he felt well, but that he could express his state only in music. And later in the train to Jena, waking up from his chloral-induced sleep, he would sing the gondolier’s song from Wagner’s Tristan. During his asylum, he did not speak as much, but when he did, he spoke mostly about music. He improvised at the piano from time to time until his death in 1900. In madness, all Nietzsche could remember was the musical collections of his life. A madness that can ultimately be called musical.

Summary of Chapters The anthology has six parts and a total of twenty articles. Part I on “Nietzsche’s Philosophy and Music” starts with a chapter by James Melo titled, “The Musical Soul of the Universe: Nietzsche’s Early Poetics of Song and the Depiction of Psychological Time in Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade.” In this chapter, Melo examines an early piece by Nietzsche, On Music and Words, and his presentation of a poetics of song through his discussion of the role of poetry in vocal music. He explores this poetics of song in relation to the two major influences on the young Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Wagner. Taking his cues from the dialectic process between will and representation in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, he reflects on the connections between their philosophy and the musical expression of this same process in the quintessential lyrical-musical form of German Romanticism, the Lied, and demonstrates them in Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade. In contrast to the mythological scope of Wagner’s music dramas, Melo shows how the Lied becomes a snapshot of a highly individualized psychological state, which can be a fertile ground for probing the dialectic between inner and outer worlds, will and representation, and the Apollonian and Dionysian nature of music. According to Melo, Nietzsche opens a window into the role of music in human life, and more particularly, the place of music in his own life and in the development of his philosophical system. In the following Chapter 2, “Thinking Through Music: On NonPropositional Thought in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy,” Michael Steinmann explains that, for Nietzsche, music is not only an object of philosophical thought but rather a source or even a mode of thinking

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itself. Music is expressive of a Dionysian, that is, pre-conceptual and ecstatic experience of the unity of nature and life. Steinmann attempts to show how music and thought are able to converge at a primordial, preconceptual level. The chapter traces both the similarities and differences between the ways in which music and philosophy are able to capture the unity of nature and life. In doing so, it questions the assumptions of a gap between the propositional and non-propositional aspects of musical art. In turn, Steinmann claims that there are non-propositional aspects of meaning that are inherent to thinking itself, for example, in the intuitive experience of the world as a whole. In this particular sense, the experience of thought can become similar to the experience of music. What Nietzsche writes in his 1886 Preface to The Birth of Tragedy, namely that this book should have been sung rather than written, can so indeed be taken seriously and is no merely rhetorical move. The last chapter in this part, Chapter 3, is titled “Nietzsche on Emotion and Affekt in Music” by Yunus Tuncel who plunges into a problem area in the experience of music, or of all arts in general, that is, the problem of intellectualization of music. Over-rationalization takes away from the musical experience. Musical experience opens up the senses and emotions, as music directs itself to primordial affects in its own way. This is perhaps why music is often described as “the language of emotion.” Tuncel explores the affectivity in music in Nietzsche and the kinds of affects that are unique to music and musical experience. One area that needs attention is movement and tempo in music and how music interacts with the movement of body as in dance and with performance in general. How do music’s constituent elements in tone and sound and their arrangement/ordering in tempo, rhythm and melody create affects and emotions? What kinds of affects and emotions are they in the large scheme of values? In what ways can music play the role of transfiguration of emotions? These are some of the issues addressed here. Although music takes up a significant space in Nietzsche’s life, he was concerned with arts, creativity in general, and the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, which was important in the Romantic literature and Wagner. Part II, “Music, Other Arts, and Gesamtkunstwerk,” addresses these issues and has three chapters, beginning with ““La Gaya Scienza” in Music: Nietzsche’s Homage to Goethe, Italy, and Lightness in Joke, Cunning, and Revenge.” In this chapter Martine Prange shows the shift in Nietzsche’s model for music drama from Wagner to Goethe and presents Nietzsche’s appreciation of the opera buffa from his interest in the Italian attempt to revive Greek

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theatre in the ‘dramma per musica’ (or opera), an interest he shared with his livelong Lehrmeister Goethe. After staging Mozart’s Zauberflöte in the national theater of Weimar, of which Goethe was the artistic director, he took up the ambition to write operas himself. Goethe was particularly interested in Mozart’s successful way of mixing the German and Italian spirit in his opera buffa compositions and, in so doing, enriching German ‘heavy’ and ‘grey’ culture with lightness and colorations. After losing hope in Wagner’s abilities to revive the ‘southern’ (‘Greek’) tragic and Dionysian spirit in his music dramas, Nietzsche took Goethe’s example to heart. Perhaps he could do what Wagner had failed to do, and Mozart and Goethe had achieved, by writing his philosophical works in the spirit of music (such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra), explored in other chapters of this anthology, by writing songs like “The Songs of Prince Vogelfrei,” and by composing music and encouraging the young German composer Heinrich Köselitz (alias Peter Gast), a former student of Nietzsche’s, to compose music in the Italian style. In the following chapter of this part, Chapter 5: “Taking a Hammer to History: the Wagnerian Leitmotif and Nietzsche as Public Intellectual,” Daniel H. Foster examines Nietzsche’s relationship with Wagner, and how Nietzsche raises the leitmotif technique to the status of a literary art form for the public expression of complex ideas. This chapter compliments, and perhaps also contrasts, to the first chapter, as it shows how much Wagner remained in Nietzsche even after their gradual separation. According to Foster, Nietzsche emulates Siegfried’s blacksmithing technique: having hammered the past to smithereens, he then melts down the splinters and remolds them into something simultaneously new and old. He learns this technique in part from Siegfried’s creator, Richard Wagner. They had much in common: they were both Grecophiles interested in arts and scholarship and in their fusion, both inspired by ancient and modern authors, both desired and worked for re-formation of their culture, and, most importantly, they were both musicians. And while Nietzsche famously broke from Wagner in many significant ways, he never seemed to abandon the notion of death/rebirth and the relationship between his scholarly knowledge and his artistic output. In Chapter 6, “Leisure and Music Drama from Plato via Nietzsche to the Posthuman Paradigm-Shift,” Stefan L. Sorgner studies the posthuman paradigm-shift initiated by Nietzsche. He explores Nietzsche’s reflections on music drama, tragedy, and opera to discern the central elements of this paradigm-shift so as to present central nodal point of a posthuman philosophy of music drama. While attempting to construct the pieces of

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posthuman musical aesthetics, Sorgner engages with some major posthuman musical works by Sven Helbig as he revisits the culture of leisure and the notion of Gesamtkunstwerk in the light of contemporary, posthuman aesthetics. Part III, “Nietzsche and Composers,” examines the relationship of Nietzsche with other composers and their compositions, although not every relevant composer could be included in this anthology. In Chapter 7, “Nietzsche on the ‘Music’ of Greek Tragedy: Beethoven and Prometheus,” Babette Babich studies the role of Beethoven in Nietzsche’s aesthetics of music. Nietzsche refers to Beethoven both at the start and the end of his first book, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. As Babich shows, the initial reference to Beethoven, an extended one, is complicated for several reasons: the book opens up with “aesthetic science,” but what is ‘science’ in this context and how can it be involved? Babich also questions why Nietzsche has “the spirit of music” in the title of his first book and what this could mean, and how are we to understand Nietzsche’s closing reference to what he calls the “becoming-human of dissonance, “so uncanny, as it seems, that some readers claim that Nietzsche anticipates 20th century New Music.” Babich further argues that Nietzsche articulates his discoveries regarding the prosody of ancient Greece based on his “Theory of Quantifying Rhythm,” via a parallel with Beethoven, as Nietzsche contends in the Birth of Tragedy. In Chapter 8, “Nietzsche’s Manfred Trilogy,” Tali Makell closely examines settings of Byron’s Manfred poem by Schumann, Nietzsche and Tchaikovsky, and Nietzsche’s relation to Robert Schumann (1810-1856) via the setting of Byron’s Manfred to music. Drawn nearly as much to literature as to music, Schumann served as a model for the young Friedrich Nietzsche, whose songs and several of his piano compositions demonstrate the extent of this influence. But Nietzsche’s youthful enthusiasm for Schumann cooled considerably over time, eventually becoming something akin to outright revulsion, a sentiment which he articulated in his harsh criticisms of Schumann, especially his musical setting of Byron’s Manfred, that deeply affected both composers. Schumann’s setting of the poem began in 1848, a year in which he suffered mightily from the auditory hallucinations which would eventually lead to his attempted suicide and insanity. Nietzsche’s Manfred consists of three separate compositions, begun in the 1860s and completed in the early 1870s with the Manfred Meditation, a work which would mark the end of his active musical creativity. Tchaikovsky, another admirer of Schumann, was already an established composer when he began

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writing his Manfred, which was undertaken partly through the suggestion of a friend and supporter, and which over time resulted in one of the composer’s most personal musical statements. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony was composed in 1885, though it underwent several revisions before reaching its final form. Each of the three works which comprise this triptych, employ the same basic thematic materials and the years of Nietzsche’s early development from the romanticism of Schumann to his career as a philology professor and devotee of Richard Wagner. In this chapter, Makell discusses all three settings of Byron’s Manfred, while also detailing Nietzsche’s relationship with the music of Schumann and discussing the compositional point of view of each composer in relation to the work itself. In Chapter 9, “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Way of the Aesthetic Transformation of the Public: Nietzsche’s Hope of Wagner’s Magic in The Birth of Tragedy,” Martine S. Prange dives into yet another complex relationship in Nietzsche’s life. As Prange suggests, when we are talking about Nietzsche and music, we are talking about the Dionysian and how Richard Wagner, as per Nietzsche, first made the Dionysian resound in his music dramas and failed to do so later. The story of the Nietzsche and Wagner friendship and enmity is the story of Nietzsche’s highest artistic, cultural, and philosophical hope and deepest despair; it is Nietzsche’s very own “history of suffering.” In this chapter Prange tells this story by focusing particularly on Nietzsche’s objection to the fact that Wagner overloaded his music with ideas, paying homage to the adage, as expressed in Wagner’s early essay Über deutsches Musikwesen, that “The German person does not want only to feel his music, he also wants to think it.” In so doing, Wagner’s art in fact became ‘Socratic.’ And that was exactly what Nietzsche had warned against in The Birth of Tragedy, the book that had defended Wagner as anti-Socratic, tragic artist. The last chapter in this part, Chapter 10: “Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Nietzsche’s Art of Transfiguration,” by Jamie Parr and Venessa Ercole, examines Nietzsche’s influence on Schoenberg based on the former’s notion of transfiguration. For Nietzsche, philosophy is “the art of transfiguration,” that also has an intrinsically ‘musical’ character. As Ercole and Parr demonstrate in this article, Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht may be read as an outstanding example of such a composition: they locate an illustration of the nature of Nietzschean artistic transfiguration in its score. Accordingly, this article first explores the role of transfiguration in Nietzsche’s thought with an explicit emphasis on its ‘musical’ character.

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Second, they consider Nietzsche’s view of ‘decadent’ types of transfiguration, in and due to which the ‘rhythm’ of human existence becomes decidedly ‘de-cadent’. In the third section, they examine first Richard Dehmel’s poem Verklärte Nacht, which directly inspired Schoenberg to produce in music what he saw at the poem’s heart: a declining affect that eventually is transformed by an ascending, affirmative affect. Ercole and Parr argue that this affirmative transformation of the negative reflects Nietzsche’s understanding of the work of transfiguration, in which the negative is retained yet simultaneously elevated and made the source of an overall affirmation. Finally, they analyze Schoenberg’s score, following the multiple transformations of its central motive, from its somber beginning in D-minor to its serenely transfigured ending in D-major. Seen from the point of view of Nietzsche’s project, it is these transformations that make Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht instructive for any attempt to grasp what Nietzsche claimed about philosophy’s ‘musical’ art of transfiguration, and how that philosophy might be observed to operate in the lives and creations of its adherents. In his compositions, Nietzsche made experimentations according to his own musical experience and aesthetics, the influence of other composers, and his knowledge of ancient Greek culture and literature, all of which is the subject-matter of Part IV: “Nietzsche’s Musical Compositions and Experiments.” The first chapter of this part, Chapter 11, ““This Most Glorious Gift of God”: On Some Formative Elements in Nietzsche’s Musical Upbringing” by Cornelis Witthoefft shows the young Nietzsche’s interest in sacred music. While Nietzsche is most remembered as a critic of Christianity, his youthful efforts between the ages of twelve and sixteen led to a number of sacred compositions. Witthoefft shows the influence that the revivalist, or neo-pietist, Awakening movement had on Nietzsche. In his early autobiography, From My Life, written at the age of thirteen, almost literal parallels to the description of the awakening experience in a prominent forerunner of this movement can be found. It is important, however, that this awakening, for Nietzsche, was not merely religious but from the beginning marked his dedication to making music. Witthoefft traces further influences on the adolescent, such as the father of his friend Krug, and shows that the early Nietzsche adopts the contemporary criticism of modern music, and, from another perspective, of the genre of chorales. Nietzsche studied Protestant chorales as early as 1854 and composed his first hymn in 1857. The chapter includes two of Nietzsche’s creative interpretations of the chorale which have not been published before.

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Studying his early sacred compositions can lead to a reassessment of the significance of Christian religion in Nietzsche’s early life. In the following chapter, Chapter 12, “Pagan World and Christianity: Nietzsche’s Projected Oratorio and its Consequences,” Cornelis Witthoefft continues his analysis of Nietzsche’s early sacred compositions. He examines whether Nietzsche had in fact, as scholars thought for some time, worked on a piece called “Christmas Oratorio” in the tradition of Bach’s famous work. Witthoefft shows that the model for Nietzsche’s projected oratorio was not Bach, but in fact Hector Berlioz’s The Childhood of Christ. The question is then to what extent a later stage of this project, “Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature,” whose title is taken from the German religious poet Justinus Kerner, was genuinely Christian. The chapter ends by discussing two early texts, “Pagan World and Christianity” and “Fate and History,” which show Nietzsche’s ambivalence in the transition away from Christian faith. The former text makes clear that the experience of faith was for him first and foremost an experience of the heart and therefore a musical experience. But because the fusion of music and religion was too deeply rooted in Nietzsche’s infancy, he could not easily separate himself emotionally from what he slowly began to reject rationally. In retrospect, Nietzsche recognizes his early attempts at composing music in the style of an oratorio in Wagner’s Parsifal. In Chapter 13: “Nietzsche’s Use of Music as a Rhetorical Device,” Benjamin Moritz takes a look at the kind of musical experimentations Nietzsche made. Friedrich Nietzsche’s devotion to music is well-documented, his quotations on the subject pervasive, and even his musical compositions—once largely overlooked by scholars—are receiving increased examination. Moritz’s first interactions with Nietzsche’s music took place in graduate school, where his musicological and philosophical studies intersected and led to analyses of his musical works. Although these examinations were made within a biographical and philosophical context, they represented a microscopic approach that treated each composition as an intentional addition to Nietzsche’s total corpus. Time and lived experience have since intervened to complicate his understanding of the role Nietzsche’s musical compositions played in his life and works. While an approach that identifies Nietzsche’s philosophy primarily as process rather than rubric is hardly revolutionary, its application to his music provides a more intellectually cohesive and satisfying environment in which his compositions can co-exist with his writings not as antagonists, but as experiments, trials, and even as a willing inclination to be deceived. In other

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words, should his music be considered as intentional exemplars of an aesthetic principle, or is it better understood as one of the results of the lived experience? Nietzsche warns against the false faith resulting from, “…petrification and coagulation of a mass of images” into truths, abstractions, and correct perceptions. By examining his music as the accumulated detritus of a life well lived, one might gain insight into Nietzsche’s larger aesthetic project – the life-long struggle to engage with existence authentically. In the last chapter of this part, Chapter 14: “Piano Music of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Eclectic Analysis of Selected Piano Compositions,” Aysegul Durakoglu, analyzes Heldenklage and Da Geht ein Bach, as she exposes their musical syntax. Music became Nietzsche’s language transformed not only into his musical experience but also in his philosophical writings. Earlier in life, he was trained as a pianist, then his musical education and ambition urged him to compose music. Even though Nietzsche did not follow a musical path, his intimacy with music greatly influenced his way of thinking. Nietzsche composed over 70 pieces between the years of 1862 and 1868, although only 50 of them survived but have not had the attention they deserve. In this article, Durakoglu focuses on Nietzsche, the composer, and analyzes his piano pieces from a performer-analyst’s perspective exploring the structural and stylistic aspects of his score, and bridging the intrinsic elements of his music into his onto-historical world. However, a critical review of his philosophy is necessary to evaluate his musical experiments to gain insights about the foundation of his creative process. A comprehensive method of analysis, built step by step, is modeled after Lawrence Ferrara’s eclectic approach integrating philosophical approaches to musical analysis to reveal the musical syntax with the purpose of understanding the referential meaning and Nietzsche’s thinking behind his music. Nietzsche is considered to be a musical writer and his musical daimon permeates his writings. Part V, “Music in Nietzsche’s Writings,” is designed to bring out the music in Nietzsche’s written works. The first two chapters are specifically on the musicality of Zarathustra. Chapter 15, “The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Preliminary Outline”17 by Graham Parkes unearths the symphonic aspect of this work. Why does

17

This article was previously published in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise, edited by James Luchte (London: Continuum, 2008). We thank the author and Bloomsbury for allowing us to re-publish it in this anthology.

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Nietzsche repeatedly refer to his Zarathustra as a symphony? Given that the protagonist not only speaks but also sings at crucial junctures in the book, then why not an opera – a new Ring in a different medium? Or, given the predominance of Zarathustra’s voice over all the others, why not an oratorio with a dominating soloist, or even a concerto with Zarathustra’s voice as the solo instrument? Yet no lesser authority than Gustav Mahler confirms Nietzsche’s claim about his favorite work: The world of Zarathustra scholarship divides into those who think the work properly ends in Part III (which Nietzsche certainly thought was the end at the time he finished it) and those who think it includes fourth part, which he wrote around a year later but chose not to publish. If one is of the three-part persuasion, the book’s structure would reflect the pre-classical symphony in three movements: a first movement in sonata-allegro form; a second, slow movement (andante or adagio) usually consisting of a theme and variations; and a third movement either ‘in the tempo of a minuet’ (sometimes minuet or scherzo and trio) or else in a faster dance-like tempo (allegro or presto). For those who include the fourth part, the form would be that of the later classical symphony in four movements, where the third would be a minuet and trio in ternary form, and the final movement dance-like in rondo. But since Nietzsche writes of ‘the finale of [his] symphony’ in four different letters after completing Part III, it makes sense to compare the structure of the first three parts of Zarathustra with that of the early classical symphonic forms with three movements. Following on this chapter, in Chapter 16, “Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a Score of Metaphors, Corresponding with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,” Gaila G. Pander reads and hears Zarathustra as a symphony, as she sees parallels between it and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Nietzsche characterized his opus magnum Thus Spoke Zarathustra in several ways as a symphony and as a tower. This essay explores these two characteristics and demonstrates their value and relevance for the interpretation of this work. In a short text (1881) on the planned structure of Zarathustra, Nietzsche took Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a model. Based on this structural draft, Zarathustra (Parts IIII) will be read and interpreted as a score of metaphors. Nietzsche’s literary symphony follows the structure of the classical sonata form as exemplified in Beethoven’s Ninth. The symphonic model contributes to the architectural construction of the book. The image of the tower adds another element. It symbolizes the “artistic and step-by-step” (“artistisch und schrittweise”) development of images. The essay sheds light on Nietzsche’s construction of his “tower,’’ with the aid of the musicological concepts he himself put to

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work. It pays attention to his understanding of the rhythm, the dynamics, the period-intervals, the image-clustering, as well as the figuration, the harmony and the style. Pander maintains Zarathustra to be a solid construction or also a coherent musical score, displaying the pattern of an ascending spiral movement – comparable to the function of the tower steeple – finding its culmination in an apotheosis that embraces all things in a new cohesion. Just as Beethoven’s Ninth unfolds its splendid glory in the “Ode to Joy,” a song of praise upon entering the Elysium, so the text of Zarathustra prepares the reader for the experience of submergence into the Dionysian mystery. In “The Seven Seals (and in “The Yes and Amen Song)” this “tragedy from the spirit of music” reaches its finale, integrating all and everything. The last chapter of this part, Chapter 17, “When Philosophy Yields to Music: The Case of Nietzsche’s Nachgesang,” by Daniel Conway focuses on singing in Nietzsche. Nietzsche closes Beyond Good and Evil with a poem or “Aftersong” [Nachgesang], in which he extends a heartfelt invitation to those unknown “friends” who, he hopes, may join him in his efforts to produce a philosophy of the future. Those readers who genuinely aspire to the nobility he described in Part Nine of Beyond Good and Evil are now urged to join him in friendship and mutual recognition, but only as equals. That he elects in this final installment of the book to sing to his best readers is noteworthy. Nietzsche has been concerned in Beyond Good and Evil not simply to make his case discursively and dialogically, but also to initiate his best readers into the affective-somatic modes of existence—e.g., habits, customs, practices, and routines—that he deems appropriate to the preparatory labors he has assigned to them. In fact, the envisioned philosophy of the future will attain its optimal realization as a way of life that is more closely attuned to the mortal rhythms of an affirmatively worldly existence. That he now sings to them is meant to provide them with a final souvenir of the affective-somatic transformation he has induced in them. Nietzsche may mean to contrast his valedictory song with Zarathustra’s farewell at the close of Part I. The suggestion here is that the singer will and must sing, regardless of audience, independent of anyone understanding what is sung. Unlike the unripe Zarathustra, that is, Nietzsche sings for everyone and no one. He will not adjust his song for those who do not understand. He is healthy enough to sing simply for the sake of doing so, in cheerful defiance of any (merely) rational algorithm or calculus, whether for audiences of the future or for no audiences at all. His singing is both the means and the end, an outward expression (and celebration) of the nobility of soul he has achieved.

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Nietzsche’s persistent engagement with arts and music, his new aesthetics and conception of art and its place in culture, and his musical background appealed to many artists, musicians, composers, and music movements in the twentieth century and still does in our century. The last part of the anthology, Part VI: “Nietzsche and Contemporary Music,” explores this influence and has three chapters. In Chapter 18, “Russian Musical Interpretations of Nietzsche” by Rebecca A. Mitchell, we see Nietzsche in Russia around the turn to the twentieth century. Perhaps more than any other philosopher, Nietzsche’s ideas permeated late imperial Russian cultural life. However, Russian elites read Nietzsche selectively. While emphasizing Nietzsche’s youthful vision of music as the ultimate unifying force in The Birth of Tragedy, his rejection of God tended to be either ignored or dismissed, and the thinker himself framed as a prophet of Russia’s future. This chapter looks at the complicated relationship between Nietzsche and the Russian musical and literary elite through close attention to the Medtner brothers (Emilii and Nikolai). Descended from a Baltic German family but raised in Moscow, the Medtner brothers proclaimed the German thinker’s contemporary relevance for Russia in both text and music. This chapter looks at Emilii’s devotion to Nietzsche’s legacy, which included active propagation of Nietzsche’s ideas in the contemporary periodical press as well as a planned biography of the philosopher, and Nikolai’s musical setting of five songs to Nietzschean texts. Examination of the creative work of Emilii and Nikolai in the final years before the 1917 revolution serves to highlight both the particularity of Nietzsche reception in Russia and later Soviet erasure of Nietzschean influence from the official narrative of Russian cultural development. In Chapter 19, “Dionysian Rock,”18 David Kilpatrick traces Nietzsche’s influence in the Rock culture. With the benefit of hindsight, Nietzsche concedes in his “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” (added to the third edition of The Birth of Tragedy) that much of the contemporary mythopoeic ambition of his first book can be dismissed as youthful naïveté. Indeed, his subsequent critiques of nationalism, as well as his personal and public repudiations of Wagner, necessitate repositioning or distancing from certain key pleas Nietzsche makes in the later sections of the book. Walter Kaufmann rather apologetically notes “the book might well end” with section 15, before Nietzsche shifts from the birth and death of tragedy in

18

This article was previously published in the Spring 2012 issue of The Agonist (Volume V, Issue II). We thank the author and The Agonist for allowing us to republish it in this anthology.

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antiquity to his romanticist cum modernist appeal for a rebirth. Kaufmann’s efforts to redeem Nietzsche from fascist affiliation renders the defense of Nietzsche’s most overt politically aestheticized hopes burdensome and problematic, embarrassing if not outright indefensible. But Nietzsche’s insistence that this great question mark remains should dismiss such simplistic apologetics. What hopes remained for Nietzsche, filtered out from those later dismissed as hasty and what applications to the present would he still consider in attempting an answer to that great Dionysian question mark? While Kilpatrick seeks Nietzschean traces in Rock, Ben Abelson does it in Heavy Metal in Chapter 20: “The Heaviest Weight: Finding Nietzsche in Metal.” It is difficult to overstate Nietzsche’s impact on 20th and now 21st century popular culture. Music, film, television, and even video games abound with references to Nietzsche’s writings. However, perhaps nowhere else is Nietzsche’s shadow most broadly cast than over the musico-cultural phenomenon of heavy metal, or simply “metal” as it is most often referred to nowadays. Numerous heavy metal songs and albums have names derived from his works. The connection between Nietzsche’s ideas and metal is palpable for many musicians and listeners. Kilpatrick makes a compelling case for rock music in general as a candidate for the Dionysian music of the future sought by Nietzsche. However, for Abelson, metal has characteristics that reflect Nietzschean ideas more so than other genres derived from rock. In this chapter he makes the case for that claim, with some major caveats, by investigating the affinity between Nietzsche and metal along three interrelated dimensions. The first concerns Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity and the apparent anti-Christian stance of most metal acts. The second, spiraling out of the first, is psycho-social, concerning Nietzsche’s encounter with and desire to overcome nihilism and the degree to which that attitude is reflected in metal. The third concerns Nietzsche’s musical aesthetics more directly, the way it is informed by his conception of the Apollonian and Dionysian artistic forces in The Birth of Tragedy, and how Nietzsche’s preferences in regard to the music of his time might be applied to metal. To conclude, we started this anthology as a puzzle to solve collectively with other musicians, musicologists, thinkers, and researchers, and we believe we found and placed some of the pieces of the puzzle. We are also aware that many other pieces are missing. In spite of the missing pieces, the anthology includes a great amount of information on Nietzsche’s musical milieu and background from his birth until his mature years and on what he achieved and did not achieve as a musician and a composer. It shows his

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musical aesthetics as it is formed in response to poets, musicians and philosophers of his time and the preceding age. It presents Nietzsche’s ideas on music, his polemic with musicians, and analysis of some of his compositions. It exposes the musicality of Nietzsche’s texts, specifically Zarathustra, and their performative aspect, and the organic fusion of thought, music and song in Nietzsche’s works. Finally, it gives a small picture of Nietzsche’s wider influence on the musical culture of the subsequent generations. All in all, we hope to open new vistas in the exploration of not only music and thought interaction in Nietzsche but also of the broader philosophy and music exchange in general.

Acknowledgements Our first event, the lecture-concert at Stevens Institute of Technology in 2014, was followed by another event at Beyhan Karahan’s welcoming and spacious loft in Soho, New York City, in 2017. Both events were organized with the support of the Nietzsche Circle in New York. Following them, we were planning for a bigger event in New York for the spring of 2020 with more speakers, philosophers and musicians, which was made impossible by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the initial plan, first the anthology would have followed this bigger event; however, instead of delaying the work, we thought it would be wiser to pursue the anthology first and then organize a series of events to present our anthology to various audiences. We would like to thank all our contributors for their commitment despite hardships the pandemic may have caused in their lives, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner for his support as the co-editor of the Nietzsche Now Series, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing, especially Adam Rummens for his help throughout the process of proposal submission and with the preparation of the content of the anthology, and the CSP team. We also want to thank the S. C. Williams Library at Stevens Institute of Technology for their support in hosting our first event, and Ms. Beyhan Karahan for the following one. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Rikki Schlott for compiling the general bibliography, to Sean Balanon for preparing musical figures, to Nathan Olivier and William Shin for preparing the Index, to Deniz Ilhan for illustrating the Nietzsche image and to Goethe-SchillerArchiv Weimar, Germany, for the musical notes for the front cover and to our readers Benjamin Moritz, Cornelis Witthoefft, Sonia Steinmann, Naz Durakoglu, and Ed Foster for their valuable time and work.

PART I: NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY AND MUSIC

CHAPTER 1 THE MUSICAL SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE: NIETZSCHE’S EARLY POETICS OF SONG AND THE DEPICTION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME IN SCHUBERT’S GRETCHEN AM SPINNRADE JAMES MELO

In Twilight of the Idols, published in 1889 shortly after Nietzsche collapsed into madness in Turin and entered the twilight of his own life, which he endured for a little more than ten years in the grip of insanity before he died on 25 August 1900, he penned one of the most anthologized and universally quoted statements about music: “Without music, life would be a mistake.” But this is only the kernel, the immediately graspable essence of aphorism 33 (one of 44 aphorisms that introduce the book), which reads in full: How little is required for happiness! The sound of a bagpipe. – Without music, life would be a mistake. Germans even imagine God singing songs.1

In this concentrated utterance, a tripartite summary of the musical experience, Nietzsche opens a window into the role of music in human life and, more particularly, the place of music in his own life and in the development of his philosophical system. It is significant that Nietzsche 1

Norman, Judith and Aaron Ridley, Eds. The Anti-Christ, Ecce-Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2014), 160. The centrality of this aphorism in Nietzsche’s conception of music and its relation to life has elicited many interpretations. Gregory Ivan Polakoff examines the implications of this aphorism through a discussion of the metaphor of musical dissonance and its role as a means of articulating the world, in his Doctoral Dissertation “The Centre is Everywhere”: Nietzsche’s Overcoming of Modernity through Musical Dissonance (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2011).

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arrived at this insight at the very end of his functional career as a philosopher, and we can see how he distilled in this aphorism all the attributes that make music such a central aspect of human existence. If we partition the aphorism into three fragments, we have a sequence that goes from empirical observation to abstract conceptualization and, finally, metaphysical generalization: 1. Music is a fundamental aspect of our lives (“How little is required for happiness! The sound of a bagpipe”) 2. Therefore, we cannot do without music, just as we cannot abdicate of anything that is essential to life (“Without music, life would be a mistake”) 3. Music goes beyond its immanent presence in reality and acquires a transcendental dimension as an attribute of the divine (“Germans even imagine God singing songs”)

There is a religious overtone to Nietzsche’s conception of music, which remained from his early contact with music as part of a religious experience. In his biography of Nietzsche, Julian Young includes a fragment from 1858, written when Nietzsche was only 14-years old, and which represents his first articulated insight into the philosophical dimension of music: God has given us music so that above all it might lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softness of its melancholy tones. […] The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart.2

This early awareness of the power of music was only the first sign of a relationship that would last throughout Nietzsche’s life and would influence all levels of his philosophical system. Music became for Nietzsche the ultimate test of experience, and he invoked music at strategic moments of his personal and philosophical development in order to convey meaning that was inaccessible through words. His conception of music stemmed from the philosophy and aesthetics of Arthur Schopenhauer, who together with Richard Wagner was the most significant influence on Nietzsche’s development. In Schopenhauer’s system, music is at the center of his reflection on the concepts of “will” and “representation,” which can be generally understood as a dialectic between “essence” and “appearance” or “attribute.” For Schopenhauer, music represented the universal manifestation 2 Julian Young. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 37.

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of the “will,” and he used the musical experience as a metaphor for the perception of ultimate truths and realities. The impact of Schopenhauer’s philosophy on Nietzsche has been studied exhaustively from myriad perspectives.3 In this essay, I am interested in how Schopenhauer’s concept of music as the ultimate embodiment of the “will” influenced Nietzsche’s reflections on the nature of song as presented in the early fragment On Music and Words, and more specifically in how these reflections illuminate the relationship between poetry and music in the German Lied. *** The fragment On Music and Words, likely written in 1871, remained unpublished during Nietzsche’s lifetime. Its subject-matter, as well as the time of its composition, suggest a close connection with the gestation of Nietzsche’s first major publication, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872). The fragment also advances important concepts and insights that helped to shape Nietzsche’s reception and adaptation of Schopenhauer’s ideas about music and poetry. It also contains the seeds for Nietzsche’s response to the music of Richard Wagner and, later, his visceral rejection of Wagner and his aesthetic outlook.4 Most of the discussion of the relationship between music and poetry in On Music and Words is concerned with opera, particularly the operas (or “music dramas”) of Wagner, topics that were in the forefront of Nietzsche’s preoccupations and interests at the time. However, the fragment interests me primarily because of what it might 3

The vast literature on this subject can be easily sampled according to one’s interests. There have been important biographies of Nietzsche in recent years: Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) offers a meticulous traversal of Nietzsche’s development; more recently, Sue Prideaux, I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche (London: Faber & Faber, 2019) presents a somewhat revisionary take on the life of the philosopher. A classic study of the role of music in Nietzsche’s life and philosophy is Georges Liébert, Nietzsche et la musique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1995) published in English translation by David Pellauer and Graham Parkes as Nietzsche and Music, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004). 4 The nature of Nietzsche’s response to music underwent significant changes throughout his life. What did not change was the ecstasy and sense of reverence he always revealed towards music. Given the nature of his philosophical writings, which relies heavily on an aphoristic style, it is not always possible to articulate his philosophy of music into a coherent system (as is the case with Schopenhauer), but the tenets of his conception of music reappear at strategic moments of his career. His lifelong engagement with the music of Richard Wagner functions as a yardstick for evaluating the shifts in his aesthetic judgments.

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contribute to an understanding of how Nietzsche’s views relate to the development and aesthetic integrity of the German Lied as a distinct genre of Romantic music. Halfway through the fragment, Nietzsche reflects on the task of the composer in setting a text to music: Imagine, after all preconditions, what an undertaking it must be to write music for a poem, that is, to wish to illustrate a poem by means of music, in order to secure a conceptual language for music in this way. What an inverted world! An undertaking that strikes one as if a son desired to beget a father!5

For a composer, this statement seems very odd. Nietzsche seems to consider the idea of text setting to be almost an impossibility or a misguided enterprise, one in which the order of the terms is reversed. How could that be? No doubt he was reacting to the Schopenhauerian notion of the preeminence of music (especially and most fundamentally, of melody) as the universal representation of the “will,” something self-sufficient that does not depend on anything else for its affirmation. In Schopenhauer’s hierarchy of the arts, music occupies the highest place. His philosophical and aesthetic thought, articulate as a dialectic between “will” and “representation,” offers a locus for presenting music as the very essence of the will: Music is thus by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy of the will itself, whose objectivity the Ideas are. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.6

Schopenhauer’s views on music are particularly pertinent to Nietzsche’s conception of the relationship between music and words because of Schopenhauer’s concept of melody as the preeminent embodiment of the “will,” the musical element that, more than any other, carries the universalist aspect of music: In the melody, in the high, singing, principal voice leading the whole and progressing with unrestrained freedom, in the unbroken significant

5

Friedrich Nietzsche, On Music and Words, Tr. by Walter Kaufman. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 109. 6 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Tr. by Richard Burdon Haldane and John Kemp (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., ca. 1909), 333.

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Chapter 1 connection of one thought from beginning to end representing a whole, I recognize the highest grade of the objectification of the will.7

In this context, words are mere addenda, particular symbols that are invoked as a way of giving a more immediate dimension to music and bring its universality into syntony with the particularities of reality. This view is again expressed in Nietzsche’s idea of the creative process in the composition of a song: When a composer writes music for a lyrical poem, therefore, he, as a musician, is not excited either by the images or by the feelings speaking through this text. A musical excitement that comes from altogether different regions chooses the text of this song as a metaphorical expression for itself. A necessary relation between poem and music thus makes no sense, for the two worlds of tone and image are too remote from each other to enter more than an external relationship.8

The most intriguing part of the text quoted above is the notion that the music chooses (the emphasis is Nietzsche’s) the text that will be used for the song. It is, in some sense, as if the composition of a song were a matter of a melody in search of a poem. Put another way, a certain music comes into being as an absolute entity, created through a purely musical impulse that obeys its own norms, and eventually it may happen that a text will be found to give this music a more easily understandable dimension by bringing into the work the intellectual, denotative elements that are the prerogative of language. This is a notion that seems to go against the grain of the creative process attested by composers throughout history, or gleaned through an examination of their sketches, revisions, alternative versions, or other procedures in the composition of a song. Text setting is obviously a very different process when a libretto is set to music to create an opera, and when a lyric poem is set as a song. There are not only differences in scope, contents, and structure, but also very important distinctions related to word intelligibility and the minutiae of textual and musical expression. In an opera, music easily overtakes the words as the primary means of expression (more or less forcefully depending on stylistic and compositional practices), but in a song, and particularly in the German Lied, there is a heightened degree of correspondence and mutual dependence between the two media. Nietzsche was certainly aware of the compositional processes and decisions that operate when a composer decides to set a lyrical poem to music (he 7 8

Ibid., 335. Friedrich Nietzsche, On Music and Words, 112.

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himself composed several Lieder), and later in the fragment he even put forward a pre-emptive defense against a particular approach to text-setting that could challenge the views embodied in the previous quotation: On the basis of a popular aesthetic view someone will try to meet us halfway with the proposition: “It is not the poem but the feeling generated by the poem that gives birth to the composition.”9

These two remarkable statements have profound implications for the understanding of the German Lied, a genre that became one of the quintessential representations of musical Romanticism. Up until the early 19th century, most of the solo song repertoire in Western music was intrinsically connected with folk song, either as direct arrangements of folk songs for domestic performance or through quotations of folk melodies as the basis for variations or as a feature of larger-scale works. In the hierarchy of music genres, these songs ranked decisively lower than almost anything else, and had no place in the concert repertoire of “serious” music. A case in point is Beethoven’s famous arrangements of Irish and Scottish folk songs, which were commissioned to supply a very delimited market and audience that cultivated music as a domestic pastime. These arrangements were, by their very nature, simple and musically accessible, and there was no intention of creating individual works of art that reflected the subjectivity and individuality of the composer. There were exceptions, of course, including individual songs by Mozart, Beethoven, and other composers here and there, but by and large there was no sustained repertoire of art songs that could find a place on the concert stage. All that began to change in the early decades of the 19th century through a felicitous parallel development of highly subjective lyrical poetry and a nascent interest on the part of composers in setting that poetry to music. A major dividing line between the simple repertoire of folk song arrangements and a new conception of song was Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), written in 1816 for male voice and piano, and which is generally considered to be the first song cycle in the history of Western music. Beethoven set six poems by the physician Alois Isidor Jeitteles (1794-1858), which are arranged to create a narrative, a psychological journey in which a young man addresses his distant beloved through a wealth of nature imagery and metaphors. There are two aspects of the cycle that are particularly relevant to the ideas expressed by Nietzsche in On Music and Words: Beethoven explicitly thanked Jeitteles for the inspiration 9

Ibid., 110.

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the poet provided him (thus making it clear that the poems came first in the process) and the entire composition is unified through musical devices that superimpose a musical structure on the sequence of the poems and, in doing so, provides a musical counterpart to the poems. One such device is the recall, at the very end of the cycle, of the melodic motives that opened the composition, thus giving the work a cyclical form. In addition, every song in the sequence is through-composed, meaning that Beethoven created music that is unique to the particular content (both syntactical and expressive) of each poem. This approach does not support the notion expressed by Nietzsche in excerpt (2) above, that a composer, being a musician, “is not excited either by the images or by the feelings speaking through this text” when setting a lyrical poem to music. There is no evidence that any of the music of An die ferne Geliebte existed prior to Beethoven’s experience of Jeitelles’s poems, but was created to reflect whatever images and feelings the poems awoke in him, as he himself made clear by thanking Jeitelles for the inspiration he provided. This is not a unidimensional process, though. The history of Western music includes many examples of pre-existent melodies (and even entire musical compositions) that were repurposed as musical settings of texts that had not been originally the basis of the composition. These vary from the contrafactum practices of the Middle Ages, when a new text was grafted onto a pre-existent composition, and the re-texting of famous melodies to serve a different purpose. In this regard, Nietzsche was hinting at an aspect of music that does indeed find expression in many contexts, but is not the raison d’être of the German Lied (that will be discussed later in the article). Two years before Beethoven composed An die ferne Geliebte, the young Franz Schubert also broke new grounds with the composition of Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel), which sets a text from Part One, scene 15, of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s drama, Faust. Composed in 1814, when Schubert was seventeen-years old, the song set a very high bar in the history of the German Lied, as it is a miracle of word painting and psychological insight.10 Schubert followed the three-section structure of 10

Schubert’s Lieder have given rise to some of the most insightful writings in interpretative musicology. A cogent study of Schubert’s text-setting practices is Richard Kramer, Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Kramer not only discusses the major song cycles, but also traces cyclical procedures in individual songs. A demonstration of focused word-music relationship analysis is found in, among others, Kofi Agawu’s review-essay “Perspectives on Schubert’s Songs”, Music Analysis 16, no. 1 (March 1997), 107-122.

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Goethe’s poem but created a musical setting that, in many respects, is a musical representation of someone reading the poem in real time. There are two types of narrative that unfold in the poem, and which are also reflected in Schubert’s setting: Gretchen’s objective description of her love encounters and experiences with Faust (the unique stanzas in the poem), and her subjective reaction to the memory of these experiences (the recurring refrain). There is an important omission in the poem, however: nowhere is there any mention of the spinning-wheel that, we infer, lulled Gretchen into her recollections. Schubert, however, made the image of the spinning-wheel the central metaphor of the song, explicitly presenting it in the moto perpetuo accompaniment in the piano and, by doing so, adding a new element to Goethe’s poem (see the appended score for the song). This is very important for several reasons. The moto perpetuo accompaniment, both in the series of sixteenth-notes in the right hand and in the recurring rhythm in the left hand (two eight-notes separated by an eight-note rest) not only mimics the continuous movement of the spinning-wheel, but also sets up a hypnotic rhythm that is conducive to Gretchen’s absorption in her memories of Faust. We all know that a repetitive action frees the mind to go in a journey and engage in unrestrictive associations. That is precisely what Schubert achieves in this song, while at the same time furnishing a musical component that will allow him to create a breath-taking contrast later in the piece. The spinning-wheel, which in Goethe’s poem is a ghost presence that the reader has to imagine constantly as a background for the reading of the poem, is made completely explicit by Schubert. In the song, it acts upon the listener in a dual capacity as imagery and metaphor. Schubert actualizes, through his music, the imagined background of the poem. Gretchen’s emotional state is tracked in the music through nuances of musical inflection, which capture the emotional tone of speech or the emotional rhythm of our thoughts. Again, we are familiar with the fact that at moments of heightened emotion our utterances (and even our thoughts) are altered in speed, intensity, pitch, and a host of other rhetorical nuances that can be rendered by music in very sophisticated ways. Nietzsche was particularly sensitive to this aspect of language, and perhaps it was this awareness of the musical element of speech that led him to postulate the possibility that a melody could “choose” its text. While discussing the dialectic between “will” and “representation” from the perspective of music and words, he addressed the musical component of language as a universal feature: All degrees of pleasure and displeasure—expressions of one primeval ground that we cannot see through—find symbolic expression in the tone of the speaker […] Insofar as this primeval ground is the same in all human

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beings, the tonal background is also universal and intelligible despite the differences between languages.11

In Gretchen am Spinnrade, Schubert uses a careful palette of sounds inflected by crescendos, accelerandos, changes of pitch, and sudden contrasts of dynamics (all stock-in-trade of the composer) to modulate Gretchen’s emotions and the tone of her speech as she narrates her experiences. The alternation between crescendos and decrescendos is particularly prominent in the score, as they track Gretchen’s internal monologue about her memories. The most ingenious touch in this process, however, comes at the moment where Goethe highlights the most intense image of the poem, when Gretchen remembers Faust’s kiss (“Und ach, sein Kuss!”) on page 194, system 2, measures 2-4. There is no difference, in terms of poetic structure, line, rhyme, or any other poetic device, between this moment and all the other moments in the poem. Goethe’s poem is an absolutely regular sequence of ten stanzas with four lines each, and for the reader there is no hint that this is a climactic moment in the poem. The reader must infer it in relation to Gretchen’s narrative. In the music, however, it is a very different story. Here again, Schubert adds another layer to Goethe’s poem in a way that makes explicit what is only implied in the poem. Having set up the regular moto perpetuo of the accompaniment, here Schubert breaks it often, for the first and only time in the song, to highlight the intensity of Gretchen’s memory of the kiss. Time literally stops. In preparation for this climactic moment, Schubert changes the accompaniment pattern in the left hand, from the ongoing alternation between two eightnotes and an eight-note rest, to a series of octaves and chords in dotted halfnotes (see page 193, systems 4-5, through page 194, systems 1-3). This change in the texture of the left hand coincides with Gretchen’s objective description of her lover’s qualities, which is very different from her musing on her current condition. The rhetorical impact of the dotted half-notes is tied to these verses: His proud bearing His noble form, The smile on his lips, The power of his eyes, The enchanting flow Of his words, The touch of his hands

11

Ibid., 108.

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Then, the accompaniment in the piano turns to a sequence of three chords that halt all previous movement and allow the listener to participate in Gretchen’s own emotion (page 194, system 3, measures 2-4). The last of these chords is even crowned with a fermata, a sign denoting a suspension and prolongation of time, which intensifies even more the emotional impact of the moment and lets the listener know that Gretchen’s mind is completely flooded by that memory. By halting the moto perpetuo accompaniment, Schubert also gives us a very clear image: Gretchen was so taken by the memory of the kiss that she stopped spinning the wheel. We can almost see, through the device of music, the young woman lost in thought and oblivious of her task. Then she catches herself up and slowly returns to her work, which Schubert shows exquisitely through two incomplete iterations of the figure of the accompaniment (as if Gretchen is just tentatively coming back from the past) before it is resumed fully and in earnest again. Gretchen is now back on track in her narrative. But then, there is more. In a feat of psychological insight, Schubert provides a musical ending that, to a certain extent, contradicts Goethe’s poem. In the poem, Gretchen seems to achieve a measure of composure after the intense memory of the kiss, but in Schubert’s setting that memory persists and continues to affect her, which Schubert shows through the reiteration of her words dressed in obsessive musical figures that create a second climax as the melody reaches the highest note of the song (page 196, second system, measure 4). Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s poem, a masterpiece that stands at the very beginning of the line of development of the German Lied, evinces a conception of the relationship between music and poetry that seems to be diametrically opposed to what is suggested by Nietzsche: Music can generate images that will always be mere schemata, as it were examples of its real universal content. But how should the image, the representation, be capable of generating music?12

In Gretchen am Spinnrade, not only did Schubert allow the poem’s images and metaphors to generate the musical setting, he also put into practice the other alternative which Nietzsche seems to have dismissed preemptively in On Music and Words: in this early Lied, as well as in countless others throughout his career, Schubert not only set the actual words and images of the poem but also, by elaborating the musical structure to bring to the surface some implicit elements in the poem, he set the feeling that the poem awoke in him as well. This is part of the essence of the German Lied 12

Ibid., 109.

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as a Romantic genre. The Romantic composer had essentially three options for setting a poem to music: (1) the poem could be set strophically, in which each stanza of the poem is sung to the same music, in emulation of a folk idiom; (2) the poem could be through-composed, meaning that the music changes constantly in order to meet the various images and feelings expressed in the poem; and (3) the composer may opt for a combination of these two methods. There are several factors that will determine one choice or another, and it is instructive to reflect about settings of the same poem by different composers, in light of Nietzsche’s notion that the music chooses the text and generates the images. For example, Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) made a habit of not setting to music any poem that Schubert had already set, unless he felt that Schubert was not successful. One such instance is the setting of the poem Ganymed by Goethe. In the poem, Goethe describes a process of transformation as the youth Ganymed, who has been lying idly in the fields, is abducted by Zeus and transported heavenwards to be Zeus’s cupbearer in Olympus. As the poem unfolds, we track this process of transformation in great detail, including the moment when Ganymed sees the clouds below him (rather than above) and realizes he is entering a different realm, until the final ecstatic dissolution into a new state of being. In his setting (composed in 1817 but only published in 1825), Schubert opted for a through-composed structure that responds, through the variation of the musical material, to each of these changes of state in the poem. It is almost a literal musical rendition of the poem, and we follow Ganymed in the process of becoming. Hugo Wolf’s setting (1891), on the contrary, is essentially static in comparison with Schubert’s. It is as if Wolf had focused on the ultimate state of Ganymed, as his transformation from mere mortal to semi-divine being is already accomplished. In his setting, we encounter Ganymed as if he were dreaming a new possibility for his being, or as if he had already achieved this new condition and was musing on how it came about. In any event, Wolf’s setting does not have the dynamic impetus of Schubert’s version, but focuses instead on the depiction of one emotional state. Both of them, however, illustrate once again how a composer can let either the “images” or the “feeling” of a poem generate the musical structure. Nietzsche’s own text-setting practices remained dependent on a selfvalidating alliance between words and music. In his seventeen songs for voice and piano, the piano never rises to the level of psychological commentator that one finds in Schubert and other masters of the German Lied. Irrespectively of the fact that Nietzsche was not (and could not be) a composer of the same stature of Schubert, the consummate master of the Lied, one cannot escape the impression that, in his songs, the piano does not

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have an individual voice. Nietzsche’s songs have an almost syllabic character, where music and words develop hand-in-hand and in which pure absolute music (expressed by the piano alone) does not have much of an impact. To a certain extent, this procedure fits Nietzsche’s conception of music as the enabler of language, so that the musical setting is a vehicle for allowing words to achieve their proper utterance. The best example of this is Das zerbrochene Ringlein, the only melodrama that Nietzsche composed for voice and piano. In this work, the piano accompaniment creates the context for the inflected recitation of the poem, so that the music is heard as a representation of what is unspoken in the poem.13 The poetry of Goethe is particularly relevant in discussions of the German Lied and the all-important question of the relative roles of poetry and music in it. No other German poet had so many poems set to music by so many composers as did Goethe. Schubert returned to Goethe’s poetry throughout his life and considered him to be central to his style as a Lied composer. On many occasions, Schubert tried to establish a personal relationship with Goethe and receive feedback from the great poet regarding his settings of his poetry. To Schubert’s great disappointment, Goethe apparently was not much impressed by Schubert’s settings of his poetry, preferring instead the far more simple and straightforward settings of Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832). Perhaps Schubert’s highly refined settings, his psychological probing through music, his musical reinterpretations of some of the poems, his ability to overlay the poem with extra meaning and images was not completely agreeable to Goethe, who would have preferred, as a poet, that his poetry had simply be “dressed” by the music. This may have been what attracted him in Zelter’s settings, which retain some of the simplicity of the folk idiom and, in some sense, are closer to the conception of the lyrical poet bursting into song in a natural, intuitive manner, as advocated by Nietzsche. The next issue in Nietzsche’s reflection about the relationship between music and words is the question of the intelligibility of the words in vocal music. In the context of his discussion of opera Nietzsche reflects on the 13 Nietzsche’s songs have been collected in Sämtliche Lieder, Ed. by Wolfgang Bottenberg (Köln: Dohr, 2011). A good summary of Nietzsche’s approach to music composition is found in Hansell Baugh, “Nietzsche and His Music,” The Musical Quarterly 12, no. 2 (April 1926), 238-247. The centrality of music in Nietzsche’s life has been investigated from many perspectives. A cogent analysis is found in Frederick R. Love, “Nietzsche, Music and Madness,” Music & Letters 60, no. 2 (April 1979), 186-203.

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role of the listener as essentially an eavesdropper, someone who has no business participating in the outpourings of the lyrical poet and, by extension, the musician: The lyrical poet sings “as the bird sings,” alone, prompted by his inmost necessity, and has to fall silent when a listener confronts him with his demands. It would therefore be altogether unnatural to demand of the lyrical poet that one should also understand the words of the text of his song— unnatural because the listener would make demands although he has no rights whatsoever in the face of a lyrical outpouring.14

While this may apply, from a purely technical perspective, to opera, it does not represent the nature and purpose of the Lied.15 Opera is a dramatic genre that relies on large, expansive, at times excessive rhetorical gestures. Everything in opera is deployed in a large canvas and, as is the case with anything of that nature, the big picture is more immediate than the details. Therefore, operatic singing is Dionysian, orgiastic, ecstatic. The Lied, by definition, is an intimate genre that is predicated on direct and personal communication. It has the grace of the Apollonian. While the opera is public, the Lied is private; the opera is demonstrative, the Lied is confessional. If the words in an opera aria are not fully intelligible, the rhetorical drive of the music will compensate for that. Hence, Nietzsche’s view that the listener has “no rights whatsoever in the face of a lyrical outpouring.” With the Lied, however, the composer takes pains to make sure that the melodic inflections reflect the prosodic and semantic nuances of the text. Intelligibility of the words, therefore, is central to a full appreciation of the Lied and for decoding its intimate message. This distinction is so important that, for performers, there is a very different approach in training and interpretation whether one opts to be primarily an opera singer or a Lied singer. Arnold Whittall’s definition of the Lied as a genre was shaped by the nature of Schubert’s compositional practice in his Lieder: The art of the art song is to achieve direct emotional communication by means of allusion and symbolism, without mimetic gesture or scenery. The Lieder singer is not an impersonator like the operatic actor: and so the music, in form and content, must embody its subject-matter with the greatest 14

Friedrich Nietzsche, On Music and Words, 114. For a wide-raging, culturally contextualized study of the Lied, see Edward F. Kravitt, The Lied: Mirror of Late Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). Kravitt traces not only the development of the lied from a compositional perspective, but also examines its social and cultural impact, as well as changes in performance style. 15

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naturalness and power if the song is not to seem too obviously a work of art about expression rather than expression itself.16

The intelligibility of the words in the Lied is so important that composers sometimes resort to a little more than inflected speech to highlight particular passages in the poem. An example that comes to mind is the last song of Robert Schumann’s cycle Frauenliebe und Leben, where the woman mourns the death of her husband and reacts to it as if, by dying and leaving her alone, he had betrayed her. Schumann set this song in a style that is virtually a monotone, revolving around a single note, so that the listener has the impression that the woman is talking through her emotions, rather than singing. Nietzsche’s dismissal of the right of the listener to understand the words of a song, therefore, may be more acceptable in the Dionysian context of opera (which is the framework in which he discusses this topic) than in the Apollonian subtlety of the Lied. At this point, however, we arrive at a further level of meaning in Nietzsche’s discussion of the roles of poetry and music in song. His reflection on the choral songs of ancient Greek tragedy, as well as the Renaissance polyphony of Palestrina, a Bach cantata, a Handel oratorio, and opera in general once again embodies the notion that the listener’s desire (or demand) to understand the words is futile and not a part of what should concern the composer. He then arrives at a sweeping definition of vocal music that is, in my view, half right and half wrong: Only for those who join in the singing is there vocal music: the listener confronts it as absolute music.17

I agree that, ultimately, the listener confronts a piece of vocal music as absolute music, but only in the sense that it is available as such to the listener for appreciation. The fact that the listener does not join in singing does not make the work any less a piece of vocal music. After all, in the appreciation of instrumental music the fact that the listener does not join in the performance does not alter the instrumental nature of the work.

16

Arnold Whittall, Romantic Music: A Concise History from Schubert to Sibelius (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 25-26. At some level, Whittall’s conceptual distinction between something that could be “about expression” rather than being “expression itself” emulates Schopenhauer’s dialectical opposition between “representation” (about something) and “will” (the thing itself). By extension, Nietzsche’s reflection on the relative roles of poetry and music in vocal music stems from the same distinction. 17 Nietzsche, On Music and Words, 115.

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In Nietzsche’s view, absolute music (music that relies entirely on musical relations for its aesthetic effect) is the preeminent manifestation of the Schopenhauerian “will,” the true embodiment of the universal nature of music, which does not bow to any particulars or individualizations. In support of his view, he could not have enlisted a better example than Beethoven’s late string quartets, which are universally recognized as epitomes of absolute music in all its abstraction and disengagement from immediate reality: Confronted with the supreme revelations of music, we even feel, willy-nilly, the crudeness of all imagery and of every emotion that might be adduced by way of an analogy. Thus Beethoven’s last quartets put to shame everything visual and the whole realm of empirical reality. In the face of the supreme deity revealing himself, the symbol no longer has any significance; indeed, it comes to be seen as an insulting externality.18

Towards the end of On Music and Words, Nietzsche comes full circle to the role of Schopenhauer in awakening his reflections. Having assessed the relative merits of absolute music and vocal music, and reflecting on the nature of opera and lyrical song on the basis of the relationship between words and music, Nietzsche offers a critique of Schopenhauer’s response to opera that seems to point to a flaw in the latter’s sensibility: Schopenhauer, for example, experienced Bellini’s Norma as the fulfillment of tragedy, regarding both the music and the poetry. In his DionysianApollonian excitement and self-oblivion, he was totally entitled to feel that way, for he experienced music and poetry in their most general, quasiphilosophical value, as music and poetry as such, although his judgment proved that his taste was not well educated, that is, not schooled in comparative history.19

In On Music and Words Nietzsche laid the grounds for a series of topics that proved to be central to his philosophical outlook. His early insights into the nature of music proved highly consequential for his adaptation and transformation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy and aesthetics. The most intriguing notion deployed in Nietzsche’s text is the suggestion that music, by virtue of its universality, “chooses” the text of a song. I would like to posit that this process of “choosing” on the part of music is not a temporal one (in the sense that the music predates the poem of which it is a setting) but a hierarchical one. Once a piece of vocal music is accomplished, the 18 19

Ibid., 112. Ibid., 116.

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music takes precedence over the poem, which then ceases to exist as an independent entity and is now comprehensible only as a set of images and metaphors that facilitate the apprehension of music’s ultimate reality. At the very beginning of the fragment Nietzsche quotes a statement by Schopenhauer that he uses as the springboard for his own evaluation of the role of poetry in vocal music: Although a purely musical person would not make any such demand, […] it might be all right to add words or even the visual performance of an action to [music] […] Thus our attention actually sticks to and follows the music more closely, and at the same time what the music is saying in its general and imageless language of the heart is based on a visual image, a schema, as it were, something comparable to an example that supports a general concept.20

This supports the view that Nietzsche’s discussion of music and poetry in On Music and Words is essentially an assessment of their respective value and identity, a hierarchical framework that puts music at the top of the hierarchy as a completely self-sufficient entity. These views resonate with a statement by the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, included in a letter to his friend Marc-André Souchay, dated 15 October 1842: People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These, too, seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.21

Whether or not Nietzsche was familiar with this statement by Mendelssohn, it is almost as if the words could have been written by Nietzsche himself. Music was a guiding principle of his life and philosophy. Not only did he employ musical metaphors in his writings on countless occasions, but even went as far as to express the wish that some of his works, rather than being conveyed in words, should be sung.

20

Ibid., 106. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Letters, Tr. by Gisella Selden-Goth (New York: Pantheon, 1945), 313. 21

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I would like to end by quoting a poem by Nietzsche that he included in the “Why I am so Clever” section of Ecce Homo.22 The poem is loaded with musical imagery and terminology and goes so far as to equate the soul with a musical instrument. In many ways, it symbolizes what was for Nietzsche not only a lifelong passion but also a lens through which he peered into the world around him. I lately stood on the bridge in the dark of the night. A song came from out of the distance: pouring away in golden drops over the trembling space. Gondolas, lights, music – it swam drunkenly away into the twilight … My soul, a stringed instrument, secretly sang a barcarole, moved by invisible forces trembling with bright bliss. - Did anyone hear? …

Bibliography Agawu, Kofi. “Perspectives on Schubert’s Songs”. In Music Analysis 16, no. 1 (March 1997), 107-122. Baugh, Hansell. “Nietzsche and His Music”. In The Musical Quarterly 12, no. 2 (April 1926), 238-247. Dahlhaus, Carl. Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Kramer, Richard. Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994. Kravitt, Edward F. The Lied: Mirror of Late Romanticism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Love, Frederick R. “Nietzsche, Music and Madness”. In Music & Letters 60, no. 2 (April 1979), 186-203. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix. Letters. Tr. by Gisella Selden-Goth. New York: Pantheon, 1945.

22

The poem was adapted as the “Intermezzo” section of Nietzsche contra Wagner, compiled in 1888 and consisting mostly of a revisiting of Nietzsche’s views on several subjects.

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Norman, Judith and Aaron Ridley, Eds. The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Selden-Goth, Gisella, Ed. Felix Mendelssohn: Letters. New York: Pantheon, 1945. Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, 3 volumes. Tr. by Richard Burdon Haldane and John Kemp. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., ca. 1909. Whittall, Arnold. Romantic Music: A Concise History from Schubert to Sibelius. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987. Young, Julian. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Music Score Schubert, Franz. Gretchen am Spinnrade, D. 118, Ed. Eusebius Mandyczewicz. Breitkopf & Hãrtal, 1894 https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/c/ce/IMSLP13971SchubertD118_Gretchen_Am_Spinnrade.pdf

CHAPTER 2 THINKING THROUGH MUSIC: ON NON-PROPOSITIONAL THOUGHT IN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY MICHAEL STEINMANN

“An impossible book” In his “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” introducing the late 1886 edition of his early work The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche famously wrote: “It should have sung, this ‘new soul’–and not spoken!”1 Taken literally, this means that his work should not have been a philosophical analysis of music but a piece of music itself. At least it should have been a piece of poetry, he adds, or perhaps even a work of classical philology; but in any case, it should not have been presented with the presumption of being a philosophical work. Seen from a more mature point of view, the text now appears to him as an “impossible book.”2 “Impossible” for the reason that it is based both on very personal experiences and on a strange form of metaphysics: an “artist’s metaphysics,” as he calls it; the kind of metaphysics that an artist might find appropriate because it corresponds to their aesthetic intuitions. Such metaphysics does not hold up to any argument or rational justification and is more of a transcendental fantasy created by the sway of artistic inspiration. At least in parts, this self-criticism is well justified. We will see later why this is so. What interests me more, however, than the failures of the book, is the claim that philosophical thought should have been substituted 1

Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Translated and edited, with commentaries by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 20. 2 Ibid., 18.

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by song. What does it mean that thoughts which have been articulated and expressed in words could also have been expressed in music? Thoughts that were not only expressed in words but in abstract concepts and ideas? If ever such a transposition from thought into music were possible, it would seem to presuppose that philosophical thought is already related to music, that there is an underlying, perhaps a silent music that can be heard between the lines. The transposition could certainly not happen after the fact, after abstract thinking has been developed in a purely self-contained way. Indeed, Nietzsche says, his book is “for initiates, ‘music’ for those dedicated to music.”3 Music is put in quotation marks here, because obviously a book cannot be a piece of music. Still, for those who share the same musical sensitivity, it resonates of and recalls a truly musical experience.4 In this essay, I will try to show that Nietzsche’s statements in his “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” can be taken seriously. My task in interpreting his text is the following: assuming that Nietzsche’s claim is intelligible, how do we have to understand both music and philosophy and the relation between the two? Obviously, not all music can be related to philosophical thought, and not all philosophical thought can be grounded in music in the way indicated here. From a certain understanding of philosophy, one that favors rational, analytic thought, Nietzsche’s claim seems highly idiosyncratic if not completely implausible. It is not even clear that Nietzsche himself, throughout the course of his work, held on to his early ideas. On the other hand, the phenomenon of music is far too rich to be limited to any specific role, whether it is in philosophy or beyond. But still, as long as I take these limitations into account and do not pretend that my reading yields more than an interpretation of certain half-mysterious, half-exaggerated passages in The Birth of Tragedy, nothing seems to prevent me from exploring Nietzsche’s hints. The fact that one can think of a convergence between thought and music seems promising enough even if this convergence only occurs in limited ways. I should also add that I am by no means the first to become aware of a philosophical dimension in the musical experience.5 In

 3

Ibid., 19. 4 The importance of Nietzsche’s life-long relationship with music for the understanding of his work is stressed by Georges Liébert, Nietzsche and Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 9 et passim. 5 For a similar approach to music, see Andrew Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 27: “Music is worlddisclosive.” For a reading that connects The Birth of Tragedy both to the Romantic and Schopenhauer’s conception of music, see Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester: Manchester University Press,



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any case, my reading will be more of a systematic reconstruction than a direct interpretation of the book. I am following a line of thought that seems to be present in Nietzsche’s work without being directly articulated as such.

Meeting halfway In order to understand how there can be a relation between music and philosophy, it is best to mention how this relation should not be conceived. One could say, for example, that philosophy is related to music because it is expressed in language which has its own rhythm and sound. Indeed, The Birth of Tragedy, with its exuberant, hymnic descriptions of Wagner’s music often seems to imitate the experience of listening to music. But the musicality of language is not specific to philosophy; one can find it also, and even to higher degrees, in poetry and literary prose. What we are looking for has to be specific for a certain kind of philosophical thought.6 A critical reader might also think that the problem of relating music to conceptual thought only concerns Nietzsche’s early, exuberant and seemingly semi-poetic text. This is not the case. At the end of his activity as a writer, in The Case Wagner, Nietzsche asks: “Has it been noticed that music liberates the spirit? Gives wings to thought? That one becomes more of a philosopher the more one becomes a musician?” 7 Following these remarks, music is the source of thinking itself, the specific experience that creates and stimulates philosophical activity. Paraphrasing the remarks about his early work, one could say that only a soul that sings can also think. We can therefore assume that music plays a decisive role for philosophical thought both in Nietzsche’s earlier and later works.8 Not even his turning away from Wagner seems to have affected this role.

 1990). A more general approach to music as a form of thinking can be found in Jerrold Levinson, “Philosophy and Music,” Topoi 28 (2009): 119-123. 6 For a more extensive account of the relation between language and music, see Kathleen Higgins, “Nietzsche on Music,” Journal for the History of Ideas 47/4 (1986): 663-673. 7 Nietzsche, Basic Writings, 614. 8 For the same conclusion see Christoph Cox, “Nietzsche, Dionysus, and the Ontology of Music,” in A Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Keith Ansell Pearson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 498. On some of Nietzsche’s musical ideas in the later works, see Frederick R. Love, „Nietzsche’s Quest for a New Aesthetic of Music: ‚Die Allergrösste Symphonie‘, ‚Großer Stil‘, ‚Musik des Südens‘“, NietzscheStudien 6 (1977): 154-194. Remarks in Nietzsche’s middle period, especially in Human, All Too Human, that signal a “break with the Romantic metaphysics of art



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The question how music relates to philosophical thinking echoes a more general question whose relevance goes far beyond Nietzsche’s conception. What is at stake in it is no less than the truth-value of art. We can ask: is music a particular and limited form of expression, signifying nothing beyond itself in its endless play of harmonic modulations, rhythms, and syntactical forms, or can it disclose a truth that concerns the world and our existence as a whole? Nietzsche clearly opts for the latter. Art in general is for him equal, if not superior, to philosophy and science in its ability to explore the inner nature of our existence. This position is well known and does not have to be explained any further.9 What is perhaps less known is the way in which musical art can also assume this role and become, for Nietzsche, a medium of truth endowed with a capacity similar to that of poetry, literature, and the visual arts. Still, in order to show why this is so, one also has to show that it is possible to overcome the distinction between feeling and thought, between the sensual and the semantic aspects of art. Nietzsche articulates a conception of music that does precisely not resort to defining it as the opposite of discursive art; that does not, in other words, describe it as an art that would lack words and intentional meaning. Music rather has a meaning of its own. For my task, it is necessary to overcome the tedious but persisting opposition between propositional and non-propositional forms of expression that all-too often impairs the understanding of musical art.10 I

 and music” seem to suggest for some that he also gave up the idea of the philosophical significance of music (Walter Frisch, German Modernism. Music and the Arts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 18). In Human, All Too Human, § 215, Nietzsche states indeed that “in itself, no music is deep or significant.” The way music is received remains historically contingent and depends on the listener’s capacity to grasp its inner symbolism (see also § 217). Yet, these statements only concern the metaphysical idea of music (essentially, Schopenhauer’s idea of music as expression of the will), while leaving the possibility intact that music can achieve philosophical significance under the appropriate interpretation. Instead of assuming the existence of “contradictions” in Nietzsche’s thought, as some interpreters tend to do (cf. Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 252), I believe that one should read the statements from his middle period as a refinement of the earlier conception. 9 See, for example, Twilight of the Idols. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990), 93. 10 To assume that music is essentially “beyond” the realm of proposition means to take propositional (or representational) knowledge as a standard against which all other forms of knowledge appear as deficient. Nietzsche follows no such standard but adopts an “expressive” view that grants all arts the capacity to be “effective and



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will have to show the connection of propositional and non-propositional forms of expression in two ways: in music, taken as the non-propositional medium par excellence, there has to be a certain propensity that allows it to be expressed, or better: resonate in words. In conceptual thinking, in turn, there has to be a non-propositional element, something that is not expressible in words alone, even if it can only be approached in a discursive way. Philosophy and music have to meet each other halfway, in an experience that is not yet and at the same time no more only propositional. And again, not all philosophy and not all music have to be able to meet this way, but only the specific way of thinking and the particular musical experience that are described in The Birth of Tragedy.

Primordial unity, as experience and as thought As said before, Nietzsche’s criticism of his early work is in parts welljustified. Although The Birth of Tragedy is certainly more than a failed, immature early work, there are some points in the book of which he truly must have felt ashamed. One point is the nationalistic tone in which he presents the achievements of German culture. Germany is attributed the mission of saving the modern world from the grip of rationalism or, as Nietzsche terms it, from the grip of “Socratic culture.” “German spirit,” he says, will give a new orientation to culture, thanks to its “Dionysian root.” From this root, two transformative powers have already risen at his time. The first one is German music, “as we understand it, particularly in its vast solar orbit from Bach to Beethoven, from Beethoven to Wagner.”11 The other Dionysian power is German philosophy, which has “introduced an infinitely profounder and more serious view of ethical problems and of art,” namely in the work of Kant and Schopenhauer.12 Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s thinking can be understood as “Dionysian wisdom comprised in

 profound” in their particular way (cf. Lydia Goehr, “Philosophy without art: standing on the stage with Nietzsche’s Gay Science,” New Nietzsche Studies 8, no. 1/2 (2009), 54). The question raised here poses a constant challenge for the philosophy of music. If music is separated from all other forms of expressions one risks ending up with a purely formalistic and reductive idea, I believe (see as an example the attempt at conceiving music purely as rhythm and time in Andreas Luckner, “Musik – Sprache – Rhythmus. Bemerkungen zu Grundfragen der Musikphilosophie,“ in Musikphilosophie, edited by Ulrich Tadday (München: Edition Text + Kritik, 2007), 49. 11 Nietzsche, Basic Writings, 119 (BT §19). 12 Ibid.



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concepts.”13 The two powers, music and philosophy, work independently together in reestablishing a Dionysian worldview. “To what then does the mystery of this oneness of German music and philosophy point if not to a new form of existence […]?” Nietzsche asks.14 What is this wisdom that unites Kant and Beethoven, Schopenhauer and Wagner? In philosophy, the Dionysian worldview leads to the awareness of the boundaries of scientific explanation: “Science […] speeds irresistibly towards its limits where its optimism […] suffers shipwreck. For the periphery of the circle of science has an infinite number of points; […] noble and gifted men nevertheless reach […] such boundary points on the periphery from which one gazes into what defies illumination.”15 The new critical philosophy developed by Kant and then further deepened by Schopenhauer ultimately leads to a pessimistic view of all existence. Life can only be understood by “tragic knowledge,”16 which is neither logical nor scientific but a form of wisdom that conserves the awareness of its own boundaries. In Nietzsche’s book, this critical approach to knowledge is supported precisely by the form of metaphysics that he later ironizes as an “artists’ metaphysics.” Life, at its core, is a “mysterious primordial unity” which can also be understood under the name of “nature.” 17 All distinctions and limitations that constitute individual life are “mere appearance.”18 For the individual, such a dissolution of limits causes a great deal of “terror”19 but it arouses also the desire to engage even more in overcoming the barriers of social life and reaching the point of ultimate and final unity with all other humans, and eventually with nature as a whole. It arouses the desire to go back “towards his primordial home”20 where all human existence originally belongs. Music, in turn, arouses very similar desires, at least insofar as it has “Dionysian depth.” 21 It is, according to Nietzsche’s account, the artistic

 13

Ibid., 121 (BT §19). 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 97-8 (BT §15). 16 BT §15, translation M.S. 17 Ibid., 37 (BT §1). 18 BT §1, translation M.S. 19 Ibid., 36 (BT §1). 20 Ibid., 127 (BT §21). 21 BT §19.



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medium that is most appropriate for the expression of ecstatic experiences. Music lets humans sense that the joy which it provides is more than a temporary escape from everyday life. In music, humans can directly feel that the overcoming of boundaries resonates their deeper longing for a home in the all-encompassing unity of nature. Music is therefore more than a play of rhythm and sound. For the early Nietzsche, its experience entails an uncontrollable feeling that carries with it, at least implicitly, the awareness of a more profound meaning. This way, music and philosophy are expressive of the same attitude toward human life: both articulate the awareness of the tragic nature of existence. Music, in The Birth of Tragedy, can truly “convey” the same meaning as philosophy.22 What are the conditions that enable this congruence of music and philosophy? It seems that Nietzsche needs an epistemology of sorts that can show how these two modes of articulation and expression are able to end up saying the same thing. He does not develop such an epistemology in any explicit or systematic way. Still, it is possible to say that he makes use of one throughout the text. Philosophy, for him, is no merely conceptual inquiry but has its origin in pre-reflective and pre-rational experiences. As an awareness of the dissolution of all boundaries and limitations, its insights are attainable both in a propositional and non-propositional form. Tragic wisdom, he says, can arise from an individual’s “premonition” about the illusionary character of all reality. 23 There is an “intuition” that allows humans to instinctively prefer dream over reality.24 Wisdom is first given in “popular” form and in myths25; it constitutes a “worldview” which underlies the aesthetic spectacle of tragedy.26 On the other hand, profound emotions like the “horror” that is caused by the abyssal nature of things disclose the truth of existence,27 and in the “Dionysian human” “disgust” coincides with genuine “knowledge” about the world.28 Although Nietzsche’s terminology moves within a fairly traditional dichotomy of reason and emotion, his conception points at an origin in which these two sides are not yet distinct.

 22

Higgins, “Nietzsche on Music,” 671. For the historical background of this idea, see Leonardo V. Distaso, “On the Common Origin of Music and Philosophy: Plato, Nietzsche, and Benjamin,” Topoi 28 (2009): 137-142. 23 BT §1, my translation. 24 BT §4, my translation. 25 BT §3, my translation. 26 BT §10, my translation. 27 BT §1, my translation. 28 BT §7, my translation.



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Music, as already said, cannot fully be described in a formalistic way, as a pattern of rhythms and harmonies. It provides an experience that comprises not only a set of related activities, such as dance, ritual, and mimic play, but also the awareness of what this experience means, or better: of what it does to the individual. Listening to music, “we are really for short moments the primordial being itself,” Nietzsche writes.29 Musical experience eradicates any distance between the listener and the sound, which would otherwise be consumed as a mere cultural object, and calls for an identifying reception which allows the individual, eventually, to make an experience with themselves. Nietzsche refers repeatedly to the “spirit of music”30 and so conceives of its experience holistically as a combination of emotional and intellectual abilities. Music is also able to “give birth to myth”, as the account of tragedy famously goes,31 which means that it generates meaning which then can be further expressed in discursive ways. Music and philosophy, however, also go separate ways in the text. Nietzsche’s use of Schopenhauer’s notion of the will is rather creative, to say the least, and gives both a Neo-Platonic and a Romantic spin to it. Nietzsche combines the blind urge of the will, as it was conceived by Schopenhauer, with the productive impulses of Mother Nature and with the idea of a mystical unity beyond the realm of appearance. The best one can say is that such a metaphysics represents a highly syncretistic mix of different conceptions of unity. And what makes matters worse, limiting the idea of unity to the achievements of German philosophy does not make it any clearer. All in all, the idea of a primordial unity seems vague and overly mysterious. We cannot but agree with Nietzsche that his book displays a strange and very personal kind of speculation.32 Compared to it, the idea that a certain type of music could be expressive of a deep and transformative human experience seems much clearer and much more convincing. We can therefore believe Nietzsche in saying that it was music that guided him in his work. The tacit insight that lies in the unity of music, dance, and ecstasy

 29

BT §17, my translation. 30 BT§10 and §16, my translation. 31 BT §16, my translation. 32 To assume that Nietzsche “slips into a metaphysical determination of music of the kind that is doomed to fail” (Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 251) means that one takes his speculation a little too seriously. Even if the metaphysical meaning of music could be defined in more precise terms, it is by no means a foundational idea. The primordial unity of nature is the unity of the production of all forms and not a principle that can be grasped beyond the appearances through which it unfolds. It indicates appearance as appearance, not their separate, independent ground.



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seems much more palpable than the various concepts that he uses in order to turn this insight into a philosophical theory. However, it seems that a little more needs to be said in order to explain why music can indeed be understood in such a way. Nietzsche is no doubt building on a very personal, or at least a very “German,” musical experience. Still, he wants more. Wagner’s music, for him, carries a deeper significance, and all listeners who encounter it in an unbiased way can understand that through this music they are part of an encompassing nature. If this were not the case, then the philosophical approach would remain forever external, arbitrary compared to the music, which in turn would have to be considered an artistic sphere of its own, indifferent and foreign to all philosophical interpretations.33 Nietzsche’s attempts in The Birth of Tragedy at showing the inherent philosophical dimension of a certain type of music can be reconstructed in two steps. In the following, I will first show that there is a structural congruence between his philosophical ideas and the particular phenomenon of music that he references in his work. Then, I will try to describe how this music can express directly, in and by itself, a Dionysian experience.

Dissonance and musical play I will mention three points that allow me to explain how for Nietzsche a certain type of music, by its own artistic means, corresponds to the ideas that he articulates in the form of philosophical thought. The first point concerns the claim that a Dionysian type of music is never representational, that it cannot be understood as an imitation of real actions or events. For Nietzsche, this claim is far from obvious. At some point in its history, he believes, music began to be used as a representation of theatrical events. In Euripides’ tragedies, music is “manipulated so as to be the imitative counterfeit of an appearance, for instance, of a battle or a storm at sea.”34 In modern times this ‘manipulation’ continues in opera, especially with the technique of the recitative. For Nietzsche, opera is the “birth of the

 33

I broadly agree with Cox here for whom Nietzsche articulates “an ontology guided by music, which [...] provides an image of natural becoming” (Cox, “Nietzsche, Dionysus, and the Ontology of Music,” 510). “Nietzsche is trying to construct an ontology in which forces, powers, movements, tensions, affects, and events precede the individual subjects and objects to which they are ordinarily attributed” (504). 34 Nietzsche, Basic Writings, 107 (BT §17).



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theoretical man” who wants to understand the words that constitute the play rather than being carried away by the music.35 Music can then only play a subordinate, auxiliary role.36 It is no doubt possible to question the historical validity of these claims which seem far too schematic to be true. But it suffices to see what they contribute to the understanding of music that Nietzsche wants to promote. The question whether music can be representational or not concerns the way in which it is received. If it were the “slave of appearances,” as he says,37 then music would seek “to arouse pleasure only by impelling us to seek external analogies between a vital or natural process and certain rhythmical figures and characteristic sounds of music. 38 Representational music is perceived in a rational way because it can be justified and explained by its similarity to actions and events. In this case, music would never be able to relate to the all-unity of nature, because this unity dissolves or at least relativizes all individual differences. The question of representation, hence, is the question whether music is able to relate to the Dionysian at all. If it does, it cannot do so by merit of any intentional meaning that would be inscribed in it. Music is expressive of the all-unity of existence by not expressing anything specific, by being absolute harmony and rhythm. Only if music is devoid of any identifiable semantic content can it be the appropriate medium to express a form of unity that lies beyond all possible contents. The second point is closely related to the first one. If the type of music that Nietzsche describes is not representational, then it can also not be subjective, that is, expressive of passions and emotions such as love and hate.39 Insofar as emotions are related to specific objects and originate as an individual’s inner affect, they also belong, in Schopenhauerian terms, to the realm of appearance. Passions and emotions are just as rational as the representations of physical events because they can be justified and explained in relation to what individuals desire, reject, or need. Dionysian music, however, transcends the realm of individual existence. Its underlying movement is very different from a play of emotions that can be said to be ‘mine’ or ‘yours’; it is eventually a movement of nature underlying and

 35

Ibid., 116 (BT §19). 36 See Higgins, “Nietzsche on Music,” 669, for the origins of Nietzsche’s claims in Schopenhauer. 37 Nietzsche, Basic Writings, 119 (BT §19); see also 107 (BT §17). 38 Ibid. 39 Cf. ibid., 50 (BT §5).



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unifying all potential feelings. If music actually relates to emotion, it is only because it can generate an emotional response or because emotions are a natural correlate to the musical movement. But even in such cases, the type of music that Nietzsche references here is never meant to be the mere expression of particular emotions. The third point is most important and comprehends the previous ones. Music, according to Nietzsche, is the interplay of creation and destruction. It consists of structures that are recognizable to the human understanding and give limit, form, and purpose to the flow of harmony and sound. These structures, however, are only there to be dissolved, transformed, and recreated; none of them is the ultimate goal for which music is produced. The structures limit and direct the flow of music only to revoke themselves and let the flow continue in an ever-different way. The human recognition of structures, hence, does not dominate over the phenomenon of music but is drawn into a transcending, encompassing flow which results in limited structures only to show that it is in fact limitless. This interplay of the creation and destruction of musical forms becomes most evident in the phenomenon of dissonance. Dissonance, according to Nietzsche, is expressive of a “primordial joy experienced even in pain,”40 a joy that consists in building up tensions and restrictions until they are allowed to evaporate or explode, and the music takes a new direction. The musical flow is essentially this play of tension and release. This way, the phenomenon of dissonance points at the metaphysical significance of music, at its Dionysian character. The phenomenon reflects the interplay of creation and destruction in nature and shows “that even the ugly and disharmonic are part of an artistic game that the will in the eternal amplitude of its pleasure plays with itself.”41 Taken together, the three points mentioned here constitute for Nietzsche the structural affinity of music to his philosophical ideas: the music he experienced is beyond the realm of representation and appearance, it is overindividual, not bound to subjective desires and needs, and unfolds as a play of limitation and dissolution. The type of music that he highlights is “the proper idea of the world,”42 the way in which the inner character of the world, of nature, can be most adequately expressed. But this structural affinity is not enough, as we said before. Even if one agrees that there can

 40

Ibid., 141 (BT §24). 41 Ibid. 42 BT§ 21, my translation.



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be a certain congruence between music and philosophical ideas, a congruence that can be plausibly described from an analytic point of view, one can ask whether there is anything in the experience of this music itself that lets one feel and understand its philosophical meaning. Nietzsche does not aim at a philosophy of music in the sense of an analysis that only reflects and talks about music. He wants to show music, or a certain type of music at least, as the necessary medium of philosophical ideas and as a form of experience that serves as the ground and life blood of these ideas. In a sense, music verifies his philosophical ideas because it shows that they can correspond to a real human experience. It is therefore not enough for him to lay out how music can display a certain similarity to ideas. In one way or another, these ideas have to be expressed and experienced in and through music itself. Music, for Nietzsche, has to be able to make the listener think, in the sense of it being experienced as a kind of thinking that occurs in and through the structures, harmonies, and rhythms that unfold. The last section will show how such an experience might be possible at all.

The world at one glance The philosophical character that music acquires in The Birth of Tragedy can be found in its relation to the other forms of artistic expression, to dance, tragedy, and poetry. As already mentioned, music is able to generate meaning; it can incorporate or be translated into gestures, images, and even words. “In the Dionysian dithyramb”, Nietzsche says, “man is excited to the greatest exaltation of all his symbolic faculties; […] and the entire symbolism of the body is called into play.”43 The same happens in poetry: the melodic ecstasy triggers the “process of a discharge,” of a “fulguration of music in images.” 44 In the description of tragedy, this process of “discharge” is famously presented as a protective force acting against the desire of Dionysian dissolution.45 But why can music lead to such a “discharge” into images and words? Nietzsche gives no direct answer to this question. Nonetheless, one can infer the answer – or at least one possible answer – from the text. Following Schopenhauer, music is already a symbolic expression of an otherwise

 43

Nietzsche, Basic Writings, 40 (BT §2). 44 Ibid., 54 (BT §6). Cf. ibid, 103 (BT §16). 45 See ibid., 127 (BT§ 21).



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ineffable unity, or the otherwise ineffable will.46 In reference to the latter, Nietzsche can even say that music is the “immediate language of the will.”47 It is the first step that translates the will into the realm of representation. With music, the will begins to speak and acquires meaningful expression for those who are able to listen and understand. By doing so, it connects to all other forms of meaningful expression, to the symbolism of language, imagination, and dramatic play. The process that leads from nature to music, and from music to the discharge into images and words, can be seen as one entire process whose parts are unable to exist separately from each other. From the perspective of nature there can only be one symbolic play. This play pervades all different forms of expression and allows for one symbolic activity to be the expression of another. One could also say: for the interpretation of one symbolic activity through another, as Nietzsche does not take the will as a genuine foundation. The relation between music and the images and words into which it is discharged is necessarily an arbitrary one. “Countless appearances” are possible without “exhausting” the essence of musical play.48 And not only are there many words or images that can relate to one musical play, words and images also fail in their attempt to fully express the experience of music.49 Music, for Nietzsche, gives a meaning to images and words that transforms all given particular meaning into a metaphor for something that is infinitely more profound. The viewer of a tragedy hears the words and sees the images and is longing, at the same time, “to transcend all seeing.”50 Their pleasure of seeing is “negated” so that they find a “still higher satisfaction in the destruction of the visible world.”51

 46

Cf. also ibid., 49 (BT §5): music as “copy” (Abbild) and “recast” (Abguss) of the will. For a semiotic interpretation of Nietzsche’s conception see Rudolf Fietz, Medienphilosophie: Musik, Sprache und Schrift bei Friedrich Nietzsche (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1992). 47 Nietzsche, Basic Writings, 103 (BT §16). 48 Ibid., 129 (BT §21). 49 Eventually, the relation of imitation is reversed. Music does not imitate dramatic actions or words, but words and actions imitate music, see ibid., 55 (BT§ 6). Cf. ibid., 105 (BT §17), in relation to tragedy: “their heroes speak […] more superficially than they act; the myth does not at all obtain adequate objectification in the spoken word.” 50 Ibid., 140 (BT §24). 51 Ibid. Cf. also ibid., 130 (BT §21): at the end the Dionysian “predominates once again”.



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This allows me to identify the missing piece in Nietzsche’s conceptions of music as it is developed in The Birth of Tragedy. Precisely because words and images are all arbitrary with respect to music and can be infinitely diverse, they all have ultimately only one meaning: they are expressive of the all-unity of nature that is most directly expressed in music. All particular meaning contained in images and words can be seen to point back to the one underlying play of music that is the immediate expression of nature, because in all particular expressions prevails the longing to transcend all seeing into listening, to transcend all limitations into music. At the first glance, this might seem quite implausible. How can we say that for Nietzsche every tragedy, and every piece of poetry, ultimately has the same meaning? Does this not mean that we impose an artificial homogeneity, if not an artificial unity, on those different arts? The answer is no, because their unity is never directly expressed. No dramatic action and no poem says the same thing as any other. The one underlying meaning of all artistic symbolism is no single semantic content but the unity of all semantic contents, which in turn is expressed through the musical play insofar as it is infinitely modulated. There is, in other words, no unity that can be directly grasped or defined. The only way to approach it is to make the experience of the continuous movement of musical play that underlies all poetry and all dramatic play. It is now possible to see how the philosophical significance of music can become part of its own experience. We can say that music is a form of thought insofar as it is continuous movement: in widening and deepening the meaning of any given representation, in turning representations into metaphors of nature, music leads to one unified experience, the experience of the play of harmony and rhythm itself. Music is not the mere flow of sounds as they come and go, like the flow of sounds in one’s environment, but the way in which all sounds are bound together as one continuous sound. All individual limitations are revoked and dissolved into one encompassing unity, and music is precisely the awareness, or better, the resonance of this unity as it emerges from the continuity of limitations that are endlessly established and overcome. In music, the continuity of all particular contents becomes audible so that it can be felt and experienced as such. And insofar as this continuity cannot be experienced in any particular sensual element but only in their combination, we are allowed, or so I believe, to use the term “thinking” in order to describe how continuity is grasped by those who go along with the musical experience. We can now also see why Nietzsche thinks that music has an advantage over philosophy: in the form of theory the unity of nature remains a mystery,



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as it cannot be subjected to the standards of rational explanation. It can at best be inferred. Nietzsche’s experience of music makes the listener sense the unity without them having to objectify and theorize this strange, intense awareness of the one play that permeates and carries all other forms of symbolic play. To use a famous distinction made by Wittgenstein, music can display the unity but does not have to say it.52 But although music is non-propositional, it is not the opposite of propositional expression either. Music can in fact underlie words and invest them with an additional meaning. Propositional and non-propositional forms of expression contribute to one expression, so that one reflects, and is translated into, the other. It would be a mistake, however, to describe philosophy solely as a theorizing and objectifying attitude. As seen before, for Nietzsche there are non-propositional elements at the very origin of philosophy. Eventually, the whole purpose of philosophy is to reach an insight that is so encompassing that it can be no longer propositional. We can see this by following a remark according to which the viewer of Tristan and Isolde would be deluded “into the belief that he is seeing a single image of the world, […] and that, through music, he is merely supposed to see it still better and more profoundly.”53 Music, thus, makes us see better. This is so because “seeing better” means to see something not in a scattered, random way, but in its coherence, in its wholeness, where all parts belong together and every detail acquires a richer, amplified meaning. Such a form of seeing is not tied to any specific content. It is a seeing that can also be called “thinking” insofar as thinking has the ability to gather and condense scattered parts into a whole. We can find a similar experience described in Nietzsche’s later thought, in The Case Wagner: The gray sky of abstraction rent as if by lightening; the light strong enough for the filigree of things; the great problems near enough to grasp; the world surveyed as from a mountain. – I have just described the pathos of philosophy. – And unexpectedly answers drop into my lap, a little hail of ice and wisdom, of solved problems. – Where am I? – Bizet makes me fertile.54

In these lines, Nietzsche again describes the strange experience of a nonconceptual unity that overwhelms us based on a musical inspiration. Music

 52

I am indebted to my friend Garry Dobbins for pointing at this distinction here. 53 Ibid., 128 (BT §21). 54 Ibid., 614.



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can guide philosophy insofar as it shows conceptual thinking the goal towards which it should strive.55 The ultimate aim of philosophy, following his words, is to tie all arguments into one coherent picture, or vision, of the world, which then can also not be said but only shown. In this sense, philosophy can become an intensified and at the same time infinitely modifiable experience of the coherence of the world, analogous to the way in which music resonates as a whole. It can strive to capture the coherence of all semantic contents that cannot be said through one single semantic content but only through the continuity of thinking. And like music exists only insofar as the flow of harmony and rhythm is actually produced and heard, this form of thinking only exists insofar as it is actually performed. For Nietzsche, both philosophy and music can be understood as striving for a unity that emerges only in the process of thought and the unfolding of musical sounds.56

55 For another testimony of music’s thought-inducing effect, see Nietzsche’s remarks on the publications of his Hymnus auf das Leben: “This little affinity to music and almost to the musicians of which the ‘Hymnus’ gives testimony, is an invaluable point for any preliminary understanding of the psychological problem that I am; already now it will make one think” (letter to Gast, 27 October 1887; my translation. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe in 8 Bänden, edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari (München/Berlin/New York: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag/de Gruyter, 1986), volume 8: 179). 56 Another example of Nietzsche’s attempt at letting a unified vision of the world emerge out of a multitude of ideas and arguments can be found in a famous passage from the Nachlass: “And do you know what ‘the world’ is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, […] blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight […] This world is the will to power-and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also the will to power-and nothing besides!” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 548f. (fragment 1067). The fragment corresponds to KSA 11, 38[12].

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Bibliography Bowie, Andrew. Music, Philosophy, and Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Bowie, Andrew. Aesthetics and Subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Cox, Christoph. “Nietzsche, Dionysus, and the Ontology of Music.” In A Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Keith Ansell Pearson, 495-514. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Distaso, Leonardo V. “On the Origin of Music and Philosophy: Plato, Nietzsche, and Benjamin,” Topoi 28 (2009): 137-142. Fietz, Rudolf. Medienphilosophie: Musik, Sprache und Schrift bei Friedrich Nietzsche. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1992. Frisch, Walter. German Modernism. Music and the Arts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Goehr, Lydia. “Philosophy without art: standing on the stage with Nietzsche’s Gay Science.” New Nietzsche Studies 8, no. 1/2 (2009): 3457. Higgins, Kathleen. “Nietzsche on Music.” Journal for the History of Ideas 47/4 (1986): 663-673. Levinson, Jerrold. “Philosophy and Music.” Topoi 28 (2009): 119-123. Liébert, Georges. Nietzsche and Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Love, Frederick R. „Nietzsche’s Quest for a New Aesthetic of Music: ‚Die Allergrösste Symphonie‘, ‚Großer Stil‘, ‚Musik des Südens‘.“ Nietzsche-Studien 6 (1977): 154-194. Luckner, Andreas. „Musik – Sprache – Rhythmus. Bemerkungen zu Grundfragen der Musikphilosophie.“ In Musikphilosophie, edited by Ulrich Tadday, 34-49. München: Edition Text + Kritik, 2007.

CHAPTER 3 NIETZSCHE ON EMOTION AND AFFEKT IN MUSIC YUNUS TUNCEL

In music the passions enjoy themselves. Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 106

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche calls music “the language of emotion.” In this first published book, Nietzsche’s passion for music and his interest in Schopenhauer and Wagner coalesce; all of these three figures give music, in their own ways, a privileged place in the economy of culture. Similar analogies are established by Nietzsche in his other early works, including works that were used as preparatory for The Birth of Tragedy, such as The Dionysian Vision of the World. As this collection of essays explores in different ways, Nietzsche was a musician and his musicality shaped the way he thought and wrote. Many readers and researchers of Nietzsche's life and works have reflected on this relationship between music and philosophy in Nietzsche. Just to name a few: Curt Paul Janz, a biographer of Nietzsche, published his musical compositions. Georges Liébert wrote an extensive study1 on Nietzsche's relationship to music including several major composers. Graham Parkes translated Zarathustra to convey the musicality2

 1

Georges Liébert's book, Nietzsche and Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) not only shows Nietzsche's musical experiences from childhood to adulthood comprehensively and his musical formation as a pianist and a choir singer but also exposes some of the ideas and debates on music in the nineteenth century that informed young Nietzsche. Similar claims regarding the importance of music in Nietzsche's writing and philosophy have been made by others including Janz (1993) and Noudelmann (2012). All three claim that Nietzsche had a lifelong desire for a career in music. 2 "In view of Nietzsche's saying that Zarathustra is to be taken as music, I have tried above all to convey the musicality of the text..." which Parkes claims other

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of the original text to the English-speaking world. Last but not least, Martine Prange3 explored in-depth Nietzsche's relationship to Wagner. Many other Nietzsche scholars reiterate young Nietzsche's Schopenhauerian position on music, such as Crawford: “the greatest measure of feelings cannot be expressed through words, but only in and through music”4 Crawford further confirms this position of Nietzsche by way of his text when she calls Wagner the artist of the language of feelings.5 On the musical side, there have been several music projects in the last two-three decades to bring Nietzsche's music to interested audiences such as the ones undertaken by Tali Makell and Cornelis Witthoefft. In his introduction to his CD project,6 Witthoefft also observes how music played a significant role in Nietzsche's early development, not to mention in his emotive formation.7 In this essay, I will focus on the emotive experience in music, as Nietzsche reflects in his works. There are many areas in human life where we feel and express emotions and there are specific fields of culture where their practitioners feel emotions unique to their practice, as in sports,8 for instance. All arts invoke emotions in their own way, and music in its own way according to its nature.9 In what follows below I will start examining how and why music

 translations do not convey (TSZ, 2005, xxxv). He does this by reproducing paragraph structures, punctuations, repetition of words, alliterations, assonances, rhythms, and cadences, in short, all the musical elements of the text. On the other hand, Carvalho claims that Nietzsche revitalizes the Dionysian impulse in his writings and in the multiplicity of his styles, which he could not do in music. See Chapter 32: Nietzsche in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music, edited by Theodore Gracyk and Andrew Kania (London: Routledge, 2011, 350-359). 3 Contrary to common opinion, Prange claims in her extensive micro-study, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013) that Nietzsche's Wagnerian period was very brief, about fifteen months, and reveals some of the minute details of the Nietzsche-Wagner relationship. 4 Claudia Crawford, “Nietzsche’s Great Style: Educator of the Ears and of the Heart.” Nietzsche Studien 20, no. 1, (1991): 216. 5 Ibid., 217. 6 Steinmann, 2012. 7 Nietzsche speaks of the importance of music in his life and its emotive impact on him in his personal interactions. Here are some examples: in a letter written during his university years to his mother, he writes: "When I don't hear any music, everything seems dead to me" (Liebert, 16). In a letter to Bülow he writes: “…Of my music I know only one thing: that it enables me to master feelings.” (Liebert, 16). 8 I explored this topic in my book, Emotion in Sports (London: Routledge, 2019). 9 To claim that music is the most emotionally evocative art is as untenable as to claim it for any other art form. Such Schopenhauerian claims in his The World as Will and Representation are based on universalist assumptions, including his notion

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has been presented as the “language of emotion.” I will then move on to the role of the senses in musical experience and how the intellect comes into play in this experience. Related to this topic on the senses, I will examine further physiological considerations in music, and end the essay by reflecting on the cases of Wagner and Bizet from an emotive standpoint.

The language of emotion Following Schopenhauer’s definition of feeling as “a complex of unconscious presentation” (DVW, 50), Nietzsche tries to understand how feeling communicates itself and highlights three layers, each of which is called a language (Sprache) in the communication of feeling: 1) language of words, 2) language of gesture, and 3) language of tone. The first one remains on the surface; it belongs to conscious phenomena. Language can communicate feelings up to a limit; it is conceptually bound in meanings. Then there remains an “indissoluble remainder:” In welcher Weise theilt sich nun das Gefühl mit? Theilweise, aber sehr theilweise kann es in Gedanken, also in bewußte Vorstellungen umgesetzt werden; dies gilt natürlich nur von dem Theile der begleitenden Vorstellungen. Immer aber bleibt auch auf diesem Gebiet des Gefühls ein unauflösbarer Rest. Der auflösbare allein ist es, mit dem die Sprache, also der Begriff zu thun hat: hiernach bestimmt sich die Grenze der “Poesie” in der Ausdrucksfähigkeit des Gefühls.10

In the realm of feelings and their expression, language remains limited; there remains the unexpressed. What interests me is this “indissoluble remainder,” which is linked to unconscious phenomena. Nietzsche further digs into the other areas of representation and speaks of gesture and tone symbolism. In gestures as in dance and acting, we are in the realm of symbolized feeling. Next is the tone where one finds various manners of

 of "will" that presumably permeates all being. Much of our experiences are perspectival, as Nietzsche upholds. It is not hard to consider that there may be humans who are entirely indifferent to music or are not aroused emotionally by presumably the most emotional piece of music. 10 Friedrich Nietzsche, KSA 1, 572. Here is the translation of this text: "In what way is feeling communicated? Partly, but very partly, it can be translated into thoughts, that is, into conscious representations; this, of course, is only true of the part of the accompanying representations. But there always remains an indissoluble residue in this area of feeling as well. It is only the dissolvable residue with which language, that is, the concept, has to do: according to this, the limit of "poetry" is determined in the expressiveness of feeling."

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pleasure and displeasure and its rhythmic, dynamics and harmony. Despite Nietzsche’s attempt to uncover the unconscious of emotive phenomena and their connection to music, his early analysis suffers from his not yet full affirmation of the human body and his bias for music. This can be discerned when he associates the language of gesture with the genus of the species as opposed to the language of tone with that of existence; this problematic association is analogous to his repeated association of the Apollonian with visual arts as opposed to the Dionysian with musical arts—these associations do dissolve to some extent in The Birth of Tragedy, but Nietzsche does not emphasize them. Although there are exceptions as in Apollonian music, for him high music is Dionysian and there is nothing Dionysian in visual arts, a dichotomy which he would not uphold in his later writings and which he is critical of in the 1886 Preface. Ultimately, all tones are present (individualized) and then absent, as much as bodies are. Therefore, if one can speak of the orgiastic union of tones as in dissonance,11 one can speak of the same of human bodies and speech. This bias for music would, therefore, lead him to place gesture in the middle realm, in the second order before the language of tone in the way he organizes the unconscious emotive phenomena. Each realm, moreover, has its own symbolism. Starting from the last, the tone symbolizes the different types of pleasure and displeasure; it is completely instinctive, as it operates at unconscious layers. Gesture symbolism also operates instinctually, but it partakes in consciousness in the form of visible gestures and in unconsciousness in rhythm and dynamics. As for the language of thought, it is fully conscious as manifest in conceptual language. Nietzsche’s account of language, however, does not end here; in “Music and Words”12 “…Nietzsche understands spoken language to have a dual essence, that of image expressed in gesture (lips and tongue) and that expressed in tone..”13 This explanation parallels his reflections on the origin of words in metaphors in “Truth and Lies,”14 as he traces conceptual language to its origin in the double metaphoric activity and interaction of images and sounds in nerve stimuli.

 11

Babette Babich's study on the relationship between dissonance and the Dionysian in "Nietzsche’s Performative Phenomenology: Philology and Music," reveals much about the phenomenology of musical experience. 12 Friedrich Nietzsche, KSA 7, 359-69. 13 Crawford, “Nietzsche’s Great Style: Educator of the Ears and of the Heart,” 215. 14 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.”

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After explaining the emotive phenomena in three layers and their respective symbolism, Nietzsche moves on to discussing how tone becomes music. He gives his answer through a tension of pathos or passion as Crawford15 calls it, the term Nietzsche uses for this phenomenon is “ecstasy of feelings of the tone,” Gefühlsrausch des Tons;16 this is when tones lose themselves in an orgiastic feast, which Nietzsche finds in the realm of lyricism. This brings him back to language; lyric poetry of spoken language approximates music in song, as both run their course at the level of unconscious excitement of instincts and emotions. Singing is a heightening of feelings, as “…the essence of the word reveals itself more clearly and sensually in the symbol of tone [ Ton]; this is why it resounds [tönt] more. Sprechgesang is more or less a return to nature: the symbol that has become deadened in the course of use regains its originary power.”17 Unlike Schopenhauer who finds the highest expression of the will in instrumental music (untainted by language), Nietzsche returns to the original musicality of human speech and sound and discovers intensification of emotions in song. “It is as spoken, however, that is, with the symbolism of tone, that the Will works to incomparably greater and more direct effect. Sung-there it attains the high-point of its effectivity, as long as the melos is the understandable symbol of its Will; when this is not the case, the sequence of tones and the arrangement of words affect us, but the thought remains distant, a matter of indifference.”18 He exemplifies this heightened emotional expression in scream. Nietzsche's integral approach to sound art is later expressed in Human, All Too Human, Aphorism 215, where he stresses the evolution of symbolism in musical arts and shows how 'absolute music' is an invention of the intellect. He states that it is either form in itself or “...symbolism of form speaking to the understanding without poetry after both arts had been united over a long course of evolution and the musical form had finally become entirely enmeshed in threads of feeling and concepts.”19 Music, in Nietzsche's view, is originally organic and bodily as it is connected to such physical arts of singing and dancing. Absolute music, while retaining the symbolism of such arts, is an abstraction of the intellect. “It was the intellect itself which first introduced this significance into sounds...” Nietzsche's departure from Schopenhauer is clear in this aphorism on many fronts,

 15

Crawford, “Nietzsche’s Great Style,” 216. 16 Ibid., 578. 17 DVW, 56. 18 Ibid., 57. 19 HAH, §215.

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including his distance to 'absolute music' as defended by Schopenhauer and his critique of music as a direct expression of the will: “In itself, no music is profound or significant, it does not speak of the 'will' or of the 'thing in itself'...” 20 Nietzsche insists on the organic and autochthonous symbiosis of all arts, of all arts of sound, image, body, and gesture. And, again contra Schopenhauer, music is not the immediate language of feeling. While the focus in Aphorism 215 discussed above is on singing in musical arts and its symbolic place in relation to music, in the following aphorism, Aphorism 216, Nietzsche discusses gesture and its symbolic place in musical arts: Gesture and language. — Older than language is the mimicking of gestures, which takes place involuntarily and is even now, when the language of gesture is universally restrained and control of the muscles has been achieved, so strong that we cannot see a mobile face without an innervation of our own face (one can observe that feigned yawning will evoke real yawning in one who sees it). The imitated gesture leads him who imitates it back to the sensation which it expressed in the face or body of the person imitated. That is how people learned to understand one another: that is how a child still learns to understand its mother. In general, painful sensations may well also be expressed by gestures which in turn occasion pain (for example by pulling hair out, beating the breast, violent distortions and strainings of the facial muscles). Conversely, gestures of pleasure were themselves pleasurable and could thus easily convey their meaning (laughter as an expression of being tickled, which is pleasurable, again served as an expression of other pleasurable sensations). — As soon as the meaning of gestures was understood, a symbolism of gestures could arise: I mean a signlanguage of sounds could be so agreed that at first one produced sound and gesture (to which it was symbolically joined), later only the sound. — It appears here that in earlier ages there often occurred that which now takes place before our eyes and ears in the evolution of music, especially of dramatic music: while music was at first empty noise without explanatory dance and mime (gesture-language), the ear was, through long habituation to the juxtaposition of music and movement, schooled to an instantaneous interpretation of the total figurations and has at last attained to a height of rapid understanding at which it no longer has any need of the visible movement and understands the tone-poet without it. One then speaks of absolute music, that is to say of music in which everything is at once understood symbolically without further assistance.

 20

Ibid.

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Nietzsche's concern and emphasis is not the conscious imitation (as in mimetic theory) but rather the unconscious replication of gestures from one person to the next. What brings these two aphorisms together as discussed above is Nietzsche's concern for movement and how he understands movement in singing, namely the movement of vocal organs, and movement of the body as in gesticulation, miming, and dance, and most importantly, how they are integrally connected to the movement of sound as in music. What severs their integral and organic connection is the intellect. What follows I will discuss further the role of the intellect, especially in relation to the senses and feelings.

Music and Entsinnlichung Much of Nietzsche’s writings revolve around the problem of desensualization (Entsinnlichung) in general and as it appears in the context of arts and music. The problem, no doubt, exceeds the limits of any art. The Dionysian that Nietzsche first introduced in The Birth of Tragedy is a sensual experience, hence the importance of living, performative aspect of ancient Greek drama. Nietzsche also placed emphasis on sensuality, on physiological functions, when he discussed the origin of language in metaphors in “Truth and Lies.” In one of his last works, Nietzsche defends the life of the senses against the tradition of philosophy that has maintained that senses lie: “They [the senses] lie neither in the way the Eleatics believed nor as he [Heraclitus] believed—they do not lie at all. What we make of their testimony, that alone introduces lies; for example, the lie of unity, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence. “Reason” is the cause of our falsification of the testimony of the senses.”21 (Twilight of the Idols, 480). The culprit here is “reason,” a form of rationality that displaces sensuality. Nietzsche's critique of ultra-rationalism remains to be a running theme in general and in the context of arts, as Branco highlights: philosophers have warned against the power of music, as it may threaten our rationality;22 this threat of music stems partly from the limitation of the power of expression of language, which music does not share. The problem of desensualization is discussed in relation to music in an aphorism in Human, All Too Human. Here Nietzsche focuses on the intellectualization of our sense of hearing: 21 22

TI, 480. Branco, 137.

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The desensualization of higher art. - By virtue of the extraordinary exercise the intellect has undergone through the artistic evolution of modem music, our ears have grown more and more intellectual. We can now endure a much greater volume, much more 'noise', than our forefathers could because we are much more practised in listening for the reason in it than they were. Because they at once inquire after the reason, the 'meaning', and are no longer content to know that a thing 'is', all our senses have in fact become somewhat blunted... 23

There are several related issues here: the first issue has to do with the physiological functioning of the organs of hearing; they are diminished in their power, because they are driven by the intellect. We look for meanings and reasons before we hear. Enduring greater volume and more noise is not an indication of strength but rather of impoverishment. Second, all this has happened in an evolutionary way; the decline of the ear has impacted the species who are under the hegemony of the rational. Most cannot distinguish the subtle differences between sounds, for instance. Third, the desensualization applies to all our senses. The intellect rules not only over the ear but over all sense organs and their functions. Nietzsche explains this process at the more primary level of pleasure or joy: ...What will be the consequence of all this? The more capable of thought eye and ear become, the closer they approach the point at which they become unsensual: pleasure [or joy] is transferred to the brain, the sense-organs themselves grow blunt and feeble, the symbolic increasingly replaces the simple being - and along this path we thus attain to barbarism as certainly as along any other.24

What Nietzsche stresses above is the displacement of joy, or the psychosomatic drives and their energies (also called libido by Freud and in psychoanalysis). Human-beings have taken more joy in the intellect and its activities (for searching for reasons and explanations) than the activities of the senses. All of this is presented by Nietzsche in respect to the evolution of modern music and higher arts, but the broader context is the intellectualization of culture and the interference of the intellect. When Nietzsche presents the same theme a few years later in Book V of The Gay Science (added to its second edition), he introduces a variety of

23 24

HAH, Aphorism 217. Ibid.

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positions on the subject.25 First, there are the 'generic' philosophers like those of the Twilight mentioned above, from the Eleatics all the way to Kant. “Formerly philosophers were afraid of the senses” (GS §332). They believed senses would take them away from their concentration on ideas and hence banished all that is sensual: “...a real philosopher no longer listened to life insofar as life is music; he denied the music of life...” Among these philosophers, Nietzsche discusses two of them specifically; regarding Spinoza, he writes that he begins with the senses and yet he empties the senses of their sensual content. There is no blood left in the amor and in the deus. As for Plato, he exercised caution against over-powerful senses, from a healthy standpoint. The second position is that of the philosophers of the present and the future who, though sensualists, have gone to the other extreme. This extreme is equally problematic: “We today are inclined to make the opposite judgment (which actually could be equally wrong), namely that ideas are worst seductresses than our senses...”26 Nietzsche is no irrationalist; while recognizing the significance of the senses for life, he does not dismiss the role of ideas. Ideas are given a special emphasis, because there are different forms of thinking, which do not diminish the value of the senses. Perhaps, this is one meaning of the “gay science.” But we have to plunge into deeper strata to understand music's affectivity.

On the physiology of music How does music work at the level of instincts and drives, at more unconscious levels? Why does a piece of music bring tears of joy or sadness without our conscious control? What does music move and how? Nietzsche elucidates this point in an aphorism in Daybreak by way of reverbations of feelings, what we may call 'affectivity' or what he calls 'empathy' (Mitempfindung).27 Empathy is a connection at deeper, unconscious levels analogous to Dionysian relationality but unlike any of the superficial varieties of Mitleid against which Nietzsche is always on his guard. Nietzsche explains empathy by way of movement and sensation: Empathy. —To understand another person, that is, to imitate his feelings in ourselves, we do indeed often go back to the reason for his feeling thus or thus and ask for example: why is he troubled?- so as then for the same reason to become troubled ourselves; but it is much more usual to omit to do this

 25

GS, Aphorism 372. 26 GS, Ibid., 333. 27 Empfindung, the root of this word, does not have an equivalent in English; it is often translated as 'sensation' or 'feeling.' The prefix Mit- adds an affective dimension.

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and instead to produce the feeling in ourselves after the effects it exerts and displays on the other person by imitating with our own body the expression of his eyes, his voice, his walk, his bearing (or even their reflection in word, picture, music). Then a similar feeling arises in us in consequence of an ancient association between movement and sensation, which has been trained to move backwards or forwards in either direction.28

It is not only imitation, Nachbildung, that is at stake here, but rather movement in sensation. Imitation (not the best translation of Nachbilden here, 'simulation' or 'reproducing' would fit better) may connote a conscious act, but such after-formation in movement/sensation association does not. That association moves in many directions and hence forms the basis of Mitempfindung. It is through movement that many sensations and their symbolic content at deeper registers are inscribed into our souls at young ages. To unlock their emotional import, one must break down these associations and re-build from their vestiges, which can happen in and through music. Nietzsche then applies his ideas on Mitempfindung to music: But it is music which reveals to us most clearly what masters we are in the rapid and subtle divination of feelings and in empathising: for, though music is an imitation of an imitation of feelings, it nonetheless and in spite of this degree of distance and indefiniteness often enough makes us participants in these feelings, so that, like perfect fools, we grow sad without there being the slightest occasion for sorrow merely because we hear sounds and rhythms which somehow remind us of the tone-of-voice and movements of mourners, or even of no more than their customary usages.29

What could Nietzsche mean when he says music is a “simulation of simulation of feelings?” Music does not simulate any specific feeling but perhaps many feelings. When music hits a hearer, it then becomes simulated in a specific simulated feeling, which is due to music's “distance and indefiniteness;” this is why the same music can invoke joy in one and sadness in another, contra Schopenhauer's rigid association of specific sounds with specific emotions. These associations are at best tenuous and subject to culture and individual diversity; this is similar to how the same horror movies or images invoke fear in some and laughter in another. Nietzsche then attempts to expose some of the archaic layers of simulation of feelings, which he claims to be fear, necessity to understand danger, and the need for quick understanding of feelings of another, human or animal:

 28

D, Aphorism 142. 29 D, §142.

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“Through long millennia he saw in everything strange and lively a danger: at the sight of it he at once imitated the expression of the features and the bearing and drew his conclusion as to the kind of evil intention behind these features and this bearing.30 All of these needs led humans to develop an “art of dissimulation” in the evolutionary process; beyond empathy Nietzsche discovers fear and, departing from Schopenhauer, claims that empathy is common among timid people as opposed to those who are proud and have less fear in them. Fear as a primordial emotion points in the direction of instincts and physiological functions. Consistent with his ideas on emotions in general and emotions in music, Nietzsche raises physiological objections against Wagner's music. The cynic speaks. — My objections to the music of Wagner are physiological objections; why should I trouble to dress them up in aesthetic formulas? My “fact” is that I no longer breathe easily once this music begins to affect me; that my foot soon resents it and rebels; my foot feels the need for rhythm, dance. march; it demands of music first of all those delights which are found in good walking, striding, leaping, and dancing. But does not my stomach protest too? my heart? my circulation? my intestines? Do I not become hoarse as I listen? (GS 368)

Nietzsche's objection is based on senses, bodily and animal functions, and movement; in summa, the Dionysian. His critique of theater in this aphorism must be taken with a grain of salt; the context is Wagner's music and theater, not theater in general. He does not like theater for the people or the hocuspocus of the actor. As for music, one must become light to be able to move and move all senses and the entire body. The body must be light again or made lighter: “And so I ask myself: What is that my whole body really expects of music? I believe its own ease: as if all animal functions should be quickened by easy, bold, exuberant, self-assured rhythms... “31 All the signs Nietzsche gives here are reflected in the Dionysian, bodily movements as in song, dance and music in which senses are heightened. But they are heightened within a domain, within its own bounds. There is no anarchy of instincts here, but rather free expression within a framework, freedom within the cult domain, to use Dionysus and his cult as an example. The bodily aspect of music, therefore its connection to other arts such as

 30

Ibid. 31 GS 368. I do not think 'ease' is the best translation of Erleictherung; it should rather be 'being made lighter', as Kaufmann tries to explain in his footnote.

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song and dance, may have been some factors that attracted the young Nietzsche to the romantic and Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, although his reflections on physiology and his leaning towards rhythm in music are postWagnerian, as Dufour remarks: “Rhythm becomes, after the break with Wagner, the element on which Nietzsche keeps coming back and insisting — in a direct way, but also in an indirect way, when the philosopher links music to dance... to walking [or pacing]...and also to breathing...In this way, music is well attached to the body...”32

Affects and music Affects work at the primordial levels of instincts and drives and manifest their own power. Parallel to the development of his ideas on power, especially around the “feeling of power,” Nietzsche was using the concept of 'affect' to denote psycho-somatic registers, as he saw them in the life of drives. One meaning of affect in the way Nietzsche uses it is emotion, as it is embedded in sensations and their oscillations within the body and the soul. Same affects are to be found in other arts, in visual and plastic arts, although they manifest themselves differently. Here is how Nietzsche explains affect and its workings in arts: Music was the Counter-renaissance in the domain of art; to it belongs the later painting of Murillo, perhaps the Baroque style does too: more so, at any rate, than the architecture of the Renaissance or of antiquity. And now one may go on to ask: if our modern music could move stones, would it set them together in the manner of the architecture of antiquity? I doubt very much that it would. For that which reigns in music, the affect, joy in enhanced, wide-ranging moods, the desire for liveliness at any cost, the rapid change of sensations, strong relief-effects in light and shadow, the juxtaposition of the ecstatic and the naive - all this reigned once before in the plastic arts and created new stylistic laws: - but it was neither in antiquity nor in the time of the Renaissance.33

Nietzsche sees a common ground in all artistic affectivity: emotions in a wide range and in their heightened states (“die Lust an erhöhten, weit gespannten Stimmungen”), the wanting to be become lively at any cost (“das Lebendig-werden-wollen um jeden Preis”), the rapid change of emotion and sensation (“der rasche Wechsel der Empfindung”), strong

 32

Dufour 225 (translation is mine, I skipped translating his references to Nietzsche's texts). 33 HAH, §219.

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relief-effects in light and shadow (“die starke Reliefwirkung in Licht und Schatten”), and the placing together of the ecstatic and the naive (“die Nebeneinanderstellung der Ekstase und des Naiven”).34 The last point brings together the Dionysian and the Apollonian without using these designations. It must be noted here that Nietzsche uses both visual and auditory symbolism to explain the artistic experience in music and other arts at the level of their affects. Furthermore, music, like all arts, works at deeper levels of affectivity beyond good and evil. On passion and music (and evilness), Nietzsche writes: Evil men and music. - Could the full happiness of love, which resides in unconditional trust, ever have been experienced by anyone who was not profoundly mistrustful, evil and embittered? For these enjoy in it the tremendous, unbelieved and unbelievable exception in the state of their soul! One day they are overcome by that limitless, dreamlike sensation which stands in such contrast to their whole life, hidden and visible, hitherto: like a precious miracle and enigma, suffused with a golden glory and quite beyond description. Unconditional trust makes one dumb; indeed, there is a suffering and an oppression in this happy dumbness, which is why such souls weighed down with happiness are usually more grateful to music than other and better people are: for through music, as though through a coloured mist, they see and hear their love as it were grown more distant, more moving and less oppressive; music is the only means they have of observing their extraordinary condition and for the first time taking of it a view informed with a kind of alienation and relief. Everyone who is in love thinks when he hears music: 'it is speaking of me, it is speaking in my stead, it knows everything!'35

Again, a wide range of emotions is presented in relation to music, emotions associated with mistrust, evil, and embitterment. Despite the seeming “unconditional trust” every full happiness may exude, a weight (“eine Schwere”) sits on top of these emotions, keeping a tight lid and creating silent suffering ('stumm' also means mute and silent).36 These souls are ready to burst at the first prick into their bubble and music provides the medium for such bursting. Music jolts them out of their stasis and they can now view their love from a distance; it is the ecstatic power of music that creates the alienation and the relief at the same time, the ability to see one's

 34

KSA 2, 180. 35 D, §216. 36 KSA 3, 192-193.

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relationship from a distance and the relief that comes from lifting that weight.

On the cases of Wagner and Bizet: an emotive response Much of Nietzsche's criticism of Wagner's music revolves around the question of emotions and affects. Wagner represents sickness and decadence,37 but yet we have to understand Wagner,38 because we all start from the standpoint of sickness and decadence and move on to recovery. Wagner remains decadent without recovery; that is the main issue with him, in Nietzsche's eyes. Wagner treats the feeling of love sentimentally, idealistically, as opposed to Bizet's treatment of love. Bizet's music gave Nietzsche cheerfulness while Wagner praised loyalty and purity.39 “...a Wagnerian ballet may drive one to despair...”40 Wagner appeals to weakness and exhaustion; related to this is the problem of overexcitement and Nietzsche diagnoses Wagner's problem as hysterics. He understood the weary nervous system41 of the modern human and made music accordingly. Although Wagner is a deep sufferer, which Nietzsche admires, his music makes Nietzsche sick and he has physiological objections against Wagner's music;42 the kind of suffering Wagner portrays in his art is that of impoverishment of life, but that of overfullness of life that he sees in Dionysian art.43 Much of Nietzsche's objection to Wagner's pathos of suffering has to do with pessimism and Schopenhauer, and how pessimism turns suffering into hostility against life, fatalism, and chronic despair. Moreover, another criticism of Wagner has to do with theater and the fact that Wagner is an actor. This, by no means, is an objection against theater and acting per se on Nietzsche's part, but rather something that lies in the emotive phenomena, namely the vanity of the artist (and not only the artist of the theater): “I believe that artists often do not know what they can do best: they are too vain.”44 It is not any artist or any spectacle that is vain,

 37

CW, Preface. 38 For a comprehensive study of Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner, readers can consult with Prange's book, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe, which addresses many issues in that relationship. 39 Ibid., Section 3. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid.. Section 5. 42 NCW in PN 664. 43 Ibid., 669. 44 Ibid., 662.

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but rather that artist who undeservedly claims to occupy the place of grand art and grand artistic spectacle, as Zarathustra also shows in his teachings on poets, buffaloes and peacocks.45 It is vain when one claims to be someone or something higher than what one actually is; Wagner claimed to be a reformer of all arts and a founder of grand artistic spectacle, which Nietzsche disputes to be the case. Consistent with Wagner's histrionic and vain presumptions discussed above, Nietzsche sees “cheap effects” in his art: “Our composers have made a great discovery: interesting ugliness too is possible in their art!”46 Although Wagner's name does not appear in this aphorism from Daybreak, it is not difficult to detect jabs at Wagner's art: “Composers have discovered contrast: only now are the most powerful effects possible — and cheap: no one asks for good music any more...” This is a hint for moralists and philosophers who have ears so that they can “...hear into the souls of our composers by means of their music...” Cheap effects, bewitching the audience and captivating them as such, and establishing a hold over the spectator's experience are some of the aspects of Wagner's decadent art, as Nietzsche diagnoses.47 Music reflects the overcomings—and the shortcomings too— of its creator, as in any art and creation, but creators are hardly aware of that: “For our composers have not the least suspicion that what they are setting to music is their own history, the history of the soul made ugly...”48 Related to hostility against life in Wagner, Nietzsche sees denial of sensuality, ascetic idealism in Wagner's works, specifically in Parsifal. Wagner betrayed the Feuerbachean teachings on “healthy sensuality” of his youth: “For Parsifal is a work of perfidy, of vindictiveness, of a secret attempt to poison the presuppositions of life—a bad work. The preaching of chastity remains an incitement to anti-nature...”49 For Nietzsche spirituality and sensuality can and must co-exist, albeit in their agonistic unity, and one must not be deceived by love and misguided by pity. We may be beguiled by the vain artist's appeal to masses and their work, however hostile against life forces it may be, may be empowered through such weakening emotions as

 45

TSZ, "On Poets." 46 D Aphorism 239. 47 I addressed this subject extensively in an essay entitled "Peacocks and Buffalos..." in Understanding Nietzsche, Understanding Modernism. As I have shown there, the problems persist in but also exceed Wagner and his grand artistic spectacle, Bayreuth. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 675.

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love and pity. “This pity regularly deceives itself about its own strength...”50 Mitleid is another complicated topic in Nietzsche on which much is written; let it suffice here to say that Nietzsche is not categorically opposed to every form of relating to suffering, but rather to those forms that weaken the individual. And this is the context in which it appears here along with love: “Alas, whoever knows the heart will guess how poor, helpless, arrogant, and mistaken is even the best, the profoundest love—how it even destroys rather than saves.”51 What I said about Mitleid holds for love; there are different forms of love and Nietzsche teaches to “love differently.” In contrast to Wagner's heavy, depressing, and chaotic music, chaotic due to its “infinite melody,” Nietzsche finds a respite, a fresh breeze in Bizet's music: “This music seems perfect to me. It approaches lightly, supplely, politely. It is pleasant, it does not sweat. “What is good is light; whatever is divine moves on tender feet”: first principle of my aesthetics. This music is evil, subtly fatalistic...It is rich. It is precise. It builds, organizes, finishes, thus it constitutes the opposite of the polyp in music, the “infinite melody.””52 All of the feelings Nietzsche describes in this passage are his own feelings and the types of affects Bizet's music creates in him. He feels light, liberated, fertile. Is that Nietzsche's own truth, his own emotional experience? One may read Nietzsche's response to Wagner and Bizet, or any other musician, as his own personal response. One may say music is subjective; it invokes different types of emotions in different listeners. This is, no doubt, true in most ordinary circumstances, but Nietzsche's responses are not ordinary and they have to do with culture-making, or the creation of highest values to use his phrase. Insofar as highest values are created in grand spectacles, along with emotive phenomena, then the artworks and their creators become concerns for the collective. In other words, Nietzsche's diagnosis of ascetic idealism in Wagner, or the existence of problematic emotions in his art, is beyond Nietzsche's personal distaste but rather concerns the making of an epoch and the shaping of its Zeitgeist.

 50

Ibid., 679. 51 Ibid. 52 CW in BWN 613-614.

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Epilogue All arts create affects and invoke emotions in their spectators in different ways; music does it in its own way and according to its own medium. There are emotive/affective phenomena in art and music making; in other words, specific kinds of emotions circulate in the artistic community, in spectacular experiences. In addition to being a writer and a thinker, Nietzsche was a musician and his writing and thinking were shaped by his experience as a pianist and a composer. Therefore, his writings reveal the tension between word-art and sound-art, between the writer/poet and the musician; while those of us who work in the medium of words see this tension in writing, those who work in the medium of sounds must be hearing it in music. Ideas and emotions want to express themselves in music. Moreover, many other conflicting tendencies are also seen in Nietzsche as in the conflict between total art work (Greek drama and Wagner) and absolute/pure music (Schopenhauer, Brahms, etc.). Whether Nietzsche developed or came close to developing a new musical aesthetic or not, his ideas and close engagement with music, his understanding of the emotive depth of music attracted the musicians of the following generation such as Mahler, Delius, and Richard Strauss.53 What makes Nietzsche unique, however, is how his relation to music, and all other arts and creativity, appears within the context of the epochal shift along with its core teachings on power (as in the will to power), temporality (as in the eternal return of the same), and typology (as in the overhuman).

Bibliography Babich, Babette. “Nietzsche’s Performative Phenomenology Philology and Music.” In Nietzsche and Phenomenology: Power, Life, Subjectivity, edited by Élodie Boublil and Christine Daigle, 127-140. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013. Branco, Maria João Mayer. “„Wachs in den Ohren”. Nietzsches Deutung der philosophischen Furcht vor der Musik in der Moderne.” Nietzsche Studien 45, no.1, (2016): 132-142. Crawford, Claudia. “Nietzsche’s Great Style: Educator of the Ears and of the Heart.” Nietzsche Studien 20, no. 1, (1991): 210-237. Dufour, Eric. “La Physiologie de la Musique de Nietzsche.” Nietzsche Studien 30, no.1, (2001) :222-245.

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An article by Zoltan Roman, "Nietzsche via Mahler, Delius and Strauss" examines this relationship in-depth.

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Gracyk, Theodore and Kania, Andrew. Eds. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music. London: Routledge, 2011. Higgins, Kathleen. “Nietzsche on Music.” Journal of the History of Ideas 47, no. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1986): 663-672. Liébert, Georges. Nietzsche and Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Noudelmann, Francois. The Philosopher's Touch: Sartre, Nietzsche, and Barthes at the Piano, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Prange, Martine. Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Roman, Zoltan. “Nietzsche via Mahler, Delius and Strauss: A New Look at Some Fin-de-Sielce 'thilosophical music.” Nietzsche Studien 19, no.1, (1990): 292-311. Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, 2 volumes. Tr. by E. F. J. Payne. New York: Dover, 1966. Tuncel, Yunus. Emotion in Sports. London: Routledge, 2019. —. “Peacocks and Buffalos: Nietzsche and the Problems of Modern Spectacle.” In Understanding Nietzsche, Understanding Modernism, edited by Brian Pines and Douglas Burnham, 115-132. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. —. “Nietzsche, Music, and Silent Suffering.” Talk at the CUNY Seminar, “Dionysian Ecstasies: Music and Madness in Nietzsche’s Philosophy,” January 14, 2010. Witthoefft, Cornelis. „Einführender Kommentar zu den auf der Doppel-CD “‘Sie hätte singen sollen, diese Seele…‘. Friedrich Nietzsches Denken und Musik” eingespielten Kompositionen Friedrich Nietzsches. Zugleich eine Anleitung zum Hören nach Nietzsche.” (CD with text (M. Steinmann) and music (F. Nietzsche). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2012.) Available at: https://www.yumpu.com/de/document/view/10039932/einfuhrenderkommentar-zu-den-eingespielten-der-blaue-reiter (accessed July 13, 2021)

PART II: MUSIC, OTHER ARTS, AND GESAMTKUNSTWERK

CHAPTER 4 “LA GAYA SCIENZA” IN MUSIC: NIETZSCHE’S HOMAGE TO GOETHE, ITALY, AND LIGHTNESS IN JOKE, CUNNING, AND REVENGE1 MARTINE PRANGE

Below, I argue that Nietzsche’s insertion of the “prelude” Joke, Cunning, and Revenge in The Gay Science is testimony to his attempt to “deGermanize” and become a “good European” through music and philosophy alike. I consider the rhymes as a libretto or at least a tribute to Italian opera buffa, with which Nietzsche follows Goethe’s objective to “bring home the Italian way to a German composer.” That, at least, was Goethe’s aim with his libretto Joke, Cunning, and Revenge (Scherz, List und Rache). Indeed, Goethe wrote a libretto called Joke, Cunning, and Revenge. Obviously, Goethe is chiefly known for his poetical and not for his musical achievements. However, Goethe contemplated the relation between music and text throughout his life, and the possibilities of musical theatre in particular. This even led Goethe to produce several librettos and Singspiele. What is more, Goethe had a clear aesthetic and cultural goal in mind with his musical endeavors. Indeed, he expected to reach an artistic and cultural effect with opera, which he was unable to achieve with poetry alone. With this view, I go against the dominant view that Goethe turned to opera mainly for practical and trivial, indeed philistine, reasons, a view based on Goethe’s expression that “opera remains the most secure and appropriate means to attract and amuse the public” (“die Oper immer ein Publikum anzuziehen und zu ergötzen das sicherste und bequemste Mittel bleibt”).2 I believe that 1

This is a modified version of a part of chapter 6 in Prange, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe, 217-225). 2 Annalen 1791 (BA XVI, 17).

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Goethe’s practical considerations served his aesthetic and cultural aims in general; to take this expression as if Goethe’s goal was just to attract and entertain the public would contradict his quest for style. Moreover, it is worthwhile to see to what result a less philistine interpretation of his musical activities would lead. Goethe tried to participate actively in the creation of a supra-provincial, national theatre, which would be inspired by, and possibly be strong enough to compete with, the best of Greek, French, English, and Italian artistic history: Homer, Racine, Shakespeare, and Italian opera. Goethe’s turn to Italian opera buffa was motivated by the fact that the popular German lyrical dramas (“Singspiele”) were not able to fulfil his theatrical ends. Thanks to Mozart, who had popularized the Italian opera for the German-speaking world, German music had made a giant step towards establishing opera in Europe. Goethe aspired to play a role in this development too. At least numerous fragments of his Conversations with Eckermann, Italian Journey, and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre seem to hint at such an intention. The fact that Goethe had the strong desire to be a painter and considered himself an “Augenmensch” (which Wagner held against Goethe as “lack of musicality”), did not hold him back from designing a theory of sound, with which he had been preoccupied for about sixteen years between 1810 and 1826.3 Goethe famously wrote: “The eye was the most important organ with which I grasped the world” (“Das Auge war vor allen anderen das Organ, womit ich die Welt faßte”) and indeed he may have used his eyes to perceive and apprehend the world.4 Yet, he applied all the senses to create art and develop culture. This is, I assume, also one way in which Nietzsche understood Goethe when he described him as a person of “totality.”5 Indeed, according to Goethe, the totality of the human senses should be drawn in the experience of the theatre, as he said to Eckermann: There is poetry, there is painting, there are singing and music, there is acting, and what not besides! When all these arts, and the charm of youth and beauty heightened to an important degree, work in concert on the same evening, it is a festival to which no other can compare. [Da ist Poesie, da ist Malerei, da ist Gesang und Musik, da ist Schauspielkunst und was nicht noch alles! Wenn alle die Künste und Reize von Jugend und Schönheit an einem einzigen Abend, und zwar auf bedeutender Stufe

3

See Walwei-Wiegelmann, Goethes Gedanken über Musik, 211-225. Dichtung und Wahrheit II/6 (HA IX, 224). 5 TI "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man," 49, 222-223 (KSA 6, 151-152). 4

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Chapter 4 zusammenwirken, so gibt es ein Fest, das mit keinem anderen zu vergleichen.]6

Thus the totality Nietzsche speaks of, can be found at different levels in Goethe: Goethe as a person who was a universal person, a scientist and an artist, and as an artist, a poet, a visual artist, a musical artist; he set out to harmonize art and knowledge, integrate body and mind, and all senses. Choosing the opera buffa is also in line with Goethe’s desire to make art that was full of life and anchored in real life. Opera buffa was designed to serve this purpose of aliveness, of the natural, direct and free expression of emotions, thus representing concrete reality, whilst the opera seria was considered “too stiff” and too far removed from the daily lives of the general public.7 In addition, in the opera buffa text and music worked closer together than in the opera seria. From 1791 until 1817, Goethe was the general manager and director of Weimar’s courtly theatre, which he had founded, after he was ordered so by Duke Charles August.8 As general manager, he was not only in charge of the repertoire, but also of the setting and dressing of the stage. He translated, rewrote, and directed plays from all over the world, amongst which plays by Caldéron, Corneille, Racine, Shakespeare, and many young German writers such as Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Schiller, the Schlegelbrothers, his favorite Iffland, and his own plays. On top of this, he acted in many of those plays. For example, he played Franz Moor in Schiller’s Robbers (Die Räuber) and Wallenstein in the latter’s Wallenstein. He also worked closely together with Anna Amalia, who composed music for two lyrical dramas written by Goethe, Erwin and Elmire (Erwin und Elmire, 1776) and the burlesque Funfair in Plundersweilern (Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern, 1778). Apart from writing lyrical 6

Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, March 22, 1825, 74 (German quote after Küpper, Goethes Verhältnis zur Musik, 42). Compare Küpper: “Die pralle Fülle eines Gesamtkunstwerks—das war Goethes Truam eines perfekt gelungenen Theaterabends” (Küpper, Goethes Verhältnis zur Musik, 42). Further on she speaks of how Goethe succeeded in putting together “again and again full of phantasy a feast for all senses” (“immer wieder phantasievoll ein Fest für alle Sinne” (Küpper, 2019, p. 43) for the Weimarian public. 7 Küpper, Goethes Verhältnis zur Musik, 14. 8 From 1776 on, Goethe worked as official for the Weimarian government. From then on, he was also intensively involved with the Weimarian amateur theatre, writing, translating and directing plays, playing in plays himself as well, even singing, when needed. (Küpper, Goethes Verhältnis zur Musik, 41ff).

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dramas already at such an early stage of his career (Goethe just came out of his “Storm and Stress” period, highlighted by the publication of one of his earliest books Werther’s Sorrows in 1774), Goethe continued his interest in musical drama by programming, translating, and directing various Italian operas for the Weimar theatre, amongst which were operas by Pasquale Anfossi (1729–1797) and Domenico Cimarosa (1749–1801).9 In fact, more than thirty percent of all performances under the direction of Goethe comprised operas and Singspiele.10 We often think of him as the “last Olympian” and the mature, wise creator of the gigantic drama Faust, but Goethe was young and up-to-date in spirit at all times, and perhaps ageless rather than “unzeitgemäss” in the Nietzschean sense of “unmodern”. Erwin and Elmire and Claudine von Villa Bella (which Franz Schubert put to music in 1815) drew upon French comedy, yet later on Goethe rewrote them in Italian opera buffa style, which also impregnated his Joke, Cunning, and Revenge (Scherz, List und Rache) from 1784.11 All these lyrical dramas were written before Goethe even went to Italy in 1786. From this all transpires that Goethe had a thorough and up-to-date knowledge of Italian buffa music, which he had not only acquired through his work as program director of the Court-Theatre but also through his intensive contacts with musicians and conductors, in Frankfurt, Leipzig and Weimar, including Philipp Christoph Kayser, Carl Friedrich Zelter, and Johann Friedrich Reichardt. Goethe himself was very open about his admiration for Mozart, which had been instantly instilled in him when he attended a live piano concert performed by Mozart, then only a seven years old child. Goethe directed The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) in his theatre in 1794, and five other lyrical dramas and operas by Mozart—which puts

9

At the age of seventeen, Goethe wrote his first Italian libretto, La sposa rapita (The Abducted Bride), which he later burned. 10 To be exact: 104 operas and 31 Singspiele (Fischer-Dieskau, “Die Musik und Goethe”, 45). 11 To be corrected: Goethe wrote his first Singspiel Erwin and Elmire in 1775 and published another Play with Song (Schauspiel mit Gesang) in Iris, a journal edited by Jacobi, in the same year. Erwin and Elmire had great success in the musical version of Reichardt, performed in 1790 in Berlin. It premiered in 1777 in Weimar with music by Anna Amalia. Schubert’s Claudine von Villa is known as D 239. Unfortunately, only the first act survived (act II and III were admittedly destroyed in a fire during the 1848 revolution). Goethe’s Singspiele in Italian style for Anna Amalia’s amateur theatre were Lila, Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit, Jery und Bätely, and Die Fischerin.

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Mozart on top of the ranking of operas performed in Goethe’s theatre.12 On the other hand, he felt intimidated by Mozart’s talent and this seems to have prevented further attempts on his part to follow Mozart’s example after The Magic Flute II, which Goethe started to write in 1795 yet never completed.13 Of all Goethe’s lyrical dramas, Joke, Cunning, and Revenge most distinctly roots in the opera buffa model.14 It was directly inspired by Rousseau’s writings on music, Pergolesi, Piccini, and Salieri. It was intended for Goethe’s old friend Kayser to set it to music. Goethe invited Kayser to come to Rome in order to learn more about Italian music, and Kayser indeed stayed with Goethe in Rome for seven months. The libretto was accompanied by a clear musical aesthetics, which sought to stir the outer senses so as to penetrate the inner feelings or mood by appealing to the imagination, or “the mind’s eye”. The aim was to provoke images in the beholder’s imagination and the meaning of music, for Goethe, resided precisely in this stirring of the imagination.15 Goethe started writing Joke, Cunning, and Revenge in the spring of 1784 and finished it by the end of the year. The libretto was expressly conceived as an Italian opera buffa, a comic opera in the Italian style (as, for example, Mozart’s Così fan tutte) and not as a Singspiel, a lyrical drama in German style. The extensive correspondence with Philipp Christoph Kayser (who was supposed to set the libretto to music) and letters to Charlotte von Stein reveal how eager Goethe was to fulfill this project and have his opera performed not only in Weimar but on different stages throughout the German states.16 However, the project never made it to the stage, apart from a test performance, in which the singers complained that Goethe had made the recitatives much too complicated.17 Goethe hoped to kill two birds with one stone: first, explore new domains for his own creativity and, second, offer Kayser the possibility of an artistic break-through by “making a German composer familiar with the Italian style” (“einen deutschen Componisten

12

The Magic Flute was performed 82 times, Don Juan 68 times, Abduction from the Seraglio 49 times, Cosi fan Tutte 33 times, Titus 28 times, and Figaro 19 times (Fischer-Dieskau, “Die Musik und Goethe”, 45). 13 The Magic Flute II was published as unfinished fragment in 1802. 14 Love calls it “Goethe’s Italianate” (1981, 53). 15 Borchmeyer, ‘“Eine Art Symbolik fürs Ohr”’, 429ff. 16 Goethe to Kayser and Goethe to Von Stein, 14 June 1784 (HA I, 442-444). 17 Küpper, Goethes Verhältnis zur Musik, 52 and 48-53.

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der italiänischen Manier näher zu bringen”).18 This, it seems to me, is very similar to Nietzsche’s cooperation with the young composer Peter Gast (Heinrich Köselitz), with whom Nietzsche also hoped to form a musical partnership. Nietzsche further followed Goethe in transforming his personal objectives in the cultural goal to serve and help German culture to progress. When Goethe started focusing on the Italian style, the German Singspiel was a relatively young genre. However, the particular involvement in it by Wieland may have been more of a reason for him to turn his focus from Singspiel to opera buffa. Wieland had been presenting the Singspiel as Germany’s national form and opera as distinctively Italian and French.19 With Alceste, Wieland had sought to create a German form of opera. It was precisely because of Wieland’s nationalism that Goethe persiflaged Alceste in the essay “Gods, Heroes, and Wieland” (“Götter, Helden, und Wieland”, 1774).20 By contrast, Goethe conceived Joke, Cunning, and Revenge as completely Italian in style. Seen from this intercultural perspective, what can be said about Nietzsche’s prelude in German rhymes of the same name? Kathleen Marie Higgins, in her book-chapter on Nietzsche’s Joke, Cunning, and Revenge, justifiably remarks that “Nietzsche’s own remarks scarcely enlighten us.”21 In a letter to Erwin Rohde, Nietzsche hints that the verses have been written in the troubadour-spirit of the whole book.22 Higgins first understands The Gay Science as a plea for “a broadly based but light-hearted scholarship” and she considers the prelude as a “call for a rebirth of the troubadour spirit.”23 Second, she perceives the verses as a parody of 18

Bötcher, Goethes Singspiele “Erwin und Elmire” und “Claudine von Villa Bella” und die “opera buffa”, 31 (Goethe’s letter to Kayser is undated, but stems probably from the end of 1784). 19 See Colvin, “Musical Culture and Thought”, 204-205. 20 Wieland’s Singspiel Alceste was inspired by Gluck’s opera, while it in fact criticized the heroism of Euripides’ play Alceste. Wieland wrote it together with the musician Anton Schweitzer. It premiered in Weimar in 1773. As a response to Goethe’s essay, Wieland published an essay in his magazine Der Teutsche Merkur, in which he argued that the Singspiel resembled Ancient Greek drama very much, and more than opera. Despite Goethe’s criticism of Wieland’s rejection of Euripides, the two men became good friends after Goethe’s move to Weimar, where Wieland had been living since 1773, in 1775. 21 Higgins (2000), p. 14. 22 Letter of begin December 1882 (KSB 6, p. 292). 23 Higgins (2000), p. 15. The title ‘gay science’ refers to the ‘gai saber’ of the Provençal troubadours of the 11th-13th century, who tried to combine art and wisdom according to the principles ‘joi’, ‘cortesia’, andi ‘mesura’. See also Prange (2005), pp. 127-133.

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Goethe’s work.24 By way of a comparative study of Goethe’s and Nietzsche’s text, she concludes that Nietzsche presented himself as a “physician” with Joke, Cunning, and Revenge, who advises to live “light-heartedly” and in a childlike way, thus pre- or immoral—which is a doctor’s advice that will not suit every reader, she remarks. Third, she interprets the prelude as a parody of childhood nursery rhymes, claiming that normally such rhymes have a moralistic character, but in Nietzsche’s case they defend immoralism. Although I agree with the fact that the verses, in the light of the rest of The Gay Science, seem to call for what Nietzsche himself called “immoralism”, there is, I want to argue, more to it. To be able to make my argument, I first have to say something about the English translation of the verses by Kaufmann, Higgins, and Del Caro. I shall give an example of the poem “invitation”, because it indicates not only how difficult it is to make an accurate translation, but also how a false translation can lead to a confused interpretation. Adrian del Caro made the Cambridge-translation of the poems.25 This is his translation of the last lines of “Invitation”: “I’ll make it,/from past inspiration take it,/turning food for thought to food”. Kaufmann translates: “All the things I’ve done before/Will inspire things quite new”.26 Higgins renders the lines as: “I’ll take cues from my old stuff/to make something new.”27 Higgins’s translation is no better than Kaufmann’s in the sense that the words “something new” are too neutral to give an indication of what Nietzsche said (while Del Caro makes a too interpretative translation). Rather than just “something new” or “things quite new”, Nietzsche says “more stuff”, more “bits-and-pieces”, more “titbits” or “scraps”. The whole poem goes as follows: “Einladung./ Wagt’s mit meiner Kost, ihr Esser!/ Morgen schmeckt sie euch schon besser/ Und schon übermorgen gut!/ Wollt ihr dann noch mehr, --so machen/Meine alten sieben Sachen/Mir zu sieben neuen Muth” (KSA 3, 353). An alternative translation could be: “Invitation./Take a dare with my fare, you guests! /Tomorrow you will like the fare already better/ And the day after very much indeed!/ And if you then feel like more/– my old stuff will/hearten me to

24

See also Gilman (1975, 1976). On p. 11 of the 2001 Cambridge translation, Del Caro refers to Scherz, List und Rache as Joke, Cunning and Revenge. The Gay Science is further translated by Josefine Nauckhoff. 26 The Gay Science, translated by Kaufmann (1974), 41. 27 Higgins, Comic Relief. Nietzsche’s Gay Science, 25. 25

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new scraps”.28 What Nietzsche says here is that his courage to write more verses depends on our liking. If we like his “stuff” (his “sieben Sachen”), he will cook us some more. So, first we try them, then we shall not reject them, then we will even like them, and then, in the fourth instance, only then, if we feel like more, then he will have the heart to freshly cook us some more of the like.29 Higgins, inspired by Koelb, interprets this “wordplay” as having “a deeper significance,” namely “the transformation of trifles into insights.” According to her, the lines are about “the transformation of banalities into something else,” because it is “the philosopher’s task” to make “the familiar problematic.”30 Despite Higgins’s stimulating interpretation, I do not think that the first little verse goes this far. Nietzsche just asks his readers to go along with him, to listen to what he has to say, and then, the moment we are doing that, he orders us to follow our own ideas (in poem 7 “vademecum, vadetecum”), well in the spirit of the free-spirited philosophy of The Gay Science: “think for yourself, but: think!” (as an alternative to Kant’s famous “Think! But obey!” in What is Enlightenment?). Poem 7, it seems to me, points to poem 23 (“wer nur steigt auf seiner eignen Bahn,/Trägt auch mein Bild zu hellerm Licht hinan”, KSA 3, 357) and GS § 99, where Nietzsche cites Goethe’s motto preceding the second edition of Werther’s Sorrows: “Be a man and do not follow me—but yourself! Yourself!”31 Nietzsche explains: “everyone who wants to be free must become so through himself.”32 “Freedom”, then, is understood as “the innocence of the utmost selfishness; the faith in great passion as the good in itself.”33 The fact that Wagner initially appeared to him as a true “K. Freigedank,” a free spirit, who followed his own ideas and passions, had attracted Nietzsche, because his free spirit promised the purely and highly 28 In Faust, there is also a sexual connection, when Mephisto uses the term to indicate

the seven places of a female body, which could be touched (Faust I 2031, HA III, p. 66). 29 Langer, Nietzsche’s Gay Science interprets the food metaphor as means to suggest that Nietzsche’s philosophy ‘is not meant for detached contemplation,’ but for incorporation, to become flesh and blood of the eater (p. 15). 30 Higgins, Comic Relief. Nietzsche’s Gay Science, 26. 31 GSJ, 98 (“Sei ein Mann und folge mir nicht nach, – sondern dir! Sondern dir!” KSA 3, 457). 32 GSJ, 98 (“Jeder, der frei werden will, [muss] es durch sich selber werden […]”, KSA 3, 457). 33 GSJ, 96 (“die Unschuld der höchsten Selbstsucht, der Glaube an die grosse Leidenschaft als an das Gute an sich”, KSA 3, 455).

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artistic mode of being, the innocent and aesthetic way of life, unpolluted and unconstrained by moral conventions. This is what the important aphorism GS § 99 suggests. However, in order to find this freedom, Nietzsche intimates that we do follow him in his process of “de-Germanization,” in his travel to the idyllic and innocent environment of Italy or “the south.”34 He invites us to change our musical taste from German music to Italian music. In the first poem, he therefore asks his readers to follow his lead, which results eventually in this plea for aesthetic freedom. In addition, connecting it to Peter Gast, he may even be indirectly asking his audience to listen to Peter Gast’s opera Joke, Cunning, and Revenge, one, two, three, four times.35 And we will be given more, if we wish so. Perceiving the plea for immorality is not enough for grasping the whole of Nietzsche’s free-spirited philosophy. If one fails to connect the “immoral” nature of the prelude (and the book in general) to the south or Italy, one misses much of Nietzsche’s recipe. The main reason for Nietzsche to follow Goethe at all is Goethe’s ability to look aesthetically at life, a look he developed particularly in Italy. Rather than being a recipe on its own, Nietzsche’s immoralism is the result of another recipe, which says that one should “become Mediterranean”: travel to the south to rid oneself of one’s northern, moral spirit. Joke, Cunning, and Revenge, I contend, must be viewed within Nietzsche’s call to become Mediterranean, a call he addresses to (northern) music in the first place, but also, in The Gay Science specifically, to (northern) philosophers and artists. Nietzsche’s insertion of the prelude Joke, Cunning, and Revenge within The Gay Science is testimony to his attempt to become “Mediterranean”, to mix the north and the south and shape himself into a what he calls a “good European.” This is what his “de-Germanizing” path eventually aims at. Moreover, with his poetry, he also offers Peter Gast an example as how to “de-Germanize” and make “Mediterranean” music, namely by inserting the Italian way. Nietzsche hoped that Gast’s music could function as ‘spokeswoman’ of his philosophy by integrating the south in his music, thus creating ‘supra34

As “In the South” (251-252/ KSA 3, 641-642) makes explicit. Cf. Prange, Lof der Méditerranée, 120-126, Prange, “‘Im Süden’: Nietzsche, Goethe, and Italy” and Prange “‘Méditerraniser’: The Flight from North to South”. 35 During his free-spirited period, Nietzsche demanded of music a natural, serene, and stylish representation of inner, human passions. He regarded Bizet’s Carmen as exemplary of such representation. Such music, Nietzsche argued, would be characteristic of ‘good Europeans’, ‘people who love the south in the north and the north in the south, people who have integrated the best of both worlds and created a synthesis out of it’ (Prange, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe, 215).

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German’ music.36 Joke, Cunning, and Revenge can be seen as an attempt to show Gast, and the general public of course, how to synthesize the north and the south in music and life more general so as to shape it into a freespirited life. It also alludes to Peter Gast’s opera with the same name, which he had created in 1880-1881 after Goethe’s libretto. After introducing Nietzsche to his music for this libretto, during a joined stay in Recoara in May 1881, Nietzsche called Gast “a musician of the first order” and the music “the best-toning spokeswoman” of his free-spirited, light-hearted philosophy. Later, he regarded Gast's composition for Joke, Cunning, and Revenge as an omen for his idea of the eternal return, which came to him about three months later. In a letter to Franz Overbeck, he even praised Gast as “a new Mozart” because he believed only Mozart had succeeded in adopting the southern spirit so well, before Gast.37 The prelude introduces the aim Nietzsche held with The Gay Science as a whole, i.e., to urge German philosophers and artists alike to travel to Southern Europe and transform themselves into “good Europeans.” Cast in this light, Joke, Cunning, and Revenge offers a “European” form of art, as it mixes the Italian buffa style with the German Singspiel. Joke, Cunning, and Revenge comprises, just as The Gay Science (including “The Songs of Prince Vogelfrei”), a plea for (and result of) “de-Germanization”.38 Next, rather than as a comical parody, I regard Nietzsche’s verses in German rhymes as a confirmation of Goethe’s creativity and musicality. Nietzsche was very pleased with his Joke, Cunning, and Revenge, and hinted at the troubadour spirit of the rhymes, as Higgins justifiably remarks.39 She also admits that “other bases for interpretation also have merit” and therefore turns to what she calls the “farcical Singspiel by Goethe.”40 She thus confirms that there is a musical aspect in Nietzsche’s rhymes; however, she does not note its cultural effect of mixing the north and the south, to ‘Italianize’ German music or make it more Mediterranean.41 36

Cf. Prange, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe, 215. Prange, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe, 215-216. 38 Or what I have called “dynamic interculturalism” in Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe. 39 Higgins, Comic Relief. Nietzsche’s Gay Science, 14-15. See for Nietzsche on GSJ: Nietzsche to Ernst Schmeitzer, 9 May 1882 (KSB 6, 191). Cf. Nietzsche to Jacob Burckhardt, August 1882 (KSB 6, 234-235), Nietzsche to Lou Andreas-Salomé, 15 June 1882 (KSB 6, 205) and 16 September 1882 (KSB 6, 260), and Nietzsche to Peter Gast, 25 July 1882 (KSB 6, 232). 40 Higgins, Comic Relief. Nietzsche’s Gay Science, 15. 41 Cf. Prange, Lof der Méditerranée. 37

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Joke, Cunning, and Revenge, thus, as prelude to The Gay Science is more than a random bunch of funny nursery rhymes with which the gay scientist makes his or her gay entrée, and the public meets the frivolity and skepticism as cornerstones of the gay scientist’s world. Seen in relation to Goethe’s libretto, much can be said for the musicality of this gay scientist and their Italian character, or also their “health.” Nietzsche’s Joke, Cunning, and Revenge is not an attempt to create German verses or to create Italian music for its own sake. Rather, it plays with the idea of creating a libretto to infuse the German Singspiel with the Italian style. By connecting different artistic forms, Nietzsche seeks to carry out his and German culture’s “deGermanization” and “Mediterranization.” Goethe did so with the explicit intention to integrate cultures too, both in his West-östlicher Divan (1819/1827), with which he tried to join Persia and Europe by bringing the Eastern soul to life in the Oriental poetical tradition of “Divan” (“compilation”) through a European language. Subsequently, when we relate the above to Wagner’s musical and cultural objectives, it makes even more sense. Whereas Wagner primarily regarded himself as the heir of Beethoven’s symphonic legacy, Nietzsche put more emphasis on Wagner as the successor to Goethe’s and Schiller’s legacy to reform the German theatre.42 When Nietzsche attended the Bayreuth festival in the summer of 1876, it not only became clear to him that Wagner was not truly ‘Greek’, but also that Wagner would not accomplish the artistic reformation ushered in by Goethe and Schiller. Goethe and Schiller can justifiably be regarded as Wagner’s forerunners, not only because of their project to create a national theatre, but also because of the way they had chosen to achieve this, namely by creating operas, which could compete with Italian and French opera in artistic and cultural value. This legacy was still there to be taken up by someone else, and Nietzsche, so it seems, toyed with the idea of taking up this legacy himself together with Peter Gast. In the early seventies, Nietzsche did not really care for Goethe’s interest in music. This is understandable given his critique of Italian opera at that time. Ten years later, however, Nietzsche considered Goethe as the only German before him who had understood the importance of an intercultural and immoral aesthetics. Only Goethe had not mixed aesthetics and morality, Nietzsche believed. It is under the umbrella of the “aestheticization” of the perception of life and of culture that Goethe and Nietzsche practiced “dynamic interculturalism;” their interest in Italian music was one means to do so. Aphorism GS § 103 is perhaps the pinnacle of Nietzsche’s musical 42

Cf. Prange, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe.

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turn from Wagnerism to anti-Wagnerism, from “German” to “southern” music.43 There he asserts that German music is the product of a revolutionary spirit, and that it misses the “esprit” and “elegance” of a courtly society (like the ones of the troubadours), and attests to a “contempt for melody.” He summarizes this in opposing Beethoven, who to him, in GS §103, symbolizes Germany’s “semi-barbarism” (“Halbbarbarei,”) and is called “the untamed human being” (“der ungebändigte Mensch”) against Goethe, the symbol of “culture” and “exception among Germans” (“der Ausnahme-Deutsche”).44 This opposition can be understood as confirmation and representation of the antagonism between Wagner, whose great example was Beethoven, and Nietzsche, who had replaced his model of the ideal artist and cultural savior Wagner with Goethe. By means of opposing Goethe and Beethoven, Nietzsche then confirms his veneration of Goethe as a searcher for and guardian of “totality,” which refers to the totality of artistic means, the totality of the senses and human faculties more generally, and the totality of cultures. To conclude: it is not sure what the exact status of Nietzsche’s Joke, Cunning and Revenge is. But by starting The Gay Science, the book in which the philosopher erects the ‘definite’ picture of the Freigeist, with this homage to Goethe as a composer of librettos in Italian buffa style, he not only points out the importance of lightheartedness for his new philosophy, but also to the importance of interculturalism or ‘Good Europeanism,’ aliveness, and, to experience life, the utilizations of all senses. This was not new: his early musical aesthetics had also focused on the identification of the Ancient Greek and contemporary German style of music drama, the appeal to all senses, and the experience of (Dionysian) vitality. Joke, Cunning, and Revenge, however, underlines how far Nietzsche had stepped away from Wagner, despite keeping to this vitalist and intercultural ideal. While Tristan and Isolde used to be the exemplary music drama at the time of The Birth of Tragedy, the opera buffa style and light comedy of Carmen became Nietzsche’s new example—for music and life. Interestingly, Nietzsche had rejected Italian opera in The Birth of Tragedy adamantly. Without any reference to his former rejection, he made a surprising “Italian” turn, which, I believe, was not merely to annoy or oppose Wagner, but was the result of a personal life that needed upliftment from severe health problems, from the “spirit of heaviness,” the “Geist der Schwere,” a dark 43

GS §103 (100-101/ KSA 3, 459-460). Cf. BGE §46, where he opposes the “northern barbarian of the spirit” to the “skeptical, southern, free-spirited world” (44/ KSA 5, 66). Cf. GS §350 (208/ KSA 3, 586).

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and heavy life of sickness that was in desperate need of light, lightness, and health. Living in Italy, Nietzsche experienced how the southern atmosphere alleviated his own depression, migraines, hopelessness, and isolation—or at least he experienced new hope. In addition, Nietzsche had given up on ‘metaphysical depth’ as the touchstone of good music. In its stead had come his appreciation of the surface and concrete reality, as famously voiced in GS Preface 4: No, if we convalescents still need art, it is another kind of art—a mocking, light, fleeting, divinely untroubled, divinely artificial art that, like a bright flame, blazes into an unclouded sky! Above all, an art for artists, only for artists! In addition we will know better what is first and foremost needed for that: cheerfulness—any cheerfulness, my friends! (GS Preface 4, pp. 7-8) [Nein, wenn wir Genesenden überhaupt eine Kunst noch brauchen, so ist es eine andre Kunst—eine spöttische, leichte, flüchtige, göttlich unbehelligte, göttlich künstliche Kunst, welche wie eine helle Flamme in einen unbewölkten Himmel hineinlodert! Vor Allem: eine Kunst für Künstler, nur für Künstler! Wir verstehn uns hinterdrein besser auf Das, was dazu erst noth thut, die Heiterkeit, jede Heiterkeit, meine Freunde! KSA 3, 351]

Indeed, the cheerfulness of opera buffa, the cheerfulness of Joke, Cunning, and Revenge, the Singspiel and Vorspiel then follows.

Bibliography Borchmeyer, Dieter. “‘Eine Art Symbolik fürs Ohr.’ Goethes Musikästhetik,” in: Walter Hinderer (ed.), Goethe und das Zeitalter der Romantik. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2002, 413-446. Bötcher, Elmar. Goethes Singspiele “Erwin und Elmire” und “Claudine von Villa Bella” und die “opera buffa”. Marburg: Frantzen, 1911. Colvin, Sarah. “Musical Culture and Thought,” in: Barbara BeckerCantarino (ed.), German Literature of the Eighteenth Century. The Enlightenment and Sensibility. New York: Camden House, 2005, 185220. Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich. „Die Musik und Goethe,“ in Goethe im Gegenlicht: Kunst, Musik, Religion, Philosophie, Natur, Politik, edited by Dieter Borchmeyer. Heidelberg: Palatina, 2000, 35-58. Gilman, Sander L. “‘Incipit Parodia’: The Function of Parody in the Lyrical Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche,” Nietzsche-Studien 4, 1975, 52-74. Gilman, Sander L. Nietzschean Parody. An Introduction to Reading Nietzsche. Bonn: Bouvier, 1976.

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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe [HA] in 14 vols. Ed. Erich Trunz. Munich: Beck, 1994 [12. Rev. ed.]. Goethe Johann Wolfgang von. Berliner Ausgabe [BA] in 22 Vols. Band 16: Autobiographische Schriften. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1960ff. Higgins. Kathleen Marie. Comic Relief. Nietzsche’s Gay Science. New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Küpper, Dietlinde. Goethes Verhältnis zur Musik. Nichts kapiert and alles verstanden. 2nd edition. Hamburg: tradition. 2019. Langer, Monika M. Nietzsche’s Gay Science. Dancing Coherence. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. Love, Frederick R. Nietzsche’s Saint Peter. Genesis and Cultivation of an Illusion. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981. Prange, Martine. Lof der Méditerranée. Nietzsches vrolijke wetenschap tussen noord en zuid. Kampen: Klement, 2005. Prange, Martine. ‘“Im Süden”: Nietzsche, Goethe, and Italy”, in: Interculture 3 (2006), 1-27. Prange, Martine. ‘“Méditeraniser”: The Flight from North to South. A Reading of Nietzsche’s Poems “Prince Vogelfrei” and “In the South”’, The Agonist IV-I (Spring 2011), 57-63. Prange, Martine. Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2013. Walwei-Wiegelmann, Hedwig. Goethes Gedanken über Musik (eine Sammlung aus seinen Werken, Briefen, Gesprächen und Tagebücher). Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1985.

CHAPTER 5 TAKING A HAMMER TO HISTORY: THE WAGNERIAN LEITMOTIF AND NIETZSCHE AS PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL DANIEL H. FOSTER

Introduction Friedrich Nietzsche knew just how much scholars love to construct monuments to insignificance. In The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life he echoes Goethe’s hostility toward the accumulation of such anthills of detail, declaring war against “anything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.”1 Brave words for a classical philologist. About a century later, halfway round the world, and down a rung or two on the socioeconomic ladder, as a working-class American kid pursuing a liberal arts degree, I often heard something similar. Whenever I made the two-day bus journey back home, I met with similarly skeptical sentiments about the usefulness of classes in classics and philosophy. Albeit not backed by the epigrammatic wit of a world-striding genius like Goethe, yet the sheer number of voices surrounding me—parents, siblings, childhood friends, and co-workers on the line at the book factory where I had my summer job— did create a formidable echo chamber of “What are you gonna do with that?” Now the chair of a liberal arts department in a music and dance conservatory, I still hear variations on the same old theme. But this time it 1

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, trans. R. J. Hollingdale and ed. Daniel Breazeale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 59.

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comes from my students, whose accusations of irrelevance recently led me to create a class that attempted to answer their question with a question: a class I called (aptly I thought) “Why Study the Liberal Arts?” And lately it seems that not just suspicious students and doubting members of the working classes have been asking academics to justify the usefulness of their knowledge. The public, politicians, and even universities themselves have become insistent that liberal knowledge serve a purpose beyond itself. And the loudest of these demands seems to be directed at academics in the arts and humanities, people whose work is not immediately useful to computing, commerce, or STEM. So, what can we do? How can we usefully square the seemingly aimless circle of knowledge? One solution to this challenge that more and more academics are embracing or rather clinging to, in what has become a perfect storm of technological innovation and economic stagnation, is that of the public scholar or public intellectual. Such a title could very easily be applied to Nietzsche. True, in his own lifetime, Nietzsche did not have much of a public following or a pulpit from which to preach. But he did step away from his strictly academic career to take a more direct route to the public. And given the enormous ways in which his words have been used to shape so much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I think Nietzsche at least deserves the title of postmortem public intellectual. One might even make the case that, over the last hundred and twenty years, the publication and subsequent popularization of his ideas have been some of the most influential intellectual forces on art, culture, politics, the course of history, and, as this volume seeks to demonstrate, music. It seems that Nietzsche commented upon and has influenced public opinion on almost every important (and trivial) topic you can think of. From what we put into our bodies—caffeine, alcohol, a vegetarian diet—to what we do with them—sex, sleep, exercise. From the most important issues of his day and ours—race, gender, national identity— to the most essential people in our lives—lovers, friends, enemies. He spoke confidently about religion, politics, economics, and even the weather, while passing aesthetic judgments on music, literature, and the visual arts. From the minuscule to the monumental and the sacred to the profane, Nietzsche had opinions about almost everything and everyone, and he was not afraid to put them out there in the public sphere.

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So where did this classical philologist from Leipzig University find and learn to use such a loud, confident, and persuasive public voice? And more importantly, at least to my mind, which still ricochets with potshots taken at my education and my profession, how can his rhetoric, his unique way of formulating his thoughts provide us with some kind of paradigm for using academic scholarship to benefit “life and action”? One way to begin to answer these questions is by beginning with those who influenced Nietzsche. Which is itself something of an enormous chore, given the fact that Nietzsche was a master rhetorician who learned from the greatest public intellectuals of all time. Plato, Cicero, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and many, many more pens all left deep grooves in Nietzsche’s thought and style. So much so that this essay could easily be renamed “Nietzsche and Public Intellectual X,” where X could almost arbitrarily be chosen from a list of Western thought’s most influential pretwentieth-century thinkers. In other words—some of them Nietzsche’s own—there is a kind of “invisible bridge from genius to genius” that reaches across space and time that relays knowledge and conveys companionship during our long, dark nights of the soul.2 There was, however, one extraordinary bridge and bond that Nietzsche valued perhaps more than any other: his intense friendship with the composer Richard Wagner and his deep respect for Wagner’s second wife, Cosima von Bülow, whom Nietzsche recognized in Ecce Homo as “by far the first voice in matters of taste that I have ever heard.”3 It was not only Wagner’s way of putting scholarship and knowledge to work in his prose works that Nietzsche emulated (and later renounced). A more lasting and pervasive influence on Nietzsche was Wagner’s mythopoetic and musical techniques. Specifically, the way he broke down and then recombined both primary and secondary sources in the creation of his librettos as well as musical material in the creation of his musical scores. No doubt, Nietzsche also learned this technique and honed it through his practice and imitation of many other writers. But Wagner and Cosima lavishly flattered the young Nietzsche when he began to show signs of adapting this technique in his own early, public-facing works. And it is this structural technique that Nietzsche ultimately chose to articulate some of his most wide-reaching, memorable, and popular concepts, concepts like “the Apollonian and the 2

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, trans. Greg Whitlock (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 3. 3 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 246.

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Dionysian,” “the artistic Socrates,” “the will to power,” and “the Übermensch.” Although he famously broke from Wagner in so many other significant ways, Nietzsche never seemed to abandon the ideal of breaking down and compressing his thoughts and ideas into expressively concise words, phrases, and split-second concepts that he repeated and developed over the course of a single work and sometimes over the course of his entire career. Under Wagner and Cosima’s approving gaze, Nietzsche took the leitmotif technique and raised it to the level of a literary art fit for the public expression of academically challenging and complex ideas.

Smithing to smithereens Richard Wagner was a confirmed Grecophile. But he was different from neoclassical artists like Goethe or Schiller, artists who adapted whole characters and stories from the past for contemporary audiences. Although not a trained academic like Nietzsche, Wagner was nevertheless an avid student of both ancient authors and modern scholars. And this interest in academic subjects bore great artistic fruit for the German composer. Some of his most important works, such as his librettos for the enormously popular Ring cycle, are not only inspired by ancient Greek authors but informed by scholars of ancient Greek. In his attitude toward scholarship and knowledge, this reformer of opera could perhaps best be compared to members of the Florentine Camerata, the amateur musicians and literati credited as the creators of opera in the late sixteenth century. In large part it was scholarship on Greek tragedy and music by thinkers like Girolamo Mei and Vincenzo Galilei that made the creation of opera possible. Similarly, Wagner’s “rebirth” of opera, also out of Greek tragedy, was helped along by classical scholars he knew personally, such as Johann August Apel, Karl Ottfried Müller, Theodor Mommsen, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as those whom he knew by reading or by reputation, like Johann Gustav Droysen, Edward Gibbon, and Karl Ottfried Müller.4 In his use of the ancient world as inspiration for his operatic reform, Wagner did not simply take characters, myths, and messages out of the past and replant them in the present. He resisted the 4

In this section I will be resorting to the somewhat self-serving habit of selfreferencing my own book on Wagner and the Greeks. For the most complete list of those classical Roman and Greek authors and scholars that we can prove Wagner was in some way aware of, see Appendices A, B, and C of Daniel Foster, Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 26794.

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urge to dress so many Orpheuses and Apollos in Neoclassical robes. Instead, he tried to pay close attention to scholarly detail and historical context, the very thing that those who seek a more universal meaning to the ancients often sheer off in order to make the square peg of the past fit into the round hole of the present. In his use of this more historically contextualized kind of Hellenization, Wagner was probably influenced early on by his uncle, Adolf Wagner. Something of a classicist manqué, Uncle Adolf avoided the more idealistic approach to the ancients that was then popular, an approach he mocked as “Grecifying” and “Grecomania.”5 Following his uncle’s more realistic and scholarly lead, Wagner argued that once you removed ancient art from its ancient context you lost what was truly splendid about it, its strange and wonderful pagan otherness. He recognized that not only are many ancient Greek place names, gods, and heroes alien to us, but their oftentimes bizarre customs, rituals, and values seem to clash with our image of the be-robed and beard-stroking philosophizer stereotypically associated with the fountainhead of Western civilization. As Wagner realized, neo-classical plays merely based on Greek myths and imitating Greek forms could not have the same kind of effect on modern audiences as they had on ancient ones. For, “removed from its time and surroundings, that product is robbed of the weightiest part of its effect.”6 Content best vitalizes form from within, not without.7 And so, thus steeped in classical scholarship, Wagner’s operas do not Germanize Hellenic myth so much as they Hellenize Germanic myth. To sum up (and resort to the somewhat dubious practice of self-paraphrase): it was Richard Strauss, not Richard Wagner, who composed Elektra.8 So how did Wagner make use of those minuscule details that scholars are so fond of? How did he create public-facing art out of academic factoids? As a metaphor for how he used scholarly knowledge from the past to benefit the public of the present, in Siegfried Wagner stages a scene in a forge where the opera’s eponymous hero, Siegfried, goes about mending the two pieces of Nothung, his father’s broken sword. This scene is significant 5

Wolfgang Schadewaldt, “Richard Wagner and the Greeks,” trans. David C. Durst, Dialogos: Hellenic Studies Review 6 (1999), 111–12. See my longer discussion of this quote in Foster, Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks, 27-29. 6 Richard Wagner, “The Public in Time and Space,” in Religion and Art, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 88. 7 Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 141. 8 Foster, Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks, 28.

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as a metaphor for Wagner’s leitmotif technique in both its musical and mythopoetic forms and can be briefly summarized as, Step 1: Take a hammer to myth and music and bash them to bits. Step 2: Reform those bits into a new, unified whole. But this is only part of what makes this scene so useful for understanding how Wagner reforms the past. In this scene he is also very much invested in juxtaposing Siegfried’s technique against that of his foster-father, Mime. Mime’s method for recreating the past is simply to glue back together the big pieces of what was previously broken and thus represent the old as new. To model this method through his plans for reforging Nothung, Mime begins by brewing a kind of metal porridge that he then exhorts Siegfried to use to rejoin the two pieces of the sword. “Here, take the solder,” Mime advises Siegfried, claiming that he made this “paste some time ago” for just this purpose.9 Pointedly ignoring this advice, however, Siegfried smashes the two pieces of the sword into many tinier pieces and, while doing so, he tells Mime he is treating his advice in the same way that he’s treating the sword fragments: “I’ve turned your sharpedged pride to chaff, in the melting-pot I smelt the splinters.”10 Then, once the sword has been broken down into these smaller pieces, Siegfried heats them until they become molten. After pouring the liquified metal into a mold, he finally submerges the fiery mold in water to quench and solidify it. Invoking an ageless symbol for creativity—fire in water—Siegfried fashions Nothung into a hard, bitten edge that will eventually bring a new world into being by destroying the old. Through Siegfried, Wagner’s operatic avatar, the composer argues that we must reduce the past to a kind of atomic state first. Only after we have done that can we begin to cast the past anew, find a novel shape for it and thus a new use for it. For Wagner knowledge of the past is not something that we adopt wholesale. It is something that we must first reduce to smaller truths, facts, ideas, opinions, and evidence. Once we have broken down the past into these smaller bits of knowledge, only then can we begin to shape it into something that is of use to the contemporary world. And, significantly, by reducing past cultures to their smaller, component parts, one can then combine many different kinds of knowledge. As Mime notes, in Siegfried’s frenzied pulverization of Nothung even parts of the rasp itself are mixed with bits of the old sword’s metal and will therefore become part of the reforged form of the new sword.11 Less metaphorically speaking: even the 9

Millington and Spencer, Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, 222. Ibid. 11 Ibid., 221. 10

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tools of scholarship that we might use to understand the past can themselves become part of our new work. Indeed, by following this kind of method all kinds of bits and pieces of knowledge can be broken down and re-melded together when heated up in the forge of one’s mind. You can mix Greek and German, music and drama, myth and folktale, opera and tragedy, art and politics, high and low, old and new, and anything else that lies in between or outside of these normal boundaries. Turning from the libretto to the music, in Das Rheingold Wagner is perhaps most clearly invested in showing how we can also break down music into its smallest components and then build them back up again to convey some kind of “bigger” truth or story about the world. The prelude opens with almost impossibly low E-flats scored for eight double basses (see Fig. 5.1).12 Fig. 5.1

So low, in fact, are the lowest notes here that they exceed the normal tuning of the double bass. Wagner therefore calls for four of the eight basses to be retuned so they can plum these deeper sonic reaches. Because of their depth, as well as their somewhat novel placement in the hidden orchestra pit, these stringed nether rumblings seem to rise up out of nowhere in the beginning of the Ring. We may even feel them vibrating our skeletal frames before we are aware of hearing them in our ears. This odd sensation makes us feel that this is a moment of creatio ex nihilo. A sound is suddenly here that was not here a second ago: In the beginning was the bass. There is something both fundamental and creative about these initial Eflats. And no sooner have we noticed them than they seem to conjure up other notes and rhythms in other parts of the orchestra: B-flats in the bassoons followed by more E-flats, B-flats, and eventually Gs in the horns (see Fig. 5.2).13

12 13

Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1985), 1. Ibid.

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Fig. 5.2

It is at this point that commentators begin to label Wagner’s musical structures with extramusical monikers and they begin to represent these structures with more reduced transcriptions of the music. For example, this triadic structure in the horns is sometimes referred to as the “nature” motif (see Fig. 5.3).14 Fig. 5.3

These and other sounds begin to rise, form, break, fall, and reform into more and more complex leitmotifs. As other voices and instruments are added to the musical texture, newer and more complex leitmotifs emerge in the form of objects, such as the “ring” motif (see Fig. 5.4).15

14

Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold: Piano-vocal Score (New York: G. Schirmer, 1904), 1. 15 Ibid., 47-48

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Fig. 5.4

Eventually, we even get leitmotifs that seem to represent complex ethical ideas such as the “corrupted power” motif (see Fig. 5.5).16 Fig. 5.5

And through transitional variations on previously stated leitmotifs, new motifs are formed. For example, through a variation on the “corrupted power” motif (see Fig. 5.6)17 Fig. 5.6

we arrive at another motif for an object, this time the “Valhalla” motif (see Fig. 5.7).18

16

Ibid., 41-42. Ibid., 54. 18 Ibid., 55. 17

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Fig. 5.7

Through this largely musical means of linking together various leitmotifs, Wagner makes an ethically complex point. Since the “Valhalla” motif is based in part on the so-called “corrupted power” motif, then Valhalla itself, as regal as it may sound, is nonetheless based on a corrupt use of power. And so, having first broken music down into what feels like one of its most basic atomic elements—mere vibration—Wagner then slowly recreates and reassembles the world, bit by sonic bit, to begin the story of the Ring. Of course, we then have to interpret that story. Wagner has done only half the work. We have to do the other half.19

Volcanically enriched scholarship Like Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche was profoundly invested in using the ancient Greek world to make sense of the modern one.20 But in doing so, he also sought to remain true to his scholarly calling as a classical philologist. So, when representing the Greeks to the public, he avoided painting them with too broad a brushstroke and making them conform to what he called the “soft concept of modern ‘humanity.’”21 As Nietzsche saw it, in the recent past those classical scholars and philologists who could provide a more robust and precise picture of the ancient Greeks were too often anathematized by the very people with whom they should have been allied. Artists like Goethe, Schiller, and other such “friends of antiquity, the warm 19 And then we might also ask ourselves whether we believe that story and whether we think it is worth retelling to others or living by ourselves. For what it’s worth, while I think one can interpret Wagner’s musical stories in many ways, I find most of these interpretations tainted with racism and xenophobia. 20 For an excellent discussion of Nietzsche’s lifelong interest in antiquity, see James I. Porter, “Nietzsche’s Untimely Antiquity,” in The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Tom Stern (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 49-71. 21 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Homer’s Contest,” in Prefaces to Unwritten Works, trans. and ed. Michael W. Grenke (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2005), 81.

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supporters of Hellenic beauty and noble simplicity” believed classical scholars to be “the real opponents and destroyers of the ideals of antiquity.”22 Contrary to this opinion, Nietzsche believed that academics could take a more productive role in shaping society if they could somehow bring the “ideal antiquity” of Goethe and Schiller’s followers, a mere “Teutonic longing for the south,” closer to the “real antiquity” that scholars could help provide.23 Meeting his hero and father-figure, Richard Wagner, in 1868 at the beginning of his career, Nietzsche welcomed the advice and guidance of one of Germany’s most well-known and influential artists.24 One of the most important ways in which Wagner influenced Nietzsche was his writing style. Those familiar with The Birth of Tragedy know that Nietzsche did publicly acknowledge and simultaneously regret how Wagner’s prose style from his theoretical works had influenced him at this stage of his career. In his “Attempt at Self-Criticism,” included in the republication of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche bemoans this influence and is embarrassed by the second half of Birth, where the most egregious imitations occur.25 But that turgid, long-winded, and Romantically bloated style is essentially the opposite of the formal urge that had a truly lasting influence on Nietzsche: the urge to compress and convey ideas in as concise a manner as possible, to reduce knowledge to smaller components and then rebuild these components into something newer, more artistic, and farther reaching. While Nietzsche does not exactly repeat Wagner’s forging metaphor to articulate how he intends to make good use of his scholarly knowledge to spur on life and change, he does use an image that parallels Wagner’s in several significant ways. Underscoring his debt to Wagner, he adopts an apocalyptic metaphor that seems to have been inspired by the plot of Wagner’s own Götterdämmerung. To explain how he would put to use his own vast, scholarly knowledge of the past, in his lecture, “Homer and Classical Philology” (1869), Nietzsche tells us that “the heap of ashes formerly pointed to as classical philology is now turned into fruitful and 22

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Homer and Classical Philology,” in Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 3, trans. J. M. Kennedy, ed. Oscar Levy (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 149. 23 Ibid. 24 Mark Berry, “Nietzsche and Wagner,” The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Tom Stern (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 103-4. 25 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Press, 1967), 4 and 25.

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even rich soil,” a kind of nutrient-filled volcanic earth in which to nourish future cultural growth.26 For Nietzsche as for Wagner, all sources of knowledge—primary texts, secondary texts, dry scholarship, fanciful hypotheses—everything can become nutrients for enriching culture. But to be of use, these sources must first be put to the torch and reduced to smaller pieces. With this method Nietzsche implies a kind of conservation of meaning. Ideas and facts may be changed and transformed, but not lost or forgotten. Then, once they have been broken down into smaller elements, this knowledge can be mixed with other elements and finally transformed into something useful. For Nietzsche, this analogy not only aptly describes his later literary technique of constructing philosophical treatises out of epigrams, maxims, gnome, paradoxes, and witticisms, the sort of brilliant aphoristic lightning strikes that briefly electrify the dark landscape of his mind. This analogy works equally well for the sort of leitmotivic constructions that gave shape to his thinking even in his earlier writings.27 For example, take the leitmotifs of the Dionysian and the Apollonian in his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy. At their most basic level, these notions are first introduced to the reader as being something like the male and female genders, with all the perpetual conflict and occasional congress that this binary implies. Nietzsche then moves on to talk about the way these two iconic forces can be found in our very physiology: intoxication for the boundary-crossing Dionysus and dreams for Apollo, that lover of appearances.28 By introducing his aesthetic theory about the origins of tragedy through these fundamental ideas of man versus woman and the dream state versus a drunken state, Nietzsche makes an immediate, indelible, and ingenuous impression on his readers. Then, from these very simple and

26

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Homer and Classical Philology,” in Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 3, trans. J. M. Kennedy, ed. Oscar Levy (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 149. 27 Interestingly, as Roger Scrutton, notes, Nietzsche’s own musical compositions were also formally indebted to brevity and concision, the impulse to miniaturism: “Nietzsche was at best what he so unjustly and outrageously accused Wagner of being (CW, 171) – a miniaturist, whose short-breathed successes are inspired by solitary and lachrymose emotions that could not be pursued at greater length without morbidity.” https://www.roger-scruton.com/homepage/about/music/understanding-music/181nietzsche-on-wagner 28 Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, 33.

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almost universal associations, he goes on to develop, complicate, intertwine, and engender newer and more complex ideas so that, every time we read something related to these original motifs, we hear echoes of meaning from past iterations and whispers of things to come. And while many scholars have coherently and cogently deconstructed Nietzsche’s argument and shown other more scholarly, less fanciful origins for tragedy, these motifs and thus Nietzsche’s theory persist in the imaginations of both the public and the academy as one of the most fruitful ways to approach and appreciate tragedy. In a letter to the young philologist on February 4, 1870, Wagner recognizes in Nietzsche’s writing and variously labels this stylistic feature as “concise,” “sharp,” and “categorical” in his analysis of Nietzsche’s lecture, Socrates and Tragedy (1870).29 Wagner was particularly taken with Nietzsche’s argument that the decline of tragedy began with Socrates and maybe even as early as Aeschylus. But before he praises the young Nietzsche, he begins by registering a half complaint about the way that Nietzsche modernizes the Greeks, comparing him unfavorably to another distinguished classist, Theodor Mommsen, whom Wagner was also familiar with. However, what begins as criticism soon becomes praise, perhaps because Wagner begins to recognize in Nietzsche’s prose style reflections of his own stylistic approach to myth and music. Thus, Wagner draws attention to the “brief and categorical terms” in which Nietzsche conveys his ideas.30 Then, in her own letter to Nietzsche, Cosima takes up and expands upon this theme of Nietzsche’s concision. Apparently, Wagner had also introduced Nietzsche’s lecture to Cosima, reading it aloud to her, as was his habit, and expounding upon its merits and meaning. Sufficiently excited by the work herself, it seems that Cosima read and reread the piece. In her own letter to Nietzsche, she further remarks upon the compression with which Nietzsche expresses his ideas. She in fact admits to being more taken by the concise formal structures through which he expresses himself than by the work’s content or mere style: “I was not so much excited by what you said and your manner of saying it, as by the succinct form in which you were obliged to present the deepest and most far-reaching problems.”31 29 Richard Wagner, Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1987), 771. 30 Ibid. 31 Elisabeth Förester-Nietzsche, The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence, trans. Caroline V. Kerr, intro. H. L. Mencken (London: Duckworth & Co., 1922), 38.

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Recognizing one of the intrinsic values of the leitmotivic mode of expression, Cosima remarks that such a rhetorical device encourages a partnership between reader and text in the production of meaning. As she further observes to Nietzsche, this type of rhetoric “demands of your listeners that they become active collaborators, and thereby an exciting situation is created.”32 Finally, for Cosima this rhetoric also has the effect of somehow bringing down the lofty ideals of the ancient Greeks, making them more approachable and human-sized without reducing their significance: “These remote geniuses whom I had always approached with reverential awe, and to whose voices I had listened as to those of prophets and high priests, suddenly became individualized and the mighty portent of Greek art passed before me in its lofty tragedy.”33 In other words, for all their approachability, Nietzsche’s Greeks were still amazing, or maybe even more amazing than before. Through their encouragement, Richard and Cosima Wagner emboldened Nietzsche to transform a musical and mythopoetic technique into a technique fit for expressing poetic, philosophical, and public-facing truths.34 Like Homeric epic, Nietzsche uses the leitmotif to monumentalize the miniature.35 He builds his literary edifices out of tiny fragmented facts, thoughts, observations, and poetic symbols repeated and developed into larger stories, colossal with meaning about the human condition, ranging from the day-to-day drudge of petty habit to the heroic thoughts and actions of singular beings and national empires.

32

Ibid. Ibid. 34 Again, Scruton beautifully sums up Nietzsche’s desire to sublimate literature into music: “His prose was an attempt to convey the wordless truths, the primeval needs and hopes, that find their true voice in music.” 35 Some critics of Wagner like to think of him as monumental. Thomas Mann observed, “Wagner’s art is a case of dilettantism that has been monumentalized by a supreme effort of the will and intelligence – dilettantism raised to the level of genius.” (Thomas Mann, “The Sorrows and Grandeur of Richard Wagner,” in Pro and Contra Wagner, trans. Allan Blunden (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 103). On the other hand, Nietzsche considered him a virtuoso of the tiny, “our greatest miniaturist in music who crowds into the smallest space an infinity of sense and sweetness.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), 171). But I think the fairest understanding of Wagner credits him as both miniature and monumental. And the same goes for Nietzsche. 33

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A contemporary attempt If we have in fact uncovered something interesting about Nietzsche’s rhetorical strategy here, is there a way that we can use this strategy to meet Goethe’s challenge (and that of my hometown, my students, and my university) to put scholarship to good use? Can we make a tool of Nietzsche’s Wagnerian method for reducing the past to bits and then reforming those bits into a greater whole for the greater good? Given Nietzsche and Wagner’s love of the ancient Greek world, perhaps Greek tragedy may prove as good a place as any to begin trying to put these ideas to some use beyond an academic one. By way of demonstration, let’s turn to a particular Greek tragedy that deeply influenced both the thinking and the aesthetics of Wagner and Nietzsche: Aeschylus’ Oresteia. What follows here is one of the most beautiful, troubling, philosophical, and instructive scenes in all of Aeschylus’ works: the scene in Agamemnon where the titular hero and leader of the Greek juggernaut against the Trojans decides to sacrifice his own daughter, Iphigenia, so that the Greek fleet, now plague-ridden and becalmed at Aulis, can sail on to Troy.36 Years later, partly as a response to this decision to kill their daughter, when Agamemnon finally comes home from the Trojan War his wife, Clytemnestra, murders him. On first impression, most people believe Agamemnon is a monster and his murder a justified homicide, especially after they hear the way that Agamemnon arrives at the decision to sacrifice his daughter. Although not eyewitnesses to the scene of this fatal decision, a chorus of old men narrate the story that leads up to this moment. They begin by putting words in the mouth of Agamemnon as he contemplates the decision of whether or not to sacrifice his daughter: “Heavy indeed my fate if I disobey but heavy, too, if I must butcher my child, the glory of my house, polluting a father’s hands with streams of a virgin’s blood beside the altar. Which of these things is without evil? How shall I become a deserter of my fleet and fail my allies?

36

Wagner enduring fascination with this scene lasted till the day he died, when he spoke once more of the various motifs that interested him (Cosima Wagner, Cosima Wagner’s Diaries 1869–1883: Complete Edition in Two Volumes, trans. Geoffrey Skelton, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), vol. 2, 1010). He is very interested in the interweaving of motifs here (C. Wagner, Cosima’s Diaries, vol. 2, 402–3).

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There is sacred law on their side, that they passionately covet a virgin’s blood as sacrifice to quell the winds. May it turn out well.” When he put on the harness of Necessity, his spirit veered in a breath of change— to impiety, to unholiness, to desecration, and from it he drew audacity for his heart to stop at nothing.37

To make sense of this situation and to find its relevance to today’s world, when asked to interpret Agamemnon’s decision, my university students often tend to ape the sorts of things they’ve heard in overly general introductions to and popularizations of Greek tragedy. They tend to say things like “Agamemnon’s tragic flaw is his hubris, his pride that he is somehow above the laws of mortals, that he is equal to the gods. And it is this sin that causes him to kill his daughter. Just like today’s politicians, he is drunk with power and pride, putting work and fame before love and family. Clytemnestra, therefore, a mother enraged with loss, is justified in killing her husband, the murderer of her daughter.” While this assessment of the situation is not exactly wrong, it does miss a lot of subtleties and details that scholarship and close reading can bring to bear on this moment. In other words, in an attempt to say something big and important that connects our world to the ancient Greek world, students and bad popularizers of the past tend to over-generalize. Returning to Wagner’s smithing metaphor for how not to use knowledge and the relics of history: like Mime, all too often we take big chunks of the past—hubris, the gods, tragic flaws—and solder them together with weak ideas that won’t hold— sin, fame, politics. But by following Siegfried’s example (and therefore Nietzsche and Wagner), let me try to show how we can break these big pieces into smaller ones, melt them down, and then reshape them into something that is composed of the past but forged for the present. Let’s begin with the moment that Agamemnon decides to sacrifice his daughter. The chorus tell us that “he put on the harness of necessity.” Now this is a very strange, very Greek moment, so let’s pause here a minute. Some translators mistranslate this line as “the harness of necessity was put on him.” And this mistake is very easy to make, since we usually understand fate or necessity as something that is laid upon us, not something we decide 37 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, trans. David Grene and Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), ll. 210-24.

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to lay upon ourselves. Confronted with this paradox, we are tempted to opt for the logic of meaning over the logic of grammar. For, if we decide of our own will to do something, then that is surely an example of our free choice, not necessity. If so, then how is it possible for Agamemnon to choose to do what he is fated to do? And yet, the verb here, ਩įȣ, is in the active voice.38 So it must be translated as “he put on the harness of necessity.” And that, as I say, is a very Greek paradox. To begin to understand this paradox, we can turn to Heraclitus, yet another important influence on Nietzsche’s rhetoric and thought. Heraclitus had a wonderfully brief epigram that sums up this conundrum with fearful symmetry and compression: “Character, for a human, is fate.” To better appreciate the beautiful, paradoxical symmetry of this epigram, it is best seen in Greek, even if you can’t read Greek: ȒșȠȢ ਙȞșȡȫʌȦ įĮȓȝȦȞ. Transliterated, this reads: ethos anthropo daimon. Once again, a quick grammar lesson can help us make the most of these words. Because ancient Greek words are bound together more by their morphological endings than by their place in a sentence, Greek word order is extremely flexible. In this maxim, therefore, Heraclitus can put character (ethos) at one end of his sentence and fate (daimon) at the other, with human (anthropo) in the middle. Add to that the fact that the verb “to be” can be implied in ancient Greek sentences where there are no verbs, and so we have a wonderfully spare and balanced seesaw between character on the one hand and fate on the other, with humanity caught in the middle as the fulcrum. In this way the visual layout of the sentence underscores its claim that human beings exist somewhere between character and fate, decision and necessity, activity and passivity.39

38

To better understand this line, we might call on Nietzsche the classical philologist, who could explain to us how an understanding of certain, seemingly small and pedantic facts about ancient Greek grammar may begin to help us comprehend this paradox. Interestingly, although this verb is in the active voice, the paradox of choosing necessity demonstrates a concept that the Greeks also enshrined in their grammar. Ancient Greek verbs not only have an active (e.g., “I put it down”) and a passive (e.g., “It was put down”) voice. They also have a middle voice (e.g., “I put myself down”). 39 I am deeply indebted here and elsewhere to the work of Jean-Pierre Vernant. See his brilliant reading of the Heraclitean dictum in “Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy” in Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (eds.), Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1990), 3238.

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Turning back to Agamemnon and his decision to put on the harness of necessity, we might now have a clearer understanding of what this phrase means. Or at least we should have a better understanding of what is at stake in this paradox even if we haven’t solved it. Essentially, this line means that Agamemnon decided to do what he had to do.40 And since we live in his future, we believe we know, with perfect hindsight, that Agamemnon decided to kill his daughter. That half of the paradox is not too hard to understand. It’s the other half, the idea that Agamemnon actually wanted to kill his daughter, that’s harder to understand. But a closer, more scholarly reading of the little details, the historical context, and Aeschylus’ specific word choices in this passage should remove any lingering doubts as to the motivations behind Agamemnon’s unholy desire for his daughter’s blood. First, let’s look at the heroic restraint Agamemnon displays in this passage when confronted with the notion of deserting his allies. This part of his speech is not merely the external expression of a character’s inner turmoil. It is also a set piece, a dramatic soliloquy that directly addresses its audience of Athenian men and plays upon their loyalties and prejudices. Historically we know that the men who were watching Aeschylus’ Agamemnon had either served in or suffered loss from one of the greatest naval victories in the Persian Wars: The Battle of Salamis. At Salamis the Athenian naval fleet almost single-handedly saved the entire Greek world from defeat at the hands of the Persians. Indeed, Aeschylus himself was a veteran of the battle. And so, by invoking the memory of this battle’s honored veterans, its proudly bereft fathers, its nobly orphaned sons and grandsons, we are to understand that Agamemnon is tilting the scales in favor of sacrificing his daughter. In other words, when Agamemnon contemplates whether he can “become a deserter of [his] fleet and fail [his] allies,” that is, the entire Greek world, this is something of a rhetorical question, a strawman argument. And though it may not be a foregone conclusion that he will therefore decide to kill his daughter, the thought of deserting his Greek allies at the hour of their need is nearly unthinkable to Agamemnon’s audience of Athenian heroes.41 40

C.f., “Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy” in Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (eds.), Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1990), 71-72. 41 As David Raeburn and Oliver Thomas point out, “ship deserter” was a legal term in ancient Athens and the desertion of his ships, which would mean the loss of his allies, would also entail the breaking of oaths and the loss of “aristocratic prestige.” None of this would be taken lightly by Aeschylus’ Athenian audience. David

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However, as we have already noted, while this argument might account for Agamemnon’s reluctance to desert his allies, it does not necessarily follow that he is therefore ready and willing to sacrifice his daughter for the sake of a foreign war. But once he commits himself to making a decision, something does seem to snap inside Agamemnon’s head. He becomes unhinged. This is not the picture of a Stoic war hero making a noble sacrifice: When he put on the harness of Necessity, his spirit veered in a breath of change— to impiety, to unholiness, to desecration, and from it he drew audacity for his heart to stop at nothing.42

Following and underscoring this transformation, the repetitive, sexually charged language that is then used to describe the impending sacrifice of Iphigenia strongly hints at what sort of “impiety,” “unholiness,” and “desecration” now lures Agamemnon to the sacrificial altar: a depraved concoction of bloodlust, rape, and incest. The repetition of the chilling chorus, “a virgin’s blood,” and the notion that the sailors surrounding Agamemnon and his daughter “passionately covet” this virgin’s blood darkly foreshadow what Agamemnon and, by proxy, his Athenian audience truly want here. For, once again, it is important to remember that Agamemnon looks at and lusts after the “virgin blood” of his daughter not just with his own eyes but with the double curve of thousands upon thousands of voyeuristic sailors. It is not Agamemnon alone who eyes his young daughter, nor even the mythic heroes of the Trojan War. It is also an audience of Athenian men imagining this scene of virginal sacrifice. Simultaneous feelings of horror and fascination draw this double curve of leering men to lean in around the altar and the stage as Agamemnon imagines his daughter’s innocent blood streaming down and staining his father’s hands. Adding to the sexual dimension of this scene is the mythic context alluded to by the color of Iphigenia’s robe: saffron, a traditional color for ancient Greek wedding robes. These saffron robes remind us of yet another part of this myth, namely, that Clytemnestra was tricked into allowing her daughter to come to Aulis under the delusion that she would be marrying her off to the greatest Raeburn and Oliver Thomas, The Agamemnon of Aeschylus: A Commentary for Students (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 91. 42 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, ll. 20-24.

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of all Greek heroes, Achilles. And so, surrounded by thousands of sailors gathered around a stage imagining thousands of sailors gathered around an altar, this young girl “suddenly slips from her shoulder her saffron robe” and stands naked and vulnerable before the eyes of one group of sailors and the mind’s eyes of another.43 To complete the picture of this rape fantasy and to keep her from crying out to curse them all, Iphigenia is described as having an iron bit shoved between her teeth: Her father ordered his servants to lift her carefully over the altar after the prayer, swooning, her clothes all round her, like a young goat, and with a gag on her beautiful lips to restrain the cry that would curse his house. Constrained to voicelessness by the violence of the bit, she slipped to the ground her saffron robes, 44 and with darting, pitiful eyes struck each of her sacrificers.

It is at this extreme moment of monstrous pressure and desire that Agamemnon decides to do what he is fated to do: to sacrifice his daughter for the sake of his fleet. And yet, despite the utter horror we must feel at this decision, we must also question to what extent would the Athenian audience have believed that Agamemnon’s wife was truly justified in murdering her husband during this play. Not only because of the burden Agamemnon feels from his allies and their sacred pacts, but also because of what we know and do not know about Iphigenia’s supposed sacrifice. Once again it is important to read closely here, to see the small details and appreciate their enormous significance. If we attend to these details, we may conclude that, at the moment of truth, the moment when Iphigenia is on the point of death and her father on the point of tilting the human seesaw from decision to action, the chorus of old men who have been narrating this scene suddenly draw a blank. They abruptly stop telling their story and, in the narrative equivalent of staring at their feet and shuffling them in the dust, they mumble: “What happened after that I neither saw nor tell.”45 What an astounding admission! What a cliffhanger! You mean you don’t know the end of this story? You don’t know whether or not he killed his daughter? 43

Aeschylus, Agamemnon, l. 238-9. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, ll. 231-49. 45 Ibid., l. 250. 44

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I think it is important to note here that almost every student I have ever taught misses the significance of this admission. It is the extremely rare student who notices that the chorus do not know for certain what happened to Iphigenia. In other words, almost every student believes that Agamemnon definitely sacrifices his daughter. But as the chorus remind us here, they were not eyewitnesses in the first place. They’re just a clutch of old men left behind in Argos because they were too infirm to go to war. And so, they actually saw none of this sacrificial scene firsthand. Moreover, there is another version of the Iphigenia myth where Artemis rescues the innocent girl at the last moment, replaces her with a fawn, and then whisks her off to the island of Tauris, where, according to yet another myth, later in life she is reputed to have saved her brother, Orestes, from certain death. And so here we have the final twist in this very twisted story: Agamemnon may have been willing and even eager to spill his daughter’s virgin blood, but we do not have proof that he did put her to the knife. Significantly, the Athenian audience would also have been familiar with all these myths as possible endings to the story, and therefore they also would know that Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon may not have been fully justified. It turns out that this isn’t a question of action, it’s a question of intention and whatever that might mean for an ancient Greek. Aeschylus’ story of Iphigenia’s sacrifice is overstuffed with dark motifs: war, rape, plague, incest, revenge, filicide, and mariticide. This short passage addresses questions of evidence, responsibility, loyalty, heroism, and narrative reliability. Here is a story of how things and people become their opposites, how a victimized mother becomes a victimizing fury, how one man can be both singular and plural, hero and anathema, actor and audience to his own crimes, a father and a naval leader who, through the eyes of thousands of other military men, fantasizes about his own daughter’s rape and murder. It is a story where humans are treated like animals and where animals may in turn replace humans at the brink of death. All these motifs can be found in this passage when we begin to pulverize it down into its component parts. And the sheer number of possible tales we can then reshape out of these shards and fragments and splinters is perhaps endless. But we can only get this far if we begin with the small ideas rather than the big ones, the ones that scholars tend to find only after long, hard hours of reading, research, and re-reading. Now, one reading that I like to forge out of these bits and pieces, a reading that seems particularly pertinent to contemporary audiences, is that tragedy can help us realize just how obstinate we humans can be when it

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comes to seeing the world from only our own limited perspective. And how dangerous it is to limit ourselves in this way. I like this reading of the Iphigenia “sacrifice” because it applies not only to Agamemnon but also to most of my students, since, as I say, nearly every one of them initially fail to see all of the perspectives at play here. To better support this claim, let’s turn to Sophocles. Famously, Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx: what walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening? Answer: a human being. The wisdom behind this paradox is that one person may be many things at different times and sometimes even simultaneously. But the tragedy is that all too often we stubbornly refuse to admit that a multitude of perspectives and people live within us. That at least is Oedipus’ tragedy. He may be able to solve the riddle of the Sphinx but he cannot see that he himself is also the answer to that riddle, that he is one as well as many: husband and son to Jocasta, father and brother to Antigone, savior and curse to Thebes.46 This inability to see something, especially one’s self, from another’s perspective is the trouble that plagues so many tragic heroes, from Agamemnon to Antigone, Clytemnestra to Creon.47 One of the most succinct and moving articulations of this very human failing comes in Sophocles’ Antigone. It is put into the mouth of Creon’s son Haemon who, in the middle of a speech in the middle of the play, makes an impassioned plea to his father to adopt a more middle-of-the-road approach to life, what the Greeks called sophrosune: Do not bear this single habit of mind, to think that what you say and nothing else is true. A man that thinks that he alone is right, or what he says, or what he is himself, unique, such men, when opened up, are seen to be quite empty. For a man, though he be wise, it is no shame to learn—learn many things, and not maintain his views too rigidly. You notice how by streams in wintertime the trees that yield preserve their branches safely, but those that fight the tempest perish utterly. The man who keeps the sheet of his sail tight 46

C.f. “The Lame Tyrant” in Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (eds.), Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1990), 215. 47 C.f. Vernant, “Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy,” 42-43.

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With some help from Haemon we may now see that it is not that we were wrong with our first attempt to analyze and apply Agamemnon’s dilemma to our world as a lesson about the hubristic self-absorption of politicians. The more important and more universal truth is not that our leaders are often blinded by pride, but that everyone can be limited by their own personal perspective. Agamemnon can see things only from the perspective of what is expected of him in his heroic position as leader of the Greeks and what is desired by him in his less than heroic lust for a virgin’s blood. He cannot see things from the perspective of his wife, his daughter, or even himself as father and husband. Agamemnon and numerous other tragic heroes often refuse to admit that someone else’s perspective may have just as much validity as their own. That is, until that other truth is visited upon them with a vengeance, as it is for Agamemnon when his wife murders him with an ax and thus shows him just how real and powerful the bonds of family can be. But unfortunately, life can be even more tragic than art. Sometimes we can’t admit there is another side to things even when that side comes crashing down on top of us. Tragic characters get to die and make grand exits, or they have epiphanies and undergo miraculous transformations. But those of us who live on the duller side of the stage, we often just keep lumbering along, still convinced of our discredited truths, still making the same mistake over and over again. This is particularly true today, when so many of us spend countless hours in a multimedia house of mirrors. In this funhouse that has become media (old, new, or social), we are mesmerized by images of ourselves endlessly reflected back to us in a convincing imitation of singularity as multiplicity. But we need to recognize the difference between a mirror and a window. And this is where tragedy comes in. This is what tragedy can help teach us about ourselves, about everyone and not just our leaders. Namely, that if we cannot see things from someone else’s perspective then we are blind to the truth. Because the truth cannot be seen from one angle alone. Potentially, it has as many sides as there are people to see it.

48

Sophocles. Antigone in The Compete Greek Tragedies: Sophocles I, trans. David Grene. (The University of Chicago Press, 1991), ll. 760-73.

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Conclusion All this talk of death and vengeance and things crashing down on top of us reminds me of one last thing I want to reflect on before leaving this subject: Why do Wagner and Nietzsche use such violent and destructive imagery when describing their method of creating leitmotifs? Hammer, fire, sword, volcano? If the point is to reduce knowledge to smaller bits that can be recombined in new ways, then surely it seems that something gentler, more precise, pacific, and painstaking would be more in line with our usual view of the artist and the academic. So why not examine history with a microscope or at least dissect it with a scalpel? To answer this question, I think we must recognize and appreciate the resistance that Wagner and Nietzsche felt from their contemporaries. They perceived the cliches of their time as entrenched ideas that could only be overturned and reconstituted with much mental effort. As Wagner warned Nietzsche in the letter quoted above: “[Your readers] will undoubtedly be frightened upon finding your ideas coming into conflict with their established belief in Socrates and even Aeschylus.”49 And so Nietzsche should be very careful when conveying these ideas “to a public which has but little inclination for culture.”50 In other words, Nietzsche should be ready to defend himself and to put up a fight when it came time to teach his new perspective on the Greeks and the origins of Greek tragedy. As worshippers of heroic men of action who viewed themselves as heroic men of action, it makes sense that Nietzsche and Wagner would choose imagery that reinforces this self-conception. And while I would never describe teaching as a violent art and rarely as an act of heroism, yet it can sometimes take a great deal of effort to help students change their minds or even just express what’s on them. It can be an arduous task to break through to them, to help them break things down, and then to help them rebuild their ideas on hopefully more solid ground and with sturdier evidence. Meanwhile, most of us academics will have to be satisfied with being like Siegfried’s rasp, hoping that one or two of our tiny splinters may someday be melted down and become part of a greater project. But as an alternative to the academic essay or monograph, we might at least try

49 50

Wagner, Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, 771. Ibid.

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ourselves and teach our students how to take these scholarly motifs and make more useful, interesting, meaningful stories out of them. True, very few of us may ever be able to take our scholarly details and forge them into the philosophy of a Nietzsche or the music of a Wagner. But rather than turning our pulverized points into footnotes for a scholarly journal that hardly anyone will ever read, we might be better off if we reformed these ideas into a new shape, a new medium that would preserve our academic integrity while simultaneously reaching out to hesitant students, skeptical administrators, and a doubting public.

Bibliography Aeschylus. Oresteia, trans. David Grene and Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Berry, Mark. “Nietzsche and Wagner,” in The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Tom Stern. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence, trans. Caroline V. Kerr, intro. H. L. Mencken. London: Duckworth & Co., 1922. Foster, Daniel. Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Mann, Thomas. “The Sorrows and Grandeur of Richard Wagner” in Pro and Contra Wagner, trans. Allan Blunden. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, 91–148. Millington, Barry and Stewart Spencer. Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung: A Companion. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Porter, James I. “Nietzsche’s Untimely Antiquity,” in The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Tom Stern. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019, 49-71. Raeburn, David and Oliver Thomas. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus: A Commentary for Students. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Schadewaldt, Wolfgang. “Richard Wagner and the Greeks,” trans. David C. Durst, Dialogos: Hellenic Studies Review 6 (1999), 108–40. Scruton, Roger. “Nietzsche on Wagner,” Sir Roger Scruton: Writer and Philosopher, June 14, 2021, https://www.roger-scruton.com/homepage/about/music/understandingmusic/181-nietzsche-on-wagner Sophocles. Antigone in The Compete Greek Tragedies: Sophocles I, trans. David Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, ll. 760-73.

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Vernant, Jean-Pierre. “Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy” in JeanPierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (eds.), Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd. New York: Zone Books, 1990, 49– 84. —. “The Lame Tyrant: From Oedipus to Periander” in Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (eds.), Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd. New York: Zone Books, 1990, 207-36. —. “Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy” in Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (eds.), Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd. New York: Zone Books, 1990, 29–48. Wagner, Cosima. Cosima Wagner’s Diaries 1869–1883: Complete Edition in Two Volumes, trans. Geoffrey Skelton, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Wagner, Richard. Opera and Drama, trans. William Ashton Ellis. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. —. “The Public in Time and Space,” in Religion and Art, trans. William Ashton Ellis. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. —. Das Rheingold: In Full Score, reprint of the first edition, 1873. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1985. —. Das Rheingold: Piano-vocal Score, trans. Frederick Jameson, arr. Karl Klindworth. New York: G. Schirmer, 1904. —. Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1987.

CHAPTER 6 LEISURE AND MUSIC DRAMA FROM PLATO VIA NIETZSCHE TO THE POSTHUMAN PARADIGM-SHIFT STEFAN LORENZ SORGNER

Between people there is a constant struggle of all against all. A human is a wolf to another human. Homo homini lupus. There is only one Federal Chancellor, only one Chairman of the Board of Management at Daimler Benz and one founder of Facebook, but many would like to hold their positions. An apartment can only be rented once, and a vacancy can only be filled once. If a place on the train is occupied, we can only hope that another free and unreserved place is available. War is the originator of all things. We fight for money, recognition, and power. Sometimes it is all about survival, sometimes it is about staying in history. In a world of constant struggle and change, to find time to reflect on the world, on values and beauty is an enormous privilege. It is primarily a useless activity. It is, however, of intrinsic importance. People value reflection on fundamental philosophical questions, since no one knows with certainty what holds the world together at its core. It may well be the case that dealing with these reflections is helpful in the world of work. Primarily, thinking about the world, about values and beauty is a useless but intrinsically fulfilling activity. It is this activity that was called leisure in ancient times or otium in Latin. It was always considered an enormous privilege. Only the best, the aristocrats, had the financial or institutional power to devote themselves to leisure. To have time for leisure is an extraordinary privilege in a world of constant growth and the struggle of all against all. When we speak of leisure today, other activities are often identified with it: having a beer with colleagues. Going bowling with friends. Playing games on the Xbox or

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PlayStation. However, none of these activities is leisure in the original ancient Greek sense. Rather, these activities would have been considered a constitutive part of work by Aristotle. Those who work also need recreation. So, the after-work beer with colleagues is actually still a constitutive part of work. She who works needs rest, and work is an activity intended to earn money. Money, however, is only an instrumental good. Money is useful because we can use it to invite our friends, pay doctors and buy books. Slaves need rest. Aristocrats devote themselves to leisure. Recreation and leisure are categorically different from each other. People have to work because financial means are needed to survive. This also applied to the ancient Greek aristocrats. They were ashamed, however, to have to show their friends that they too must work, if only to organize their own slaves. They wanted to be able to devote themselves to leisure and demonstrate this in a social context. To have time and money, to be able to devote oneself to a useless but intrinsically valuable activity, was accompanied by the highest social prestige. To have leisure is therefore not only a privilege, but also a way to demonstrate one’s strength. One must be able to finance leisure. Nietzsche stressed this insight by giving an explicit description of the varying circumstances and meaning of otium.1 How do schools and universities relate to leisure? What is the actual purpose of school time? What does the word school mean? The word school comes from the ancient Greek word schole, which has the same meaning as the Latin otium. It means leisure. Schooling is the time when one has time to engage in activities that are fundamentally human but primarily useless. Words, numbers, inferences. It is an enormous privilege to be able to go to school, a privilege which one must not take for granted. School and universities must be paid for. In Europe this is usually done by taxpayers. In the United States, on the other hand, it is usually necessary to go to a private school or private university if you intend to pursue a socially exposed and well-paid job. The opportunity to attend school, which is financed by taxpayers in Europe, is a significant privilege for young people living in Europe. It enables them to live aristocratically for a few years and to devote themselves primarily to leisure. Many of the skills learnt are primarily of intrinsic relevance. At the same time, they can also be of instrumental use. Without having dealt with numbers, it is impossible for a tax advisor to be able to make an income surplus calculation. Not to go to school means to disregard and squander a huge privilege financed by the hard-earned

 1

KSA 3, 557 (GS, § 329).

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taxpayers’ money. Only when I have learned the basic arithmetic can I become an expert in developing solutions for dealing with global warming. Even though it deserves further considerations, whether compulsory schooling, as we have it in Germany, is an appropriate legal approach, or whether compulsory education, as it exists in the USA, would be a better regulation, I cannot deal with this here, as it goes beyond the scope of this text. In school, we also promote the intellectual engagement with music, another useless activity. Musicians produce sounds. Listeners go to concert halls just to listen to them. Humans are already a special kind of animal. We fight for money, status, and power. At the same time, we learn to use instruments to create useless sounds. It is an exciting undertaking to look at the meaning of music, the arts in general and the concept of beauty against the background of a naturalistic world view. The objective of aesthetic contemplation can no longer be the contemplation of eternal and unchangeable truths, which has been the prevailing interpretation in the context of Western cultural history. Contemplation of musical sounds has to be understood against the background of the meaning of leisure. To possess time and money that enable one to make music is an enormous privilege, which is accompanied by a high social prestige, if it is not to serve the purpose of making money. Within the framework of aesthetic contemplation, the possibility of leisure, of reflection on the fundamental questions about the world, arises which then is dealt with by the arts in a sensual, mediating way, different from the abstract-intellectual way of philosophy. The fact that the social dimension of leisure must not be ignored is, incidentally, also striking in the context of the artes liberales, and reflection on music is one of the numerical arts. The liberal arts were not referred to as such in order to reflect freely and associatively on music, but because one had to be free from work in order to devote oneself to this useless activity. Here, too, the close connection between leisure and social independence from the need to work becomes clear. Leisure cannot be conceptualized without a socially privileged special position. The music mentioned in the context of the seven liberal arts, which is one of the numerical arts, the quadrivium, the four-way, is not about the activity of composition or musical practice, but about reflection on music. This also has to do with the world view prevailing at the time, according to which there was an analogy between numerical relations, virtues, and

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ontological ultimate justifications. However, we have said goodbye to this view at the latest with Darwin, Nietzsche, and Wagner. In order to be able to comprehend the musical oeuvre of the contemporary composer Sven Helbig in an appropriate manner, we must now devote ourselves to reflecting on Helbig’s music and, in particular, pay special attention to the concept of the total work of art. Only then will we be able to enter into the relationship between Helbig’s total work of art and that of mindfulness. Both my reflections on the Gesamtkunstwerk and mindfulness and the subsequent aesthetic-intellectual examination of Helbig’s musical work are leisure activities to which we can devote ourselves, because nowadays most people from developed countries are not forced to worry too much about making a living, which is an enormous privilege. Globally, we are all the 1%. We are all aristocrats. Whether the possibility exists that all humans can become aristocrats and robots will become our slaves, or whether artificial intelligence will make us their slaves, is an open question. But let us concentrate on the question of the possibilities of contemporary meanings of total works of art.

The non-totalitarian total work of art of the posthuman future 2 The understanding of opera as a total work of art has been decisively influenced by artists, composers, and thinkers from German and Italian cultures. Members of the Camerata Fiorentina invented the opera, and Wagner, and Nietzsche have significantly influenced musical history by pleading for the realization of the musical drama. In the 20th century the debate on the question of opera as a total work of art was continued in Germany by Thomas Mann and in Italy by D’Annunzio.3 These two cultures have much in common. Their decisive reason for focusing on opera is that both cultures have been in a constant dialogue with Greek antiquity. The opera was born out of a misunderstanding of ancient tragedy, and the orientation towards the ideal of ancient drama played a central role in

 2

Central passages of the following part were revised and integrated from Stefan Lorenz Sorgner: “Das Gesamtkunstwerk der posthumanen Zukunft,” in Abbasso il Tango e Parsifal! Wagner in Italia, 1914-1945, eds. Pier Carlo Bontempelli and Oreste Bossini (Roma: Instituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, 2019), 355-362. 3 Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Reflexionen zum Musikdrama. Richard Wagner, Thomas Mann und der Posthumanismus,” in Liebe ohne Glauben: Thomas Mann und Richard Wagner, eds. Holger Pils and Christina Ulrich (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2011), 152-172.

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numerous proposals for reforming opera. However, this approach, which focusses on the music drama, also has significant social implications. A unified total work of art requires a communitarian community in which the values and symbols represented are shared. Herein, lies the central problem that Adorno, Thomas Mann and Popper have explicitly addressed: the problem of totalitarianism. Therefore, the following challenges arise for the present: does a total work of art necessarily have to have totalitarian implications, and is it still permissible to aim for realizing a Gesamtkunstwerk? The contemporary German composer Sven Helbig is concerned with creating Gesamtkunstwerke. Does this necessarily make him a proponent of totalitarian ideologies or is there also the possibility of creating nontotalitarian total work of art? This is our central question. With his perspectivism, Nietzsche is the central philosopher, who is turning away from totalitarian ways of thinking.4

The problem - Plato, Galileo, Wagner Plato can be regarded as the intellectual forefather of the musical drama, since the inventors of the opera, i.e., the members of the Camerate Fiorentina, intensively dealt with his reflections on the music drama. But here the problem already begins. Popper has convincingly shown that Plato is an advocate of a totalitarian political order. Plato’s reflections on the ideal tragedy are part of his proposals for revising them. He banned Homer and Hesiod from his ideal state and only allowed the performance of dramas that represent the idea of the good in terms of content, form, and material. Instead of being entertaining, music should promote the cardinal virtues. This circumstance ultimately led to the invention of opera. Analogous thinking was in fact to be found among Florentine cultural workers in the middle of the 16th century. The musicians, thinkers, and music theorists of the Camerata Fiorentina were dissatisfied with the polyphonic music of their time, considering it morally corrupting. They wanted to create a musical drama inspired by the ancient tragedy which would help to express the virtues. This could only be done through monodic singing (ancient Greek “solo singing”), since this kind of music, in their opinion, represented the essence of ancient music. In order to develop the

 4

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Metaphysics without Truth: On the Importance of Consistency within Nietzsche’s Philosophy, 2nd ed. and rev. ed. (Milwaukee: University of Marquette Press, 2007).

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musical drama in the best possible way, they studied Plato’s philosophy of music drama in particular. Girolamo Mei, an expert on ancient music and the philosophy of music living in Rome, helped Giovanni Bardi, the spiritus rector of the Camerata Fiorentina, and Vincenzo Galilei, a decisive head of the association, lutenist, singer, and father of Galileo Galilei, to better understand Plato’s philosophy by explaining in letters the questions addressed to him. One result of this exchange is the “Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna” by Vincenzo Galilei. Inspired by this writing as well as by the intellectual exchange within the Camerata, other members of this association, Jacopo Peri (music) and Ottavio Rinuccini (text), created the first opera, the melodrama “Dafne”, which unfortunately no longer exists. The two artists were also responsible for “Eurydice”, the first melodrama still preserved, which was premiered on 6 October 1600 at Palazzo Pitti in Florence during the wedding celebrations of Maria de’ Medici with the King of France, Henry IV.5 Today their assessment of ancient tragedy is no longer shared. It is rather assumed that the choral parts were sung primarily. This is due to the fact that there are numerous papyrus findings with notations of the choral parts. The protagonists mostly had spoken parts. Only occasionally were parts with other dimensions found. For the speaking parts the iambic trimeter was used, i.e., a spoken verse similar to colloquial speech. The choral parts, on the other hand, have the dimensions of choral lyricism and are constructed in the form of verses. Thus, the attempt to revive the ancient tragedy can also be called an invention of the opera. Structurally, Richard Wagner’s reflections on the Gesamtkunstwerk are not unlike those of the Camerata Fiorentina. He had ethical intentions.6 Incidentally, Nietzsche already recognized the relevance of ethics in Wagner’s work at a young age when he confessed the following in a letter to Erwin Rohde: “What I like about Schopenhauer pleases me in Wagner, the ethical air, the Faustian scent, the cross, death and tomb.”7 The dramatic

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Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Einige Überlegungen zur antiken und modernen Musikphilosophie,” in Musik in der antiken Philosophie: Eine Einführung, eds. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Michael Schramm (Würtzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2010), 15-32. 6 Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Ethik,” in Wagner und Nietzsche: Kultur-Werk-Wirkung: Ein Handbuch, eds. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, James H. Birx, and Nikolaus Knoepffler (Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008), 194-214. 7 KSB 2, 322 (letter to Erwin Rohde, 8 October 1868). Note: I translated the various German texts by Nietzsche, Mann, Gluck, and Wagner into English.

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aspects of his music dramas also have an ethical-cultural significance in Wagner’s work. He strove for a new form of dramatic unity. In doing so he reacted to the separation of the arts, which he wanted to transform into a new unity. Bayreuth was to become the heart of a new community that was to represent an updated form of the ancient polis-culture. He was by no means alone in this goal in the culture of the 18th and 19th centuries; for example, many thinkers tended to idealize a past, pre-modern world, which was accompanied by a critique of contemporary culture: Novalis (in relation to the Middle Ages), Rousseau (in relation to pre-cultural nature), Winckelmann (in relation to antiquity). Wagner notes that ancient drama was conservative, since the myths present in drama corresponded to the thinking and actions of the national community, which, however, was no longer the case in his own time.8 At that time there had been a separation of the arts and also of society, as had also happened in the Athenian state when the “common spirit split into a thousand selfish directions” and dissolved the “great total work of art of tragedy into the individual artistic components included in it.”9 Wagner, for his part, wished for a return to a community that had grown out of the people and hoped to be able to support the social movement directed in this way with the help of his musical dramas. Wagner’s theoretical reflections on music drama began with his dissatisfaction with contemporary opera and his orientation towards ancient thought, which enabled him to work out “an ideal for an artistic view of art.”10 He had the hope of being part of a cultural development that could overcome the individualism and nihilism of his time and make a new culture possible. Here, it must be emphasized that Wagner did not assume that he himself could actively create a new culture with his work. It was clear to him that a culture could only arise from the people: But it is precisely this bond, this religion of the future, that we unhappy people are not able to make, because we, as many as we may be of those who feel the urge for the artwork of the future within us, are only individuals, lonely. The work of art is the religion that is vividly portrayed; - religions, however, are not invented by the artist, they only arise from the people.11

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Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen: Volksausgabe, 16 Bände, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1911-1914), 28. 9 Ibid., 12. 10 Ibid., vol. 9: 120-1. 11 Ibid., vol. 3: 63.

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Wagner always emphasizes the creativity of the people or portrays the people as a true poet who would never think of singing a melody without words.12 The creativity of the people always finds its best expression in myth: “In myth, the common poetry of the people grasps the phenomena only as the physical eye can see them, not as they really are in themselves.”13 Since Wagner creates his dramas primarily for German rather than Greek culture, he draws on Germanic myths rather than others, because, according to his theory, these are the ones that are appropriate for the German people.14 Wagner’s concern was not solely a reactionary one, just as Plato and Galileo were not solely affirming reactionary objectives.15 In any case, Wagner understood there could not be a return to past ideals alone, but that these had to be born in consideration of the recent history of new ones in order to have an analogous effect.16 Nevertheless, the idea of the unity of human nature is strongly anchored in Wagner’s thinking. Only under this condition can he assume that the new cultural and political order he advocates can be an appropriate one. Here, it becomes explicitly clear that metaphysics, and with it Wagner’s dogmatism, is associated with vehement violence, namely violence against the diversity of human physiologies, against which a totalitarian structured culture is taking action. In this respect, Mann’s well-known statement that there is

 12

Ibid., 103; ibid., vol. 4:31. 13 Ibid. 14 Dieter Borchmeyer, “Mythos,” in Wagner und Nietzsche: Kultur-Werk-Wirkung: Ein Handbuch, eds. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, James H. Birx, and Nikolaus Knoepffler (Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008), 249-264.; Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Ethik,” in Wagner und Nietzsche: Kultur-Werk-Wirkung: Ein Handbuch, eds. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, James H. Birx, and Nikolaus Knoepffler (Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008), 194-214. 15 Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Wagners (un)zeitgemäße Betrachtungen: Reaktionäre oder progressive Überlegungen zum Musikdrama?”, in Richard Wagner: Persönlichkeit, Werk und Wirkung, eds. Helmut Loos (Beucha: Sax Verlag, 2013), 193-200; Kurt Sier, “Platon,” in Musik in der antiken Philosophie: Eine Einführung, eds. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Michael Schramm (Darmstadt: Königshausen und Neumann, 202), 123-166; Claude V. Palisca, “Introduction,” in Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music (1581-1582), trans., intro., and notes Claude V. Palisca (New Haven Yale University Press, 2003), xvii – lxix. 16 Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen: Volksausgabe, 16 bände, 3: 29.

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certainly “a lot of “Hitler” in Wagner’s “wanting to be based on Bramar, to perorize, to talk alone, to want to have a say in everything” is certainly an accurate assessment.17 The reform proposals of Plato, Galileo and Wagner presuppose a uniform human nature, which demands that certain human virtues are necessary for the good life. For them, the Gesamtkunstwerk has an ethical concern that can only be realized in a communitarian community. However, such demands lead to a strongly paternalistic totalitarian society. Is it necessary that total works of art have these implications?

Present – Nietzsche, Sven Helbig, and the total work of art18 Plato, Galileo, and Wagner wanted to reform and promote the dramatic. Another composer who called for an opera revolution also advocated the promotion of the dramatic, which can of course be understood primarily against the background of the opera seria of the time. However, Gluck was only concerned with an inner-musical goal, the dramatic unity of opera music, because in this way “the language of the heart, the strong emotions, the gripping situations and an ever-changing spectacle” can be realized in the audience.19 With Plato, on the other hand, the promotion of political order was at the heart of the opera, with Galileo the promotion of virtue and with Wagner the promotion of a new culture. They were interested in a holistic embedding of the musical drama in culture and life. Gluck’s opera reform was therefore not concerned with the creation of total works of art, since their effect was not to extend beyond mere entertainment.20 However, if this is the essence of total work of art, then the question does indeed arise as to whether a total work of art can be conceived that does not call for the creation of a totalitarian ideology. Are non-totalitarian total works of art in

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Thomas Mann, Thomas Mann Essays. Bd. 6: Meine Zeit, 1945-1955, eds. Hermann Kurzke and Stephan Starchorski (Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Verlag, 1997), 145. 18 Reflections from Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Das Gesamtkunstwerk der posthumanen Zukunft,” in Abbasso il Tango e Parsifal! Wagner in Italia, 1914-1945, eds. Pier Carlo Bontempelli and Oreste Bossini (Roma: Instituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, 2019), 355-362. 19 Alfred Einstein, Gluck: Sein Leben –Seine Werke (Basel: Bärenreiter, Kassel, 1987), 118. 20 Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Philosophische Reflexionen zu Glucks Opernreform,” in Orbis Idearum, vol 5, issue 1, (2017): 9-25.

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principle possible at all? Can musical dramas aim at an extra-musical effect without being embedded in a totalitarian ideology? Here, Nietzsche enters the stage, as he realized that by inverting Platonism, truth gets abandoned, too. By affirming naturalism, perspectivism becomes a philosophical necessity.21 There is a dialectical relationship between naturalism and perspectivism, each one of these theories is being made plausible by the other one. This move has significant implications for the philosophy of arts, which Wagner did not realize. Wagner has a naturalist understanding of the world, but did not realize that thereby the correspondence theory also needs to be abandoned.22 It is this realization, which is being accommodated in Nietzsche’s thinking, in particular when it comes to the arts, as he suggests that aesthetics ought to be seen as applied physiology. Nietzsche’s objections to Wagner’s music are physiological ones, as he explicitly states himself.23 Wagner’s music drama affects Nietzsche’s physiology such that it does not increase his strength.24 This is his main reason for rejecting Wagner’s musical creations.25 However, this approach has further implications for the question concerning the evaluation of total works of art, whether these necessarily have totalitarian implications. If Nietzsche’s aesthetic twist is plausible, then it is clear that one’s own psychophysiological reactions to a work of art as well as the reactions widely shared by others are the ones, which should be seen as central for aesthetically evaluating artworks. Different people have different psychophysiological needs, affects, and desires. Consequently, each person needs to find the artworks which are needed by them. It should not be the case that one specific cultural organization is needed by all people. If this is the case, then, it could be inferred that there can be non-totalitarian total works of arts. It merely needs to be realized that a work of art is a suggestion, an option, or an offer, but not the attempt of an ultimate solution or answer. It is this understanding which gets realized by Sven Helbig’s total works of

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Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Metaphysics without Truth: On the Importance of Consistency within Nietzsche’s Philosophy. 22 Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebücher, eds. and commentor Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack, vol (München: Piper Verlag, 1976-1977). 23 KSA 6, 418. 24 KSA 6, 21. 25 I explain in detail, why Nietzsche regards Wagner’s music as sick, in a separate article; Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “‘Wagners Kunst ist krank:’ Nietzsches Reflexionen über Kultur, Musik und Krankheit,” in Nietzsche und Wagner: Perspektiven ihrer Auseinandersetzung, eds. Jutta Georg und Renate Reschke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 94-110.

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art, e.g., in his music drama “Vom Lärm der Welt”, in which the dangers related to embracing a utopia are explicitly referred to. So far, the issue was not addressed whether Nietzsche’s understanding of aesthetics as applied physiology implies an affirmation of overcoming nihilism by means of the realization of total works of music dramas or not. Arguments can be made which justify both readings of Nietzsche. I have argued elsewhere that Nietzsche stresses the need to overcome nihilism and wishes to promote the cultural movement in this direction by means of his own philosophical reflections.26 Nietzsche presents strong reasons in favour of his claims. However, I disagree with them, and so does the posthuman paradigm-shift. Sven Helbig’s musical pieces are such non-totalitarian total works of art. He sees his works in the tradition of total works of art. The way he treats topics, and in which his works are performed reveal that they are not meant as mere entertainment, without them being at the same time paternalistic. Philosophically, his musical oeuvre is shaped by posthuman thinking. The posthuman paradigm-shift is decisively characterized by a new relational and non-dualistic anthropology, which is also the central starting point for explaining why Gesamtkunstwerke are possible again after this event. The aim of posthuman musical pieces is to convey a non-dualistic ontology of becoming. Non-dualistic thinking is weak thinking since every world perspective can only be understood as an interpretation. The concept of interpretation does not mean, however, that the represented view is wrong, but only that it can be wrong. It is therefore also not self-contradictory, in the sense that the Cretan liars’ paradox could be applied to this idea. The truth of this epistemological basic attitude cannot be shown. But it could only be refuted by demonstrating the validity of an ontological ultimate justification. Since this has not yet been realized, this further strengthens the plausibility of weak thinking, pensiero debole. Weak thinking is nontotalitarian, since each statement becomes an interpretation that cannot make the claim of ultimate validity for itself. It is rather a matter of drafts, proposals, and suggestions. The total works of art by Helbig are such suggestions. They do not claim to become the dominant due to their being ultimately valid. The musical gestures his musical pieces embody do not claim for their own ultimate validity. Although non-dualistic assessments are promoted, which are

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Sorgner, Metaphysics without Truth.

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transported in them in many ways, at the same time, it is clear that their ultimate justification is not a claim that can be made against this background. Here the recipient is confronted with posthuman musical creation in the form of the audience. The audience experiences, senses, and experiences posthuman thinking and at the same time can distance itself from it in order to reflect on it. It is a dialectical interplay between lifeworld experience and the distance that enables reflection, which the recipient experiences during the performance. In contrast to the reform proposals of Plato, Galileo and Wagner, the aim is not to realize a new unified community. Helbig’s total works of art make proposals that promote a certain interpretation in a self-relativizing way, but do not impose it on anyone. Whether his suggestions are appropriate one’s remains uncertain. Proposals are being advertised. The performance makes it possible to confront this new paradigm and encourages the discussion of extra-musical concerns. The intention of these musical works is not only entertaining, but rather leisure in the ancient sense, otium, schole, in which specific principles are not conveyed dogmatically, but options are reflected upon and experienced discursively. Herein lies the stimulating aspect of these posthuman total work of art. Non-totalitarian total works of art are therefore not only possible, but even meet the requirements of posthuman thinking.

A relational ontology of becoming and mindfulness It becomes particularly exciting, however, when we look at individual implications of this relational ontology of becoming, which are conveyed by means of analogies in his total works of art. We are no longer concerned with knowledge for the sake of having it. Thinking and acting no longer represent a categorically separated duality. Even the apparently small, insignificant, everyday things become relevant. Where we live, what the climatic conditions are in the places where we are, and what we eat now becomes philosophically relevant. Everything is constantly changing in every respect, and everything is connected with everything else, with each entity being nothing more than the sum of its effects on others, resulting in the dissolution of the essence of each entity. The constant becoming becomes the new being. Cows and pigs are kept in the smallest space on mass farms. Pigs are social beings and suffer enormously under these circumstances. Their excrement and urine affect locally available ground water. To prevent pigs

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from falling ill with the bacteria present in the barn, they are given antibiotics almost permanently. Mass cow keeping intensifies the greenhouse effect and the associated global warming. Many people who have once seen the killing of pigs and cows either directly or in a video become vegetarians, at least for a short time. High consumption of red meat probably increases the likelihood of developing colon cancer in humans. When we realize that we as relational beings are fully part of nature and only gradually differ from all other purely natural creatures, then the question arises how we should deal with them. Which moral status should be attributed to pigs and cows? The intellectual as well as emotional insight of being comprehensively embodied in a multitude of relational intraactions brings with it mindfulness. We pay attention to what we eat, how we eat, where we eat, with whom we eat, where our food comes from and how it is produced. We also become aware of the social and environmental implications of eating meat. The richer a nation becomes, the more people are interested in eating meat because they can now afford it. Meat consumption is also associated with social prestige. I can afford to eat a fillet of veal. Many people feel good about experiencing, representing and affirming their own social status in this way. The richer countries like China become, and the economic rise of China is probably unstoppable, the more people will want to eat meat, live in warm and beautiful houses, own cars and want to travel. Hundreds of new airports are currently under construction in China. In percentage terms, private transport has an enormous amount of climate-damaging gases. Helbig’s total works of art present a relational ontology of permanent becoming as a suggestion. In the leisure time of aesthetic contemplation, we experience this and reflect on its implications. Here, it is not a matter of analyzing how many angels fit on the tip of a needle, but rather of quite everyday concerns of a widespread way of life, i.e., our nutrition, our handling of raw materials, our leisure activities, and our clothing. Aesthetically supported mindfulness meditations are mindfulness considerations about nutrition, clothing, and lifestyle. There is no categorically separated duality between thinking and acting. Relational and non-dualistic thinking promotes the embedding of thought and action. Aesthetic contemplation is not separated from action but refers to it. This is a paradigm-shift. I do not go to a concert just to enjoy beautiful forms or to suffer from disharmonies, but there is a close relationship between attending a concert and my own way of life. Relational mindfulness is relevant for all areas of life. The relational ontology of constant becoming is experienced as a suggestion but

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is not imposed on anyone. This is what makes Helbig’s total works of art so special.

Leisure in posthuman times At this point it also becomes clear that the new revaluation of leisure cannot represent a return to the ancient Aristotelian aristocratic ethics. According to the ancient concept, leisure was of intrinsic relevance since Aristotle assumed the possibility of knowledge. After the posthuman paradigm-shift the basic attitude is no longer plausible. Instead, perspectivism now represents a plausible epistemological assessment. Is it convincing that leisure alone is of intrinsic importance, if every philosophical judgment is an interpretation and the existence of categorical dualities is convincingly doubted? Would the sole focus on the vita contemplativa then not be a performative self-contradiction? In order to revise one’s own prejudices, the vita contemplativa requires the vita activa, through which the plausibility of philosophical judgements can be questioned, which leads to the necessity of further considerations. The vita contemplativa needs the vita activa, which in turn provides decisive impulses for the further-reaching vita contemplativa. This has significant implications for the re-evaluation of leisure. With the expansion of the norm of equality and with it the dignity and personal status of all people in modernity, a flattening of social hierarchies has come about. The aristocrat whose life is dedicated to leisure no longer plays an exposed role in society in this period. All people have gained dignity due to their humanity. Nobody has had so much that they no longer had to work. Work and dignity were linked. Leisure as a useless activity no longer played a central role in society. Work makes us useful members of a society. However, work is only a means to earn money, whereby money itself is only a means and not an end in itself. Work turns people into quasi-slaves. In the posthuman world, however, such categorical dualities are dissolved: master/slave, otium/labor. Different processes happen at the same time. More and more people are now becoming aristocrats. Absolute poverty 200 years ago applied to 90% of the population worldwide, and 80% in Britain.27 In the meantime, it has fallen to almost 10% worldwide. Through automation and digitalization more and more people are becoming

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“World Population Living in Extreme Poverty, World, 1820 to 2015” Our World in Data, accessed January 5, 2020, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/worldpopulation-in-extreme-poverty-absolute.

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aristocrats. This is accompanied by the possibility of changing the meaning of leisure, whereby leisure is in fact the activity of intellectually or sensually dealing with the fundamental philosophical challenges. If this movement were to be given alone, this reevaluation would only be a return to antiquity. But this is not so. The cultural currents are also accompanied by a close connection between vita contemplativa and vita activa. Without action, thinking is not possible, which in turn suggests that one’s own considerations should be put into practice, which also suggests a dissolution of the otium/labor dichotomy. Without the plausible possibility of a judgement which is based upon an ultimate foundation, the sole focus on the vita contemplativa cannot be justified convincingly. The posthuman paradigm-shift is thus indeed accompanied by an upgrading of the relevance of leisure as intellectual and sensual reflection to philosophical challenges. On the other hand, a non-dualistically practiced leisure is a constant dialectic between otium and labor or between vita activa and vita contemplativa. Is this analysis implausible, since two seemingly contradictory concepts of leisure are both being affirmed? Against the background of non-dualistic thinking, this circumstance is rather given due to a linguistic problem. Our grammar forces us to make a decision between these two possibilities of meaning, since a and not-a cannot both be true. However, this impossibility represents a linguistic compulsion and not necessarily a plausible description of our circumstances. For this reason, even a posthuman re-evaluation of leisure is not simply a return to the ancient ideal, but a complex twisting of different processes, in which the ancient high estimation represents one facet, which, however, must be complemented by a non-dualistic concept. It is the twist of vita activa and vita contemplativa which clearly gets demonstrated in Helbig’s music drama “Vom Lärm der Welt”, in which the plot consists of an alteration of abstract philosophical and theological reflections and practical events in the lifeworld.

Helbig’s choral work “I Eat the Sun and Drink the Moon” Finally, I actively demonstrate a leisurely engagement with a specific musical piece by Sven Helbig, which is concerned with some of the most fundamental philosophical issues of our times. According to Nietzsche, Wagner’s Parsifal represents a kneeling before Christianity. This is not a plausible assessment. Wagner’s cultural goal does not imply the overcoming

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of nihilism through a return to a traditional Christianity. Even if Wagner presents a synthesis of Christ and Apollo as his personal ideal, he does not want to establish the imitatio dei as an ideal to be striven for culturally again. The intellectual heritage of Feuerbach and thus also the rejection of a traditional, fundamentalist understanding of religion which is strong, Wagner’s reflections must not be ignored when interpreting Wagner’s musical and philosophical works. For Wagner, Christ stands for the love of mankind and Apollo for beauty. He draws on a selection of characteristics of a mythical figure and reinterprets them. Similar processes have taken place in history when ancient myths were reinterpreted by Christianity. The life stories of Dionysus and Jesus Christ are strikingly similar. Both have a heavenly father and an earthly mother. Both had to endure terrible suffering processes. Only after these terrible experiences could they experience a fulfilled life. The story and the promise associated with it remain. The name and the mythical embedding change. In this reinterpretation, just as in Wagner’s case, an existing element is used, which, however, is subsequently placed in a new philosophical, ontological and ethical context. Helbig proceeds analogously. In an unreflected response, his “Kyrie” and his “Agnus Dei” might seem to suggest a kneeling before a traditional account of Christianity. However, a closer examination of his musical works as well as intellectual considerations reveals that this is an implausible reading. Although the theme of salvation plays a central role in his work, he does not assume that the known and existing approaches already provide a plausible answer to this question. It is this thought that has led him to refer to these two texts from the liturgical hymns. It is the Como el sol Y bebo la lluvia, Con la quietud de la luna,

to which the title of his choral work can also be traced, which represents the thrust of possible approaches to the theme of the idea of redemption. “I eat the sun, and drink the rain, quiet like the moon.” The ego, which used to be the crowning glory of creation, no longer exists. The rational subject, which categorically differs from the purely natural world, elevates itself above it and is supposed to make the world its subject, is now embedded in it, and differs at most gradually from the existing entities. Nor is the distinction static and unchangeable, but dynamic, inter-relational and constantly changing. The ego is no longer an immaterial thing that is connected to a material body, but the ego is always already the

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other, which is why the concept of the ego and thus also that of the subject as well as that of the object can no longer be grasped accurately, but must be replaced by something else. “I eat the sun and drink the rain.” Here the fusion between originally categorical dualistic opposites takes place. The formerly immaterial “I” and the material rain and sun merge. There is a constant exchange of everything with everything else. Culture-nature, bodysoul or human-machine are no longer radically different binary opposites. The brain pacemaker is a part of a human being, just as the smartphone represents our extended mind. However, the mind is no longer immaterial, just as the smartphone is no longer just a material object. I am my psychophysiology, whereby mine is not clearly distinguishable from nonmine. There are more non-human (i.e. bacterial) cells in the human psychophysiology than human ones. This assessment implies that human beings no longer hold a categorically special status in the world.28 There are certain characteristics which only humans can possess at present, such as the ability to learn a human language. However, other living beings also have such special characteristics. Vampire bats are the only mammals that feed exclusively on blood. In this respect they have a special position in this respect. Special characteristics are possible, but they are only somewhat elevated with regard to a certain context, and not in an absolute sense with regard to a fundamental understanding of the world. As Leopardi says: “Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani silenzi, e profondissima quiete io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco il cor non si spaura” (“Sitting there and contemplating, the infinite spaces beyond it, and the overhuman silences, profound peace I imagine in my thought, which almost scares my heart”). Human beings are not the crowning glory of creation, but a flowing part in the ever-changing world in which man is not even in a special place. “Boundless spaces” surround him, as well as a “silence beyond human measure.” This is a human experience of a posthuman understanding of the world, i.e., a world view as it is represented by meta-, post-, and transhumanists and which carries hardly foreseeable legal, cultural, and ethical consequences. Legally, we still live in a Christian-dualistic world. Only human beings are persons and only they possess dignity. Animals, plants, and computers are things or at least should be treated as such. From a posthuman perspective this assessment is highly implausible. 28

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Pedigrees,” in Post- and Transhumanism: An Introduction, eds. Robert Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, 2014), 29-48.

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However, it is not primarily the ethical, political, and legal questions that are raised by Helbig’s choral work, but he is concerned here with “what holds the world together at its core.” It deals with the search for salvation, a new understanding of humanity and the attempt to resolve these questions from a narrow academic context in order to increase the plurality of perspectives to be considered. This is also accompanied by an aesthetic criterion that is dominant in Helbig’s work: musical beauty is affirmed. In this way he opposes the musical current dominant in the 20th century, which identified every form of beauty with totalitarian and paternalistic structures and therefore avoided them. As a result of this approach, music also became a phenomenon that had to remain restricted to a narrow circle of recipients. Helbig realized that beauty does not presuppose platonic ideas but can also have an evolutionary basis. It appeals to many people, which results in musical inclusion. Inclusion does not have to be accompanied by simplification. A successful inclusion is an enrichment, a musical complexation, which promotes the likelihood of getting an inkling of the abundance of the world. Successful musical inclusion makes it possible to turn the fragmentation of reception into a transversal dialogue. Helbig’s “Meernacht” conveys an idea of this posthuman methodology: Faith on all shores, in all the stars sense, Where the gaze ignites the nothingness, ...thoughts fly to it.

Even if the first impressions of the “Kyrie” and the “Agnus Dei” lure us onto a different track, on closer inspection it becomes doubtlessly clear that this choral work by Helbig confronts us directly with the "Gretchenfrage 3.0." It is not about simple-minded revival of a dead God. However, with the possibility of foundational judgements becoming implausible, we no longer have a solid reason to reject Christianity. A posthuman Christianity is possible. It needs to be a weak Christianity, a Christianity which does not claim to provide us with foundational insights about the world, clear ethical ideals, and absolute moral duties, even though the music uses a mostly tonal language. Yet, abandoning the correspondence theory of truth promotes the affirmation of pluralities. We no longer have a solid reason to reject tonality either. A tonal language does not imply that all musical pieces ought to include tonal sounds. Yet, tonality is no longer forbidden either, as the rejection was based on a dualistic good-bad-distinction. By employing tonality without it having any normative implications is liberating. Options, possibilities, and suggestions are being presented. We can decide upon the

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meaning of these offers, and in how far we wish to take them into consideration. By moving away from an ultimate foundation, the possibility of other alternative traces gets revealed, too. Hence, these suggestions are also about artificial intelligence, moral algorithms, genetic modifications (CRISPR/Cas9), bio-privacy, big gene data, metahumanities, metasex, epigenetics, new family concepts, children with three biological parents, genetically modified photosynthesizing animals, geoengineering, and about us, who no longer see ourselves as rulers of the world, but as participants in a complex web of relations of whose eccentric entanglements we only have a first inkling. Perhaps the emergence of beings with a meta-self-consciousness, a superintelligence and a nano-sensitivity is necessary to deal with all these challenges in an appropriate way? Maybe, only posthumans are capable of adequately reflecting on the question of salvation? These are challenging contemporary issues. Philosophical reflections on posthuman art works enable us to confront with some of the most challenging issues of our times, as posthuman artworks are no longer autonomous. They are engaged with the great variety of extra-artistic challenges, but without being ideological, as they start from a perspectival epistemology, i.e., every philosophical judgement is an interpretation. What is being put forward are merely suggestions. A posthuman aesthetics is twisting categorical ontological dualities, aware of permanent becoming, inclusive, non-dualistic, non-anthropocentric, nonfoundational, perspectival, non-utopian and pluralistic. This judgement is not meant to be a conclusive statement concerning a philosophy of posthuman art works, but the attempt to initialize a debate on some of the most fascinating challenges of our times.

Conclusion In a constant exchange with the ideal of ancient drama, thinkers, artists, and composers of German and Italian cultures in particular have repeatedly put forward new proposals for reforming opera, in which the promotion of a dramatic unity has played a central role. The invention of the opera by members of the Camerata Fiorentina and Wagner’s conceptualization of the total work of art have played a central role in this process. From today’s point of view, their proposals represent dangerous pleas since they are used to promote totalitarian structures. Is this circumstance rooted in the fundamental structure of all total works of art? By reflecting upon

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Nietzsche’s suggestion of aesthetics as applied physiology and by outlining central considerations concerning Sven Helbig’s total works of art, it becomes clear that non-totalitarian total works of art are possible. Posthuman thinking, and this represents Helbig’s intellectual home, is nontotalitarian. It creates non-totalitarian total works of art, which are at home in a posthuman philosophy and are therefore to be assessed against the background of weak thinking, the pensiero debole. The paradigm-shift brought about by the paradigm-shift associated with posthuman thought is so fundamental that we cannot even begin to estimate the multitude of implications; after all, it is accompanied by the dissolution of the dualisticontological basis of Western humanistic culture. In Richard Wagner’s work, too, numerous approaches to posthuman thought are already present. The gods of the Ring can be interpreted as transhumanist posthumans, and the use of language in Wagner’s musical dramas as an effort to move away from an ontologically categorial-dualistic conception. These approaches could be of enormous importance in reinterpreting the relevance of Wagner’s work for the present. The intellectual and sensual examination of Sven Helbig’s metaformances is particularly exciting and relevant for the present. His musical pieces are not performances, but rather metaformances, as the dualistic separation between artist and audience is removed. All participants leave the event after having been transformed by the metaformance of Helbig’s total works of art, which represents a confrontation with sensually-mediated philosophical proposals.

Bibliography Borchmeyer, Dieter. “Mythos”. In Wagner und Nietzsche: Kultur WerkWirkung: Ein Handbuch. Edited by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, James H. Birx, and Nikolaus Knoepffler, 249-264. Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008. Einstein, Alfred. Gluck: Sein Leben –Seine Werke. Basel: Bärenreiter, Kassel, 1987. Mann, Thomas. Thomas Mann Essays. Bd. 6: Meine Zeit, 1945-1955. Edited by Hermann Kurzke and Stephan Starchorski. Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Verlag, 1997. Palisca, Claude V. “Introduction.” In Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music (1581-1582): xvii – lxix. Translated with introduction and notes by Claude V. Palisca. New Haven Yale University Press, 2003.

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Sier, Kurt. “Platon.” In Musik in der antiken Philosophie: Eine Einführung. Edited by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Michael Schramm, 123-166. Darmstadt: Königshausen und Neumann, 2021. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “Das Gesamtkunstwerk der posthumanen Zukunft.” In Abbasso il Tango e Parsifal! Wagner in Italia, 1914-1945. Edited by Pier Carlo Bontempelli and Oreste Bossini, 355-362. Roma: Instituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, 2019. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “Einige Überlegungen zur antiken und modernen Musikphilosophie.” In Musik in der antiken Philosophie: Eine Einführung. Edited by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Michael Schramm, 15-32. Würtzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2010. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “Ethik.” In Wagner und Nietzsche: Kultur-WerkWirkung: Ein Handbuch. Edited by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, James H. Birx, and Nikolaus Knoepffler, 194-214. Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. Metaphysics without Truth: On the Importance of Consistency within Nietzsche’s Philosophy. Second and revised edition. Milwaukee: University of Marquette Press, 2007. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “Philosophische Reflexionen zu Glucks Opernreform.” In Orbis Idearum, Volume 5, Issue 1, (2017): 9-25. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “Pedigrees.” In Post- and Transhumanism: An Introduction. Edited by Robert Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, 2948. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, 2014. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “Reflexionen zum Musikdrama. Richard Wagner, Thomas Mann und der Posthumanismus.” In Liebe ohne Glauben: Thomas Mann und Richard Wagner. Edited by Holger Pils and Christina Ulrich, 152-172. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2011. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “‘Wagners Kunst ist krank:’ Nietzsches Reflexionen über Kultur, Musik und Krankheit.” In Nietzsche und Wagner: Perspektiven ihrer Auseinandersetzung. Edited by Jutta Georg und Renate Reschke, 94-110. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “Wagners (un)zeitgemäße Betrachtungen: Reaktionäre oder progressive Überlegungen zum Musikdrama?” In Richard Wagner: Persönlichkeit, Werk und Wirkung. Edited by Helmut Loos, 193-200. Beucha: Sax Verlag, 2013. Wagner, Cosima. Die Tagebücher. Edited and commented upon by Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack, Volume 2. München: Piper Verlag, 1976-1977. Wagner, Richard. Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen: Volksausgabe. 16 Bände. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1911-1914.

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“World Population Living in Extreme Poverty, World, 1820 to 2015.” Our World in Data. Accessed January 5, 2020. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-inextreme-poverty-absolute.

PART III: NIETZSCHE AND COMPOSERS

CHAPTER 7 NIETZSCHE ON THE ‘MUSIC’ OF GREEK TRAGEDY: BEETHOVEN AND PROMETHEUS BABETTE BABICH

Aeschylian rhythms and musical composition By way of his title vignette (Fig. 1) of Prometheus liberated from his fetters, Nietzsche refers to Beethoven even before the start of The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. References continue, substantively in the very first section and throughout the book. In his first line, Nietzsche speaks of ‘aesthetic science’ — but what is ‘aesthetic science’ [aesthetische Wissenschaft]? How is it different from aesthetics [Ästhetik], quite as Baumgarten defined aesthetics as a ‘science’? What kind of ‘science’ is an ‘aesthetic science”? Even more crucially, given the subtitle of the book, what is ‘the spirit of music’ [Geist der Musik]? Is this ‘spirit’ a reference to Wagner? Leaving such questions aside, scholars have believed — ever since Wilamowitz told them so — that Nietzsche makes no contribution to the philological study of ancient Greek tragedy offering only a screed for the Wagner cult. In this essay I ask why Beethoven? For Wagnerians this is no question as they simply refer to Wagner once again (Wagner wrote a book on Beethoven).1 But others will need more clarity as Nietzsche’s relation to Beethoven is not obvious and it is not predictable on metonymic grounds (i.e., referring either to Wagner’s Beethoven or Wagner’s identification with Aeschylus). Similarly, it is as an extension of Nietzsche’s ‘Wagnerism’ that we are to understand Nietzsche’s closing reference to the ‘becoming 1

Richard Wagner, Beethoven (Leipzig: Fritzsch, 1870). See Wagnerian Nietzsche scholars from Richard Schacht and so on down the line, including the musically attuned George Liébert and very scholarly, and comprehensively, Curt Paul Janz.

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human of dissonance.’2 If Nietzsche’s first section is significant, as I argue, his closing focus on dissonance hardly points to Wagner. Indeed, several scholars have speculated that Nietzsche ‘predicts’ 20th century New Music, quite as, perhaps for other reasons, scholars have read between Nietzsche and Strauss or else in connection with jazz and blues and rock music, etc.3 Not quite, it is the nuance I will seek to underscore, an unqualified admirer, Nietzsche qualifiedly relegates Wagner to ‘pioneer’ status, in his dedication of his book to the composer he describes as his ‘advance scout’ [meinem erhabenen Vorkämpfer auf dieser Bahn]. In The Hallelujah Effect, I argue that in his first book, Nietzsche rather than seeking to clear the way for Wagner’s cultural revolution sought instead to articulate his own scholarly discoveries concerning ancient Greek prosody, in a phenomenological hermeneutic of the text (a hermeneutics learnt from

2

See, among many others, Nicholas Kompridis, “Nietzsche and the Dionysian Ideal,” Symposium, 1 (1997): 25-34 and, very nuanced, Frederick Love, Young Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963). 3 E.g., among others: Stella Voskaridou, “Cacoyannis’ Trilogy: Out of the Spirit of Music,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement, No. 126 (2013): 251-273 as well as, via Carl Dahlhaus, John Covach, “Schoenberg’s (Analytical) Gaze: Musical Time, The Organic Ideal, and Analytical Perspectivism,” Theory and Practice, Vol. 42 (2017), 141-159 in addition to Gregory Polakoff, ‘The Center is Everywhere’: Nietzsche’s Overcoming of Modernity Through Musical Dissonance (Vancouver: Diss. University of British Columbia, 2011) in addition to note 38 below. See on Richard Strauss, Charles Youmans, “The Role of Nietzsche in Richard Strauss’s Artistic Development,” The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Summer 2004): 309-342 and with respect to jazz, John Carvalho’s several essays, including “Dionysus Now: Dionysian Myth-History in the Sixties,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Fall, 2005), 77-116 as well as Stanley Spector, “‘It all Rolls into One’: Rapture, Dionysus, Nietzsche, and the Grateful Dead,” in Nicholas G. Meriwether (ed.), All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar’s Publishing, 2007), 196-207 and the rock critic, Simon Frith, “‘The Magic That Can Set You Free’: The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community,” in Richard Middleton and David Horn, eds., Popular Music, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 159-168. And, recently, Babich, “Dionysus in Music: On the ‘God of Sex and Drums and Rock and Roll’,” The Philosophical Salon, 31 January 2022.

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Ritschl), in his separately composed “On the Theory of Quantifying Rhythm.”4 There, however, is Wagner and, for many readers, that is the end of it. Their relationship, we are told, suffuses Nietzsche’s life fairly abjectly, to the pitch of embarrassment for the sensitive young scholar who is dispatched by Wagner to buy silk underwear for the elderly composer,5 or more intimately, more embarrassingly, as target of a dinner joke sometimes raised in the context of literary discussions of the so-called ‘deadly’ insult Nietzsche endured, in this case (the debate is out on the exact nature of the ‘insult’) concerning the size of Nietzsche’s penis,6 along with Nietzsche’s sexual proclivities and not less his relations with his sister. Apart from such salacious themes, most readers assume that if one thematizes ‘music and Nietzsche’ the focus can only be Wagner. Reading Nietzsche’s writings up to and including the obviously titled, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, seems to confirm this conviction. Nietzsche was well aware of this and in Ecce Homo, he mused regarding his first book that while it did little for his own career it contributed to Wagner’s: thus having an “effect” in the very sphere he claimed to have been “lacking” [verfehlt] in the book as such: “Wagnerism” [Wagnerei]. For Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy was to be understood as “an event [Ereignis] in Wagner’s Life,” as from that moment “great hopes [grosse Hoffnungen] would come to be associated” not with his own projects as he ruefully writes, but “with Wagner’s name.” (EH, GT §1)

4

Nietzsche, “On the Theory of Quantifying Rhythm,” New Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 10, Nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2016): 69-78. I discuss this (in the same locus) in “Nietzsche’s Archilochus,” 91-128. 5 Babich, “Nietzsche und Wagner: Sexualität,” Martin Suhr, trans. in H. J. Brix, N. Knoepffler, S. L. Sorgner, eds., Wagner und Nietzsche. Kultur — Werk — Wirkung. Ein Handbuch (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2008), 323-341. 6 See Geoff Waite, “Nietzsche’s Baudelaire, or the Sublime Proleptic Spin of his Politico-Economic Thought,” Representations, 50 (Spring 1995): 14-52 on deviance and impotence in connection with Wagnerian „decadence.” Cf. David Blair Allison, Reading the New Nietzsche (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001) along with Sander Gilman, “Nietzsche, Bizet, and Wagner: Illness, Health and Race in the Nineteenth Century,” The Opera Quarterly, 23/2 (2007): 247-264 and Laurence Dreyfus, Wagner and the Erotic Impulse (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).

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Some readers seek to foreground Nietzsche’s personal musical taste, arguing, as supplement, Nietzsche’s ‘real’ favorite as Bizet7 — a rumor Nietzsche sponsors — or Rossini, who just happens, famously for the Suabians, to have been none other than Hegel’s favorite. I argue that Beethoven was key to the substance of the argument Nietzsche made concerning ancient Greek tragedy.

Music about music itself — Musik über Musik In The Wanderer and his Shadow, preceded by a series of aphorisms on Sebastian Bach, Handel, and, not least, Haydn, and succeeded by an aphorism entitled, Recitative, Nietzsche writes that Beethoven’s music frequently appears as a profoundly felt reflection upon the unanticipated re-hearing of a long forgotten piece, an innocence in tones [‚Unschuld in Tönen’]: it is music about music. In the songs of beggars and children in the alleyways, by the monotone modes of wandering Italians, at dances in the village tavern or during the nights of Carnival — there he uncovers his “melodies”: he gathers them together like a bee, in that he grasps here now and there now a sound, a sheer interval. For him, these are transfigured recollections of a “better world” not unlike what Plato thought of his Ideas. — Mozart stands entirely otherwise with respect to his Melodies: he does not find his inspiration by listening to music but in the contemplation of life, of the most moving, most southern life: he always dreamt of Italy whenever he was not there.8

I began by noting the context of preestablished viewpoints, quite as Plato reminds us concerning trials/disputations and using the example of Socrates’ condemnation: a pre-existing court has already decided the matter. These are ‘prejudices’ as Gadamer names them, or “convictions” [Überzeugung] as Nietzsche writes, bringing the ass on stage to allude to Lucian’s parodic, 2nd century CE Philosophies for Sale,9 with a snatch of cultic, ritual song: 7 This begins fairly early, see, for example: Hugo von Daffner’s pamphlet, Friedrich Nietzsches Randglossen zu Bizets Carmen (Regensburg: Gustave Bosse, 1912) as well as John W. Klein, “Nietzsche and Bizet,” Musical Quarterly, IX, 4 (1925): 482-505. See further, George Leiner, “To Overcome One’s Self: Nietzsche, Bizet and Wagner,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No. 9/10, (Spring/Autumn 1995): 132-147 and see Benoît Goetz, “Nietzsche aimait-il vraiment Bizet?” La Portique, 8 (2001) [online]. 8 Nietzsche, MM, The Wanderer and his Shadow, §152. 9 See Lucian, “Ǻǿȍȃ ȆȇǹȈǿȈ/Philosophies for Sale,” Vol. II, A. M. Harmon, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915), 449-511 as well as

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‘Convictions’ also correspond to received scholarly views on the question of Nietzsche and music, which thus includes fandom: being a fan of Wagner (or Bizet or Rossini or Haydn) entails remaining a Wagnerian (like other Wagnerians, etc.).11 As in the Monty Python football sketch of philosophical fealties, favoring the one musician is expressed in terms of references and competitive favoring. Whose team are you on? And the philosopher replies, in language vaguely like a hook-up, that one “does” MerleauPonty or Bergson, or Heidegger (so speaketh the continentals), that one does metaphysics and epistemology, consequentialism, speculative realism (so sayeth analytic style, mainstream philosophers), etc. A few shift this to Nietzsche’s own music compositions and in my own case, via a turn to the Greeks (thus I highlight the subtitle: Out of the Spirit of Music), I argue that ‘interpreting’ Nietzsche’s compositions presupposes both his improvisational style and theoretical investigations into rhythm. Thus The Hallelujah Effect,12 a book in three parts on pop music and musical ‘covers,’13 Adorno on recorded music, and concluding with Nietzsche, could, alternatively, have been titled: Why Beethoven? Lucian/Pseudo-Lucian, “ȁȅȊȀǿȅȈ Ǿ ȅȃȅȈ/Lucius or the Ass,” Vol. VIII, M. D. Macleod, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 47-145. I note Nietzsche’s invocation of the Lucianic ‘ȣʌİȡȐȞșȡȦʌȠȢ, the literal ‘over’-human but some readers prefer to read Nietzsche’s Übermensch as a program for the future such that the ‘Nazi’ Nietzsche retains its adherents. See: Babich, “Nietzsche as Educator,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 51, No. 9 (2018): 871-885. 10 This recurs as epigraph among a range of projected book projects, Midday and Eternity: Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence, KSA 11, 274. 11 This is the presupposition of many scholars, from Ernst Bertram to Curt Paul Janz, Tracy Burr Strong and Georges Liébert. In addition to the argument of his book, Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, Strong repeats the claim and extends it to include a reference to my notion of ‘concinnity,’ in his introduction to Richard Polt’s translation of Twilight of the Idols (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1997), xx-xxii. 12 Babich, The Hallelujah Effect: Music, Technology, and Performance Practice (London: Routledge, 2016 [2013]). 13 See here, Babich, “Musical ‘Covers’ and the Culture Industry: From Antiquity to the Age of Digital Reproducibility,” Research in Phenomenology, 48/3 (2018): 385-407.

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Wagner is certainly mentioned yet he is curiously little engaged in The Birth of Tragedy where Beethoven is the focus of sustained explication. This contrast is in addition to the complex question of Nietzsche’s preface. Thus, as has been variously argued,14 to call anyone an ‘advance scout’ is, in effect, to scoot that scout offstage for the main act to come. The connection with the ‘art of the future’ and Nietzsche’s ‘future’ art ambition on his own part with respect to the musicality of Greek antiquity makes this terminology that much more suspicious.

Fig. 1. Woodcut, Frontispiece to Nietzsche’s 1872 Geburt der Tragödie.

Ostensibly, as I point out above, Beethoven even precedes the address to Wagner in Nietzsche’s book as the preface refers to the frontispiece [Bildertitel]: a woodcut featuring a framed circle outlining the newly liberated Prometheus, fetters broken, one foot on his slain vulture, gazing upward at the heavens. As Aeschylus tells us, Prometheus, a titan god who

14 See Tracy Strong, “In Defense of Rhetoric: Or How Hard It Is to Take a Writer Seriously: The Case of Nietzsche,” Political Theory, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2013); 507532 and Michael Davis, The Music of Reason: Rousseau, Nietzsche, Plato (Pittsburgh: University Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 73ff. as well as Andreas Kablitz, Europäischer Wagnerismus: (Charles Baudelaire, Richard Wagner et « Tannhäuser » à Paris – Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner) (Brill: Fink, 2017): 107–172.

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foresaw the outcome both of his ‘crime’ and his ‘punishment,’ was freed by Hercules at the command of Zeus who had him bound to begin with.15 The woodcut, executed by the artist Leopold Rau, a friend of Carl von Gersdorff, was commissioned by Nietzsche. The ‘Foreword to Richard Wagner’ includes a rhapsodic vision, imagining Wagner wandering back from an evening tromping in the ‘winter snow,’ to take up the book, ‘contemplate the title page illustration’ of Prometheus Unbound, and thence ‘to read’ Nietzsche’s ‘name.’16 Prometheus qua signifier is worth some attention well beyond Nietzsche scholarship as it is overdetermined enough to stand in for Beethoven himself.17 With reference to Nietzsche, Henning Ottman has reflected on the title image. Wagner once again is key,18 as Ottman foregrounds the Wagnerian account offered by Reinhardt Brandt, wherein Wagner is both tragic hero, Prometheus, and liberating Demigod, Herakles.19

15

See Siegfried Mandel, “Genelli and Wagner: Midwives to Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche-Studien, 19 (1989): 212-229. See too Genelli’s Prometheus pictured in a recent issue of New Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 10, Nos. 3 & 4 (2017/2018): 34. 16 [vergegenwärtige ich mir den Augenblick, in dem Sie, mein hochverehrter Freund, diese Schrift empfangen werden: wie Sie, vielleicht nach einer abendlichen Wanderung um Winterschnee, den entfesselten Prometheus auf dem Titelblatt betrachten, meinen Namen lesen…] Nietzsche, GT, “Vorwort an Richard Wagner.” KSA 1 23. 17 See Mary Ann Smart’s “Beethoven Dances: Prometheus and his Creatures in Vienna and Milan” in Nicholas Mathew and Benjamin Walton, eds., The Invention of Beethoven: Historiography, Analysis, Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 210-235 and overall, Paul Bertagnolli, Prometheus in Music: Representations of the Myth in the Romantic Era (New York: Routledge, 2017), along with the third section of Manuela Helga Schulz, Metaphysische Rebellen. Themengeschichtliche Studien zu Goethe, Byron und Nietzsche (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010). 18 See Henning Ottman’s “Prometheus Entfesselt,” in Titelblätter, Titelkupfer, Frontispize. Bucheröffnungen von “Narrenschiff” bis “Alice im Wunderland” (Frankfurt am Main: Metzler, 2020), 303-306. 19 Reinhardt Brandt, “‘Die Titelvignette von Nietzsches Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, ” Nietzsche-Studien, 20 (1991): 314–28. For a classicist’s discussion, see Adam Lecznar, “Aryan, German, or Greek? Nietzsche’s Prometheus between Antiquity and Modernity,” Classical Receptions Journal, Vol. 5, Iss. 1 (January 2013): 38–62.

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Nietzsche’s imaginings of Wagner’s attentions would not last — and, like Prometheus, we already know the end of the story. Still: why Prometheus? Why, if the appeal of the book overall, as many scholars continue to assume, is directed to Wagner, assuming the text composed ‘as if’ in the maestro’s immediate ‘proximity,’ why then proceed to cite Beethoven,20 from the start? And why conclude with reference to Beethoven’s ‘art’ of dissonance: ‘playing with,’ as Nietzsche says, the “sting of displeasure” [Stachel der Unlust]? In addition to the reference to Beethoven’s ‘dancing’ creations of Prometheus, Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus,21 the same ‘creaturely’ mortal or human beings who make an appearance via Goethe in Nietzsche’s book22 (GT §9), we know that the young Nietzsche composed his own drama entitled Prometheus.23 In his Nachlass notes, Nietzsche goes on to characterize ‘Zarathustra,’ his ‘symphony’ — note the form as such — ‘in the style of the first movement’ not of Wagner’s compositions but Beethoven’s, specifically the composition referenced throughout the Birth of Tragedy, the 9th Symphony.24 It adds gnomic dimensionality to note Nietzsche’s reflection that Beethoven, simply given the sketches for the 10th symphony, had he completed the sketch, would have composed “exactly this 10th symphony.” (KSA 7, 368)

20

This is to the point of the conclusion of Allison’s reflections on Nietzsche’s option not to “publish ‘On Music and Words,’ preferring to submit his own musical composition, the Sylvesternacht Musik, to the Wagners for their warmly anticipated consideration, and their competent judgment.” David Blair Allison, “On Nietzsche’s ‘Music and Word’,” New Nietzsche Studies: Companion to The Birth of Tragedy I, Vol 10, Nos. 1 and 2 (2016): 162. 21 See Daniel K. L. Chua, Beethoven and Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) in addition to Bertagnolli, Prometheus in Music, already cited, as well as, classically but significantly, Hugo Riemann, “Beethovens Prometheus Musik: Ein Variationenwerk,” Die Musik, 9/13-14 (1909-10; 1934):107-125. 22 See, again, Mary Ann Smart, “Beethoven Dances.” 23 Rüdiger Ziemann details Nietzsche’s youthful Prometheus drama which, apart from the Goethe he quotes, is likely more relevant for his choice of subject for his title image than Wagner’s fondness for Aeschylus as is often affirmed. See Ziemann, “Ewiges Ziel und falsche Begriffe. Zu Friedrich Nietzsches PrometheusDrama,” Nietzsche Forschung, 8 (2001): 205-217. 24 See for a discussion read as prelude to Zarathustra, Francesca Cauchi, “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Promethean Pretensions and Romantic Dialectics,” Romanticism, Vol. 15 Issue 3 (2009): 254-264.

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The focus is Beethoven who composes music about or concerning — über — music. To this extent, Nietzsche’s invocation of Beethoven’s “innocence of tones”25 may be coordinated with what Nietzsche elsewhere calls the “innocence of becoming,” emphasizing musical redemption. The echo recurs in the second edition of The Gay Science, re-issued in 1887 adding the fifth section,26 so that the two editions of The Gay Science frame Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The conclusion epitomizes the musical challenge of the art of ending, as Nietzsche characterizes this art, and here again the reference is not to Wagner but Beethoven: We can’t take it any longer,” they shout at me; “away, away with this raven black music! … [not the] voices from the grave and the marmot whistles as you have employed so far to regale us in your wilderness, Mr. Hermit and Musician of the Future! No not such tones! Let us strike up more agreeable, more joyous tones. (FW §383)27 25

Cited from the patently satirical concluding section of Nietzsche’s Human, All too Human, namely “The Wanderer and his Shadow” (the reference to Lucian in the shadow usually passes unnoticed). For a discussion of Nietzsche and Lucian, the second century C. E. cynic and satirist, see my chapters in Babich, Nietzsches Antike (Berlin: Nomos, 2020) and in English, with fewer references, Babich, “The Philosopher and the Volcano,” Philosophy Today (Summer 2011): 213-231. 26 See Babich, “Nietzsche’s ‘Gay Science’” in Words in Blood, Like Flowers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 55ff as well as Babich, “Wort und Musik in der Antiken Tragödie,” Nietzsche-Studien, 36 (2007): 230-257. 27 Note that it is not my claim that the significance of such references has gone without notice. Thus, in addition to his teacher, the late Carl Dahlhaus, Stephen Hinton highlights Nietzsche’s emphasis, in order to point out the difficulty of parsing Beethoven himself, in “Not Which Tones? The Crux of Beethoven’s Ninth,” Nineteenth Century Music, XXII/1 (Summer 1998): 61-77. For Hinton, the problem is musical, but that is to say performative: when it comes to “the beginning of the baritone recitative ‘O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!’ …everything turns on how the singer sings the word Töne. The singer can sing “the pitches literally, as notated,” or the singer can “add an unnotated but implied appoggiatura on the first syllable.” Ibid. The alternate option is there because indicated in the score itself: “in the versions of the recitative presented earlier in the movement by the lower strings, the appoggiatura is written out.” See Hinton’s illustrations of Beethoven’s Symphony Number Nine, movement IV, baritone recitative, mm. 216-236, here: 62. Hinton emphasizes Beethoven’s ‘irony’ but he is also interested in what our interpretations tell us about ourselves: how we hear such possibilities in the case of scholars and of composers such as Wagner. Thus Hinton cites Nietzsche, described as being “otherwise pro-Wagnerian,” as calling attention to these very words — and, as we might say, to the tonality of Töne. Hinton, who had been Carl Dahlhaus’s assistant, notes this crucial point (rare even within Nietzsche scholarship), citing the Kaufmann translation of Nietzsche’s “Music and Word” in

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Tragedy and music Prior to The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, Nietzsche’s initial philological, phenomenologically hermeneutic investigations of the ‘spirit of music’ in antiquity began at the level of the word, specifically: Nietzsche’s explorations of the musical character of ancient Greek qua spoken/sung. It is in this sense that we ought here to understand Nietzsche’s important reflections on Greek music drama and dance, together with his discussion of arsis/thesis thus in terms of meter and rhythm and thus in time. In this way, ‘keeping time’ with one’s feet (or hand, ‘for the eye,’ as Nietzsche argues) derives from ancient Greek musical dancing practice (or Orchestik).28 The mode of keeping time is suitable for dramatization as a literal and visual coordination of time intervals, as Nietzsche says of thesis “in the weightier intervals, the dancer brings his foot down.”29 Here Nietzsche Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 66. For Hinton, Nietzsche “is the only commentator to have picked up on the ironic significance of Beethoven’s reference to tones, as opposed to words which Wagner found so critical.” Ibid., 67. Emphasis added. 28 The dancers wore Kroupezai or Kroupala on the right foot, to beat time. As Amy Dale notes, the reference to dance is vestigial at best: “‘arsis’ and ‘thesis’ echo the lift and fall of the dancer’s feet.” Dale, The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama, 2. In a footnote she further emphasizes caution: “These terms, obscured as they have been by the varied and contradictory usage of past generations of scholars can only lead to confusion in a modern system of metric.” (Ibid.) Axel Pichler in his Nietzsche, Die Orchestikologie und das dissipative Denken (Wien: Passagen Verlag, 2010) makes a great contribution to dance. In addition to Pichler’s useful discussion, see Georg Stauth and Bryan S. Turner’s Weberian and hence regrettably less philosophical/philological account in their Nietzsche’s Dance: Resentment, Reciprocity and Resistance in Social Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988). Beyond Dale’s broader study, see Günther, „Am Leitfaden des Rhythmus. Kritische Wissenschaft und Wissenschaftskritik in Nietzsches Frühwerk“ in: Carlo Gentili & Cathrin Nielsen, eds., Der Tod Gottes und die Wissenschaft. Zur Wissenschaftskritik Nietzsches (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 107-122. As Curt Sachs writes, in accord with Nietzsche’s time measure and as opposed to stress: “The metric accents in both poetry and melody followed the so-called quantitative principle, they materialized as long syllables or short ones, not as strong among light beats.” Curt Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World: East and West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1943), 263. Adorno likewise foregrounds ancient dance in the context of his own comments on Riemann “Ad ancient musical notation,” in: Adorno, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction: Notes a Draft, and Two Schemata (London: Polity, 2006), 57. 29 Nietzsche, KGW II/2, 102.

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explains that what we call rhythm is “a whole drawn from a series of tacts.”30 In the distinction here, “elevating and setting down are presented for the eye, this is in poetry, in pous, thesis, arsis … while walking and dancing, the foot at first elevated, then lowered.”31 The point is musical regarding the direction for prosody. At issue is a kind of tact that has nothing to do with the stress ictus that is the only kind of ictus we know today.32 To this extent, we signal the unstressed ictus in a negative distinction with the stressed. Nietzsche however is concerned with the sounding of Greek in temporal measure, in every sense musical: a matter of pitch or tone. According to the entry in Liddell and Scott, ਙȡıȚȢ, ársis is the “lifting, removal, raising of the foot in beating of time,”33 and Nietzsche’s point is that this is, as in music, unaccented by contrast with the stressed meaning this has in Latin poetry and in poetry as we know it (in English, German, French, Italian, etc.), which nearly always tends to exemplify the stress ictus that Nietzsche argues as untenable in the Greek.34 There are modern exceptions but it may be hard for readers to know what to do with these

30

Ibid., 103. Ibid. As Sachs explicates these are dyadic beats: “arsis, lifing and thesis, dropping of the time-regulating hand or foot; in our words upbeat and downbeat.” The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, 263. 32 This in turn is related to the medieval recto tono which is unstressed and has everything to do as Ivan Illich reminds us (given his work on oral and written culture) on voice in monastic life practice. Illich uses this illustration in his In the Vineyard of the Text, to clarify the distinction between various cultures of reading as of scholarly, monastic life. in his commentary on Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalicon. “They listen to recitations done on one tone (recto tono)…” Ibid., 59. 33 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Seventh Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), “raising of the foot in beating time, opp. șȑıȚȢ, downward beat, Aristox. Rhyth. 12.17, D.H. Dem. 48, Aristid. Quint.1.13, Luc. Harm.I, etc.” 34 “Wenn es Ictus in dem Sprechen giebt—verschieden vom Accent—dann muß der im Verse sich wiederfinden. Aber die Worte haben die verschiedenste Stellung im Verse, bald in der Arsis, bald [in der] Thesis, somit haben sie keinen Ictus. / Giebt es einen Versictus (a), dann gewiß keinen Wortiktus (b). / Wenn es aber keinen Wortiktus (b) giebt, dann gewiß keinen Versictus (a). / Wenn a ist, dann ist b nicht. / Wenn b nicht ist, ist a nicht. / Also giebt es nicht a. / Giebt es keinen Versictus, dann ist Wortiktus möglich.Wenn es Wortiktus giebt, dann ist Versictus möglich.“ KSA 7, 4 [7], 90-91. 31

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exceptions, a patent claim on behalf of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘sprung’ rhythm — if there are those who argue for this in Milton as well.35 Nietzsche repeats this reflection on stress emphasis throughout his early philological reflections and he takes it up again later in life, drawing upon his experience as a pianist (here Nietzsche’s remarkable gift for musical improvisation and hence bodily performance practice is relevant),36 especially in his correspondence with Fuchs on musical phrasing with reference to Riemann’s 1882 study of the same.37 The culminating point of Nietzsche’s book on tragedy suggests as emphatically as counter-intuitively, that ancient tragedy is not about the ‘tragic’ aspects of life (he is very clear about this, invoking Goethe as antecedent for his claim that “the deepest play can indeed be merely aesthetic play in the case of musical tragedy” [GT §22]).38 The issue for Nietzsche, is the “genesis of the tragic myth” (GT §24), just where, as Nietzsche points out, the simple fact that “life is really so tragic would least of all explain the origin of an art form” quite where what is “transfigured” in the working of the art work is not the “‘reality’ of this world of appearances.” (Ibid.) Thus contra Aristotle, beyond 35

See on Milton, George Dobbin Brown, Syllabification and Accent in the Paradise Lost (London: J. Murphy Co., 1901) who does not argue for a pitch ictus per se and as opposed to a stress ictus but, more nuanced, for an “ictus in conflict marked by pitch.” 54. 36 Improvisation refers to a quite specific relation to performance. Thus Beethoven’s own reputation for improvisation may be illuminating as Glenn Stanley tells us Beethoven “preferred improvisations, which had an artistic status equal to, and perhaps higher than, playing finished works.” Stanley, ed., Cambridge Companion to Beethoven (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000), 16. 37 See on Köselitz, Frederick Love’s Nietzsche’s Saint Peter: Genesis and Cultivation of an Illusion (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991). And see Christopher Middleton’s translation of Nietzsche’s correspondence with Fuchs in “Nietzsche on Music and Metre,” Arion, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1967): 58-65 and Damien Ehrhardt, “Aspects de la phraséologie riemannienne,” Musurgia, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1997): 68-83. 38 Nietzsche names catharsis a “pathological discharge,” attributing it to Aristotle and pointing out that the classicist’s question of whether catharsis “be included among medical or moral phenomena, recalls a remarkable notion of Goethe’s: ‘Without a lively pathological interest,’ he says, I too, have never yet succeeded in elaborating a tragic situation of any kind, and hence I have rather avoided it than sought it. Can it perhaps have been yet another merit of the ancients that the deepest pathos was with them merely aesthetic play, while with us the truth of nature must co-operate in order to produce such a work?” GT §22.

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Chapter 7 moral delight, for example, under the form of pity or moral triumph …if you would explain the tragic myth, the first requirement is to seek the pleasure that is peculiar to it in the purely aesthetic sphere, without transgressing into the region of pity, fear, or the morally sublime. (GT §24)

Nietzsche here invokes his own musical motif as he puts the question of tragic enjoyment or ‘aesthetic’: “How can the ugly and disharmonic, the content of tragic myth, stimulate aesthetic pleasure?” Nietzsche’s answer refers to Beethoven — nota bene: this is the same answer Wagner gives, the same answer Adorno gives — referring to the music of Beethoven as ‘playing’ with dissonance. The point is directly available, so Nietzsche tells us, “via the wondrous significance of musical dissonance. Quite generally, only music, placed beside the world, can give us an idea of what is meant by the justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon” (Ibid.) This reference continues to Wagner’s Siegfried yet it is consistent with Nietzsche’s general condemnation of Wagnerian decadence that Nietzsche does not claim Wagner’s music under the rubric of the Dionysian. Rather: he tells us that what is needed is yet to come. This is why Nietzsche calls for a ‘rebirth’ of tragedy, supposing “the Apollonian power of transfiguration,” as both Dionysus and Apollo must unfold their powers “according to the law of eternal justice.” (GT §24) For Nietzsche, “both the Apollonian and the Dionysian transfigure a region in whose joyous chords dissonance as well as the terrible image of the world fade away charmingly; both play with the sting of displeasure [Stachel der Unlust] … by means of this play both justify the existence of even the ‘worst world’.” (Ibid.) An unresolved chord, ‘dissonance’ is always on the way to resolution. Thus Seyfried’s publication of Beethoven’s notes (from his studies with Albrechtsberger) also emphasizes this resolutio dissonantiarum, detailing the varieties of the same. As Nietzsche emphasizes, the deferred resolution is a matter of time: the longer this takes, i.e., the more irresolution, the more discord, the more pain. Beethoven is a master of this deferred resolution. As Adorno reflects in an allusion that recalls Nietzsche’s language in the Birth of Tragedy — “playing with the thorn of dissonance” —but not less reminiscent of Nietzsche’s own studies of quantifying rhythm [quantierenden Rhythmik]:

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Time — as something no longer mastered but depicted — becomes a solace for the suffering. Only the older Beethoven discovered this secret of time in music.39

Dissonances are heard as such relative to a given context as Nottebohm’s edition of Beethoven’s notes stresses this in his own studies of composition concerning context and resolution.40 For Schoenberg, as a result of what he famously describes as the “emancipation of dissonance,” dissonance came to be placed on an equal footing as the sounds regarded as consonances (in my Harmonienlehre the explanation for this lies in the insight that consonance and dissonance differ not as opposites do but only in point of degree; that consonances are the sounds closer to the fundamental, dissonances those further away; that their comprehensibility is graduated accordingly, since the nearer ones are easier to comprehend than those further off.)41

But, and as already noted above, rather than predicting twentieth century atonality, what interested Nietzsche turned upon extant musical compositional notions of discordances and accordances — already in his early notebooks on Homer and the difference between epic and lyric poetry — i.e., dissonances and consonances, quite in the harmonic relationship between music and words in ancient Greek whereby tragedy can be literally born out of the ‘spirit’ of music. What is elusive is that Nietzsche does not read the text of ancient Greek tragedy as a kind of libretto where we happen to be missing, as many scholars assume, the musical score which we then might someday discover or, easier still: re-invent. Such a claim already misconceives the relationship between music and words in antiquity as this is independent of any separate musical notation quite simply because the text, the written Greek, is its own phonetic notation. In other words: the addition of musical notation to the text, like the Hebrew vowels to which Ivan Illich refers

39

Adorno, Beethoven The Philosophy of Music (London: Polity, 1998), 93. “Von der Auflösung der Dissonanzen: De Dissonantiarum Resolutione. Eine gebundene Note ist nichts anders als eine Verzögerung der folgenden Note." In: Nottebohm, Beethoveniana: Aufsätze und Mittheilungen (Leipzig Rieter Biedermann, 1872), 179. 41 Schoenberg, “Theory and Composition” in Leonard Stein, ed., Style and Idea (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1975 [1950]), 260-261. 40

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(drawing as he does on the scholarly exploration of the tradition of orality and literality),42 is a later (much, much later) supplement. Like davening (Yiddish ʯʲʰʥʥ ʔʠʣ davnen), the rhythmic bodily bowing of praying in Hebrew: the bodily, physical tradition preserves sound apart from a visual aide memoire. In the case of ancient Greek, Nietzsche argues, this is what he means by the ‘death’ of tragedy, musical notation is needed only subsequently.43 For Nietzsche, after the death of tragedy, “committing suicide at its own hand” and by way of the works of Euripides and Platonico-Socratic rationality, Beethoven’s “playing” with dissonance gives us insight into the paradox of tragedy: “playing” discord, again “the sting of the unpleasant” [Stachel der Unlust] in the fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony. At the same time, such dissonance is also to be found throughout the 19th century, in Chopin and in Wagner, although this is of course predominantly associated with Schoenberg today. As Adorno puts it, tracing a line between Wagner, Beethoven and Schoenberg with language that is quite as Nietzschean as it is Heideggerian: The manner in which Wagner treats motifs whose aspect inherently contradicts the procedure of variation casts the die of Schoenberg’s procedure. It leads to the definitive technical antagonism of postBeethoven music that between a predetermined tonality — and the substantial detail. Whereas Beethoven developed the musical entity out of nothingness in order to be able to determine it entirely as what becomes, the late Schoenberg demolishes it as what already became. 44

42

Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders, ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988), 13. See Jousse in note 24 in addition to Walter Ong, S.J., Orality and Literacy: The Technologization of the Word(London: Methuen, 1982). As Illich develops this in his In the Vineyard of the Text (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), “the alphabet is a technology” for ‘recording’ speech. (93). Cf. Anne Carson, who cites neither Nietzsche nor the philologists Illich cites, on consonants and breath in Eros, The Bittersweet (Chicago: Dalkey Press, 2000 [1986]). 43 Nietzsche, GT §11. 44 Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, Robert Hullot-Kentnor, trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 61. Cf. Hinton, “The Emancipation of Dissonance: Schoenberg’s Two Practices of Composition,” Music and Letters, 91.4 (2010): 568-579.

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Indeed if one means dissonance apart from harmony, apart from its relation to consonance and its resolution (this is the language of sexual tension and rapprochement as Friedrich Hölderlin speaks of the conflict of lovers and the promise of happiness that is at least its occasional reconciliation in his Hyperion, as this same dynamic tension also structures the entirety of The Birth of Tragedy which similarly begins (and ends) with the reference to the lover’s strife between male and female, between masculine and feminine elements in music and art), one has gone well beyond the historic sensibilities of Nietzsche’s nineteenth century and, seemingly, well into the realm, once again, of what Schoenberg called the “emancipation of dissonance.”45

From Dionysus and Apollo to Nietzsche and Beethoven Those who write on Nietzsche and antiquity as on Nietzsche and music are inclined, perhaps for the sheer joy of it, to focus on Dionysus. Yet Nietzsche argues that we find ourselves in foreign territory when it comes to the ancient Greeks. The challenge is less to understand Dionysus than Apollo in his violent and fearful aspect. As already noted with reference to Prometheus, these are alien names in an archaic vista.46 Rather than the distinctive juncture of the Dionysian,47 tragedy for Nietzsche derives from the 7thcentury, IJȡĮȖȚțȠ‫ ܜ‬ȤȠȡȠȓ, the goat choruses and older folk traditions. Speaking of the oldest song festivals, “with the potent coming of spring that penetrates all nature” (GT §1), Nietzsche emphasizes that “beneath” “the charm of the Dionysian” there is not only a communal and political connection, reaffirming “the union between human being and human being,” but not less chthonic, a re-union with nature itself. And we recall both Hölderlin and Schiller as well as Goethe as Nietzsche writes: “Freely the earth proffers her gifts, and peacefully the beasts of prey of the rocks and the desert approach.” (Ibid.) 45

See Schoenberg, “Composition with Twelve Tones” in Leonard Stein, ed., Style and Idea, 216-244. 46 On this theme there is a good deal more to be said, but for one start, see in a musical context, the Wagnerian Martin Vogel, Apollinisch und Dionysisch (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1966). Significant, and bearing out Nietzsche’s emphasis here, see Marcel Détienne’s Apollon le couteau à la main. Une approche expérimentale du polythéisme grec (Paris : Gallimard, 2009 [1998]). 47 As Nietzsche might have done had he been an advocate of Euripides (for Nietzsche, Euripides is matched with Socrates, thus tragedy meets its death at Euripides’ hand, thus the language of suicide).

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In addition to its manifestations in Schiller, this is also the central theme of Hölderlin’s poetry along with the painter so significant for Nietzsche as also for Dieter Jähnig, the Nietzsche and Schelling scholar, Nicolàs Poussin. Poussin paints Bacchus together with Pan and Midas with his asses’ ears. What is crucial are thus animal signifiers and not less the calm of the animals and we note that Nietzsche found a common theme for discussion when he visited Tribschen where Wagner displayed a Genelli tapestry of oneness and communion.48 Dissonance emerges in this ideal of union of all with all in these feast “days of transfiguration” as Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of “extravagant sexual licentiousness, whose waves overwhelmed all family life and its venerable traditions” indeed, “even that horrible mixture of sensuality and cruelty which has always seemed to me to be the real ‘witches brew,’” (GT §2) comparing “the Dionysian orgies of the Greeks with the Babylonian Sacaea and their reversion of man to the tiger and the ape.” (Ibid.)49 When Nietzsche continues this classically dark (“cruel”) reference beginning from such “festivals of world redemption,” he declares that with them “nature for the first time attains her artistic jubilee; it is with them that the destruction of the principium individuationis for the first time becomes an artistic phenomenon,” (GT §2) the ultimate illustration turns out — and this should surprise us — to be nothing other than Beethoven’s musical transposition of Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy,’ a setting that, as Nietzsche earlier declared first truly gave voice to what the poet had provisionally expressed: Schiller’s Hymn to Joy first attains in this way its deeper, genuinely artistic background. We see how the poet attempts to explicate the Germanic depths of this profoundly Dionysian excitement: which he however, as a modern human being, can only stammer with great difficulty. If

48

See the same issue of New Nietzsche Studies cited above for the image of Dionysos wird von den Musen erzogen [Dionysus Schooled by the Muses], here: vi. Here we might argue for a reciprocity of influence (affinity) between Nietzsche and Wagner, whatever it was that first made them friends, a sense of which reciprocity is overlooked in our modern passion for proving intellectual priority, championing either Nietzsche or Wagner, as if shared ideas and their genial exchange were a matter of somehow unique “originality” or demonstrable “copyright.” 49 This is the theme of Strong’s Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration.

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Beethoven now presents before us the true Schillerian depths, what we thus have is the infinitely higher and more perfect.50

This point recurs in Beyond Good and Evil: … Beethoven is the intermediary between an old mellow soul that is constantly crumbling and a future over-young soul that is constantly arriving; upon his music there lies that twilight of eternal loss and eternal extravagant hope—the same light in which Europe lay bathed when it dreamed with Rousseau, when it danced around the Revolution’s Tree of Liberty and finally almost worshipped before Napoleon. But how quickly this feeling is now fading away, how hard it is today even to know of this feeling—how strange to our ears sounds the language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, Byron, in whom together the same European destiny that in Beethoven knew how to sing found its way into words!— (JGB §245)

There is no question of Beethoven’s ode functioning as an ode to freedom, not if this destiny is to find its way into song. This is not because Nietzsche had some antipathy — hardly — to the ideal of liberty. This last is the French Revolution (and its particular Tree of Liberty), together with the Hegelian allusion to the majesty of the world spirit in the person of Napoleon. But the theme for Nietzsche in this first book is song as such, music about music: thus Nietzsche’s self-critique of his first book — sie hätte singen sollen.51 The signal significance of Beethoven is a specific word-sound, needed to the extent that a specific tone is needed. The Hölderlinian effort to speak out the essence of joy, das freudigste, freudigst zu sagen, is the heart

50

„We see how the poet, seeking to interpret his deep Germanic Dionysian impulse in images that as a modern man he only barely knows how to stammer. If Beethoven now represents what is actually Schiller’s underground, we thus have the infinitely-higher and more perfect.” Nietzsche’s posthumous notes, ca, 1871. 51 See here for a broader context, and also with reference to Adorno on this theme, Rose Rosengard Subotnik’s “The Historical Structure: Adorno’s ‘French’ Model for the Criticism of Nineteenth-Century Music,” 19th Century Music, 2 (July 1978): 36-60.

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of tragedy.52 For Nietzsche the word, the sound, the note, the Ton: is Freude.53 The contrast with Schopenhauer brings to aesthetics what Nietzsche found in an ethical mode in Anaximander in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. He goes on to replicate the contrast between aesthetics (pathos) and the ethical (ethos) with reference to Beethoven. For Nietzsche (as for E.T.A. Hoffman too): Beethoven was the first to allow music to speak a new language, the formerly forbidden language of passion...: Thus it almost seemed as if Beethoven had set for himself the contradictory task of allowing pathos to be expressed via the means of ethos.54

Nietzsche makes the contrast with Wagner explicit by way of an allusion to Wagner as indeed to Schopenhauer’s own very musical aesthetics: ‘Entirely withdrawing into himself from this world the musician is thus, as Wagner has described it with reference to Beethoven, very nearly in the sphere of holiness: the incomparable purity, emotional lustre of childlike immediacy, utterly lacking pretense, the absence of conventionality all belongs to music, not the other arts, which stand precisely too close to the phenomenal world as images.55

This echoes Hoffmann’s declaration of the absolute in music in his famous review of Beethoven, arguing that as the magic power of music grows stronger it cannot but shatter — here there is an allusion what Nietzsche calls for with regard to Lessing as to the new Laocoon — every bond to the other arts.56 52

Beethoven and Hölderlin were both born in 1770 and as Günter Miethe observes the influence of Schiller’s Ode to Joy, “An die Freude” is to be seen in Hölderlin's representation of Bacchus as “‘Freudengott’” (Miethe, Friedrich Hölderlin: Zeit und Schicksal (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), 113). 53 See Holger Schmid’s discussion of Nietzsche’s own ‘word’ for music: Venedig, Venice and his poetological-musicological analysis in terms of “swingstep” and “double song” of what he calls “Nietzsche’s barcarole.” Schmid, “Nietzsche’s Philosophical Nocturne,” Babette Babich with Heidi Byrnes, trans. New Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 1, Nos. 1 &2 (1996): 57-63, here: 61. 54 See Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator, §9 vii. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. To put this in context, as it includes a specific reference to opera, it is worth citing E. T. A. Hoffmann here: “In dem Gesange, wo die Poesie bestimmte Affekte durch Worte andeutet, wirkt die magische Kraft der Musik wie das wunderbare

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Here Nietzsche also traces what can seem to be his sharpest musical critique of Wagner on behalf of (and by way of) Beethoven: For Wagner the mistake in the artistic genre of opera is that a means of expression, the music, qua end, the purpose of the expression, was made into a means. Thus music counted for him as a means of expression — very characteristic of the actor. Now one would be asked in a symphony: if the music is a means of expression here, what would be the purpose? It cannot lie in the music, as what is essentially a means of expression, now requires something it must express. For Wagner, this is the drama. Without this, music alone would be for him an absurdity: it raises the question “why all this noise?” Consequently, he regarded Beethoven’s 9th Symphony as Beethoven’s actual achievement, because by the inclusion of the word here Beethoven gave music its meaning, as means of expression. Means and ends — music and drama — older teaching. General and Example — music and drama — newer teaching. 57

Here, we may return to The Birth of Tragedy, to recall Nietzsche’s challenge in the first section of his first book: Only transform Beethoven’s jubilant song of joy into a painting and do not restrain your imagination as the multitudes sink awestruck into the dust: thus one grazes the Dionysian. Now is the slave a free human being, now all the rigid, hostile, barriers that necessity, caprice, or “crass convention” [“freche Mode”] have fixed between human beings are shattered. Now, with the gospel of world harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, and joined with his neighbor but as one with him… (GT §1) 58

Nietzsche’s rude or “‘crass convention’ [‘freche Mode’]” repeats Wagner’s reflections between French ‘taste’ [Geschmack] and “the spirit of Paris and Versailles”59 by contrast with an expressly German ideal woman [“‘deutsche Weib’”] and mode [“‘deutsche Mode’”]60 and dictates Elixier der Weisen, von dem etliche Tropfen jeden Trank köstlicher und herrlicher machen. Jede Leidenschaft – Liebe – Haß – Zorn – Verzweiflung etc., wie die Oper sie uns gibt, kleidet die Musik in den Purpurschimmer der Romantik, und selbst das im Leben Empfundene führt uns hinaus aus dem Leben in das Reich des Unendlichen. So stark ist der Zauber der Musik, und, immer mächtiger werdend, mußte er jede Fessel einer andern Kunst zerreißen.“ From: Hoffmann, „Beethovens Instrumentalmusik.“ 57 Nietzsche, KSA 7, 32 [52], 770. 58 KSA 1, 29. 59 Wagner, Beethoven, 60. 60 Wagner, Beethoven, 61.

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and rules of the same. Thus Wagner explains that Beethoven altered Schiller’s verse: ‘sovereignly,’ “aus eigener Machtvollkommenheit”, writing „was die Mode frech getheilt!” in place of “was die Mode streng getheilt,”61 just where Schiller’s own first draft, “Schwert getheilt” would, Wagner writes, have been “too noble [edel] and heroic.”62 Wagner’s point is elusive for reasons he details in a footnote citing Beethoven’s 1826 Schott’s Söhne edition while noting as his own discovery that the 1864, Breitkopf & Härtel edition, the last being the basis for choral versions to date, simply set ‘streng’ in place of ‘frech,’ a “falsification [Fälschung],” for Wagner, indicative of the “destiny” [Schicksal] of “our great Beethoven.”63 It is also true that for both Nietzsche and Wagner everything depends on articulating ‘Mode’ as a “spiritual symbol.”64 What Nietzsche expresses at the end of The Birth of Tragedy as the “becoming-human of dissonance” (GT §24) is already anticipated where the first section concludes citing Schiller’s poem in a sculptural, spiritual mode (Schiller’s Plotinus), in Beethoven’s musical transposition of Schiller’s own words of transfiguration: The noblest clay, the costliest marble, the human being, is here kneaded and hewn, and to the sounds of the chisel strokes of the Dionysian world artist rings out the cry of the Eleusinian mysteries, “Do you prostrate yourselves, millions? Do you sense your maker world?” (GT §1)

Writing in an ecstatic mode that also corresponds to the Schopenhauerian insight into the nature of the will, Nietzsche reflects that for Schopenhauer, as for the Greeks, “Pain, contradiction is true being, pleasure, harmony is appearance.”65 In this musically dissonant way, what remains, inevitably, “hard for us to understand,” as Nietzsche says here “is the Apollonian…”66 Note Nietzsche’s emphasis on “the suffering that resounds, as opposed to the 61

Wagner, Beethoven, 69. Ibid. 63 Ibid, *. 64 See for critical discussion, the Luther scholar Heinz Bluhm, who argues that Wagner highlights elements of ‘protestantism’ element in ‘the Catholic baptized and raised’ Beethoven, which he sets alongside the ‘Germanic spirit,’ Bluhm, „Das Lutherbild des Jungen Nietzsche,“ PMLA, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1943): 264-288, here, 277f. 65 Nietzsche, KSA 7, 9 [10], 275. 66 Ibid. 62

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acting of the epic: the ‘picture’ of Apollonian culture is presented by the human by way of enchantment.”67 Thus what “we call ‘tragic’ is precisely the Apollonian clarification [Verdeutlichung] of the Dionysian.”68 This is an explicitly musical illustration. Nietzsche continues to reflect on “dissonance and consonance in music—” adding that “we may say that a chord suffers through a false note.”69 But harmony is the issue: “The pain, the contradiction is the true being [wahrhafte Sein]. The pleasure, the harmony is the illusion.”70 The tragic artwork illustrates this for those who participated in the cult of which Nietzsche writes in his book on tragedy. Tragedy for the Greeks was no ‘night at the opera.’ Distant from Wagner’s 19th century (although a connection is implicit in Wagner’s ideal of a Gesamtkunstwerk), ancient musical techné was a cultic occasion, a ‘happening,’ far from the ideal of entertainment, as cultural diversion, but also and even as l’art pour l’art which last cultural preoccupation Nietzsche regarded as utter decadence (thus Nietzsche might compare the artist, the composer, the actor, with today’s stars of whatever musical kind, from opera to jazz, rock, pop, hiphop: all of it). For Nietzsche by contrast with such 19th century (and 21st century) cultural institutions, the tragic work of art dramatized the “earthly resolution of tragic dissonance.” (GT §17)71 Here Nietzsche argues that “beauty has no share whatever in the domain of music,” a point he can make purely formally and purely in terms of his discovery of the musical character of the articulation of ancient Greek: “Rhythm and harmony are the main parts, the melody is only an abbreviation of the harmony”72 and this is the coincidence of pathos and music. The point of reference is the dissonant chord in music, “it is pain that is productive,” i.e., pain, “which as a related counter-color engenders the beautiful,” always — and again we note the musical allusion here — “from an indifferent point.”73

67

Ibid. Nietzsche, KSA 7, 7, [128], 192. See the title illustration of the author’s Nietzsches Antike by Bartolomeo Manfredi, Apollo and Marsyas (1615-1620). 69 Nietzsche, KSA 7 [165], 202. 70 Nietzsche, KSA 7 [165], 203. 71 Thus arguing on behalf of musical resolution Nietzsche is not arguing on behalf of an “earthly” much less a “heavenly” resolution. 72 Nietzsche, KSA 7, 3 [54], 75. 73 Ibid. 68

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“Music” as Nietzsche also argues, following the same Schopenhauer followed by aesthetical musical theorists from Wagner to Adorno, is thus what “demonstrates to us that the entire world, in its multiplicity, is no longer felt as dissonance.”74 To illustrate this, Nietzsche’s example is Beethoven. As Nietzsche reflects, “After these premises, imagine what an unnatural, indeed impossible enterprise it must be to compose music for a poem.”75 And we recall, and this is the Gesamt point of the Gesamtkunstwerk, Wagner wrote his own lyrics. By contrast, Beethoven’s achievement was the musical setting of Schiller’s word poem into, i.e., transposed as, music in his Ninth Symphony. Beethoven’s achievement for the Nietzsche who wrote “Music and Word,” no accident as we now see, would be the claim that what Beethoven manages to do was less to set Schiller’s words to music than to play or use them as music. Nietzsche describes the challenge as “like that of a son trying to beget his father”76 but just such a genesis is Nietzsche’s project in his later writings.77 Here what is crucial is that Nietzsche’s example, Kantian as it happens (whatever is actual is also possible) corresponds to the actuality of Beethoven, whereby Beethoven’s images “are no more than sheerly allegorical representations.”78 For Nietzsche, “Beethoven’s last quartets, for example, entirely put to shame any intuitive perception and indeed the whole realm of empirical reality.”79 The heart of the argument as Nietzsche develops it, is all about what Beethoven actually achieves, writing as Nietzsche does in his best courtly mode: We hope it will not be taken amiss if … we include in our reflections the tremendous and inexplicably magical last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony … That Schiller’s poem ‘To Joy’ is totally incongruent with this music’s dithyrambic jubilation over the redemption of the world and is 74

Ibid. Nietzsche, KSA 7, 7 [127], 185. Emphasis added. 76 Ibid., 363. This is an Aristotelian allusion. 77 This is evident in several extant discussions of Nietzsche’s music and his philosophy, not least of which should be considered Frederick Love, as cited above, as well as and although not available in English Curt Paul Janz, the basis for many discussions of Nietzsche and music. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 75

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drowned like pale moonlight by that ocean of flames — who would want to rob me of this most certain feeling?80

If, as I point out in The Hallelujah Effect, some part of what Nietzsche says here can appear to echo feminist musicologists who write on Adrienne Rich’s Beethoven poetry and if another part seems to echo Adorno’s more routinely sexist reflections on Schiller,81 Nietzsche’s argument emphasizes less the ecstatico-erotic violence of “this music’s dithyrambic jubilation” nor indeed the synæsthesia of light and sound (“like pale moonlight”, “oceans of flame”)82 than the claim that among the instruments Beethoven deploys for his 9th symphony he uses the human voice qua musical instrument among all the others. Nietzsche’s point concerns sound and ‘musical meaning’ in “the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”83 It is where, as Nietzsche says, the “dithyrambic world-redeeming jubilation of this music is utterly incongruent with Schiller’s poem ‘To Joy’,”84 what is manifest is Beethoven’s transposition of the poet’s words into nothing other than that same ‘language of tones.’ Thus Nietzsche makes the phenomenological claim that: the only reason why this feeling upon listening to that music fails to cry out when we listen to it is precisely that we have been dispossessed for image and word by the music and already hear absolutely nothing of Schiller’s poem at all?85

80

Ibid., 366, cf. GT §1. Adorno, Minima Moralia, §53, 88. I have already cited many of those who read Beethoven and Adorno, be it against Adorno or through him, and see for a recent discussion engaging the theoretical concerns of both Adorno and Horkheimer and the “totalitarian” undercurrents in Schiller, Nicholas Vaszonyi, “Hegemony through Harmony: German Identity, Music, and Enlightenment Around 1800” in Nora M. Alter, ed., Sound Matters: Essays on the Acoustics of German Culture (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004), here esp. 40ff. 82 Nietzsche, KSA 7 12 [1]. Cf., again, my discussion of Nietzsche’s synæsthetic reflections, Babich, “Between Hölderlin and Heidegger: Nietzsche’s Transfiguration of Philosophy,” Nietzsche-Studien, 29 (2000): 267-301. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 81

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The tones in question are to be counted as “More pleasing and more joyful!”86 What is needed is another instrument, another sound: in this case the sound of joy, Freude, the word itself. Herewith we find a differently critical understanding of Nietzsche’s reflections on Aristotle in The Birth of Tragedy including his reflections on the “role” of the chorus. We also gain a new perspective on Nietzsche’s citations from Schiller or, better said, from Beethoven’s transposition: Seid umschlungen, he writes, ahnest du deinen Schöpfer, Welt? Nietzsche thus foregrounds the significance of a community in harmony, describing the “Greek chorus”: Once as living sounding board, thence as the sounding pipe through which the actor’s sentiments were colossally conveyed to the viewers, thirdly, the coming to voice of the lyrically pitched passionately singing spectator.87

What is at issue for Nietzsche is not ineffability. As he argues: No one should ask himself whether, with the poems of the great ancient lyric poets in hand, these poets could have had any idea of making their images and thoughts clearer to the listening crowd around them: and one should answer this serious question with Pindar and the Aeschylean choral songs in mind. These boldest and darkest knots of thought, this swirl of images tempestuously born and reborn, this oracular tone of the whole, which we are so often unable to penetrate, even with the most concentrated attention and without being distracted by music and dance — should this whole world of miracles have been as transparent as glass to the Greek mass, an interpretation of music in fact, by way of images and concepts? And with such mysteries of thought as are found in Pindar, would this wondrous poet have wanted to make music, so powerfully clear in itself, yet clearer?88

Nietzsche invites us to reflect on our lived or felt experience of music. But the call to reflect on our ‘own’ experience is not a call to subjectivity

86

Ibid. Nietzsche, KSA 7, 1 [40], 20. Cf. Nietzsche’s lecture “The Greek Music Drama” for a description of the heavily padded actor and the immense mask through which the actor had to speak and sing in the strongest tones in order to be understood by a mass of spectators of more than 20,000 human beings.” Das griechische Musikdrama, KGW, III/2, 10. 88 Nietzsche, Das griechische Musikdrama, KGW, III/3, 382. 87

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or conventional sympathy, feeling with or feeling into, quite to the extent that, given what Nietzsche names the “problem of the subject,” his thematic is not about the subject at all. At issue is not communication: the audience already knows what is said. Thus at issue is speaking and singing ‘well,’ in the face of “a public that obdurately penalized every excess in pitch, every incorrect accent.”89 In the vision Nietzsche presents of ancient Greece, the lyric poet singing his hymn, the masked actor engaging the audience, here not unlike the high mass of his earlier reference, suggests that what is at stake is “the people singing the folk song, for themselves.” Here we should think of Beethoven’s Ninth and its “Chorale” as Nietzsche also invokes this in his Fragment, Music and Word,90 for the sake of the people who are singing, “as the lyricist sings his hymn” (the parallel is at the heart of his continued reference to folksong). The people singing the folksong sing as they do “out of an inner urge, without caring whether the words are intelligible to anyone who does not join in the singing.”91 Like the ancient Greek experience of the lyric and tragic poet, we have our own personal, musical experience. Here, arguably Nietzsche’s reference includes a reference to Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, as I read the cadence of the examples given: We think of our experience with music of the higher artistic kind: how much would we understand of the text of a mass by Palestrina, of a cantata by Bach, of an oratorio by Handel, if we ourselves did not sing them? Only for those who join in the singing, is there a lyric, is there vocal music …92

89

Nietzsche, Das griechische Musikdrama, KGW, III/2, 10. See for further references the discussion of Thrasybulos Georgiades in Babich, The Hallelujah Effect and, likewise drawing on Georgiades, Bertram Schmid, Der ethische Aspekt der Musik. Nietzsches „Geburt der Tragödie“ und die Wiener klassische Musik (Würzburg: Köngishausen und Neumann, 1991). Cf., further, Helmut MüllerSievers, “‘A Tremendous Chasm’: Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Measure of Poetry,” New Nietzsche Studies (Fall 2017/Winter 2018): 15-34. 90 Nietzsche, KGW, III/3, 386-387. 91 Ibid. Cf. Strong’s discussion of Rousseau and music, as the literally communitybuilding music of the people, here the people of Geneva, Strong, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary (Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), xxvii, 4-8, 61-63. 92 Ibid.

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The (polemical) point is that the music the singer sings is different from the music the listener hears who is by contrast offered nothing less than “absolute music.”93

The becoming-human of dissonance This essay has traced points of contact between Nietzsche and Beethoven, and, with the titan, Prometheus, Goethe and Hölderlin. Nietzsche draws attention to the “transition of the spirit of music in poetry, that is tragedy, the tragic.” (GT §25) I have emphasized that it matters to know why dissonance or discord with all its mythic Titanic associations might need to be liberated/emancipated in the first place, and not less that we need an understanding of what counts as dissonance for Nietzsche. Thus in the 1822 Ersch-Gruber Encyclopedia (today: the Brockhaus), dissonance is listed under the rubric of “binding”94 and the terminology can be helpful in understanding dissonance both in terms of the preparation needed for the ear to hear it as such and also as requiring or on the way to resolution. The same language is also relevant to Nietzsche’s description of the “wedding” between Apollo and Dionysus, with tragedy as offspring. The terminology of the “emancipation of dissonance” is usually attributed to Schoenberg’s famous invocation.95 I’ve taken care to emphasize historical contextualization necessary for discussing dissonance by noting its significance for the 19th century.96 This last is Nietzsche’s context when 93

Ibid. Johann Samuel Ersch, Johann Gottfried Gruber, et al., Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1822), 202. Additionally, Gottfried Weber was the author of a Theory of Musical Composition: Treated with a View to a Naturally Consecutive Arrangement of Topics, trans. John F. Warner (London: Robert Cocks and Co., 1851), Volume 1, including a section exploring traditional definitions of dissonance. The first mentioned encyclopedia entry is drawn in part from the larger book, in the section on tied or slurred or bound dissonances, in his chapter on preparation, 234ff. James Tenney’s nuanced A History of ‘Consonance’ and ‘Dissonance’ (London: Routledge, 1988) begins with harmony, underlining “the currently equivocal status of dissonance and consonance,” 32. 95 As noted, Schoenberg uses it in his 1926 essay: “Gesinnung oder Erkenntnis?” But for a discussion of the origination of Schoenberg’s “Emanzipation der Dissonanz,” see August Halm’s Harmonielehre (Berlin: Göschen, 1900) analyzed as “Befreiung der Dissonanz.” 96 Helmholtz analyses consonance and dissonance in these terms, speaking of pulses or beats, in his On the Sensations of Tones, (Dover, New York 1954 [1862]). 94

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he uses the term to conclude his reflections on The Birth of Tragedy, speaking of the “becoming-human of dissonance.” Claims go even further back in the 19th century and we cited Hoffmann on music’s magical power to break its bonds with the other arts, given the dynamic between consonance and dissonance.97 I began by noting that Nietzsche tends to be read both in his own day as in our own as if he were speaking to the need for a cultural revival such that Wagner might thrive.98 The result of this focus on Wagner left Nietzsche a banal Wagnerian and a failed philologist with nothing to say, so the classicists tell us, about tragedy. Although Nietzsche sought to

Using the language of wave interference and the terminology of entanglement that may be familiar to readers of popular science authors on quantum mechanics, the 19th century physicist and student of physiological psychology defines consonance in his “Retrospect” as “a continuous, dissonance an intermittent sensation of tone. Two consonant tones flow on quietly side by side in an undisturbed stream; dissonant tones cut one another up into separate pulses of tone.” 352. The beauty of this definition allows a mathematical model but the point of the distinction is expressed for Helmholtz in Euclid whom he cites: “Consonance is the blending of a higher with a lower tone. Dissonance is incapacity to mix, when two tones cannot blend, but appear rough to the ear.” See Robert Fink’s discussion of Helmholtz in his The Origin of Music: A Theory of the Universal Development of Music (The Greenwich-Meridian Co., 1981), 132ff in addition to the brilliant historian of science, H. Floris Cohen’s discussion in his Quantifying Music: The Science of Music at the First Stage of Scientific Revolution 1580-1650 (Frankfurt am Main: Springer, 1984), foregrounding a beautiful discussion of Zarlino and Kepler on distinguishing consonance and dissonance. Today’s scientistic cognitive philosophy makes much of this. See, e.g., Karen Johanne Pallesen, Elvira Brattico, et al., “Emotion Processing of Major, Minor, and Dissonant Chords: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. The Neurosciences and Music II: From Perception to Performance, Vol. 1060 (December 2005): 450-453. I would note here without pursuing it further, that Pallesen et al. tilt their results, despite the epistemological appeal of their mathematical models, to the extent that they begin with hermeneutically expert subjects, namely musicians. 97 See here, more generally, and among her other essays, Barbara R. Barry, The Philosopher’s Stone: Essays in the Transformation of Musical Structure (New York: Pendragon Press, 2000). 98 Today, of course, this need hardly be said, the focus on Wagner has been transposed into whatever art form one might favor, from rock and roll to jazz to the blues and so on.

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answer with a contestation of both judgments, posterity has made its own judgment, ignoring his protests.99 Nietzsche drew his understanding of dissonance from then-contemporary musical accounts, including his focus on Beethoven as exemplar, a focus Wagner likewise thematizes in his celebration of Beethoven.100 To this extent, Nietzsche’s resolution of the question of tragedy was musical.101 What was at stake was the “music” of the articulated words themselves: the spirit of spoken (sung) Greek.102 Musically, we note Nietzsche’s inquiry into the “Origin and Goal of Tragedy.” As Nietzsche explains: What is the feeling for harmony? On the one side, a subtraction [wegnehmen] of the with-sounding mitklingenden overtones, on the other side, a not-individual-hearing of the same.103

To explore Nietzsche’s Harmonielehre requires a hermeneutic of influence and reference.104 Here, any reference to dissonance is also part 99

See for discussion and further references, Babich, Nietzsches Antike. I have thus argued that to the extent that we focus on Wagner we tend to miss Nietzsche’s own overall context, ascribing an all-or-nothing kind of dependency on Wagner to Nietzsche. This can be especially dangerous when it comes to Nietzsche’s understanding of music in general quite in addition to understanding The Birth of Tragedy. Thus I am not arguing that Nietzsche was not in many respects influenced by Wagner’s music along with his theoretical writings (and the literature abounds in arguments of this kind). But I have been arguing that Nietzsche, like Wagner himself, was influenced by Beethoven’s music and particularly by the notes on counterpoint that he thought he could rightly take from Beethoven, but which as we noted above Seyfried fails to underscore as they also drew on other teaching notes as those could also have resonated with Nietzsche in this way. Thus one might make the further case that Nietzsche was influenced by a different Wagner, an influence that may be traced beginning with the first sentence of his first book. It is this other Wagner, Johann Jakob Wagner’s Aesthetik that would then frame what Nietzsche here calls “the science of aesthetics.” Nietzsche, GT §1. Both reference the battle between the sexes makes sense both generically and specifically if we add in the importance of this aesthetics of music. Cf. Wagner, Aesthetik, ed. Philip Ludwig Adam (Ulm: Adams Verlag, 1855), 83. In addition to using the language of the battle between the sexes, Johann Jakob Wagner discusses the chorus, dissonance, consonance, accord, etc. 101 Nietzsche, GT §22. 102 I discuss this in Babich, “Music and Word.” 103 Nietzsche, KSA 7, 164. 100

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of a discourse of tonality and one that inevitably includes references to consonance, and some are fond of taking this metaphorically as a reference to Apollo, where, like chaos, dissonance would be a metaphor for Dionysus. I would not support this but would instead refer consonance and dissonance to harmony. The harmonious question of the human being as the one who has ‘turned out well,’ the artist, the poet, the actuality of the singer and the dance corresponds to the work of the composer, as this corresponded to the political question of musical culture. If there is for the Greek no term for art, there is also no cult of the artist but a contest between artists, in a culture of contests that involved the entire polis, set apart from and thus above and beyond the political. In this thus trans-political fashion, we may understand Nietzsche’s musing: „es muß viele Übermenschen geben.”105 Like Beethoven: excellent or good and outstanding things can only develop like to like, as Aristotle tells us that the ancient Greeks emphasized, among similarly good, exemplary, and outstanding things.

Bibliography Adorno, Theodor. Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. London: Polity, 1998. Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. London: Verso, 2020. [1951] Adorno, Theodor. Philosophy of New Music. Trans. by Robert HullotKentnor, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Adorno, Theodor. Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction: Notes a Draft, and Two Schemata. London: Polity, 2006. Allison, David Blair. “On Nietzsche’s ‘Music and Word’.” New Nietzsche Studies: Companion to The Birth of Tragedy I, Vol 10, Nos. 1 and 2 (2016): 141-167. Allison, David Blair. Reading the New Nietzsche. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.

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More discussion of the complexities of Nietzsche’s interaction with von Bülow as with Fuchs, and Heinrich Köselitz, a still veiled story despite the accounts on hand in Frederick Love and in Curt Paul Janz, is needed. 105 Nietzsche, KSA 35 [72], 541.

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Babich, Babette. “Between Hölderlin and Heidegger: Nietzsche’s Transfiguration of Philosophy.” Nietzsche-Studien, 29 (2000): 267301. Babich, Babette. “Dionysus in Music: On the ‘God of Sex and Drums and Rock and Roll’,” The Philosophical Salon, 31 January 2022. Online: https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/dionysus-in-music-on-the-god-ofsex-and-drums-and-rock-and-roll/. Babich, Babette. “Musical ‘Covers’ and the Culture Industry: From Antiquity to the Age of Digital Reproducibility.” Research in Phenomenology, 48/3 (2018): 385-407. Babich, Babette. Nietzsches Antike. Berlin: Academia, 2020. Babich, Babette. “Nietzsche’s Archilochus.” New Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 10, Nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2016): 91-128. Babich, Babette. “Nietzsche as Educator.” Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 51, No. 9 (2018): 871-885. Babich, Babette. “Nietzsche und Wagner: Sexualität,” Trans. by Martin Suhr, In H. J. Brix, N. Knoepffler, S. L. Sorgner, eds., Wagner und Nietzsche. Kultur — Werk — Wirkung. Ein Handbuch. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2008. 323-341. Babich, Babette. The Hallelujah Effect: Music, Technology, and Performance Practice. London: Routledge, 2016 [2013]. Babich, Babette. “The Philosopher and the Volcano.” Philosophy Today (Summer 2011): 213-231. Babich, Babich, Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Heidegger. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Babich, Babette. “Wort und Musik in der Antiken Tragödie.” NietzscheStudien, 36 (2007): 230-257. Barry, Barbara R. The Philosopher’s Stone: Essays in the Transformation of Musical Structure. New York: Pendragon Press, 2000. Bertagnolli, Paul. Prometheus in Music: Representations of the Myth in the Romantic Era. New York: Routledge, 2017. Bluhm, Heinz. „Das Lutherbild des Jungen Nietzsche.“ PMLA, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1943): 264-288. Brandt, Reinhardt. “‘Die Titelvignette von Nietzsches Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik.” Nietzsche-Studien, 20 (1991): 314–28. Brown, George Dobbin. Syllabification and Accent in the Paradise Lost. London: J. Murphy Co., 1901. Carson, Anne. Eros, The Bittersweet. Chicago: Dalkey Press, 2000 [1986].

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Carvalho, John. “Dionysus Now: Dionysian Myth-History in the Sixties,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Fall, 2005), 77-116. Cauchi, Francesca. “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Promethean Pretensions and Romantic Dialectics.” Romanticism, Vol. 15 Issue 3 (2009): 254-264. Chua, Daniel K. L. Beethoven and Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Cohen, H. Floris. Quantifying Music: The Science of Music at the First Stage of Scientific Revolution 1580-1650. Frankfurt am Main: Springer, 1984. Covach, John. “Schoenberg’s (Analytical) Gaze: Musical Time, The Organic Ideal, and Analytical Perspectivism.” Theory and Practice, Vol. 42 (2017), 141-159. Daffner, Hugo von. Friedrich Nietzsches Randglossen zu Bizets Carmen. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1912. Dale, A. M. The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Davis, Michael. The Music of Reason: Rousseau, Nietzsche, Plato. Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Détienne, Marcel. Apollon le couteau à la main. Une approche expérimentale du polythéisme grec. Paris: Gallimard, 2009 [1998]. Dreyfus, Laurence. Wagner and the Erotic Impulse. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. Ehrhardt, Damien. “Aspects de la phraséologie riemannienne.” Musurgia, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1997): 68-83. Ersch, Johann Samuel and Johann Gottfried Gruber, et al., eds., Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1822. Fink, Robert. The Origin of Music: A Theory of the Universal Development of Music. The Greenwich-Meridian Co., 1981 Frith, Simon. “‘The Magic That Can Set You Free’: The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community.” In: Richard Middleton and David Horn, eds., Popular Music, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 159-168. Gilman, Sander. “Nietzsche, Bizet, and Wagner: Illness, Health and Race in the Nineteenth Century.” The Opera Quarterly, 23/2 (2007): 247264. Goetz, Benoît. “Nietzsche aimait-il vraiment Bizet?” La Portique, 8 (2001). [https://journals.openedition.org/leportique/209]. Günther, Felicitas. „Am Leitfaden des Rhythmus. Kritische Wissenschaft und Wissenschaftskritik in Nietzsches Frühwerk.” In: Carlo Gentili &

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CHAPTER 8 NIETZSCHE’S MANFRED TRILOGY TALI MAKELL

Foreword Taught piano by his mother, the young Nietzsche acquired a reputation among friends for imaginative improvisation, and it was undoubtedly this practice which led directly to his efforts at musical composition. But as a composer, Nietzsche was entirely self-taught and never really advanced much beyond the apprentice stage. Further, he never fully mastered the rules of harmony or musical form, so that, apart from his songs, his compositions for piano often have the feel of improvisation rather than fully worked out musical statements. The bulk of his musical output was produced during his youth and while there are flashes of talent throughout, much of the earliest work is either experimentation, or reflective of his various musical influences. In those works produced throughout his twenties, a personal style began to emerge despite continued technical infelicities. Nevertheless, his musical output is of significance primarily as a window on the soul of the nascent poet-philosopher and provides an enhanced understanding of the centrality of music to this extraordinary man of letters who, throughout his life, strove to effect a fusion between the artistic and purely intellectual aspects of his character and use the results to inform his overall philosophical outlook. As well, Nietzsche had a front row seat to the aesthetic battles which raged among German-speaking musicians throughout the mid to late nineteenth century, and found himself at various times squarely in the camp of one side or the other. Ultimately, the side to which he had always been drawn was the one he chose. The following is an overview of three musical settings connected directly and indirectly to Byron’s Manfred by Friedrich Nietzsche, with an eye toward elucidating the similarities and differences of overall musical approach, as well as underscoring the degree to which personal identification

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and empathy for the title character served as a primary inspiration for the settings. While it is understood that music is not always autobiographical and can be effective on its own terms without prior knowledge of biographical details, there are any number of examples, especially from the Romantic era, where autobiography does inform a composer’s choice of subject and overall musical approach. In addition, a few critical observations are included which are intended to clarify problems with each setting. Any discussion of Nietzsche’s Manfred—Meditation must be approached from the vantage point of two of his earlier compositions, as all three utilize much of the same basic musical material, though they came about at different stages of his development. As such, it could be argued that the three works constitute a musical triptych reflecting the young Nietzsche’s personal situation at the various times of composition, as well as demonstrating the centrality of Byron’s hero to his thinking from early on in his life. It was Manfred for whom Nietzsche first applied the description ‘Übermensch,’ and it was undoubtedly the character’s defiance of conventional notions of morality that appealed to him and would inform the development of much of his later thought as a philosopher.

Literary sources Byron’s Manfred (1816-17) was written in the shadow of Goethe’s Faust Part 1 (published in 1808), though his inability to read German (apparently, it was read to him in 1816 at the Villa Diodati in simultaneous translation by another English writer of Gothic tales, Matthew “Monk” Lewis (17751818))1 suggests that it was more an influence of atmosphere than slavish imitation. But there can be no question that the character which Byron created has features in common with the earlier model drawn up by the German master. Both feel a profound disaffection with life. Both are scholars who have studied and mastered many disciplines, though only Manfred manages to acquire the knowledge and understanding of nature through magic which Faust seeks, but fails to achieve; and it is this failure which makes him ripe for devilish temptation. Finally, both share a profound love of nature. The differences between the two characters are just as significant. Faust is old and possesses the wisdom which comes with age and experience, while Manfred is still a young man, wise beyond his years, but seeking oblivion rather than wisdom. Although he is led to accept the offerings of Mephistopheles, Faust hedges his bets. The bargain he strikes 1

Monk Lewis as simultaneous translator of Faust for Byron. (from “Monk Lewis: A Critical Biography” by D.L. Macdonald: University of Toronto Press, 2000).

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is conditional and provides an escape. Despite his mastery of magic, Manfred never allows himself to be in any way dominated by the spirits he summons, however many times he is offered the opportunity. He makes clear from the outset that he is their master and refuses to the last to become in any way subservient to them. In the end, Faust is redeemed and given entry into paradise, but Manfred refuses to bow before either heaven or hell and dies without owing fealty to either. He meets his demise defiant to the end, a characteristic which in many ways defines the Byronic hero, who, like his creator, was “Mad, bad and dangerous to know.”2

Nietzsche’s “Manfred-Triptych” Eine Sylvesternacht for violin and piano (1863-64) Toward the conclusion of his years at Schulpforta, Nietzsche and two friends organized a musico-literary club, or Bund, which they called Germania. For this Bund, Nietzsche wrote numerous essays and musical works. One of these, written in 1861 when Nietzsche was 17 years old, was the essay entitled “On the Dramatic Works of Byron,” which gives special attention to Manfred and several other dramatic works by the English poet. In it, he hails Byron as "a volcano,” and says of Manfred: “Manfred, a monster in a dramatic relationship, one might say, the monologue of a dying man, burrowing into the deepest questions and problems, deeply moving due to the tremendous sublimity of this spirit-mastering Übermensch.”3 “There is, in fact, no work richer in ideas that to such a degree, despite its dramatic shortcomings, despite its accumulation of despairing thoughts, captivates the reader with magic power and can put him in a state of profound melancholy.”4 Though tempered over time by age and experience, his enthusiasm for both Byron and the character he created never diminished, though the character of Manfred would be supplanted eventually by one

2 Attributed to Lady Caroline Lamb. Caro: The Lady Caroline Lamb website, https://sites.google.com/sjsu.edu/caro/home?utm_source=faculty&utm_medium=3 01&utm_campaign=douglass-caro 3 Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Dramatic Works of Byron”, 1861 (trans TheNietzscheChannel.com, 2012), 1. 4 Nietzsche, “On the Dramatic Works of Byron” (trans TheNietzscheChannel.com, 2012), 3.

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created by Nietzsche himself, who does not seek oblivion or death, but embraces life despite its inherent tragedy. It was at the suggestion of his friend and fellow Bund member, Gustav Krug (1844-1902), that Nietzsche strove to curtail his tendency for free improvisation and acquire an enhanced understanding of the rudiments of musical composition.5 He studied counterpoint, did contrapuntal exercises, and wrote fugues. But improvisation remained his primary mode of musical self-expression, and full mastery of compositional procedures remained elusive. As a consequence, any attempt at traditional musical analysis of his music, beyond brief descriptions of musical events, basic harmonic progressions used, or motivic development, will be limited, as he avoids the use of conventional compositional structures or techniques, even those regarding “free” improvisation. Nevertheless, he composed what he called a “Musikalische Dichtung,” or musical poem, for violin and piano, his only extant chamber work, entitled Eine Sylvesternacht, a New Year’s Eve. Work on the piece had begun in the waning days of 1863 and was completed in early January. He played through the piece several times with Krug, who was a competent violinist as well as a pianist. A poetic program for the piece had also been written which provides a sense of his cast of mind concerning the approach of the new year. Ein Sylvestertraum6 It is still in my room, now and then the coals crackle in the stove, I turn down the lamp, and there is no light in the room, only some fiery broad stripes trembling from the stove to the floor and gliding off the mahogany of my pianino. These are the last hours before midnight; I have until now been burrowing through my manuscripts and letters, drunk hot punch and then played through the Requiem from Schumann’s Manfred. Now I wish to put aside all foreign things and think only about myself. I once more stoke the fire, prop up my head with my left hand and on the edge of the sofa, close my eyes and think. My spirit quickly takes flight to places that are dear to it and lingers in Naumburg, then in Pforta and Plauen í and finally ends up back in my own room. In my own room? Yet, what do I see on my bed? There someone lies í he groans, a death-rattle í a dying person! And he is not alone! There are shadows standing and hovering around him. Yes, the shadows speak. “You evil year, what did you promise me and 5

Frederick Love, Young Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience, (New York: AMS Press Inc., 1966), 19. 6 Translation of Ein Sylvestertraum, Jurgen Thym/Tali Makell (edits by Cornelis Witthoefft and Michael Steinmann).

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This prose poem is quoted at length because it provides a glimpse into the sensibility of the ambitious young Nietzsche at this stage of his development. As a prose-poem, while it is slight and its concerns a bit trivial, it nevertheless has something of the “Gothic” about it, a characteristic which was still very much in vogue at the time. The mention of the “Requiem from Schumann’s Manfred” is notable. Further, it is clear that at nearly twenty, the poem’s protagonist, i.e. Nietzsche himself, is somewhat apprehensive about his future, as he decries his inability to fully realize his self-appointed goals to this point, and voices his impatience to make headway toward achieving them in the coming year. In short, this is another in a long series of autobiographical sketches that he produced throughout his life from early youth to Ecce Homo, but it is more a sketch of mood than a record of events occurring over an extended period of time. As with Byron’s Manfred, the poem is an interior monologue intended as a means through which to articulate and work through some personal dilemma. The protagonist is also capable of invoking “spirits”, but deep concentration alone is the “magic” required to animate them. The mood and imagery of the poem serve as a springboard for the imagination of Nietzsche the composer.

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The opening is in 3/4 time with a four-bar introduction in E minor, which introduces a “Hauptrhythmus”, or basic rhythmic motive, which undergoes numerous transformations over the course of the piece and serves as its motivic backbone. Fig. 8.1-Friedrich Nietzsche, Eine Sylvesternacht, mm.1-2.7

The A section begins at the end of the fourth bar with a three-note upbeat figure introducing melodic material in G major (the relative major) which will return in various guises throughout the piece Fig. 8.2-Nietzsche, Eine Sylvesternacht, mm.4-8.8

This melodic material presented a very song-like character, reminding us that Nietzsche was already the composer of a number of Lieder. However, this singing quality soon gives way to a transition section, as the music moves swiftly through various key centers. The initial four bar by four bar phrasing is soon abandoned in favor of those that are less regular. After further development of the basic melodic material, a brief B section in A major is introduced at measure 58. It is marked Lebhafter (livelier) and is yet another variant of the basic rhythmic motive.

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Friedrich Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass. edited by Janz, (BärenreiterVerlag, Basel, 1976), 36. 8 Nietzsche, Nachlass, 36.

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Fig. 8.3-Nietzsche, Eine Sylvesternacht, mm. 58-61.9

A further significant motive is the dotted figure beginning in the piano part at measure 25. Fig. 8.4 -Nietzsche, Eine Sylvesternacht, mm.25-26.10

It too will undergo further elaboration in the other two sections of the triptych. About midway through the piece, a very attractive feature is introduced (from the upbeat figure to measure 207 in A-flat major). It is a rather elegant polonaise variation, which reminds the listener of the composer’s musical, if not ethnic, affinity with things Polish. Fig. 8.5 -Nietzsche, Eine Sylvesternacht, mm.206-208.11

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Nietzsche, Nachlass, 38. Nietzsche, Nachlass, 37. 11 Nietzsche, Nachlass, 45. 10

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The final section, or coda, begins at measure 25112. It is in 4/4 time, marked sehr gemessen (very measured) and quickly transitions to D-flat The final section, or coda, begins at measure 278. It is in 4/4 time, marked sehr gemessen (very measured) and quickly transitions to D-flat major by measure 281. It is the mission of this coda to get us from the remote key of D-flat major to the still distant D minor conclusion. This is carried out through the use of a combination of a final variant of the Hauptrhythmus and a rather wistful elaboration of the basic melodic figure. A sudden darkening of mood begins to assert itself, as the bell-like transformed Hauptrhythmus tolls away beneath the ever-unfolding melodic line, which eventually abandons its efforts to soar above the clouds, as it conforms to the implacable basic rhythmic motive. But it is only as the music zeroes in on D minor (measure 285), its ultimate destination, that the listener becomes fully aware of the profound melancholy which has been an underlying feature of the music throughout. Fig. 8.6 -Nietzsche, Eine Sylvesternacht, mm.251-255. (mm.278-282 with gestrichene coda).13

There can be no question that Eine Sylvesternacht is a vast improvement over most of Nietzsche’s earlier musical endeavors. Of course, perfect execution of musical procedure is still lacking. There are passages which 12 13

Measure 278 if the gestrichene coda precedes the Sehr gemessen. Nietzsche, Nachlass, 45.

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are awkward, or seem to arrive at dead ends, as well as problems with voiceleading and chord formation. But perhaps the biggest problem with the piece is its wealth of ideas. Had Nietzsche confined himself to those variants most closely related to the basic materials introduced at the outset, and integrated them into organic, disciplined musical discourse, perhaps he would have achieved a greater sense of musical cohesion throughout. But as a composer, Nietzsche was, at base, a musical miniaturist whose most effective musical efforts are those in which complex “little worlds” are fully presented and explored over a short span of time. It is in larger formats, which require a full command of those skills necessary for the successful realization of long forms, where his abilities flag. Lacking the ability to create extended musical arguments, he resorts to following wherever his fancy leads him, with only the slimmest of structural threads keeping him tethered to earth. Doubtless certain sections of the piece correspond to an altogether different inner program, the details of which are unknown and likely to remain unknown. Some years later, Krug would describe Eine Sylvesternacht as a “motley” fantasy for violin and piano,14 and this impression may owe something to the possibility that Nietzsche composed the piece in sections rather than in a single concentrated breath. As well, Nietzsche’s propensity for improvisatory fancy, rather than careful musical construction, may also have contributed to this perception. Nevertheless, it is entirely Nietzsche’s voice that we hear in this piece. Harmonically, it is clear that the music takes a rather circuitous musical journey, from E minor/G major at the outset to the very distant key of D minor at the end. Perhaps unintentionally, some of Nietzsche’s compositions are early examples of what would later be called progressive tonality, i.e. music that begins in one key and ends in another. But even if not fully cognizant of what he was doing, this sort of harmonic daring suits the rather restless intellect of a young man of his age. The work also introduces a number of musical figures which Nietzsche will explore in even greater detail in subsequent works.

Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht for piano four hands (1871) The Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht (“Echoes of a New Year’s Eve”, making clear the connection to the first piece), was composed in 1871, after Nietzsche’s fabled friendship with Wagner had been firmly established. He had spent the Christmas of 1870 at the Wagner villa, Tribschen, in Lucerne, 14

Nietzsche, Nachlass, 332.

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and was present at the premiere of Wagner’s musical homage to his new wife, Cosima, the daughter of Franz Liszt, and former wife of conductorpianist, Hans von Bülow. In 1869, she had given birth to a son, whom they named Siegfried, after the hero of the Ring operas, and the work was intended as a declaration of the composer’s love and devotion to her. It has come to be known as the Siegfried Idyll ever since, as it later was sold for publication in order to help fill the family coffers. Rather tactlessly, Nietzsche hit upon the idea of composing his own homage to Cosima, a woman he had come to admire perhaps more than he should have, given his relationship with Wagner, who had become a virtual father substitute for him. The program for the piece is contained within the full title: Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mit Prozessionslied, Bauerntanz und Glockengeläut (sEchoes of a New Year’s Eve with Procession Song, Peasant Dance and the Ringing of Bells”), though it is overlaid, both atmospherically and thematically, with the program and music of his earlier work for violin and piano. Nietzsche begins the piece in 3/4 time, with an extensive introduction, based largely on the Hauptrhythmus Fig. 8.7 - Nietzsche, Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm.1-6.15

and the melodic material used in the previous work. The harmonic language employed is quite a bit more chromatic than the earlier work, indicating careful study of the music of the Zukunftsmusiker, especially that of Liszt and Wagner. The mood of the introduction appears to affect a seamless continuation of the end of the previous work. It is contemplative, melancholy, and restless as it seeks to find its way toward a well-defined key center. Suddenly, at measure 36, the dominant of the key of B major is reached and the beginnings of a new theme emerge which bear an 15

Nietzsche, Nachlass, 86.

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unmistakable resemblance to the one Wagner had used both in his music drama, Siegfried, and later in the Siegfried Idyll. Aside from mere imitation or an homage to Wagner, and considering the identity of the dedicatee, one is led to speculate that this tune was intended as a musical representation of Cosima, and it is imbued with Nietzsche’s tender feelings toward her. Fig. 8.8 - Nietzsche, Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm.38-41.16

Fig. 8.9 - Richard Wagner, Siegfried Idyll, mm.28-30.17

In any case, this theme is only touched upon briefly at this point. In structural terms, it recurs in slightly modified and expanded form at transition points between sections. Nietzsche extends the dominant chord of B major with the dotted rhythmic figure at measures 42 and 43. which, again, has its origins in Eine Sylvesternacht, and will return at strategic moments throughout.

16 17

Nietzsche, Nachlass, 87. Richard Wagner, Siegfried Idyll, (Leipzig, Breitkopf und Härtel, 1900), 2.

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Fig. 8.10 – Nietzsche, Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm.42-43.

Finally, the key of B major is established and the Procession song, an elaboration of the aforementioned B section of Eine Sylvesternacht, is introduced at measure 49. Fig. 8.11 – Nietzsche, Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm.49-51.18

though its full arrival occurs several bars later, at measure 61, in the key of D minor. It quickly modulates away from that key to other sometimes clearly related, and at other times, more distant keys, gathering intensity all the while until it reaches a climatic point at measure 98, in G major. Further on, it moves steadily toward yet another climactic point in C major at measure 114, with a shortened variant of the dotted rhythmic motive. With the ensuing triplet figure, (again, this figure has its antecedent in the Siegfried Idyll) the momentum slows to a halt.

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Nietzsche, Nachlass, 87.

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Fig. 8.12 - Nietzsche, Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm. 131-132.19

Now we hear a further development of the Cosima theme, interrupted briefly by the triplet figure, and transitioning to a slower more subdued version of the Procession Song in B major, though there is an F-sharp in the bass which implies the dominant of that key. The Bauerntanz, at measure 188 and marked “Nicht zu schnell” (not too fast) is in G major, with a clear G natural pedal point in the bass. Fig. 8.13 – Nietzsche Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm.188-193.20

It employs the ABA format typical of the minuet/scherzo with trio encountered in many chamber and symphonic works from the classical era onwards. However much he had imbibed of the manner of the Zukunftsmusiker, he retained much of his earlier traditionalist musical stance. Still, it is clear that the Bauerntanz itself is somewhat reminiscent of

19 20

Nietzsche, Nachlass, 92. Nietzsche, Nachlass, 94.

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the Dance of the Apprentices from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, a work he had admired even before Tristan had made a deep impression on him. The trio is announced by a fanfare in B major at measure 250, Fig. 8.14 - Nietzsche, Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm.250-252.21

and commences in bar 253, where B major is firmly established. Fig. 8.15 - Nietzsche, Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm. 253-260.22

The music here, marked etwas langsamer (somewhat slower) is altogether lighter and more relaxed than the initial dance section. However, it serves only as a brief respite before the return to the vigorous A section, which is 21 22

Nietzsche, Nachlass, 97. Nietzsche, Nachlass, 97.

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itself interrupted again by the fanfare in B major, at measure 315 and the trio section is re-introduced. This time the trio is extended, and a swirling figure takes us to a half cadence, where, however briefly, the action stops. After a brief pause, a further developed version of the A section, accompanied by fragments of the trio and punctuated by the dotted figure which had served as the climax of the Procession Song serve as a lead-in to the coda of this section. The joyful revelry of the dance gives way gradually to a brief restatement of the Procession Song, and then suddenly the image fades. Once again (measure 399) preceded by a brief introduction, the Cosima theme emerges (upbeat to measure 407, with a half diminished seventh chord on A#, over a B-natural pedal point, which ultimately resolves into E major), this time even more tenderly and more fully developed than it had been previously. At measure 421, the melancholy tolling of the Hauptrhythmus returns us to the gloomy music of the introduction. In the distance (measure 430) is heard the ringing of deep bells, intoning midnight and the arrival of the New Year. The Cosima melody (measure 442) makes one final appearance accompanied by remnants of the Procession Song. The piece finally comes to rest on B major. The completed work was sent off to the Wagners, but Nietzsche was too nervous to be there when the gift was presented and performed. Cosima herself, joined by conductor, Hans Richter, was one of the performers. Needless to say, their reaction was far from favorable and apparently Wagner could not restrain his laughter at having heard it. But what Nietzsche hadn’t understood was that there was room for only one composer in the Wagner household. They had no desire or use for a would-be rival to “der Meister,” as he was called by his family and close confidants. They wanted this young philologist to serve them and the Wagner cause and had little patience or tolerance for his musical trifles. Far from being Nietzsche’s Ariadne or Astarte, Cosima understood herself to be the guardian of her husband’s flame. Later, when Nietzsche had cast off his infatuation with Wagner and the musical futurists, Cosima burned most of the correspondence between the two men, and never spoke to Nietzsche again. Some of his last sentient thoughts were of her, and the fact that his love for her survived despite all he had been subjected to by the Wagners is heartbreaking.

Manfred-Meditation for piano four hands (1872) Nietzsche’s Manfred-Meditation was composed in April of 1872, as the controversy over his Birth of Tragedy raged within scholarly circles. Nietzsche effectively takes over the narrative of the tale from Byron,

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becoming one with the central character, not merely sympathetic with him. We know this because he uses music directly connected to his own recent past, which he now presents in full Zukunftsmusiker garb. In fact, the piece might more accurately be called “Echoes of Echoes of a New Year’s Eve", as its musical materials are a darker, more tragic, take on the same musical materials used in his musical gift to Cosima, composed only a few months before. However, his focus here is less on the various story elements than the nature of the character himself; in a very real sense, this is a meditation, not a true dramatization, though the dramatic element is not altogether absent. In the end, it is clear that despite Manfred’s fate, Nietzsche’s personal choices are more pragmatic: he remains defiant, but does not desire or seek oblivion, redemption or death, just a way forward. The work is both a musico-psychoanalytical study of the character and a metaphor for Nietzsche’s own psyche at the time of its composition. The contemplation of the character’s suffering becomes a mirror through which the composer is able to examine and confront his own. Once again, it is clear that Nietzsche’s Manfred-Meditation is a biographical sketch in musical form, but one more concerned with exorcising private demons than with the invocation of spirits. The "guilty secret" with which this iteration of the Manfred-Nietzsche character must contend is the “incestuous” nature of his love for the wife of his father substitute, Wagner. It is, perhaps, one reason that the harmonic language of the music is shot through with references to Wagner’s Tristan. There is even a direct quotation of the famous "Tristan chord" in the lower registers of the piano secondo (measure 85). As this work unfolds, the shadow of “der Meister” looms over the proceedings like the dark silhouette of an Alpine range. In his response to conductor Hans von Bülow’s scathing critique of the work, Nietzsche described the experience of writing it corresponded to an actual mood, and that he had taken pleasure in writing it, as it (and music generally) had “allowed him to master feelings.”23 Meanwhile, his book, The Birth of Tragedy had practically ruined his academic career. Professors admonished students to avoid his classes, so that he often had empty chairs to address rather than students. Despite the support of a few close friends, his sense of isolation must have been palpable. Such was the atmosphere in which his ManfredMeditation was created. The negative response of pianist-conductor, Hans von Bülow (18301894), to Nietzsche’s Manfred-Meditation is cited religiously by those eager to consign his musical efforts to oblivion. But given the weight afforded his 23 Friedrich Nietzsche, Letter to Hans von Bülow, October 29, 1872, from Werke in Drei Banden: Dritter Band, (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1973)

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judgment, it is surprising that these same critics have failed to examine in more detail the possible motivations underlying this response from the man who effectively put an end to Nietzsche’s musical aspirations. Von Bülow had read and been impressed by Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, but was less than gracious or helpful in his reaction to Manfred, especially given that Nietzsche had dedicated the work to him. Instead of offering encouragement or technical guidance of any kind regarding compositional issues, he was brusque and dismissive to a degree bordering on offensive, and seemed to relish humiliating the young philologist in the cruelest possible terms. Furthermore, his critique ignores the fact that, despite having been written for the piano, Manfred-Meditation is a descriptive, dramatic work, not unlike the orchestral symphonic poems “invented" by von Bülow’s former father-in-law, Franz Liszt. As such, Nietzsche’s chromatic “monstrosities”, as von Bülow describes them, are entirely appropriate given the criteria he himself sets out in his critique. While von Bülow’s letter does contain some factual points concerning Nietzsche’s lack of technical polish, it should not be bandied about as if it were holy writ: the problems he identifies could be easily addressed and were by no means fatal. The most significant reason why von Bülow’s “review” should be approached with caution is that his former wife, Cosima, had left him for Wagner, and he had suffered a good deal of humiliation from them long before it was clear to him that the marriage was over. Lacking the stomach to confront either Wagner or Cosima, von Bülow unleashed some of his most venomous invective upon this presumptuous professor who had dared to trespass on his territory. It is self-evident that had Nietzsche’s musical training been as systematic and rigorous as his training in philology, he might have succeeded in taming his improvisatory habit such that it could have served as a useful adjunct to his musical instincts. But for him, the Dionysian element of musical creation was paramount, and improvisation was the crutch he fell back upon in order to allow his musical thoughts to emerge at all. Sometimes he hits his mark, but at others, the seams of the musical fabric are glaringly obvious. Whatever the flaws in his musical efforts, it is clear that he certainly deserved better treatment than he received at the hands of either von Bülow or the Wagners. In 1874, Nietzsche sent a copy of his Manfred-Meditation to Swiss Kapellmeister, violinist, and the founding conductor of the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, Friedrich Hegar (1841-1927). Two years earlier, Nietzsche had attended a performance of Brahms’ Triumphlied, which Hegar had conducted, and which had greatly impressed him. The difference in tone between the response of Hegar and that of von Bülow is striking: "I

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had always hoped to be able to personally return it and to tell you on that occasion how much of it found my interest, particularly the manner in which you try to musically express the basic mood. Of course, the whole is, as far as the execution of musical ideas is concerned, lacking some architectural prerequisites so that the composition makes more of an impression of an improvisation describing a certain mood to me than that of a thoughtthrough composition.”24 A far more reasonable and civilized critique, and perhaps easier to take as a result. However much Nietzsche utilizes figures from earlier works here, he also moves away from them, as if searching for the true starting point of the musical argument, which occurs at measure 67, with a dominant to C minor. We hear again the Hauptrhythmus from the earlier two works, with the new feature of a descending scalar figure outlining G major emerging from it. Fig. 8.16 - Nietzsche, Manfred-Meditation, mm.1-2.25

At once it is clear that both the craggy mountainous landscape and the psychological state of the protagonist are being evoked. The atmosphere created suggests the fateful midnight during which Manfred delivers his initial speech, just before summoning the first of the spirits. At times, the throbbing insistence of the Hauptrhythmus gives it the character of a fate motive, a portent of the tragedy to come. All of this is introduced over a sustained G natural octave tremolo in the left hand of the piano primo part. Harmonically, the opening vacillates between outlining the keys of G major and E minor (the key signature indicated is the same for both) and there is a brief suggestion of an E minor cadence at measure 8 before the music moves past it. A fully definitive cadence does not occur until G major is finally reached at measure 14. It is at this point that we hear an ornamented variant of the lyrical melody first introduced in the violin piece, but the 24 25

Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 338. Nietzsche, Nachlass, 108.

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effect here is more akin to a haunting from a distant sphere, as the melody is quickly subsumed by slashing gestures which have the effect of cancelling what might have been a further unfolding of the melodic figure and the firm establishment of key. Fig. 8.17 – Nietzsche, Manfred-Meditation, mm.13-17.26

There follows a statement of another sequence we recognize from the Nachklang, but this time it seems stuck in place, grinding suspensions without consonant resolutions, trying to proceed but unable to move forward. Finally, the tension is lifted as we are led to harmonies which suggest the dominant of the key of E minor, but the actual cadence is postponed and, after a slight ritardando, we are guided back unexpectedly to a brief recap of the initial material with the fateful Hauptrhythmus throbbing away menacingly, while harmonies vacillate between the tonal areas of E minor and G major. Again, the point at which the piece truly takes wing is at the powerful statement of a new and rather dissonant harmonization of the Hauptrhythmus 26

Nietzsche, Nachlass, 108.

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at measure 67, along with a firm establishment of the key of C minor. All the same, there are recurring references to the gloomy opening of the piece throughout. Notably absent from these reintroduced themes is the one associated with Cosima in the Nachklang. Instead, at measure 85, the quotation of the “Tristan” chord, mentioned earlier, Fig. 8.18 - Nietzsche, Manfred-Meditation, mm.85-87.27

substitutes for her theme’s function in the earlier work as transition, in this case, to the introduction of what might be described as Manfred’s motive, with its major third descent from A# to F#, followed by a minor 7th leap upwards to E-natural. Fig. 8.19 - Nietzsche, Manfred-Meditation, mm.92-93.28

This figure is accompanied only by a sustained octave F# tremolo in the bass of the secondo piano part, as the intensity is increased by the implication (not notated) of a slow crescendo in the tremolo and the register changes in the piano primo. This section, with its tremolo pedal point, suggests a dominant to B minor. The moment brings to mind the scene in the drama where Manfred stares from the edge of a cliff into the abyss and considers ending his torment with a final leap into the void. Finally, the key of B minor is reached, and the music hovers over that key area until altered tones are added suggesting instead a resolution to E major. Another transitional section occurs which again leads to a restatement of the dominant of E major, and the melodic material is an anguished version, in D minor, of the Procession Song from the earlier Nachklang. This episode 27 28

Nietzsche, Nachlass, 113. Nietzsche, Nachlass, 113.

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begins over what would appear to be a dominant of the key of E major, but actually ends up as the dominant of D minor. It is this sort of sliding through keys which lends the music its piquancy and reflects the unstable, wandering nature of the protagonist. A climactic point is reached when the music arrives at a definitive C minor resolution (measure 209), and there is a corresponding Presto indication which provides a sense of urgency as the cadence is reached, with the most powerful statement of the Hauptrhythmus we have yet encountered. Fig. 8.20 - Nietzsche, Manfred-Meditation, mm.209-211.29

Over a C natural octave tremolo in the bass we now hear a defiant statement of the Manfred motive, followed shortly thereafter by a brief chorale figure suggesting the dialogue between Manfred and the abbot toward the end of the drama. Fig. 8.21 - Nietzsche, Manfred-Meditation, mm.216-219.30

The abbot attempts to convince Manfred to give over magic and return to religion. But his efforts are greeted with Manfred’s emphatic refusals to give himself over either to heaven or hell. A final restatement of the opening of the work serves as the beginning of the coda, as the interchange between the

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Nietzsche, Nachlass, 120. Nietzsche, Nachlass, 121.

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abbot and Manfred continues. Defiant to the end, Manfred expires and the work ends in a subdued C minor. Unlike the two earlier works, the Manfred-Meditation is not divided into easily identifiable segments, but is more through-composed; the music is constantly evolving and its chromaticism allows for a lot of gliding between key centers, making sturdy resolutions to specific keys less readily identifiable. Despite his obvious debt to the manner of the Zukunfstmusiker, this is a oneoff, something he never again attempted. With his Manfred-Meditation, Nietzsche put to rest the hero of his adolescence and, over time, his time as an acolyte of Wagnerism ended as he began to come fully into his own: Manfred dies at sunset, but Zarathustra will rise at daybreak. Nietzsche went on to compose two additional substantive works, but both are returns to a more diatonic musical language. The Monodie a deux (1873), written as a tribute to the marriage of Olga Herzen (1850-1953), and Gabriel Monod (1844-1912), is a reminder of Nietzsche’s early interest in the contrapuntal writing of the composers of the oratorios he had admired as a young man. The Hymnus aus die Freundschaft (1874) for piano solo avoids any traces of Wagnerian chromaticism and inhabits more the sound world of Brahms and Schumann. But it is instructive to note that after having traversed the far-flung chromaticism of the Zukunfstmusiker, he returned to the conservative aesthetic stance toward which his instincts had impelled him from the beginning. Why does Nietzsche so vehemently disdain Schumann’s Manfred? “The music of his (Schumann’s) Manfred is an error in judgment and a misunderstanding to the point of injustice," he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil.31 Doubtless, he objected to Schumann’s addition of the hero’s redemption to the conclusion of his setting. But perhaps his personal need to purge himself of any vestiges of the Romanticism that had nurtured him throughout his youth was the deciding factor in his renunciation of a work and a composer he had once venerated; Romanticism which he now perceived as “decadent,” hopelessly sentimental and self-indulgent. For Nietzsche, Schumann’s sensibility had been informed by a culture in decline; a culture which, he believed, must be transcended, overcome. That he never succeeded completely in his efforts in this regard, he acknowledges in his writings with varying degrees of regret.

31 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 177.

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Summary The musical settings of Byron’s Manfred by Robert Schumann and Piotyr Ilyich Tchaikovsky are worthy of mention. Both composers devised new formal structures for their work on this subject; Schumann’s concept is a combination of melodrama, incidental music and oratorio, while Tchaikovsky’s setting is a hybrid comprised of the tone poem and the symphony. As with Nietzsche, both approached the subject from the vantage point of profound empathy for the title character and his tragic circumstances. Schumann’s setting was undertaken while he was in the throes of serious mental and physical illnesses; he was beset by both aural and visual hallucinations, and in the plot of the drama, he doubtless recognized similarities with his own personal circumstances. As well, it must have been increasingly clear to him that his own downward spiral toward oblivion was already underway.32 Tchaikovsky found it difficult to write music of a programmatic nature without a profound sense of personal identification with the characters and their dramatic situation. He was drawn especially to those situations involving unsanctioned romantic liaisons between characters, something which had immediate relevance for him. Though both composers were true Romantics who, throughout their careers had few qualms about giving free rein to their natural tendency for untrammeled self-expression, they developed over time a keen sense of artistic discretion, a sense of the importance of clear musical structures (however difficult it often was for them to manage to their satisfaction), which prevented self-expression from overbalancing careful deliberation and judicious manipulation of the musical material. This discretion is very much in evidence in their Manfred settings, as however much they may have felt an affinity with the dramatic situation of the main character, they kept it at enough of a remove to enable them to craft what are largely balanced works capable of existing independently of their personal issues. Both composers understood that even as drama, personal or otherwise, might dictate the form, it was essential that some overarching organizational principles be adhered to for their work to have the power to communicate to audiences. While he may have understood all of this on a theoretical level, Nietzsche, the talented amateur and avowed musical conservative who never mastered the art which he loved above all others, also never developed the ability to sublimate his profound need for artistic self-expression to the 32 Joseph Wilhelm von Wasielewski, Life of Robert Schumann, trans. A.E. Alger, (London: W. Reeves, 1878), 158.

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need for disciplined adherence to musical logic; his understanding of musical syntax was filtered through a much more highly developed sense of the logic of language. His three Manfred-related works are musical manifestations of his penchant for autobiographical sketches, a habit which began in his early years and persisted to the end of his career. As he himself had made clear, music was a means through which he was able "to master feelings."33 His innately conservative musical leanings notwithstanding, Nietzsche’s personal dramas were the engine for his musical creativity; unfettered self-expression through free improvisation was his primary goal and the exorcizing of those psychological states which threatened to lay him low was the desired result of his efforts (“We possess art lest we perish of the truth”34). The nobility and defiance of Byron’s tragic hero mirrored the young Nietzsche’s sense of himself, and the influence of this character would extend into the period when he produced those philosophical works for which he is best remembered and most celebrated.

Bibliography Byron, Lord. Lord Byron: Selected Prose (ed. Peter Gunn) Harmonsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1982. —. Manfred in Lord Byron: The Major Works. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2008. Garden, Edward. Tchaikovsky, London: JM Dent and Sons Ltd, 1973. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust A tragedy (trans. Bayard Taylor), Modern Library, 1950. Heyman, Ronald. Nietzsche: A Critical Life, New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Liébert, Georges. Nietzsche and Music (trans. David Pellauer and Graham Parkes), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Love, Frederick. Young Nietzsche and the Wagner Experience, New York: AMS Press Inc., 1966. Macdonald, D.L. Monk Lewis: A Critical Biography, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Newlin, Dika. Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg, New York: W.W. Norton, Inc., 1978. Ostwald, Peter. Schumann Inner Voices of a Musical Genius, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985. 33

F. Nietzsche, Letter to Hans von Bülow, 1872, quoted from Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Musikalische Nachlass, 337. 34 F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, #822, trans. W. Kaufmann and R. Hollingdale, (New York, Vintage Books, 1967), 435.

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Wagner, Cosima. Cosima Wagner’s Diaries Volume 1: 1869-1877), ed. M. Gregor-Dellin and D. Mack, trans: Geoffrey Skelton, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Wasielewski, Joseph Wilhelm von. Life of Robert Schumann (trans. A.E. Alger), London: W. Reeves, 1878.

Scores Consulted Friedrich Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, ed. Curt Paul Janz, Basel; Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1976. Robert Schumann Manfred, Dramatisches Gedicht in Drei Abtheilungen, Op. 115, Breitkopf und Härtel, 1862. Piotyr Tchaikovsky Manfred Symphony, Op. 58, Moscow, Editions de Musique de L’URSS, 1947. Richard Wagner, Siegfried Idyll, Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1900, reprinted E.F. Kalmus, New York, 1933.

CHAPTER 9 THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE BY WAY OF THE AESTHETIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC: NIETZSCHE’S HOPE OF WAGNER’S MAGIC IN THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY MARTINE PRANGE

Introduction When we broach the topic of Nietzsche and music, we essentially address Nietzsche’s idea of the meaning and value of music for European culture.1 Thus, we broach the subject of how Nietzsche perceived Richard Wagner’s music dramas as a way to bring European culture back to its Dionysian origin. By turning to Christian religion, nationalism, and ideas rather than feelings, Wagner later “robbed” music of its Dionysian “worldtransfiguring, affirmative character.”2 Below, however, I shall only discuss the hope concerning Wagner’s music drama, Tristan and Isolde in particular, that Nietzsche expressed in The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872). In this book, Nietzsche viewed Wagner’s music still as Dionysian, affirmative, and world-transfiguring. I discuss this hope, while I argue that Nietzsche, in a typically Schillerian and Romantic vein, advocates the transformation of the “Socratic,” critical public via art into an “aesthetic public,” i.e., a public that looks at life from an aesthetic viewpoint rather than a moral, pathological, or political one. Such an aesthetic viewpoint offers the metaphysical, deep, yet playful solace against the great worries of life–death, decay, and pointlessness in the face of human life’s finitude– 1

See Martine Prange, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013). 2 “Weltverklärenden, jasagenden Charakter” (EH, Case Wagner 1; KSA 6, 357).

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which is the deep existential and psychological need that all human beings have in common. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was one of the greatest and most influential European composers in the 19th century. In his magical touch, music and poetry conspired to create the most life-affirming, powerful, energizing, touching, disrupting, controversial, and exciting, or, in Nietzsche’s famous terminology, “tragic” artworks. It is through Wagner’s artworks that the public got to understand what life is, as these artworks brought them back to life, reviving them with new energy, after having been lulled asleep, or worse: catapulted into a downright depression by modern life’s many dulling demands. Yes, life is senseless and the most obvious choice is just putting an end to it all. So says the tragic, pessimistic directive of life, according to Nietzsche.3 In a strange twist, it is the awareness of life’s utter senselessness that, at least when expressed in artistic form, gives life some sense. Metamorphosized in artistic pleasure, sublimity, and beauty, art gives us the kind of comfort we need to not put an end to our lives. Thus, while art reveals the “Silenian” truth of life to us, the way in which it conveys this truth, namely in a soothing, beautiful form, makes us want to hang around a little longer. This double experience of a desire for death transformed into the desire to live, thanatos and eros as two sides of the same coin, is the philosophical and psychological tenet of the highly Romantic “artistic metaphysics” laid out in The Birth of Tragedy.4 The book was set up as a dialogue with Richard Wagner: Nietzsche wrote it as if he was in a permanent conversation with Wagner about art, life, knowledge, the truth, and aesthetics, and the relationship between all these topics. The aesthetic “problem” of the role and function of art in human life and culture was the real, “grave” problem for Germany, according to Nietzsche, that needed to be addressed urgently.5 The German public made a big mistake by thinking that the military victory in the Franco-Prussian war was also a cultural victory. If Germany wanted to retrieve cultural domination over France (and Italy for that matter), then it had to beat France and Italy on their own ground, i.e., opera.

3

I refer here to Silenus’ wisdom as discussed by Nietzsche in BT §3. Re-issued in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy or Hellenism and Pessimism. 5 See also Nicholas Martin (Nietzsche and Schiller: Untimely Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) and Paul Bishop and R.H. Stephenson, Nietzsche and Weimar Classicism (New York: Camden House, 2005), 24-62. 4

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Enter Richard Wagner’s dramma per musica or “music drama.” This artform promised to deliver the kind of “metaphysical” and musical “depth” that French and Italian opera, and any other artform that was not “total,” lacked, on Nietzsche’s diagnosis. So, the European public, whose taste was ruined by the entertainment opera buffa proffered through its emphasis on frivolity, had to be saved from the idea that opera formed Europe’s artistic and cultural highlight. The European public urgently needed to be enriched with a deeper understanding of art and life by getting acquainted with ancient and medieval mythology, wisdom, and artistry. After all, Greek mythology, art, and culture formed the roots and also the artistic and philosophical pinnacle of Europe’s history. What could be more salutary, in times of “low” culture, than a return to Europe’s cultural roots and, tapping from the Dionysian vessel of life, a revival of old glory times through a new form of “total art” inspired by ancient Greek tragedy? This is, in brief, Nietzsche’s plan for Europe, the German public for starters. Cheering the fall of Napoleon III, Bismarck’s ambition to unify the German states, and Wilhelm I’s ascension to the throne, the German public had overlooked the fact that in artistic and cultural matters another war still had to be waged. Below, I answer the question why such a war was needed in addition to the political-military battle, according to Nietzsche, and why art as life force is of such vital importance, next to political autonomy. The answer is, in brief, that political freedom is empty without the ability to give creative form to life. Autonomy, as the political freedom expressed in public life through labor and participation in public debates on the social and political organization of the nation is not enough for Nietzsche to fulfill human life, to make a person and a culture thrive. For this, one needs to be able to play with life, enjoy it to the fullest, and express this joy in art, which also testifies to life’s tragedies. A human being consists of reason, emotions, a body, and imagination. All these aspects of the human being need to be activated. Remarkably, even Kant calls for people to become “mature” and gain autonomy by critically participating in the public debate (in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” of 1784), Nietzsche urges the public to reconnect with their childhood ability to experience stories as magic, tune in to their creativity, and in so doing unite with the (Dionysian) flow of life itself. How Wagner’s art helps the (German and European) public in this matter, will be explicated in what follows. To this end, I will discuss, first, the fact that Nietzsche presents his book as “a dialogue with Wagner” and “the grave problem for Germany” they in joint action seek to address. After this I analyze the concept of the “aesthetic

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public” and the testing of its “aesthetic nature.” From this I conclude that a new art of listening or perceiving art is essential if we are to adopt an aesthetic, affirmative view of life, according to Nietzsche, and that we need this view of life to rejuvenate, “wake up” or “bring back” the public to life. Such a “wake-up call” is necessary, on Nietzsche’s view, because the public has been falsely indoctrinated with the idea that political power is cultural power. To counter this “misinformation” and redirect the gaze of the public in the right direction of art and truth as pillars of culture, is the task of music and its magical power.

The Birth of Tragedy as “a dialogue with Wagner” aimed at solving a “grave problem”6 Nietzsche develops his ideas on the ability to create and receive art in The Birth of Tragedy in the context of his aim to “gain” something for the “science of aesthetics”7 by exploring Richard Wagner’s creative genius and the public’s response to his music dramas. He does so in constant, imaginary conversation with Richard Wagner. We, as readers, can imagine the kind of conversations Nietzsche had with Wagner, based on the letters and diaries that we have, but thanks to The Birth of Tragedy, we also get an idea of the kind of conversations that Nietzsche would have liked to have with the celebrated composer. One of the main differences between the real conversations and the imaginary ones is that, while in the real conversations Wagner was explaining himself to Nietzsche, in the imaginary conversations, Nietzsche explained Wagner to Wagner. So, the topic is always Wagner–or at least most of the time (half of Nietzsche’s philosophical works is devoted to explaining and, later more poignantly, blaming and judging Wagner). In his writings on Wagner, Nietzsche takes on the role of friend, philosopher, art critic, enemy, and teacher. So, when he writes that he had written The Birth of Tragedy “as if” he had been in permanent dialogue with his good friend Richard Wagner, the question is to what extent this dialogue was an exchange of ideas on equal footing; or whether this imaginary conversation was a way for Nietzsche to “test” his ideas on the philosophy of art by putting them in front of Richard Wagner; or a way to “instruct” Richard Wagner on matters he thought he knew much about but about which he actually did not really know that much, at least not as much as Professor 6

In his “Attempt at Self-Criticism”, he calls the problem “a problem with horns” (“ein Problem mit Hörnern”, ASC 2, 4/GT, VSK 2, KSA 1, 13) and “the problem of science itself” (ibid./ ibid.). 7 BT §1, 14 (“die aesthetische Wissenschaft,” GT §1, KSA 1, 25).

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Friedrich Nietzsche–topics such as Greek art and culture, and the nature, origins, and purposes of Greek drama. Nietzsche starts the “Preface to Richard Wagner” by contrasting the “aesthetic public”8 with which culture is only poorly acquainted at that moment, and himself and Wagner, as the pair of friends who find themselves set against this public.9 Nietzsche addresses Wagner in an intimate way. Although the book was written for a larger audience, the preface suggests that Nietzsche’s main aim with the book was to please Wagner: I see you […] read my name, and immediately feel convinced that its author has something serious and urgent to say, and also that, while conceiving these thoughts, he was conversing with you constantly, as if you had been present and as if he could only write down things which were appropriate in your presence.10

Nietzsche reminds Wagner that he was writing this book while Wagner was writing his Beethoven essay (1870), “in other words amidst all the terrors and sublimities of the war that had just broken out”.11 Then Nietzsche makes the point that concern for art and concern for politics and war, or “patriotic excitement and aesthetic self-indulgence, or courageous seriousness and serene play”12 may seem diametrically opposed to one another, but they are not. The problem of aesthetics, with which Nietzsche grapples, is exactly the problem Germany should be dealing with. Art gives hope where politics fails, Nietzsche suggests: “the matter with which we are concerned is a grave problem for Germany, a problem which we now place, as a vortex and

8

BT Preface, 13 (“aesthetische Öffentlichkeit,” GT Vorwort, KSA 1, 23). Here, by the “aesthetic public” is meant the current public that actually lacks in aesthetic powers. Later, as “aesthetisches Publicum” (GT §7, KSA 1, 53), the “aesthetic public” is viewed as the ideal opposed to the critical, Socratic public. 10 BT Preface, 13 ( “[…] vergegenwärtige ich mir den Augenblick, in dem Sie, mein hochverehrter Freund, diese Schrift empfangen werden: wie Sie […] meinen Namen lesen und sofort überzeugt sind, dass […] der Verfasser etwas Ernstes und Eindringliches zu sagen hat, ebenfalls, dass er, bei allem, was er sich erdachte, mit Ihnen wie mit einem Gegenwärtigen verkehrte und nur etwas dieser Gegenwart Entsprechendes niederschreiben dürfte,” GT Vorwort, KSA 1, 23). 11 Ibid. (“das heisst in den Schrecken und Erhabenheiten des eben ausgebrochnen Krieges,” ibid.). 12 Ibid. (“patriotischer Erregung und aesthetischer Schwelgerei, von tapferem Ernst und heiterem Spiel”, KSA 1, 23-4). 9

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turning-point, into the very midst of German hopes.”13 Nietzsche expects the public to take offence at seeing that, in times of war, someone takes art or “an aesthetic problem”14 so seriously. But that is the problem, according to Nietzsche, that the public does not see how important art is, especially in times of war, death, loss of life, and grief. The problem to Nietzsche is that the public is “incapable of thinking of art as anything more than an amusing sideshow, a readily dispensable jingling of fool’s bells in the face of the ‘gravity of existence’.”15 Hence, Nietzsche’s answer to war and violence is not political dialogue, but art. This is unequivocally evident in the equally famous and enigmatic conclusion of the preface: Let these serious-minded people take note: my conviction that art is the highest task and the true metaphysical activity of this life is based on an understanding which I share with the man and fighter whose sublime lead I follow and to whom I now wish to dedicate this work.16

In his “Beethoven” essay, Wagner had articulated the view that an artistic and cultural war had to be waged with France and Italy in order to secure Germany’s place in Europe’s opera culture.17 While Nietzsche hoped to join Wagner as leader of the cultural pack, he criticized Germany for accommodating cultural power to military and political power. In his first Untimely Meditation, David Strauss, The Confessor and Writer (1873), he emphasized that the military victory of Germany over France in the FrancoPrussian war should not be appreciated as a cultural victory: “Geist” and “Reich”, “spirit” and “state” should not be mistaken for the same thing. In that sense, “a great victory is a great danger.”18 The great danger is that people mix up military and cultural power, thinking that political and 13

Ibid. (“mit welchem ernsthaft deutschen Problem wir zu thun haben, das von uns recht eigentlich in die Mitte deutscher Hoffnungen, als Wirbel und Wendepunkt hingestellt wird”, KSA 1, 24). 14 BT Preface, 14 (“ein aesthetisches Problem”, GT Vorwort, KSA 1, 24). 15 BT Preface, 14 (“falls sie nämlich in der Kunst nicht mehr als ein lustiges Nebenbei, als ein auch wohl zu missendes Schellengeklingel zum ‘Ernst des Daseins’ zu erkennen im Stande sind”, GT Vorwort, KSA 1, 24). 16 BT Preface, 14 (“Diesen Ernsthaften diene zur Belehrung, dass ich von der Kunst als der höchsten Aufgabe und der eigentlich metaphysischen Thätigkeit dieses Lebens im Sinne des Mannes überzeugt bin, dem ich hier, als meinem erhabenen Vorkämpfer auf dieser Bahn, diese Schrift gewidmet haben will,” GT Vorwort, KSA 1. 24). 17 Compare Prange, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe, 133ff. 18 DS 1, 3 (“ein grosser Sieg ist eine grosse Gefahr”, DS 1, KSA 1, 159). Compare BT §23, 111.

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military supremacy mean artistic and cultural supremacy, too. Indeed, equalizing spirit and state is the clear-cut expression of the “philistinism” or cultural “decadence” Nietzsche opposes. As a result, the transformation of the public sphere, according to Nietzsche, is a cultural transformation that consists in substituting the moral-political perspective on society for an aesthetic perspective, which affirms life in all its glory and pain. The aesthetic perspective of life forms the normative vantage point for human development, well-being, and prosperity in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Hence, Nietzsche’s focus on the transformation of the contemporary philistine public, that takes on a critical attitude towards art, while expecting from it the arousal of patriotic, warlike sentiments and moral improvement, into a what he calls “aesthetic public.” But how does the act of listening to Wagner’s music or watching his music dramas transform the “critical” into an “aesthetic” public? And what is an “aesthetic” public, exactly?

The transformation of the “Socratic” into an “Aesthetic” public: Tristan and Isolde’s “Swansong” Nietzsche addresses the “aesthetic public” most pressingly in chapter 22 of The Birth of Tragedy, perhaps not coincidentally the chapter where he also finally speaks to Wagner directly again. Interestingly, he addresses Wagner not so much as creator but as beholder of musical tragedy asking him “to call to mind his experience of the pure and unalloyed effect of a true musical tragedy.”19 We recall that the book is dedicated to Wagner, whom he in the preface called “the man and fighter whose sublime lead I follow.” Here, however, he asks him to recall this effect, because it is exactly this “pure and unalloyed” effect that he should stir in his public to transform them into an aesthetic public. Nietzsche then gives a summary of that effect, in fact telling “my attentive friend” what he is supposed to recall. This part is different in style to the preface where he imagined his friend’s thoughts upon receiving his book, in the sense that by making this description Nietzsche in fact wraps it in a normative account of what kind of musical effect Wagner should strive for, in his works. While pretending that this is the experience Wagner had, as beholder, he in effect tells him which effect he, as creator, should be out for to achieve.

19 BT §22, 104 (“sich die Wirkung einer wahren musikalischen Tragödie rein und unvermischt, nach seinen Erfahrungen, vergegenwärtigen”, KSA 1, 140).

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The passage is a long passage in which Nietzsche fantasizes about Wagner’s own experience of perceiving tragic art. Interestingly, the passage finishes with a quote from the “Swansong” to illustrate Wagner’s experience as beholder on the one hand and as normative exemplar of how this experience leads to the right kind of artistic, genius creation, on the other. After this excursion, Nietzsche advances the point of “the truly aesthetic listener” against other aesthetic theories as the key point of difference. Indeed, Wagner himself is addressed in the first part as “truly aesthetic listener” as “the experiences of the truly aesthetic listener reveal to us the tragic artist himself.”20 Nietzsche explains the text of Isolde’s “Swansong” in Apollonian and Dionysian terms, thus showing both the source and workings of Wagner’s artistic genius in the joy of unity with Dionysus and the pleasure of producing and destroying Apollonian figures or visions. Having overlooked this dynamic between Apollo and Dionysus, and the unification with Dionysus as humanity’s natural “home and origin,”21 Nietzsche suspects that the aesthetic thinkers before him “may not be susceptible to aesthetic stimulation at all, and that, when they are listening to tragedy, they can perhaps only be considered as moral beings.”22 Hence, while former aesthetic thinkers remained silent about the aesthetic workings and purpose of musical tragedy,23 Wagner at least has experienced the aesthetic transformation that the public needs, as he is susceptible to aesthetic stimulation. This must be, otherwise he would never have been able to create art as “aesthetic play”, i.e., a play which delights in the destruction of the Apollonian “veil of appearance” and the experience of a supreme joy in the ensuing unification with Dionysus–here expressed as 20 BT §22, 105 (“den Erfahrungen des wahrhaft aesthetitschen Zuhörers, den tragischen Künstler selbst”, GT §22, KSA 1, 141). 21 Ibid. (“Rückkehr zur Urheimat”, ibid.). 22 Ibid. (“sie möchten überhaupt keine aesthetisch erregbaren Menschen sein und beim Anhören der Tragödie vielleicht nur als moralische Wesen in Betracht kommen”, ibid., KSA 1, 142). 23 “Since the time of Aristotle, no one has yet given an explanation of the effect of tragedy, which would permit the conclusion that artistic states were involved, or that the audience was engaged in aesthetic activity” (BT §22, 105/ “Noch nie, seit Aristoteles, ist eine Erklärung der tragischen Wirkung gegeben worden, aus der auf künstlerische Zustände, auf eine ästhetische Thätigkeit der Zuhörer geschlossen werden dürfte”, GT §22, KSA 1, 142). And: “[…] all of them [,] have never heard that tragedy is a supreme art“ (BT §22, 106/ “[…] dass diese alle […] von der Tragödie als einer höchsten Kunst nichts erfahren haben”, GT §22, KSA 1, 142). Art, Nietzsche makes very clear, is not an “institution of popular, moral education” (BT §22, 107/ “Veranstaltung zur moralischen Volksbildung”, GT §22, KSA 1, 144).

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“allowing us to sense behind that world [of individuality and separation] and through its destruction, a supreme, artistic, primal joy in the womb of the Primordial Unity.”24 Artists can only transmit this same experience to the public, when they have experienced and comprehended the “pure effect” of “true musical tragedy.” To experience this, they need the beholder’s experience of musical tragedy–and that experience is extensively discussed by Nietzsche at the beginning of chapter 22. To comprehend this, the artist has to interpret their experiences with the help of Nietzsche’s new aesthetic terminology and theory. Only after experiencing and comprehending all this, the artist is ready also to create true musical tragedy.25 By the same token, the public is opened up to the new form of art by way of the destruction of the (Apollonian) surface, on which the public with their critical minds and their preferred socio-political plays abide. Through this rupture the members of the public are reconnected with what Nietzsche calls their “last traces of life”. Apart from the “Swansong,” the “successful performance” of Lohengrin could also shake up the critical listener by giving them “a quite unexpected and wholly incomprehensible effect”26 but Lohengrin cannot transform them into the “aesthetic listener” Nietzsche demands.27 Not any public, in fact, has been able to grasp the depth and meaning of Wagner’s artworks because they have been missing the right guide in aesthetic matters until this day–until that is, Nietzsche decided to write such a manual with The Birth 24 BT §22, 105, What is between brackets is added by me. (“[...] diese ganze Welt der Erscheinungen verschlingt, um hinter ihr und durch ihre Vernichtung eine höchste künstlerische Urfreude im Schoose des Ur-Einen ahnen zu lassen”, GT §22, KSA 1, 141). 25 Here obviously the problem arises that Richard Wagner has to listen to his own “true musical tragedy” to articulate in Nietzschean-aesthetic terms what he experiences as beholder of his own work, in order to understand what he is actually doing. In this way, Nietzsche indirectly makes it clear that Wagner’s own aesthetics also does not explain Wagner’s art satisfyingly. 26 BT §22, 108 (“einer ebenso unerwarteten als gänzlich unverständlichen Wirkung”, GT §22, KSA 1, 144). 27 The question is whether Siegfried can. In BT §23, Nietzsche seems to allude to that, when he writes that the German person who is lost from home, should “listen to the blissfully enticing call of the Dionysiac bird which is on the wing, hovering above his head, and which wants to show him the way” (BT §23, 111/ “so mag er nur dem wonnig lockende Rufe des dionysischen Vogels lauschen, der über ihm sich wiegt und ihm den Weg dahin deuten will”, GT §23, KSA 1, 149), thereby alluding to the forest-bird in Wagner’s Siegfried who leads Siegfried to the rock on which Brünnhilde is sleeping.

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of Tragedy.28 Missing this handbook, they were not able to make headway with their interpretation of whatever effect they were undergoing. The public’s experience therefore “remained something isolated and then was extinguished again, like some mysterious planet which had shone only briefly”.29 The artist, too, faces this problem of interpretation. The artist is as much in need of the aesthetic beholder as the other way around. The public “mirrors” the artist in the aesthetic experience, which they share. The artist sees herself in this mirror, then analyzes and interprets her experience as a viewer with the help of Nietzsche’s new aesthetic terminology, and through this action finally understands her creative work in the right manner. Thus, thanks to Nietzsche’s explanation, both the artist and the public understands the artwork as “aesthetic play,” mirroring their positions as viewer and creator to one another. Those who, despite these opportunities, still prefer to explain tragedy from “extra-aesthetic spheres,” i.e., according to “the pathological-moral process” should question their “aesthetic nature”. Nietzsche comes to aid in this matter by offering a test, in chapter 23 of The Birth of Tragedy, by way of which people can determine their aesthetic nature. With the help of this test one can figure out whether one is a truly aesthetic listener or belongs to the “community of Socratic, critical human beings.”30 In short, when the public understands the tragic–which finds its pinnacle in the destruction of Apollo by Dionysus–as “aesthetic play,” they confirm their own “aesthetic nature.”

Testing one’s “aesthetic nature” To have an aesthetic nature means, in brief, that one does not refer to nonaesthetic spheres in their appreciation of art, as is made clear in chapter 22:

28 Which suggests that Nietzsche, as the only person who really understood Wagner’s artistic purposes, is, together with Wagner himself, the only one to have ever achieved this level of aesthetic understanding. In other words, they are the only ones who have the “lived experience” of “the pure and unalloyed effect of a true musical tragedy” (BT §22, 104), and thus of the transformation of a critical into an aesthetic listener. Nietzsche writes this, by the way, before he ever attended a life performance of Tristan and Isolde and Lohengrin. 29 Ibid. (“vereinzelt blieb und wie ein räthselhaftes Gestirn nach kurzem Leuchten erlosch”, ibid.). 30 BT §23, 107.

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Anyone who can still speak only about the kinds of surrogate effect which derive from extra-aesthetic spheres, and who does not feel himself raised above the pathological-moral process, can now only despair of his own aesthetic nature.31

The person judging art according to extra-aesthetic norms is “alienated from the true aims of art.”32 The challenge is, indeed, to bring this person “back home”, to the place where they will not only be reunited with their Dionysian origin, but also with the true, aesthetic aims of art, i.e., to arouse joy, playfulness, life in the beholder: Thus, along with the rebirth of tragedy, the aesthetic listener too is reborn, whose place in the theatre has been occupied up till now by a strange quid pro quo, with expectations that were part moral, part scholarly, namely “the critic.”33

Not only art needs to be renewed, liberated from its “artificialness,” or “reborn,” the public will, and needs, to change with it. The former, critical beholder took their critical mind, their “public opinion” with them–and public opinion was reigned by what we would now perhaps call a form of “cancel culture,” or at least censorship. Deviating voices, especially those who spoke about the dangerous consequences of the Franco-Prussian war, were not welcome. This led to a kind of “meagre and unoriginal sociability.”34 Instead, the “sociability” or “Geselligkeit” that Nietzsche hopes to achieve through art is the unity with the “Primordial Unity” (“Urheimat”), or as he explains in the first chapter:35 Not only is the bond between human beings renewed by the magic of the Dionysiac, but nature, alienated, inimical, or subjugated, celebrates once more her festival of reconciliation with her lost son, humankind. […] hearing 31

BT §22, 106 (“Wer jetzt noch nur von jenen stellvertretenden Wirkungen aus ausseraesthetischen Sphären zu erzählen hat und über den pathologisch-moralischen Prozess sich nicht hinausgehoben fühlt, mag nur an seiner aesthetischen Natur verzweifeln“, KSA 1, 143). 32 BT §22, 107 (“Entfremdung der eigentlichen Kunstabsichten”, GT 22, KSA 1, 143-144). 33 BT §22 (p. 106/ “So ist mit der Wiedergeburt der Tragödie auch der aesthetische Zuhörer wieder geboren, an dessen Stellen bisher in den Theaterräumen ein seltsames Quidproquo, mit halb moralischen und halb gelehrten Ansprüchen, zu sitzen pflegte, der ‘Kritiker’”, GT §22, KSA 1. 143] 34 BT §22 (p. 107/ “ärmlich-unoriginalen Geselligkeit”, GT §22, KSA 1. 144). 35 To become one with Dionysus as “nature”, human beings in fact have to become satyrs. Cf. Prange (2013). Nietzsche discusses the satyr in BT §7 and §8.

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Chapter 9 this gospel of universal harmony, each person feels himself to be not simply united, reconciled or merged with his neighbour, but quite literally one with him […] Singing and dancing, man expresses his sense of belonging to a higher community; […] there now sounds out from within man something supernatural: he feels himself to be a god […] Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art.36

Thus, becoming an aesthetic public also means that the public is activated and in action—singing and dancing—unites with nature, humanity, and the gods. The aesthetic person is not just a beholder, it seems they are not even a mere artist, but “a work of art.” Here Nietzsche alludes to the Dionysian mysteries and the figure of the satyr as exemplary “Naturmensch.” I won’t go into that here, but just want to mention that this experience is metaphysical or “supernatural,” divine, and mysterious. Is this experience necessary for the public to transform into an aesthetic public? Yes. As mentioned above, the public needs to be re-acquainted with their own aesthetic nature, i.e., the Apollonian and Dionysian forces in them. They need the experience of art and the creativity for this, just reading and comprehending Nietzsche’s manual on art will not do. They need to experience the creative and destructive powers working in their own nature and as the essence of all life, the “universal harmony”37 behind all conflict. This is the ideal. The reality, however, is that Wagner has to do with a barely living, “barren,” a hedonic public. How to reach, move, and activate them with art? The performing artist no longer knew where to begin with this kind of listener and his critical demeanor, so that both he and the dramatist or operatic composer who inspired him searched restlessly for the last traces of life in this creature who was demanding, barren, and utterly incapable of enjoyment.38 36 BT §1, 18/ “Unter dem Zauber des Dionysischen schließt sich nicht nur der Bund zwischen Mensch und Mensch wieder zusammen: auch die entfremdete, feindliche oder unterjochte Natur feiert wieder ihr Versöhnungsfest mit ihrem verlorenen Sohne, dem Menschen. […] Jetzt, bei dem Evangelium der Weltenharmonie, fühlt sich Jeder mit seinem Nächsten nicht nur vereinigt, versöhnt, verschmolzen, sondern eins […]. Singend und tanzend äussert sich der Mensch als Mitglied einer höheren Gemeinsamkeit […]. Der Mensch ist nicht mehr Künstler, er ist Kunstwerk geworden“, GT §1, KSA 1, 29-30. 37 BT §1, 18 (“Weltenharmonie”, GT §1, KSA 1, 29). 38 BT §22, 106 (“Der darstellende Künstler wusste in der That nicht mehr, was er mit einem solchen, kritisch sich gebärdenden Zuhörer zu beginnen habe und spähte daher, sammt dem ihn inspirirenden Dramatiker oder Operncomponisten, unruhig

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Hence, quite a task awaits the artist, but if one person can achieve this, it is Wagner. The “Swansong” convinces Nietzsche of this. As mentioned above, however, the beholder needs to be able to enjoy the play in the right manner, i.e., from their aesthetic nature, and in chapter 23, Nietzsche introduces a test for the beholder to examine their aesthetic nature. What does this test look like? Anyone who wishes to examine just how closely he is related to the true aesthetic listener, or whether he belongs to the community of Socratic, critical human beings, should ask himself honestly what he feels when he receives the miracle presented on the stage.39

Interestingly, the test comes down to whether we as beholders are able to perceive like children, or whether we undergo the play as scholars “corrupted by the critical-historical spirit of our education.”40 Only as children can we understand the story, the staged myth as a miracle. Thus, having an aesthetic nature requires humankind to experience the magic on stage as a miracle like children do. This disposition is essential to cultural health: Without myth […] all cultures lose their healthy, creative, natural energy; only a horizon surrounded by myths encloses and unifies a cultural movement. […] even the state knows of no more powerful unwritten laws than the mythical fundament which guarantees its connection with religion.41

What counts is to what extent one is educated by a mythical culture and has brought this with them into adult life. In this chapter, Nietzsche sets up the “mythical” person, who has their cultural roots in the poetic, fantastical stories of their nation, against the “abstract” person, who looks at reality

nach den letzten Resten des Lebens in diesem anspruchsvoll öden und zum Geniessen unfähigen Wesen,” GT §22, KSA 1, 143). 39 BT §23, 108 (“Wer recht genau sich selber prüfen will, wie sehr er dem wahren aesthetischen Zuhörer verwandt ist oder zur Gemeinschaft der sokratisch-kritischen Menschen gehört, der mag sich nur aufrichtig nach der Empfindung fragen, mit der er das auf der Bühne dargestellte Wunder empfängt”, GT §23, KSA 1, 145). 40 Ibid. (“durch den kritische-historischen Geist unserer Bildung zersetzt”, ibid.). 41 BT §23, 108 („Ohne Mythus aber geht jede Cultur ihrer gesunden schöpferischen Naturkraft verlustig: erst ein mit Mythen umstellter Horizont schliesst eine ganze Culturbewegung zur Einheit ab. […] und selbst der Staat kennt keine mächtigeren ungeschriebnen Gesetze als das mythische Fundament, das seinen Zusammenhang mit der Religion […] verbürgt,“ GT §23, KSA 1, 145).

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with a historical and critical outlook.42 France was culturally so advanced, because its people and its culture were one identity. Germany can outgrow this, according to Nietzsche, but only if, beneath this inclination to criticism and abstraction, it successfully connects with “a magnificent, inwardly healthy, ancient strength”, which is “the noble core of our national character”, but with which “this questionable culture of ours still has nothing in common”.43 In this part, Nietzsche seeks to explain Lutheran choral music and German mythology as born from this ‘ancient strength,” being “the Dionysian,” which is then “echoed” by “that consecrated yet exuberant procession of Dionysiac enthusiasts to whom we owe German music—and to which we shall owe the rebirth of the German myth!”44 Thus, Nietzsche directly relates the Dionysus followers or the “Greek chorus of satyrs”45 or 42 See the analogy with the satyr: “What the Greek saw in his satyr was nature, as yet untouched by knowledge, with the bolts of culture still closed […] what he saw in the satyr was the original image (Urbild) of mankind, the expression of man’s highest and strongest stirrings, an enthusiastic celebrant, ecstatic at the closeness of his god […]” (BT §8, 41/ “[…] das sah der Grieche in seinem Satyr […] es war das Urbild des Menschen, der Ausdruck seiner höchsten und stärksten Regungen, als begeisterter Schwärmer, den die Nähe des Gottes entzückt”, GT §8, KSA 1, 58) as opposed to “the cultured man, who generally thinks of himself as the only reality” (ibid./ “der gemeinhin sich als einzige Realität achtende Culturmensch”, ibid.). 43 BT §23, 109. 44 BT §23, 109 (“jener weihevoll übermüthige Festzug dionysischer Schwärmer, denen wir die deutsche Musik danken—und denen wir die Wiedergeburt des deutschen Mythus danken werden!” GT 23, KSA 1, 147). Compare to this passage: “In the German Middle Ages, too, ever-growing throngs roamed from place to place, impelled by the same Dionysiac power, singing and dancing as they went; in these St John’s and St Vitus’ dancers we recognize the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, with their pre-history in Asia Minor, extending to Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea,” BT §1, 17. “Auch im deutschen Mittelalter wälzten sich unter der gleichen dionysischen Gewalt immer wachsende Schaaren, singend und tanzend, von Ort zu Ort: in diesen Sanct-Johann- und Sanct-Veittänzern erkennen wir die bacchischen Chöre der Griechen wieder, mit ihrer Vorgeschichte in Kleinasien, bis hin zu Babylon und den orgiastischen Sakaën”, GT §1. KSA 1, 29). Here “Greek” is to be taken as “cosmopolitan”, while in BT §23 Nietzsche opposes the adoption of foreign myths. As I interpret it, the challenge seems to be to create a national art and culture that can compete with other artistic nations’ artistic and cultural highlights (ancient Greek tragedy, Shakespearean poetry and plays, French and Italian opera) as to “put the stamp of the eternal on its experiences” (BT §23, 110 (“auf seine Erlebnisse den Stempel des Ewigen zu drücken vermag”, GT §23, KSA 1, 148) because only then does “a people—or, for that matter, a human being” have ‘value’ (ibid./ “Und gerade nur so viel ist ein Volk—wie übrigens auch ein Mensch—werth”, ibid.). 45 BT §7, 39.

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the “agitated mass of Dionysos’ servants”46 as origin of Greek theatre, to German music and myth. In the end, he seems to imply that all are touched by the same magic, which stems from the original, metaphysical or musical “depth.” This part of Nietzsche’s argument is not very convincing. There is not so much an argument as a crippled attempt at connecting Greek religious and intoxicated processes in celebration of Dionysus with later German religious celebrations and music. Nietzsche himself seems to be aware of his forced attempt to “prove” German’s unique predilection for understanding and reviving Greek magic, as shown by the words he here addresses to his friend Richard Wagner, this time less directly: I know that I must now lead the friend who is following these arguments sympathetically to a high place of lonely contemplation where he will have but a few companions, and I call out to encourage him that we must hold fast to our radiant leaders, the Greeks.47

Despite being the least convincing part of his argument, the message is clear: abstract, scientific cultures lack myth, and for Germany to revive as a mythical culture, it needs to tune in which its “Greek” core.48 Only then can the cultural war against France be won. Humankind needs to be reminded that there is another reality besides the historical, political one: “The sphere of poetry does not lie outside the world, like some fantastical impossibility contrived in a poet’s head; poetry aims to be the very opposite, the unvarnished expression of truth […]”.49 Humankind should follow the lead of “the blissfully enticing call of the Dionysiac bird, which is on the wing,

46

BT §7, 40. BT §23, 109-110 (“Ich weiss, dass ich jetzt den theilnehmend folgenden Freund auf einen hochgelegenen Ort einsamer Betrachtung führen muss, wo er nur wenige Gefährten haben wird, und rufe ihm ermuthigend zu, dass wir uns an unseren leuchtenden Führern, den Griechen, festzuhalten haben,” GT §23, KSA 1, 147). 48 It is unconvincing in two ways: first, the Dionysian core of the world and nature is shared by all human beings, as is made amply clear in BT §1 and further throughout the book, and thus not specially reserved for Germans; second, to claim that Lutheran Reformation and music were born from a Dionysian spirit, rather than a Christian spirit, is absurd. Here, Nietzsche clearly tries to tie his book to Wagner’s “Beethoven” essay, but it mainly shows how forcefully Nietzsche tries to marry his own thoughts on Greek tragedy with Wagner’s thoughts on the value of music drama. 49 BT §8, 41 (“Die Sphere der Poesie liegt nicht ausserhalb der Welt, all seine phantastische Unmöglichkeit eines Dichterhirns: sie will das gerade Gegentheil sein, der ungeschminkte Ausdruck der Wahrheit […]”, GT §8, KSA 1, 58). 47

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hovering above his head, and which wants to show him the way”50 if they don’t want to remain in the “cultural lie.”51 This Dionysiac bird is Richard Wagner, if it is up to Nietzsche, and it is the “sublime lead” of this winged birdman that he follows in The Birth of Tragedy.

Conclusion Nietzsche’s hope of Wagner was very high indeed, and in any case no less than Wagner’s own ambition to transform Europe’s musical culture. What was at stake was the public consciousness of what culture was and how important art, myth, creativity, and imagination are for the experience of belonging and home-coming; for being a human being and being alive; for being one with nature, humanity, and the divine. Wagner did not just bring art to the people, through his art he brought them back to life. Wagner did not just make music, through his music the public transformed their view of life from a moral, pathological, historical-realist and critical one into an aesthetic view of life. This is essential, to Nietzsche, because it is the only view that does justice to life. It doesn’t reject life; it doesn’t judge life as something that needs to be different. On the contrary, the aesthetic view of life teaches the invaluable life lesson that everything that exists has an equal right to exist, including the experience of life’s pointlessness. While Nietzsche claimed to follow Wagner’s “sublime lead” in The Birth of Tragedy, it becomes clear that he also wants Wagner to follow his lead when it comes to theorizing music drama in Apollonian, Dionysian, and aesthetic terms. Thanks to Nietzsche’s explanation of the workings of the “art deities” Apollo and Dionysus in the human body and imagination, the public can understand the artist’s genius and the artist can, via an ingenious reflection upon their own experience as beholder of tragedy, understand their own genius. Thus, with the help of his academic friend Nietzsche, Wagner learned how to speak to the aesthetic sensibilities of the public, in thoroughly political, moral, warlike, and patriotic times, and to help the public transform into an “aesthetic public,” releasing its moralcritical attitude and regaining the childlike ability to see the magic on stage and believe in myth. While following Wagner, Nietzsche also hoped that Wagner would follow him, so that in the end, everyone in touch with their

50

BT §23, 111 (“dem wonnig lockenden Rufe des dionysischen Vogels lauschen, der über ihm sich wiegt und ihm den Weg dahin deuten will”, GT §23, KSA 1, 149). 51 BT §8, 41.

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aesthetic nature would follow “the blissfully enticing call of the Dionysiac bird”.

Bibliography Bishop, Paul and R.H. Stephenson. Nietzsche and Weimar Classicism. New York: Camden House, 2005. Martin, Nicholas. Nietzsche and Schiller: Untimely Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Eds. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Spiers. Transl. Ronald Spiers. Cambridge/ New York. Oakleigh: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Prange, Martine. Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe. Berlin/ Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013.

Additional abbreviations ASC = “Attempt at Self-Criticism” GT = Die Geburt der Tragödie VSK = “Versuch einer Selbstkritik”

CHAPTER 10 SCHOENBERG’S VERKLÄRTE NACHT AND NIETZSCHE’S ART OF TRANSFIGURATION JAMIE PARR AND VENESSA ERCOLE

Just for today, destiny, give me the unluckiest roll of your dice. Today I turn everything into gold.1

Introduction: art and craft The valorisation of courage in Nietzsche’s texts reflects both the problem of our existence and the fluctuations of our resolve before it. All too often, this problem hinges not on external events but on our experience of ourselves. We are not always brave; from the point of view of exhaustion, not only our tasks but our lives themselves feel like burdens we are tempted to throw off.2 Presuming that such a catastrophe is avoided–such ideation can be a form of coping3–with the restoration of our energies comes a return to the problem of ourselves. Given all we know of ourselves–knowledge we will continue to seek, as philosophers–to what extent can we accept what we are? Such acceptance has the status of an ethical imperative in Nietzsche. The one necessary thing, he claims (cf. Luke 10.42), is that “a human being should attain satisfaction [Zufriedenheit] with himself.”4 We must find the ‘peace’ (Frieden) of self-acceptance; an inability to do so leads to resentment and revenge (ibid.). Yet the more we press our investigations into the character of existence and the nature of ourselves, the more we uncover that which is ugly, unattractive and repellent. We cannot stop these investigations;

1

KSA 10:5[1], §130. GS 311; cf. §315. 3 BGE §157. 4 GS §290. 2

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for us, life is a means to knowledge.5 Yet the often repulsive nature of our truths risks an exhaustion that cultivates despair. What means do we possess then “for making things beautiful, attractive and desirable when they are not?”6 Nietzsche’s answer is: philosophy, construed as an ‘aesthetic’ way of living that extends and applies the artist’s practice of the transfiguration of her experiences into works of art, to our wider, and especially our most difficult experiences of life (ibid.). As well as the discipline in which we hunt relentlessly for truths which both fascinate and terrify us, philosophy is also the “art of transfiguration [Kunst der Transfiguration],” by which we “give birth to our thoughts out of our pain,” translating our negative experiences into “the most spiritual [geistigste] form and distance” (ibid.).7 Transfiguration is one of the deepest and most important conceptions of Nietzsche’s project. Yet what is transfiguration? How does it work? The term is strange, even arcane, and for many is heavily associated with Christianity through the account of the Transfiguration of Christ (Matt. 17.1-8, Mk 9.1-8, Lk. 9.28-36). Nietzsche refers to transfiguration repeatedly, in a manner that recalls but also strips the concept of its Christian accretions, but an explicit account of its nature and function is absent from his writings. This is unavoidable, for like all deep things transfiguration resists and exceeds language; words petrify and vulgarise our experiences.8 Rather, Nietzsche appears to assume that ‘we philosophers’ will possess both an intuitive understanding of transfiguring activity and a compulsive need to enact it: “Life – to us, that means constantly transforming all that we are into light and flame, and also all that wounds us; we simply can do no other.”9 Yet Nietzsche also believes that intuition and compulsion matter little without a willingness to apprentice oneself to the discipline of one’s

5

GS §324. GS §299. 7 GS Preface §3. The description of philosophy as the art of Transfiguration, not Verklärung, is notable. Nietzsche simultaneously evokes and subverts the Christian conception of the term; now philosophy, not Christianity, is to be the means by which we respond to the problem of existence and discover the sacred within the profane. The scarcity with which Nietzsche uses the term (26 appearances in his corpus, compared with 132 uses of Verklärung) only amplifies its effect. 8 TI, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” §26. 9 GS Preface §3. 6

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craft.10 We must learn from artists,11 but the artist must never place herself above the craftsperson.12 We philosophers must be patient, diligent, devoted, and humble before the value of our task; like all good craftspeople and apprentices of trades, we must marry our intuition to our practice. Yet none of this explains what transfiguration is, how the techniques of a craft might engage and develop it, or how we are to translate the work of transfiguration from artworks to the wider events of our lives. How can we apprentice ourselves to a craft when the central term of our practice is unclear to us? Does this lack of clarity matter in this case? Is it possible (or even desirable) to resolve this problem, or must we accept that when it comes to learning our trade as philosophers, proficiency in the ‘art of transfiguration’ hinges on a phenomenon that must remain only partially understood? These questions take us to the heart of this chapter. Ultimately, our experiences of transfiguration exceed language, and to this extent they must remain ‘obscure’ to us. Nonetheless, following Nietzsche’s direction, we argue that it is possible to use particular works of art to illuminate the nature of transfiguration, as he conceives it. This may be achieved without ossifying the activity of transfiguration in language, and this insight may go to strengthen our ability to pursue Nietzsche’s central ethical imperative, namely, the attainment of satisfaction with ourselves.13 The artistic medium capable of conveying this insight into the nature of transfiguration is music– the preeminent artform for Nietzsche–and a particular piece of music in which the nature of transfiguration may be discerned is Arnold Schoenberg’s string sextet Verklärte Nacht (‘Transfigured Night,’ 1899). Though Schoenberg was aware of Nietzsche, Verklärte Nacht is not an intentionally ‘Nietzschean’ work. What is crucial, however, is that the piece takes its own intrinsic process of transfiguration as its principal subject. Our point is not that Schoenberg composed a ‘Nietzschean’ sextet, but that Nietzsche’s concept of transfiguration models genuine artistic activity well enough to be discernible in particular works of art. In the aural experience of Verklärte Nacht, therefore, and in the transformations of the work’s central motive observable in its score, the nature of transfiguration, as Nietzsche understood it, is made explicit.14 10

HH I §163. GS §299. 12 KSB 6, §389. 13 GS §290. 14 For an interesting analysis of Nietzsche’s influence on Schoenberg–a topic we are unable to consider here–see William E. Benjamin, “Abstract Polyphonies: The 11

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Accordingly, in what follows we first discuss the importance of transfiguration in Nietzsche’s project before connecting that concept to his view of music. Having established a model of Nietzsche’s thinking of transfiguration, we then turn to Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, initially by analysing Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name, which was the inspiration for Schoenberg’s composition. Dehmel’s poem narrates the redemption of a woman from despair through her lover’s exuberant resolve and strength of will; read from Nietzsche’s point of view, it contains themes and action of striking relevance to his view of the ability of transfiguration to effect genuine positive change in human lives, rendering us better disposed toward both ourselves and life in general. Finally, with this analysis in place we isolate from the score of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht key moments in the transformations of the work’s central motive, demonstrating how these changes accord with Nietzsche’s thinking of transfiguration and suggesting how, with Dehmel’s poem in mind, this insight can aid our own practice of the art, and craft, of living.15

Nietzsche on transfiguration and music The failure of Nietzsche’s relationship with Lou von Salomé–the worst experience of his active life–provides important insight into his view of the nature and practice of transfiguration. Nietzsche’s friend Paul Rée had met her first, in March 1882. Rée wrote Nietzsche informing him of the extraordinary young woman he had met and her interest in forming a small, cohabiting, intellectual study group. When Nietzsche himself met Salomé the following month, he was captivated. It seemed that here at last, in this slight, attractive, fiercely intelligent woman of twenty-one, was a soul with whom the loneliness of his existence could be eased. “I want to be lonely no longer,” he wrote to her, “but to learn again to be a human being. Ah, here I have practically everything to learn!”16 He was awkward, mannered, rebuffed–his marriage proposals were refused–yet inspired. He composed a setting for her poem Lebensgebet (“Life-Prayer”), though he found the title

Music of Schoenberg’s Nietzschean Moment,” in Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg. Edited by Charlotte M. Cross and Russell A. Berman (New York, NY: Garland Publishing, 2000), 34–93. 15 We wish to thank the reviewers of this chapter for their helpful suggestions for its improvement. We also wish to acknowledge our sincere gratitude to Simon Perry and Tim McKenry for their invaluable advice regarding the motivic transformations in Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. 16 KSB 6, §256.

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“impossible”17; “the demon of music came over me again…”18 he informed her, writing Köselitz that he hoped the piece might be played publicly to entice others to his philosophy.19 By late autumn, however, the trio’s relationship had collapsed into acrimony. Rée and Salomé left Germany at the start of November; they would never see Nietzsche again.20 The despair into which Nietzsche fell was deep. For our purposes, his letter to Overbeck of 25 December is particularly valuable: This last morsel of life was the hardest I have yet had to chew, and it is still possible that I shall choke on it. I have suffered from the humiliating and tormenting memories of this summer as from a bout of madness. … I am exerting every ounce of my self-mastery [Selbst-Überwindung] but … I am now being broken, as no other man could be, on the wheel of my own passions. … Unless I discover the alchemical trick [AlchemistenKunststück] of turning this – muck into gold, I am lost. Here I have the most splendid chance to prove that for me ‘all experiences are useful, all days holy and all people divine’!!!! All people divine.21

Two aspects of this excerpt require highlighting. The first is Nietzsche’s figurative use of images of alimentation and digestion.22 We must incorporate

 17

KSB 6, §311. 18 KSB 6, §293. 19 KSB 6, §295. 20 The complexities of Nietzsche’s relations with Rée and Salomé are impossible to reproduce here. For a helpful overview, see Rudolph Binion, Frau Lou: Nietzsche’s Wayward Disciple (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 81–111. Salomé provides her own summary of the period in Lou Andreas-Salomé, Looking Back: Memoirs. Edited by Ernst Pfeiffer, translated by Breon Mitchell (New York, NY: Marlowe & Company, 1995), 44–56. 21 KSB 6, §365. Nietzsche’s reference is to Emerson’s essay “History:” “To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and Journals. Selected with an Introduction by Lewis Mumford (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), 74). Nietzsche used a version of Emerson’s sentence (dropping reference to ‘the saint’) as the motto for the first edition of The Gay Science, and used the same truncated version of December in a letter to Rée the preceding August (KSB 6, §292). The return of the quotation in Nietzsche’s letter to Overbeck is agonisingly ironic. 22 For Nietzsche, an important metaphorical image of the activity of assimilation and domination essential to the will to power. See particularly BGE 230: “… really,

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our experiences as we incorporate our food, taking what is required for living and excreting the remainder. It is this digestive process–his spiritual overcoming of the Salomé affair–that he is struggling to perform. The result is the torture of memories he is unable to be done with, memories that show him his recent life with terrible frankness. As he acknowledges to Overbeck, Nietzsche is faced with the chance to prove his own philosophy through his actions, and it is a portion of his torment that he is struggling to do so. The Gay Science was published in August 1882. It is in the fourth book of that work–which he was composing when he first met Salomé–that Nietzsche writes of the need to attain satisfaction with oneself: “only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold! Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually prepared to avenge himself for this, and we others will be his victims if only by having to endure his sight.”23 By December 1882, Nietzsche himself was fulfilling this bleak image. His emotions warped by intense pain, he struggled not to fall victim to the very resentment he had set himself against in his most recent, and by his own account, highly personal work.24 The second aspect is the ‘alchemy’ by which Nietzsche aims to turn his most ‘base’ experiences into ‘gold’. This is our central concern. Far from being confined to the Salomé affair, for Nietzsche ‘alchemy’ is a figurative term for our fundamental need to transfigure our experiences. This need exists due to the character of existence, which Nietzsche claims is horrifying. Insight into this fact leads to the despair of Silenic wisdom: death is preferable to life.25 Transfiguration is therefore the essential human task.

 ‘spirit’ resembles a stomach more than anything.” The nature of music as the expression of the artist’s will to power is considered below. 23 GS §290. 24 In a draft letter to Salomé, Nietzsche writes: “Formerly, I was inclined to take you for a vision and the earthly apparition of my ideal. Observe: I see very poorly” (KSB 6, §347; cf. ibid. §352). A short time later he drafts a letter to both Rée and Salomé, writing of his suicidal despair, adding: “This evening I shall take so much opium that I’ll lose my mind. Where is there a person left who might be worshipped? But I know you all through and through” (KSB 6, §360). He drafted a retraction of the ‘nonsense’ of his ‘opium letter’, though addressed only to Rée (KSB 6, §362). 25 When asked “what is the best and most excellent thing for human beings,” Silenus replies, laughing: “Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach, not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon” (BT §3; cf. TL §1). For an instructive study of Nietzsche’s construal of the problem,

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Existence “must be transfigured ever anew and in new ways.”26 Each of us will inevitably find ourselves afflicted by the “execrable”27 aspects of the world and consequently face the need to assimilate often agonisingly base experiences into the remainder of our lives. Suffering can loosen our attachment to living; the alchemy of transfiguration is an attempt to bind ourselves to life once more, through the transformation of one’s attitude to the prospect of one’s remaining alive. What is ultimately at stake in transfiguration is the avoidance of suicide; its principal result, therefore, must be our liberation, or redemption, from the potentially lethal effects of life’s pain. It is this change of attitude to living that makes alchemy–transmuting the valueless into the supremely valuable–such an effective metaphor. For Nietzsche, of course, philosophy is the very art of transfiguration. Accordingly, the philosopher is a kind of spiritual alchemist, as it were, a figure in whom experience is repeatedly transformed into the light and flame of philosophical texts and the “spiritual form and distance”28 of a studiously crafted style of living. At the time of the Salomé affair, therefore, what Nietzsche needed was a new book. Accordingly, in December 1882, he tells Hans von Bülow: “I am a hermit once again, and more than ever; and am – consequently – thinking out something new. It seems to me that only the state of pregnancy binds us to life ever anew.”29 The result was the ‘gold’ of the first book of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, completed in January 1883.30

 see Philip J. Kain, Nietzsche and the Horror of Existence (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009). 26 KSA 12, 1[127]; WP §1044. 27 KSA 13, 14[123]; WP §685. 28 GS §290. 29 KSB 6, §344. Using Binion’s translation (Frau Lou, 101–102). We are indebted to Binion’s text for drawing our attention to a number of Nietzsche’s letters referred to in this chapter. 30 KSB 6, §381. In a postcard to Köselitz in April 1883, Nietzsche writes: “Today by chance I learned what “Zarathustra” means, namely, “gold star.” This coincidence makes me happy. One might think that the entire conception of my little book has its root in this etymology” (KSB 6, §406). The gold motif also appears in two letters to Overbeck: “I have an aim which compels me to go on living and for the sake of which I must cope with even the most painful matters. Without this aim I … would no longer live. … I must even have an absolute victory [over my sufferings]: namely, the transformation [Umwandlung] of experience into gold and use of the highest order” (KSB 6, §451); “It is my duty … to continue to transform [verwandeln] my fate into gold in favour of my task” (KSB 6, §526). In a letter to Rohde, Nietzsche

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How then does Nietzschean transfiguration work? Why does he consider it to be so effective at re-binding us to our lives, given life’s formidably negative content? Here we turn to the model of Nietzschean transfiguration provided by R. Lainer Anderson. Anderson demonstrates that Nietzsche’s conception of transfiguration has both Hellenic and Christian roots. On the Hellenic side, the Greek term metamorphosis denotes a process whereby an object undergoes a change of ‘form’ (morphé) while also, in some manner, remaining identifiably the ‘same’ object: “In metamorphosis, something changes radically (it gains a whole new form) but nevertheless remains the same thing[.]”31 Ovid’s tales of Caenis, transformed from female to male, and the apotheosis of Romulus, are cases in point.32 However, while Christianity retained the same core notion of identity-in-change, Anderson claims that in order to separate itself from unwanted association with pagan transformations such as those of Ovid, the new faith limited metamorphosis to Christ alone, while also insisting on the “spiritualizing significance of the change. Christianly understood, transfiguration is an identity-preserving transformation that raises the person (Christ) onto a purely spiritual, divine plane.”33 Retooled, these two conceptions allow Nietzsche to develop a response to the negative experiences of life suited to his purposes, namely, an affirmation of life that does not deny the fact or causes of suffering, and which does not appeal for legitimacy to a transcendent reality. For Nietzsche, transfiguration–which is “always a spiritualizing change, even though it loses all mystical or otherworldly connotations”34–hinges on a psychological revaluation of the negative in which its meaning or ‘form’ is

 describes Human, all too Human, Dawn and The Gay Science as his “prescription and home-brewed medicine” (KSB 6, §267) against the temptation to suicide. 31 R. Lainer Anderson, “Nietzsche on Redemption and Transfiguration,” in The ReEnchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age. Edited by Joshua Landy and Michael Saler (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 242. 32 See Ovid, Metamorphoses. Translated by A. D. Melvile, with an introduction and notes by E. J. Kenny (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 279–280 (Caenis), 349–351 (Romulus). 33 R. Lainer Anderson, “Nietzsche on Redemption and Transfiguration,” 243. Anderson evades the obvious objection here that while Christianity understands the two processes differently – one is a divine revelation, the other a human task underwritten by supernatural power – metamorphosis is not limited to the person of Christ but extends to believers. See 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed [metamorphoumetha] into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 34 R. Lainer Anderson, “Nietzsche on Redemption and Transfiguration,” 243.

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positively changed, but which leaves the negative ‘content’ of the experience unaltered. “For [the] magic of transfiguration to happen,” claims Anderson, “the process must draw a basic distinction between something constant in the life or subject, and something new that emerges in it.”35 As we demonstrate in the second part of this chapter, it is this fundamental activity of Nietzschean transfiguration–the simultaneous change and retention of the negative–that is illustrated by the central motive of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, which continually transforms while, musically, remaining identifiably the same. In our estimation, the veracity of Anderson’s model of Nietzschean transfiguration is well demonstrated by the following moment from The Gay Science: Our ultimate gratitude to art. – Had we not approved of the arts and invented this type of cult of the untrue, the insight into general untruth and mendacity that is now given to us by science – the insight into delusion and error as a condition of cognitive and sensate existence – would be utterly unbearable. Honesty would lead to nausea and suicide. But now our honesty has a counterforce that helps us avoid such consequences: art, as the good will to appearance. We do not always keep our eyes from rounding off, from finishing off the poem; and then it is no longer eternal imperfection that we carry across the river of becoming – we then feel that we are carrying a goddess, and are proud and childish in performing this service. As an aesthetic phenomenon existence is still bearable to us, and art furnishes us with the eye and hand and above all the good conscience to be able to make such a phenomenon of ourselves. At times we need to have a rest from ourselves by looking at and down at ourselves and, from an artistic distance, laughing at ourselves or crying at ourselves; we have to discover the hero no less than the fool in our passion for knowledge; we must now and then be pleased about our folly in order to be able to stay pleased about our wisdom!36

Art allows us to endure our two primary disillusionments–the loss of both God and ‘Truth’–and to cope with the constant demands of our intellectual conscience.37 Beyond mere endurance, however, art also allows us to enter

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Ibid., 251. 36 GS §107. 37 As Laurence Lampert puts it (with reference to Richard Wagner in Bayreuth §4), “Art has an indissolvable bond to knowledge and to the human character as knowledge-seeking. Art does not relax the tension between the “general knowledge of things” and “the moral-spiritual capacities” of human beings; rather, it makes it possible to live in that tension” (Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study of Bacon,

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into the ecstasy of the hierophant, “the one who shows sacred things.”38 Our passion of knowledge drives us continually to refrain from indulging our drive to complete the ‘poem’ of existence; instead we habitually expose and explore the broken syntax into which its sentences eventually lead. But not always. Whether done by ourselves or another–whether a rapture of art, for instance, or of romance–sometimes the poem of life is completed. Then, the world becomes composed, transfigured into something clearer, simpler, beautiful, and we ourselves with it. The river of becoming through which we all wade as subjects of matter and time persists, only now we feel it differently. Now we carry our existence as do celebrants in a sacred rite. Now the world trembles with a holiness all its own, a radically nondenominational, immanent glory unique to this moment. As with all love, we are driven to offer ourselves to the goddess in service, not just to protect and bear her across the waters, but to know her. We accept proudly the prospect of suffering for her, if only the pain allows us to love her all the deeper. She restores us to ourselves; like the children we once were, now we are lighter, freer, playful, more whole. Like children, our pain is closer to us, yet so too is our laughter. In such transfigured moments we may recuperate from the problem of ourselves. It is this aesthetic approach to life that seduces us to live on,39 enabling us to experience an otherwise horrific reality as “beautiful, attractive, and desirable”40 and to do so without denying the nature of reality itself. Crucially, for Nietzsche this transfiguration includes we ourselves. In moments of aesthetic transfiguration we are redeemed from the problem of ourselves; we come to experience ourselves as beautiful, attractive and desirable–when we know we are not. It is therefore our cultivation of practices of aesthetic transfiguration–not only the seeking of ‘artistic’ experiences but the sustained ‘composition’ of our lives–that allows us to counter our susceptibility to resentment, born of our pain, and to grow

 Descartes, and Nietzsche (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 296). By our ‘spiritual-moral capacities’ Nietzsche means our ability to be nourished and refreshed by the ‘simplifications’ of the problem of the world provided by art. This tension between knowledge and art, central to GS §107, is also at the heart of Nietzsche’s view of the ‘cruelty’ of the intellectual conscience, in which the “will to appearances, to simplification, to masks’ is resisted by the ‘sublime tendency of the knower” (BGE §230). 38 Part of the role of the hierophant in ancient Greek mystery religions was to show (‘phaínǀ’) to initiates that which was holy (‘hierós’). 39 BT §3. 40 GS §299.

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increasingly satisfied with our existence.41 Without these practices, Nietzsche claims, our knowledge of ourselves in all our pettiness and vulgarity would be overwhelming.42 We may now appreciate the musical nature of philosophy as the art of transfiguration, and the grounding of this dimension in the will to power. 41

GS §290. GS §78. Here, two things must be noted. Firstly, in aesthetic transfiguration it is not reality but our inherited bias against the value of illusion that must be denied; the negative is changed, but also retained. In GS §78, Nietzsche claims that we can overcome “certain lowly details in ourselves” only by learning from dramatists and “regarding oneself as a hero, from a distance and as it were simplified and transfigured – the art of ‘putting oneself on stage’ before oneself.” This is a delicate condition: transfigured, we know our own ugliness even as we revel in ourselves, just as we know the repellent nature of existence even as we see it resplendent. As GS §107 underscores, for us to cultivate this form of experience, in which the problem of oneself is temporarily suspended we must possess a good will to appearance; any shame at our involvement in artistic illusion, or inability to embrace seeing oneself so transformed, will break its spell over us and destroy its redemptive effect. As Tracy Strong has pointed out, Nietzschean transfiguration “is one’s own experience, to which, however, one is [also] a witness” (Tracy B. Strong, ‘Philosophy of the Morning: Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration’ (Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 39, 2010). 53). Secondly, the practice of cultivating ‘satisfaction’ with our lives must be understood in relation to the self-contempt that Nietzsche sees present in all healthy forms of self-love, and which ultimately lies at the heart of the philosophic enterprise: “The philosopher’s contempt for the all-too-human emerges from the nature of the philosophic eros (the desire for the highest things)”, argues Alex McIntyre, yet while this eros impels the philosopher beyond the human, it also teaches her to love the human, thus “[t]he paradox of eros is that the philosopher who represents a contempt for, and a negation of, the human things embodies a new, transfiguring love” of the human (Alex McIntyre, The Sovereignty of Joy. Nietzsche’s Vision of Grand Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 78–79). Love for what is and can be higher in us leads to our despising that which is based in ourselves. Nietzsche conceives this self-disdain as part of a creative tension that he distinguishes from its moralised form: “Oh my soul, I taught you contempt that does not come like a gnawing worm, the great, loving contempt [liebende Verachten] that loves most where it has the most contempt” (TSZ III, On Great Longing). Also: “Lonely one, you go the way of the lover: you love yourself and that is why you despise yourself as only lovers despise [Liebende verachten]” (TSZ I, On the Way of the Creator). Accordingly, to cultivate satisfaction with ourselves is to practice an artistic fashioning of one’s self-relation that enables us to avoid the poisonous effects of the moralised form of self-contempt, leaving us free to allow its loving form to drive our philosophic practice. 42

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Nietzsche uses the figurative notions of digestion and alchemy to characterise the task of overcoming his experience with Lou von Salomé;43 both are activities of the will to power, which in Nietzsche’s view is the fundamental character of all that is.44 He believes the organic world displays the nature of this will:45 “the essential thing in the life process is … the tremendous shaping, form-creating force working from within which utilizes and exploits ‘external circumstances,’”46 incorporating and re-shaping outside material for “a maximal feeling of power”.47 It is this incorporation, domination, and creative reformation of the chaotic manifold of experiences with Salomé–the ‘chewing’ and ‘digesting’ of his time with her–that Nietzsche was struggling to achieve. If he could perform it, he knew that his reformation would produce an artwork that would transform the maelstrom of his pain into something controlled, clarified and beautiful; the ‘alchemical’ process of which he writes to Overbeck. At length, Nietzsche’s alchemical process created Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a work he describes several times as music.48 For Nietzsche, art is the most important human expression of the will to power, and music is the preeminent artform; consequently, as Michael Gillespie points out, in his mature thought Nietzsche regards music as “the preeminent form of the will to power”.49 The ordering and simplification of assimilated material is a sign of the strength of the power-will.50 Accordingly, the great artist will “become master of the chaos” she is and compel her chaos “to become form: to become logical, simple, unambiguous, mathematics, law.”51 This work is an artistic response to the chaos of the composer’s sensate existence. When she creates rhythm, claims Gillespie, the composer “shapes time by demarcating temporal periods”, imposing her will to order, simplify, and beautify disorder by “break[ing] up the undifferentiated flux of becoming into regular intervals.”52 Above all, the effect of the musical artwork is “the

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KSB 6, §365. 44 KSA 11, 38[12]; WP §1067. 45 KSA 12, 2[99]; WP §691. 46 KSA 12, 7[25]; WP §647. 47 KSA 13, 14[82]; WP §689; cf. KSA 12, 7[9]; WP §681. 48 See EH “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” §1, and his letters KSB 6, §§370, 397 and 499. At KSA 9, 11[19] an early outline of TSZ styles the work’s first part after Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. 49 Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 234. 50 KSA 13, 14[117]; WP §800. 51 KSA 13, 14[61]; WP §842. 52 Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche, ibid.

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transformation of dissonance into consonance:” Nietzsche’s musical artist “transfigures the chaos and contradiction of existence into a new harmony.”53 Crucially, the organised ‘whole’ the composer creates “is constructed by harmonizing contradictions and not by destroying them.”54 Per Anderson’s model of transfiguration, the negative is simultaneously changed, and retained; per Nietzsche’s suffering from the effect of his relationship with Lou von Salomé, he made ‘music’ out of his pain. In his expanded conception of music Nietzsche regarded life as music55 and his books as musical works.56 Consequently, as the art of transfiguration philosophy is a musical art, regardless whether that music is a book, a poem, or the philosopher’s own life. In writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche mastered his own chaos; his art of transfiguration is as much about the composition of the composer as it is about the composer’s compositions. To be human is to be dissonant,57 but we may overcome ourselves by practicing philosophy, the transfigurative art of self-harmonization, through which we may cultivate a greater sense of satisfaction with our lives.58 We become the transfigurers of our existence, Nietzsche claims, when we learn to transfigure ourselves,59 and there is no more effective artistic means for this transfiguration of self and existence than music–the preeminent expression of the creative, affirmative strength of the will to power, the reduction of flux to order, the arrangement of tones in time, the sculpting of sound into sonic experiences that penetrate deeper into our being than words, concepts or images could ever go. We become all the more philosophers the more we become musicians,60 because to be a philosopher is to compose with the will to power.61

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Ibid., 235. 54 Ibid., 238. 55 GS §372. 56 KSB 8, §864. 57 BT §25. 58 GS §290. 59 KSA 11, 37[12]; WP §820. 60 CW §1. 61 Limitations of space preclude our discussion of it here, but for an excellent account of the ‘musical’ nature of the askeses of the self in Nietzsche, see Bruce Ellis Benson, Pious Nietzsche. Decadence and Dionysian Faith (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 165–187.

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Verklärte Nacht in Dehmel and Schoenberg We are now in a position to unpack the value of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht as an illustration of Nietzschean transfiguration. In 1899, Schoenberg’s interest in Dehmel’s 1896 poetry collection Weib und Welt (Woman and World) quickly eclipsed his efforts that year to set the works of other poets, including texts by Hofmannsthal and Goethe.62 Three songs based on poems from Weib und Welt would be combined with a setting of a poem by Schlaf to create Schoenberg’s Op. 2, while a setting of Dehmel’s Warnung would appear in Op. 3.63 The final completed “Dehmel composition” of 1899, however, was not a song but Schoenberg’s “first instrumental masterpiece”, namely Op. 4, his setting of Dehmel’s Verklärte Nacht. To express what he considered to be the idea ‘behind’ the poem, Schoenberg selected “a complicated contrapuntal combination: a leitmotiv and its inversion played simultaneously.”64 Elsewhere he provides an overview of the work that reveals his systematic effort to render sonically both the overall movement and key elements of the poem.65 However, before we can suggest what Schoenberg understood by the poem’s fundamental idea, or use the principal motive of his composition to illustrate Nietzschean transfiguration, we must turn to the poem itself. The vibrant, aggressive sexuality of Weib und Welt saw Dehmel accused of blasphemy and immorality. Yet Dehmel’s poetry explores “a mystical integration of the divine and the mundane, a quest for spiritual exaltation that took its source from the core of earthly experiences[.]”66 Central to these experiences was sexuality, which he treated as the occasion of a form

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Walter Frisch, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg 1893–1908 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 80. 63 Josef Rufer, The Works of Arnold Schoenberg. A Catalogue of his Compositions, Writings and Paintings (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), 23–24. 64 Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea (New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1950), 155–6. 65 Joseph Auner, A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 38–40. 66 Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers, “‘Denk an meinen Hund’: Applied Subdominants and Motivic Treatment in Schoenberg’s “Warnung” Op. 3, No. 3,” Intégral 28/29 (2014– 2015), 55, 56.

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of redemption, “a transfigurative vehicle towards salvation.”67 While Nietzsche’s influence on Dehmel’s work has long been noted–his “affirmative stance towards life, the championship of the body and Eros, and … individualism”68 is notable in this regard–the poet’s own view of Nietzsche was conflicted. For example, when invited by Nietzsche’s sister to read an excerpt of Thus Spoke Zarathustra at a celebration, Dehmel vacillated; while he viewed Nietzsche as “the critic of greatest genius […] since Socrates,” he considered his “prophetic (and distinctly unpoetic) laying down of the law” to be “just as much nonsense as any other moralistic dogmatism.”69 Regardless, the content and dramatic action of his Verklärte Nacht aligns with key elements of Nietzsche’s project: the transfiguring effect of love on human experience; a wholly intra-worldly redemption from despair; and the strength to will a new meaning and purpose to one’s life, while lucidly aware of its nature and content: Two people walk through a bare, cold grove; the moon goes with them, they look into it. The moon runs over tall oaks; no cloud obscures the heavens’ light into which the black spikes reach. A woman’s voice speaks: I carry a child, and not yours, I walk in sin beside you. I have deeply wronged myself. I no longer believed in happiness yet had still a deep desire for purpose, motherhood and duty; so I dared and, shivering, allowed a stranger to embrace my sex, and for that I thought myself blessed. Now life has taken revenge: now I have met you – oh, you.

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Ibid, 56. 68 Robert Vilain, “Schoenberg and German Poetry,” in Schoenberg and Words: The Modernist Years, ed. Charlotte M. Cross and Russell A. Berman (New York, NY: Garland Publishing, 2000), 7. Dehmel devotes a poem to Nietzsche (“Nachruf an Nietzsche”), in the third part of his collection Erlösungen (‘Redemptions’ or ‘Salvations’); see Richard Dehmel, Gesammelte Werke in drei Banden. Bd 1 (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1920), 82–84. 69 Quoted in Vilain, “Schoenberg and German Poetry,” ibid. Dehmel clearly misunderstands Nietzsche on this point.

Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Nietzsche’s Art of Transfiguration She walks with an awkward step. She looks aloft; the moon still looms. Her dark gaze is drowned in light. A man’s voice speaks: May the child you have conceived be no burden to your soul; Oh, look how brightly everything shimmers! There is a brilliance to everything; You float with me on a cold sea, but your warmth flickers from you to me, from me to you. It will transfigure the stranger’s child, you will bear it for me, as mine; you have brought the brilliance into me, you have made me a child myself.

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He grasps her around her ample hips. Their breath kisses in the air. 35 Two people walk through the high, bright night.70

Lines 1–5 present Dehmel’s Menschen to us like specimens, mounted beneath the clinical light of the relentless moon. This is a borrowed light, projected

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Our translation is an adaptation of that done by Stanley Appelbaum, in Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht and Pierrot Lunaire (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994), 2. Dehmel’s German text: “Zwei Menschen gehn durch kahlen, kalten Hain; / der Mond läuft mit, sie schaun hinein. / Der Mond läuft über hohe Eichen; / kein Wölkchen trübt das Himmelslicht, / in das die schwarzen Zacken reichen. / Die Stimme eines Weibes spricht: // Ich trag ein Kind, und nit von Dir, / Ich geh in Sünde neben Dir. / Ich hab mich schwer an mir vergangen. / Ich glaubte nicht mehr an ein Glück / und hatte doch ein schwer Verlangen / nach Lebensinhalt, nach Mutterglück / und Pflicht; da hab ich mich erfrecht, / da ließ ich schaudernd mein Geschlecht / von einem fremden Mann umfangen, / und hab mich noch dafür gesegnet. / Nun hat das Leben sich gerächt: / nun bin ich Dir, o Dir, begegnet. // Sie geht mit ungelenkem Schritt. / Sie schaut empor; der Mond läuft mit. / Ihr dunkler Blick ertrinkt in Licht. / Die Stimme eines Mannes spricht: // Das Kind, das Du empfangen hast, / sei Deiner Seele keine Last, / O sieh, wie klar das Weltall schimmert! / Es ist ein Glanz um alles her; / Du treibst mit mir auf kaltem Meer, / doch eine eigne Wärme flimmert / von Dir in mich, von mir in Dich. / Die wird das fremde Kind verklären, / Du wirst es mir, von mir gebären; / Du hast den Glanz in mich gebracht, / Du hast mich selbst zum Kind gemacht. // Er faßt sie um die starken Hüften. / Ihr Atem küßt sich in den Lüften. / Zwei Menschen gehn durch hohe, helle Nacht” (Richard Dehmel, Weib und Welt (Berlin; Leipzig: Schuster & Loeffler, 1901), 61–63).

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from a sun far away on the other side of the Earth, yet it brings a clarity so intense it reduces the woman to sound alone (line 6). She describes a terrible drift away from all hope for happiness, a fall into despair panicked by the persistence of her desire for motherhood (lines 10–13). Yet her bid for escape–sex with einem fremden Mann (line 15), a scandalous violation of mores for the time–has only driven her deeper into crisis. She lowered herself to feel love within her, only to have it arrive from without (line 18). Now that which she longed for seems likely to destroy her connection to this man. At the poem’s nadir (lines 19–21) she awaits his response, on the threshold of a decline whose ultimate end would be the bitter practices of Silenic wisdom. When the man speaks, his manner recalls The Gay Science §107: he is raptured, a hierophant of the sacred vision she is and has brought him. “Oh, look how brightly everything shimmers!” His first action, a ringing proclamation, is to will the redemption of the woman from the weight of her pain: “May the child you have conceived be no burden to your soul.” The problem of their shared existence has not been removed–the woman remains pregnant, with the challenges that will pose for them both–but it is now transformed by the man’s resolve. The negative is retained, yet changed. He is lucid about their predicament (line 27), but he has been transfigured by love (line 32). Now he is stronger, more courageous, more self-sacrificing than he would otherwise be, in another condition.71 He carries out his hierophantic duties seriously but with a childish joy; his proclamation is both an affirmative act of reverence for the present, for the shimmering goddess of the moment in which he and his lover find themselves, and a solemn pledge to their shared future. Just as it has transfigured him (“you have made me a child myself”), so her love will transfigure her child into their own, a sacred Yes to their shared life together. At the end of the poem they walk toward an uncertain future, but now through a night that is high and bright. Schoenberg’s string sextet Verklärte Nacht is explicitly programmatic, “illustrating and expressing the poem of Richard Dehmel.”72 As James

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KSA 13, 14[120]; WP §808. 72 Auner, A Schoenberg Reader, 39. As Rufer notes (The Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 24), Schoenberg’s manuscript of the score is titled ‘Verklärte Nacht / poem by Richard Dehmel / for six string instruments / by / Arnold Schoenberg.’ The formal structure of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and its relation to Dehmel’s poem has been examined by several scholars, though no consenus has emerged. In this vein the claim that Schoenberg’s composition takes rondo form – ABACADA – has

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McCalla observes, the work is characterised by a “constant evolution of musical thoughts” in which, importantly, motivic ideas are continually modified and elaborated without thereby becoming unrecognizable.73 It is on this treatment of motivic ideas that our argument for the value of Verklärte Nacht as an illustration of Nietzschean transfiguration hinges. Specifically: the retention of the musicological identity of the work’s opening (and in our view, central) motive, as it also passes through a series of dramatic phenomenological changes, demonstrates Nietzsche’s conception of the aesthetic revaluation of the negative aspects of our experience. Our principal motive opens the work itself. The key is D minor; the effect is cold, with a low, sustained D in the 2nd viola and 2nd cello. Descending through mm 2–3 of this excerpt and being immediately repeated, the motive sounds in the 1st viola and 1st cello (see arrows):

 much in its favour (see Carl Dallhaus, “Schoenberg and Programme Music”, in Schoenberg and the New Music: Essays by Carl Dallhaus, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 97; cf. Frisch, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 113). 73 James McCalla, Twentieth-Century Chamber Music. Routledge Studies in Musical Genres. 2nd Edition (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003), 3. Also: “Schoenberg’s musical ideas, the basic units of his pieces, are so constituted that their successive variations or modifications will at the same time remain recognizable and yet create a constantly moving musical discourse – contrasts, similarities, far-flung extensions and, ultimately, resolutions – that works in tandem with the harmonic structure and formal conventions” (Ibid., 5). McCalla lists Verklärte Nacht’s various motivic ideas on pp. 6–8. Schoenberg dubbed this technique the “principle of developing variation”, finding it in the work of Brahms, though it is more often associated with Wagner (McCalla, Twentieth-Century Chamber Music, 3). It should be noted that early critics observed the influence of Wagner, especially Tristan und Isolde, on Verklärte Nacht, with one claiming that Schoenberg’s score sounded “as if the score of Tristan had been smeared while the ink was still wet” (ibid.).

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Fig. 10.1 - Motive iteration #1.74

The lovers are walking through the “bare, cold grove.”75 For the woman however, this is not merely walking, but bearing. Between mm 1–28 the opening motive is developed into the principal melodic identity, establishing the woman’s anxiety as it concentrates itself under the cold beauty of the moonlight. Reflecting the poem’s transition from the first to the second stanza, a decisive shift occurs at measure 29,76 ending the introduction and leading swiftly to the woman’s confessional “outburst.”77 From this point until the approximate mid-point of the piece the music is engaged in a complex sonic representation of the woman’s misery, shame, and fear for her relationship with her lover. In fact, it is within this tumult of sound, close to its climactic point of crisis, that we encounter that “leitmotiv and its inversion played simultaneously” that Schoenberg considers most appropriate to express what he took to be the idea ‘behind’ Dehmel’s poem. As Mark Doran points out, this motive and its inversion is apparently found in the score at mm 165–166.78 This portion of the work is given in Figure 10.2; the motive (bold

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Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 3. We predominately refer to Schoenberg’s score (Schoenberg 1994) using page numbers, not musical measures; where references to measures appear, page numbers are also given. 75 Auner, A Schoenberg Reader, 39. 76 Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 5. 77 Auner, A Schoenberg Reader, 39; see Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 6. 78 Mark Doran, ‘The ‘True Relationship’: Schoenberg’s Analysis of ‘Unity’ in the Op. 9 Kammersymphonie,’ Tempo, New Series, 219 (2002), 14. It is apparent that this is the moment Schoenberg intends for, as Doran explains, in Style and Idea Schoenberg refers to the wrong part of his score when speaking of the ‘leitmotiv and

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arrows) and its inversion (outline arrows) appear successively before being played simultaneously: Fig. 10.2 - Schoenberg’s “motive and its inversion.”79

 its inversion’; Doran’s selection of mm 165–166 (repeated at mm 167–168), is plausible. 79 Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 20. Such transformation and inversion also occurs here in the bass motive.

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Nietzsche’s expanded notion of the musical, together with the movement of both Dehmel’s and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht from misery to redemption via profound despair, allows us to suggest what this fundamental idea consists of. The music of Figure 10.2 reverberates with pain; the motive here, which at this point has dominated for multiple measures,80 expresses the woman’s “self-accusation of her great sin.”81 What then of the inversion of this motive? One interpretation is that it is some other form of negative emotion, the two motives expressing her inner torment. Our interpretation, however, is that the inverted motive expresses an inversion of self-accusation–the hope for forgiveness from the other. In their dissonance, these two currents are tearing the woman apart. Unable to do so herself, she fears her lover will refuse her absolution. In that case, she would be without redemption. On this interpretation, Schoenberg’s “idea behind the poem” is the problem of redeeming ourselves from our own estimation. Which is also a central problem for Nietzsche: our attaining satisfaction with ourselves. When seen through a Nietzschean lens, therefore, the agony of Figure 10.2 becomes the sonic expression of the same struggle Nietzsche refers to in his letter to Overbeck: that of overcoming oneself, particularly to avoid despair.

 80

See Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 16ff. 81 Auner, A Schoenberg Reader, 39.

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The second iteration of our principal motive reappears soon after the drama of this moment, repeating three times before passing into a new melodic extension: Fig. 10.3 - Motive iteration #2.82

This is the nadir of Schoenberg’s piece, corresponding to that of the poem (lines 19–21). We are walking once more; having confessed her secret, the woman walks beside her lover “full of desperation ([v]oller Verzweiflung),” awaiting his “verdict (Urteilsspruch).”83 Again she carries her pain as an almost unendurable weight, though now there is a pronounced sense of exhaustion in the suffering expressed by our motive. The texture is severe, harmonically unstable, and dissonant.84 While a literal interpretation of Verklärte Nacht’s two lovers is the most obvious–that they should be understood as two separate people–a plausible alternative, particularly apposite to our Nietzschean reading, is that they represent moments of feeling, and willing, within a single individual. According to this view, the woman’s struggle, as it is wrought sonically, represents an effort of will divided against itself, as exemplified by the

 82

Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 23–24. 83 Auner, A Schoenberg Reader, 39–40. Translation adjusted. 84 The motive sounds in Db in the 2nd violin and 1st cello against a G in the 2nd cello, alternating between a half-diminished 7th on G and an augmented triad on A. The progression of this iteration of the motive remains dissonant as it repeats across mm 202–215, passing through different keys, with no point of harmonic arrival.

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dissonance of Schoenberg’s motive and its inversion. Eventually this effort arrives, spent, at the pessimism of the work’s nadir. Yet for Nietzsche, pain can also act as a stimulus to the will to power;85 for those capable of it, such states of exhaustion provoke the will into renewed action. Immediately following the work’s nadir, therefore, comes a fresh action of will, the ‘man’s’ response, announced by the first appearance in the work of the warmth of D major.86 This shift begins a development that culminates in the third iteration of our principal motive, as it reflects the climax of Dehmel’s poem; we are walking for the last time, only now through a transfigured night: Fig. 10.4 - Motive iteration #3.87

This is the moment on which Verklärte Nacht hinges. As Anderson’s model of Nietzschean transfiguration describes, the form has changed, but the content remains the same: now elaborated as a fully developed musical idea, in Schoenberg’s sense, the possibilities of the motive extended to their limit, the motive is musicologically the same as its prior iterations, yet phenomenologically it has been transformed. Now, sounding in the upper register of the 1st violin in the glow of D major, the motive which earlier bore such dreadful weight, and which visually and aurally is recognizably

 85

E.g. KSA 13, 14[174]; WP §702. 86 See M –10, in Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 26. 87 Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 44; the melodic extension continues a short while before both are repeated. Hints of this transfiguration appear early on, e.g. Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht, 28–29 and 30–31.

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the same descending movement, is now serene and beautiful. Yet, to repeat, while its form–its phenomenological expression–has changed, its content– its existential depth–remains the same. Narratively, the woman remains pregnant; the lives of the two lovers remain complicated. Musically, therefore, the motive retains the gravitas of pain, even as its movement traces sonic lines of bliss. What was painful persists, but that dissonance has been harmonized into serenity–for now. Importantly, when the transfigured motive of Figure 4 makes its last two appearances,88 it has a distinctly brittle, melancholic feel, perhaps hinting not only at the grave challenges ahead for the two lovers, but the impermanent nature of all states of transfiguration. In a literal sense, then, the man has redeemed the woman from her suffering. Alternatively, something akin to the following has taken place: If, as Pascal and Christianity claim, our ego is always hateful, how might we possibly ever allow or assume that someone else could love it – be it God or human being! It would go against all decency to let oneself be loved knowing full well that one deserves only hate – not to mention other feelings of repulsion. – ‘But this is precisely the kingdom of mercy.’ – So is your love-thy-neighbour mercy? Your compassion mercy? Well, if these things are possible for you, go still one step further: love yourselves out of mercy – then you won’t need your God any more at all, and the whole drama of Fall and redemption will play itself out to the end in you yourselves.89

On this view, therefore, the transfiguration of despair depends on an act of self-acceptance and self-forgiveness. Self-disgust weighed down all efforts at its overcoming; self-love, however, brought liberation and the return of the future. Musically, the persistent identity of our principal motive, expressing walking that is by turns foreboding, horrified, and serene, underscores the notion that the two lovers are indeed interwoven moments of a single, living whole–transfigured, self-redeemed.

Conclusion: craft in art For Nietzsche, the essential human task is artistic and musical: over and again, we are to harmonize the dissonance of our experiences into compositions, which allows us to joyously celebrate existence as it is, in all its suffering and difficulty. We must do so, not so that we might be redeemed from our lives in some future existence, but so that we might 88 89

See ibid., 48–51. D §79.

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practice our redemption now, releasing ourselves over and again from the weight of the suffering of life, in life. Philosophy is the art of such transfiguration, in which the chaos of our bodily states is transposed into the light and flame of idea, text, book, and style of life.90 Such transposition into order, simplicity and beauty is a form of thanksgiving, of gratitude for and affirmation of life. Beyond native intuition, however, Nietzsche’s texts say little about this transfiguration as the craft it must be for us, if we are to learn it. We have therefore looked to art to shed light on our craft, finding in Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht an illustration of Nietzschean transfiguration, in which the painful nature of life’s content is retained, while changes in its phenomenal form lead to joy. Love, the greatest force of transfiguration we can know, makes hierophants of us all. Yet sometimes, as Nietzsche knew, it is the loss of those we love which at length produces the most beautiful works, as our will rises to meet the challenge of our pain. Thus, while it is often hard to like ourselves, just as it is often hard to like the lives we each lead, the philosopher strives to turn her dross into gold. If she is successful, she revalues that which afflicts her until the sight of what she has made causes her to want nothing more than the life she has, with all it contains, for it contains such worth.91 In turn, our own lives are enriched and encouraged in their struggles by the sight–and sound–of the philosopher’s works. For the alchemist is “the only true benefactor of humanity.”92

Bibliography Anderson, R. Lainer. “Nietzsche on Redemption and Transfiguration.” In The Re-Enchantment of the World. Secular Magic in a Rational Age, edited by Joshua Landy and Michael Saler, 225–258. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Andreas-Salomé, Lou. Looking Back: Memoirs. Edited by Ernst Pfeiffer, translated by Breon Mitchell. New York, NY: Marlowe & Company, 1995. Auner, Joseph. A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

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Cf. Tyler T. Roberts, Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 67–70, 92–93. 91 GS §341. 92 KSA 13, 16[43].

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Benjamin, William E. “Abstract Polyphonies: The Music of Schoenberg’s Nietzschean Moment.” In Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, edited by Charlotte M. Cross and Russell A. Berman, 34–93. Garland Publishing: New York, 2000. Benson, Bruce Ellis. Pious Nietzsche. Decadence and Dionysian Faith. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008. Binion, Rudolph. Frau Lou. Nietzsche’s Wayward Disciple. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968. Dehmel, Richard. Weib und Welt. Gedichte und Märchen. Berlin, Leipzig: Schuster & Loeffler, 1901. Dehmel, Richard. Gesammelte Werke in drei Bänden. Erste Band. Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1920. Doran, Mark. “The ‘True Relationship’: Schoenberg’s Analysis of ‘Unity’ in the Op. 9 Kammersymphonie.” Tempo (New Series) 219 (2002): 13– 21. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays and Journals. Selected with an Introduction by Lewis Mumford. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968. Frisch, Walter. The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg 1893-1908. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Gillespie, Michael Allen. Nihilism Before Nietzsche. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Kain, Philip. J. Nietzsche and the Horror of Existence. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. Lampert, Laurence. Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. McCalla, James. Twentieth-Century Chamber Music. Routledge Studies in Musical Genres. 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. McIntyre, Alex. The Sovereignty of Joy. Nietzsche’s Vision of Grand Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by A. D. Melvile, with an Introduction and Notes by E. J. Kenny. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pedneault-Deslauriers, Julie. “‘Denk an meinen Hund’: Applied Subdominants and Motivic Treatment in Schoenberg’s “Warnung” Op. 3, No. 3.” Intégral 28/29 (2014–2015): 53–80. Roberts, Tyler T. Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Rufer, Josef. The Works of Arnold Schoenberg. A Catalogue of his Compositions, Writings and Paintings. Translated by Dika Newlin. London: Faber and Faber, 1962.

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Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea. New York, NY: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1950. Schoenberg, Arnold. Verklärte Nacht and Pierrot Lunaire. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994. Strong, Tracey B. “Philosophy of the Morning: Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration.” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 39 (2010): 51–65. Vilain, Robert. “Schoenberg and German Poetry.” In Schoenberg and Words. The Modernist Years, edited by Charlotte M. Cross and Russell A. Berman, 6–15. New York, NY: Garland Publishing Inc., 2000.

PART IV: NIETZSCHE’S MUSICAL EXPERIMENTS AND COMPOSITIONS

CHAPTER 11 “THIS MOST GLORIOUS GIFT OF GOD”: ON SOME FORMATIVE ELEMENTS IN NIETZSCHE’S MUSICAL UPBRINGING CORNELIS WITTHOEFFT

On days when we were allowed to sleep late, […] in room nine in the right corner, I can still see him sitting, during the first hours a large sheet of paper in front of him, filling it with notes, black masses of notes, […], and how he then went down during the break to play in [...] a small music room [...] what his god Apollo had inspired him to compose—or was there already something Dionysian among it??1

This is what one of Nietzsche’s former roommates remembered some sixty years after they had both attended the boarding school Pforta, testifying thereby to the young Nietzsche’s love and passion for music and his persistent aspiration to become a composer. Hundreds of surviving music manuscripts—sketchy fragmentary and completed, containing successful and less successful works, all meticulously preserved by his mother and sister—confirm these youthful endeavors; and along with his writings and letters they help us to retrace his religious, artistic and musical development at that time. They have been edited since in a scholarly edition2 and are now, thanks to an initiative of the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv Weimar, where the majority of Nietzsche’s legacy is housed, also available as part of the collection of digital scans of all his manuscripts and compositions.3 1

Recollections of Gustav Heidemüller from 1923 (quoted in: WB, Werke 1, 339). All translations from German and French are by the author, unless otherwise stated in the bibliography. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, edited by Curt Paul Janz (Basel: Bärenreiter, 1976). 3 Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, www.klassik-stiftung.de/goethe-und-schiller-archiv/das-archiv/digitales-archiv, last modified December 10, 2021. In Chapters 11 and 12, references to Nietzsche

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Considering Nietzsche is today perhaps best remembered and most discussed as a relentless critic of Christianity, the considerable number of sacred compositions among these youthful efforts, written between the ages of twelve and sixteen,4 naturally attracts particular attention, all the more since these works provide an easily recognizable contradiction to his public self-portrait in this regard, as he proclaimed in 1888/89 in Ecce homo: “God“, “immortality of the soul“, “redemption“, “beyond“ all notions, to which I have neither paid any attention nor for which I have invested any time, not even when I was a child,—maybe I was never childlike enough for that?5

That this is a blatant case of self-stylization need not be explained in detail; it may suffice to cite a single contrary self-testimony from 1881 that was, significantly, uttered privately: As far as Christianity is concerned, you will believe me one thing: in my heart I have never been mean against it, and from my childhood on I have made many an inner effort to live up to its ideals, in the end, of course, always with the result of pure impossibility.6

One cannot expect to create a complete portrait of Nietzsche from his statements alone. His friend Franz Overbeck, the addressee of the last quoted statement, considered both his “quite unusual communicativeness” and his “equally unusual ‘caginess’” as typical characteristics of his nature: “Precisely what occupied him vividly, he kept under his control with incomparable energy. It urged to come out of him with unusual power and yet could not be held more securely under anyone’s lock.”7 However, if we start from the written records, avoiding to venture into the realm of speculation, it is still possible to reconcile these diametrically opposed statements. Namely, if one assumes that a certain self-stylization, or better yet his ‘self-staging,’ was already embraced and internalized by the child manuscripts are given by indicating the call number in the Goethe- und SchillerArchiv, beginning with GSA. 4 To be mentioned here are several church hymns, both self-conceived and arranged, choral settings of Psalms, fragments of a Latin Mass and a Requiem, a choral Miserere, the complex of a large-scale oratorio (cf. Chapter 12), and four organ works, Weihnacht, Charfreitag, Ostern and Bußtag (only projected or lost, cf. KGW 1/2, 103í104). 5 KGW 6/3, 276 (EH, “Clever,” §1). 6 KSB 6, 109í110; July 23, 1881. 7 Franz Overbeck, “Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche,” Die neue Rundschau 17 (1906): 228.

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and adolescent, merely under reversed signs, then no change in Nietzsche’s later demeanor has to be diagnosed. A question of particular interest here is what religious and musical influences the young Nietzsche was exposed to in his childhood and adolescence as he approached his goal of becoming a composer of religious music, whereby the attempt of judging to what extent he actually believed in what he composed in this genre and what he expressed in his writings may remain irrelevant here. As advanced as Nietzsche research may be in other areas, it still faces challenges when it comes to the delicate relationship of its protagonist to his own sacred music. From the abundance of topics that await reappraisal, three shall be selected here that emerge from a closer reading of the musicrelated passages of Nietzsche’s first autobiography, Aus meinem Leben [‘From My Life’, subtitled “I. The Years of My Youth. — 1844-1858”], written at the age of 13, in which formative and hitherto neglected religious and music-cultural influences manifest themselves with special emphasis.

Autobiographical writing Nietzsche’s Christian education has been studied in recent decades primarily by Reiner Bohley,8 Martin Pernet,9 and Klaus Goch,10 who, however, came to far from unanimous conclusions. In an overview, Pernet has pointed out “a variety of—sometimes contradictory—theological convictions” with which the young Nietzsche was confronted, with the result of a “dominance of the pietistic-revivalist influence”:

8

Reiner Bohley, “Nietzsches christliche Erziehung,” Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987): 164í196. 9 Martin Pernet, Das Christentum im Leben des jungen Friedrich Nietzsche (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989); Martin Pernet, “Friedrich Nietzsche and Pietism,” German Life and Letters 48 (1995): 474í486; Martin Pernet, Friedrich Nietzsche und das „Fromme Basel“ (Basel: Schwabe, 2014). 10 Klaus Goch, Franziska Nietzsche: Ein biographisches Porträt (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1994); Klaus Goch, “Lyrischer Familienkosmos: Bemerkungen zu Nietzsches poetischer Kindheitserfahrung,” Nietzscheforschung 3 (1995): 103í125; Klaus Goch, Nietzsches Vater oder Die Katastrophe des deutschen Protestantismus: Eine Biographie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000); Klaus Goch, “Erweckungsphilologie: Martin Pernets seltsame Präsentation eines NietzscheFamiliendokuments,” Nietzscheforschung 14 (2009): 213í236.

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This had come to the child Friedrich from his own parents and from his maternal grandparents,11 and later, to the teenager, from the families of his Naumburg friends, Pinder and Krug, as well as from his revered teacher Buddensieg, teacher of religion in Schulpforta—in short: this influence was practically everywhere where Nietzsche was in a sense ‘at home’.12

As characteristic features of the Awakening (or revivalist, or neo-pietistic) movement13 Pernet emphasized the belief in salvation, “the consciousness of the interplay of sin and forgiveness and, connected with this, of reconciliation and Christology,” the importance of the Bible “as the sole foundation of Christian belief,” leading to “an intensive, even daily contact” with the Scripture, and described its general orientation as a “pious attitude […] which is based not so much on reason but on an immediately experienced and felt conviction of being touched and affected deep in one’s heart.”14 Nietzsche was born into the foothills of this movement, which had attained its greatest importance in Germany in the first half of the 19th century, first interdenominationally, then within the framework of the Protestant regional churches. It took up the legacy of the Pietists of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but unlike them, who directed their reform against the ossification within the established church, it saw itself as a champion against rationalist theology and, more generally, the consequences of the Enlightenment, which means that it must be considered as culturally and politically conservative, if not reactionary. In a more detailed study, Pernet underlined the influence that the notorious tendency of pietists and later revivalists to write their autobiographies 11

While Pernet called Nietzsche’s grandfather David Ernst Oehler “a gentle and not particularly reflective supporter of the Lutheran-Pietistic movement,” (Pernet, “Friedrich Nietzsche and Pietism,” 477) Goch pointed to the memoirs of his grandson who wrote: “The grandfather Oehler was not a pietist, […] according to the custom of the time he was a member of a Masonic lodge” (Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 79). 12 Pernet, “Friedrich Nietzsche and Pietism,” 474. 13 Suggested further reading: David L. Ellis, Politics and Piety: The Protestant Awakening in Prussia, 1816í1856 (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Andrew Kloes, The German Awakening. Protestant Renewal After the Enlightenment, 1815í1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Doron Avraham, German Neo-Pietism, the Nation and the Jews: Religious Awakening and National Identities Formation, 1815í1861 (London: Routledge, 2020). 14 Pernet, “Friedrich Nietzsche and Pietism,” 474í475.

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may have had on Nietzsche’s own extensive activity in this regard. The introspection involved in such an undertaking became an obvious need already for the adolescent and is perhaps most evident in the quatrain with which he concluded his first autobiography: Life is a mirror. To recognize oneself in it, I want to call this the first thing For which we should strive.!! [sic]15

After citing examples of anthologies of baroque self-descriptions of pietistic lives, Pernet explains the continuation of this tradition in the age of revivalism: In the face of adversity, as it had come to light especially in the political events of the French Revolution and its aftermath, awakened people saw it as their task to reflect on the traces of God’s saving work in their own lives and to record the experiences they had had with God, his gracious guidance, the awakening given by God’s saving work, in order to counter any negative worldview.16

Probably the most important and influential religious autobiography Nietzsche encountered was authored by the writer, ophthalmologist, and polymath Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740í1817),17 who is considered one of the decisive forerunners of the Awakening movement. The theologian August Tholuck, one of the academic teachers of Nietzsche’s father Carl Ludwig and of his teacher Robert Buddensieg, called him an “eminent man who was a particular instrument in the hand of God for keeping up Evangelical truth in the latter part of the former century.”18 The immediate impact that this book had on the young Nietzsche can be demonstrated here by means of an often-quoted account in Nietzsche’s first autobiography that, prior to now, was taken only at face value.

15

KGW 1/1, 311; 4 [77]. Pernet, Friedrich Nietzsche und das „Fromme Basel“, 125. 17 Cf. Martin Hirzel, Lebensgeschichte als Verkündigung: Johann Heinrich JungStilling – Ami Bost – Johann Arnold Kanne (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 23í93. 18 Quoted in: Richard Eddy, Universalism in America: A History, vol. 1 (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1891), 10. 16

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Nietzsche possessed a complete edition of Jung-Stilling’s Lebensgeschichte, published in 1857,19 which had been originally issued in multiple volumes between 1777 and 1804; in early November 1858, this book was one of several items he sent back to his mother from Pforta (“Do keep everything safe,”20 he added), quite certainly providing evidence of his reading. A prominent episode of this book whose first part Nietzsche later would praise as a must-read in German prose literature21 is Jung-Stilling’s awakening experience, or his covenant with God. Strikingly, the comparison given below displays a multitude of similarities between his depiction and Nietzsche’s account of how he became a composer, suggesting that the latter used a revered text for awakened Christians as a template for his selfpresentation. This circumstance may also render the conspicuous pathos in Nietzsche’s text explicable, which otherwise might alienate readers today. Jung-Stilling’s and Nietzsche’s awakening experiences are narrated nearly identically in both texts, in six steps following the scheme: (1) indication of time and place, (2) preparatory steps, (3) reaction to the unexpected, (4) precisely specified decision, (5) gesture of humility and (6) statement on the truthfulness of the incident. While Jung-Stilling writes in the third person, Nietzsche employs the first. The wordings corresponding to each other are highlighted in italics.

19 Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling, Lebensgeschichte oder dessen Jugend, Jünglingsjahre, Wanderschaft, Lehrjahre, häusliches Leben und Alter, 3rd Edition (Stuttgart: Rieger, 1857); cf. Giuliano Campioni, Paolo D’Iorio et al. (Eds.), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003), 323. 20 KSB 1, 25. 21 KGW 4/3, 237 (HH II; WS, §109).

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1. Exact dating and location [In 1762,]22 […] about the middle of July,23 he was passing one Sunday afternoon through a street in the town of Schauberg […].24

On Ascension Day, I went to the parish church25

2. Preparing for and foreboding of the divine He accidentally looked upwards, and saw a light cloud passing over his head;26

and listened to the sublime chorus from the Messiah: the Hallelujah!27

3. Impetuous and joyful reaction with this look an unknown power penetrated his soul; he felt inwardly happy, his whole body trembled, and he could scarcely keep himself from sinking to the ground.28

22

I felt as if I should have joined in, since it seemed to me the jubilant chant of the angels in the midst of whose roaring [‘Braußen’] Jesus Christ was ascending towards heaven.29

Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, tr. by S. Jackson (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1844), 54 (“April, 1762”). The year given here also applies to this episode set in July. 23 Here the translation “June” (ibid., 58), which corresponds to a misprint in earlier German editions, was corrected to “July” according to the later emendation, “Julius” (cf. Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling, Lebensgeschichte, edited by Gustav Adolf Benrath (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), 198). 24 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 58. 25 KGW 1/1, 297; 4 [77]. 26 The second part of this sentence is added here since it is missing in the translation; the German original reads: “und sah eine lichte Wolke über seinem Haupte hinziehen” (Jung-Stilling, Lebensgeschichte (1857), 266; Jung-Stilling, Lebensgeschichte (1976), 198). 27 KGW 1/1, 297; 4 [77]. 28 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 58. 29 KGW 1/1, 297; 4 [77].

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4a. Earnestness, exclusiveness and steadfastness of the decision From that time, he felt an invincible inclination to live and die entirely for the glory of God and the good of his fellow-men; […].30 He made upon the spot a firm and irrevocable covenant with God, to resign himself henceforth entirely to his guidance, and cherish no more vain wishes.31

Shortly afterward, I made the earnest decision to compose something similar.32 This […] gave me an inextinguishable hatred of all modern music and everything that was not classical.33 May this most glorious gift of God [i.e. the music] always be my companion on the path of my life [...].34 I have firmly decided to devote myself to his [God’s] service forever.35

4b. Immediateness of the decision He made upon the spot a firm and irrevocable covenant with God, to resign himself henceforth entirely to his guidance, and cherish no more vain wishes.36

Shortly afterward, I made the earnest decision to compose something similar. Right after church, I got to work and rejoiced like a child over every new chord I made sound.37

4c. Decision for and simultaneously against something He made upon the spot a firm and irrevocable covenant with God, to resign himself henceforth entirely to his guidance, and cherish no more vain wishes.38

30

This […] gave me an inextinguishable hatred of all modern music and everything that was not classical. Mozart and Haidn [sic], Schubert and Mendelsohn [sic] Beethoven and Bach,

Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 58. Ibid. 32 KGW 1/1, 297; 4 [77]. 33 Ibid., 298; 4 [77]. 34 Ibid., 306; 4 [77]. 35 Ibid., 310; 4 [77]. 36 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 58. 37 KGW 1/1, 297í298; 4 [77]. 38 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 58. 31

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these are the pillars on which alone German music and I are39 based.40 5. Humble acceptance of God’s will […] but that if it should please God that he should continue a tradesman41 all his life long, he would willingly and joyfully assent to it.42

But may His holy will be done! All that He gives, I will joyfully accept, happiness and misfortune, poverty and wealth, and I will even courageously face death, which will one day unite us all in eternal joy and happiness.43

6. Statement of truth This circumstance is a real truth.44

I have told here completely according to the truth without poeticizing or poetic embellishment.45

For all the similarities between these texts, there are also significant differences that shed light on the purpose of Nietzsche’s creative appropriation of his reference text. While Jung-Stilling’s report is harmoniously embedded in his overall biographical description, Nietzsche forced his account of the “Hallelujah” experience without any transition into the further course of events by abruptly breaking off a virtual tour through the city of Naumburg with the words, “now we have seen enough, more another time.”46 Subsequently, given that both authors have in common their origin from strictly Christian, pietistic or neo-pietistic homes, it is worth noting that Jung-Stilling’s awakening literally comes out of the blue on a Sunday afternoon walk—“he was neither meditating deeply, nor did he have any thing else of a particular nature in his thoughts”47—, and expressively outside the church, while with Nietzsche there is some

39

The original wording, “gründete [‘were based’], is obviously a clerical error. KGW 1/1, 298; 4 [77]. 41 At that time Jung-Stilling practiced the profession of a tailor. 42 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 58. 43 KGW 1/1, 310; 4 [77]. 44 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 58. 45 KGW 1/1, 311; 4 [77]. 46 Ibid., 297. Of course, the literary ability of a 13-year-old cannot be held to the same standard as that of a mature writer, but this detail seems nevertheless striking. 47 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 58. 40

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previous consideration. He looks for a place and an occasion where an experience of this kind seems to be at least possible, if not expectable. Both features render his version somewhat calculated as opposed to JungStilling’s naïve sentimentality (according to the ‘Empfindsamkeit’ of his time). Finally, while Jung-Stilling experiences the process of his awakening through the sense of sight and obviously makes his decision quietly, Nietzsche focuses entirely on the sense of hearing and feels the desire to use his voice, as both best fit his purpose of presenting himself as a musician or an aspiring composer. Nietzsche was also able to get to know Jung-Stilling as a devout, selftaught music amateur, a feature that might have additionally appealed to him. Preceding the account of his covenant with God, Jung-Stilling is presented as “a great lover of singing and music;” when working as a school teacher, “he collected a number of pretty hymns, learned the notes himself with little difficulty, and introduced singing in four parts.”48 He also has the gift of touching others with sacred music. After an old man had told him the hardship he had endured, he “went to a pianoforte […] and played and sang the hymn, ‘He that lets God the Almighty rule.’49 The old man folded his hands, and sang most heartily, so that the tears rolled down his cheeks […].”50 One day, Jung-Stilling even replaced the regular organist in his parish during services. “[A]lthough he had never learned to play on the piano scientifically,51 but merely from his own reflection and practice,” he proved capable of playing the hymns “very correctly from the notes and perfectly in four parts,” and impressed the congregation so much that everyone “asked […] who it could possibly be.”52 In his autobiography, Nietzsche seems to have aimed at creating a similar idealization of a life dedicated to the harmony of music and piety. Having concluded the subsection “On Music” with the eulogy, “Eternal thanks shall be sung by us to God who offered this beautiful pleasure to us!”,53 the declarations of a covenant with music and with God eventually

48

Ibid., 36. The chorale ‘Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten‘ (Jung-Stilling, Lebensgeschichte (1857), 259). 50 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 56. 51 The German original reads: “kunstmäßig” (Jung-Stilling, Lebensgeschichte (1857), 263), which translates as “according to the rules of art”. 52 Jung-Stilling, The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling, 57. 53 KGW 1/1, 306; 4 [77]. 49

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blend into an inextricable unity; his vocation to serve God equates with his vocation to music — provided that it “leads our thoughts to higher things”54. It is instructive to realize how this resonates perfectly with the expectations that his mother had in him. “Fritz still remains true to his [!] resolution to become a clergyman,” she wrote to her brother Detlev Ernst when her son was barely 12 years old, he “therefore sets psalms to music.”55 She wrote this letter anticipating a performance of Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus, which Nietzsche mentions shortly after the Messiah experience as one of three oratorios he had heard “at that time”56 after having busied himself “for years” with “learning the structure of music [‘die Erlernung des Tongefüges’],”57 thus with the most elementary steps in music education. Unsurprisingly, this did not immediately result in a proper composition, but just in improving his side-reading skills.58 The year 1856 was also highlighted by other important events: Nietzsche’s first (and dated) completion of a small work, the “Sonatina op. II” for piano,59 and the Christmas present of a volume of Haydn symphonies arranged for piano four-hands, a “truly tremendous wish”60 he had articulated. Hans Gerald Hödl has pointed out that Nietzsche’s From My Life is not a religious biography in the strict sense of the word; instead he speaks of its “religious frame of reference […], admittedly expressed in traditional formulas, which, however, do not have to mean that Nietzsche would only express something foreign to him and not what he has experienced 54

Ibid. Also with this position, the young Nietzsche entered pietistic heritage. While then music was considered in principle as an “adiáphoron”, which according to Stoic doctrine is neither good nor bad, it was subjected all the more to the idea of function, for example by the pietist theologian Gottfried Vockerodt, who railed against the Missbrauch der freyen Künste / insonderheit der Music [‘The abuse of the liberal arts / especially of music’] in a much-noted writing of 1697. 55 Quoted in KGB 1/4, 41; May 25, 1856. 56 KGW 1/1, 298; 4 [77]. Naumburg performances of all these oratorios (additionally Mozart’s Requiem and Haydn’s The Creation) were proven by Bohley for the years 1856 and 1857 (cf. Bohley, “Nietzsches christliche Erziehung,” 193, footnote 165). An upcoming performance of another piece listed there, Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is mentioned in a note from 1858 (KGW 1/1, 231; 4 [13]). 57 KGW 1/1, 298; 4 [77]. 58 Cf. ibid. 59 Cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 167í168; the last two bars are missing here, cf. GSA 71/237, 4. 60 KGW 1/1, 171; 2 [34].

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himself.”61 However, a certain inauthenticity has long been noted as a characteristic feature of its religiously tinged passages.62 Nietzsche’s lack of originality in his account of his musical awakening and its consequences has been deduced by the author of this chapter from his dependency on an identified source. Two notes that he wrote down shortly before producing the fair copy of the autobiography (completed on September 1, 1858) provide further evidence for the assumption that the supposedly so spontaneous “Hallelujah” experience contains intentional elements. The first consists of characterizations of individual parts of Handel’s Messiah on the basis of a piano reduction which Nietzsche proved bibliographically exactly (including a price indication) and therefore most probably had in front of him.63 Here, he qualifies the “Hallelujah” chorus as “joyfully sublime,”64 which sounds suspiciously similar to the formulation used in the final text, “the sublime chorus,” and the joyful reaction described in this context.65 It should be observed as well that in the final outline of his autobiography the keyword “On the Messiah” is listed not among the biographical events but as one of (too) many “thoughts”66 he wished to deal with. Both entries appear to be jotted down as Nietzsche considered how to introduce Handel’s oratorio into his writing. If the hypothesis is true that Nietzsche modeled his awakening as a (religious) composer on a preexisting model, then specific conclusions need to be drawn. In this case, essential components of his narrative, except for the churchgoer Nietzsche who maybe even happened to hear Handel’s “Hallelujah” on some Ascension Day in his childhood, have to be regarded 61 Hans Gerald Hödl, Der letzte Jünger des Philosophen Dionysos: Studien zur systematischen Bedeutung von Nietzsches Selbstthematisierungen im Kontext seiner Religionskritik (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 170. 62 E.g. Karl Klein, Der Glaube an der Wende der Neuzeit (München: Schöningh, 1962), 85; Hermann Josef Schmidt, Nietzsche absconditus oder Spurenlesen bei Nietzsche: Kindheit, vol. 1í2 (Berlin: IBDK Verlag, 1991), 445í567; Hermann Josef Schmidt, “„Jeder tiefe Geist braucht die Maske...“. Nietzsches Kindheit als Schlüssel zum Rätsel Nietzsche?” Nietzscheforschung 1 (1994); Peter André Bloch, “„Aus meinem Leben“. Der Selbstporträtcharakter von Nietzsches frühen Lebensbeschreibungen: Selbstdialog als Selbstbefragung,” Nietzscheforschung 2 (1995): 85. 63 The score is documented in Nietzsche’s personal library including a note of ownership, cf. Campioni, D’Iorio et al. (Eds.), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek, 704. 64 KGW 1/1, 254; 4 [43]. 65 Ibid., 297; 4 [77]. 66 Ibid., 279; 4 [75].

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as fabricated, and Nietzsche’s account cannot be taken as a plain biographical fact. This would also render the ongoing discussion of when this event occurred superfluous. This discussion arose because Nietzsche had not dated his „Hallelujah“ experience, giving as a justification: The series of years flies past my eyes like a confused dream. It is therefore impossible for me to commit to any dates in the first ten years of my life.67

Due to the fact that Nietzsche mentions his “Hallelujah” experience shortly prior to relating his transition to High School in October 1854, most readers were led to assume a date shortly preceding it, that is spring 1854 (Ascension Day fell on May 25), when Nietzsche was nine years old, without considering, however, the hard cut with which this digression is mounted into the narrative flow. In fact, Nietzsche’s sister was the first to do so,68 however undoubtedly with the intent of stylizing her brother even more resolutely as a child prodigy, now also in musical terms. It seems that Nietzsche’s justification for being imprecise is not just an excuse but should be trusted in this case, for his later statements as to when his decisive initial musical experience took place are inconsistent, varying between the ages of 9 and 10 upwards.69 Tellingly, in all later accounts of his life there is no longer any mention of a major work of church music that has allegedly served him as a model. One may interpret this difference as a deliberate revision, namely a suppression or concealment of any religious foundation of his passion for music (save mentioning “biblical texts” he then sang “with a fantastic accompaniment of the piano,”70) given that Nietzsche already had begun to turn away from Christian faith. Or instead, one may, following the line of arguments put forward here, take only those recollections that are void of any religious initial spark at face value and relegate the version in his first autobiography to the realm of a literary selfstylization.

67

Ibid., 282; 4 [77]. Cf. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, vol. 1: The Young Nietzsche (New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1912), 56. 69 In the accounts of his life from 1861 (KGW 1/2, 262; 10 [10]) and 1863 (KGW 1/3, 191; 15 [41]) Nietzsche mentions the age of 10 upwards (after entering High School), and more prosaically refers to his “inclination towards music,” (ibid.) while the accounts from 1864 (ibid., 418; 18 [2]) and 1868 (KGW 1/5, 52í3; 70 [1]) specify an age of 9 and emphasize the naïve and unreflective status of a child’s mind. 70 KGW 1/3, 418; 18 [2]. 68

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Musical positioning As seen above, it was important for the 13-year-old Nietzsche to articulate his “inextinguishable hatred of all modern music and everything that was not classical”.71 In the course of his writing, he became even more specific: Another rather sad phenomenon is that many newer composers strive to write obscurely. But precisely such artificial periods, which may charm the connoisseur, sound cold to the healthy human ear. Especially this so-called music of the future [‘Zukunftsmusik’] of a Liszt, Berlioz, seeks something in showcasing passages as peculiar as possible.72

And reflecting on his own poetry he wrote: Youth, still lacking its own thoughts, seeks to hide its emptiness of ideas behind a dazzling, brilliant style. Doesn’t poetry resemble modern music in this respect? Likewise, it will soon become a poetry of the future [‘Zukunftspoësie’].73

Even in the light of his inquisitiveness, a trademark of his already in his early years, Nietzsche could not have possibly possessed the necessary perspective at that time for the generalizing statements on modern music he made. A fortiori, not even a superficial acquaintance with the music of the two composers he mentions is documented or even conceivable at this time, which would be necessary for such a judgment. This naturally leads to the assumption that these remarks are based on hearsay only, or that, as Lenzinger put it, here an “authoritative judgement is just repeated.”74 However, this should be no surprise given that Nietzsche announced his “thoughts on music” as being written “in sententiae,”75 or maxims—according to the Aristotelian definition a rather general or common-sense statement dealing “with the objects of human actions, and with what should be chosen

71

KGW 1/1, 298; 4 [77]; cf. footnote 33, p. 231. Ibid., 306; 4 [77]. This passage is also discussed in Chapter 12, footnote 42, p. 261-262. 73 Ibid., 307. 74 Gustav Lenzinger, Das Problem der Musik und des Musikalischen bei Nietzsche, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Jugendepoche (Ph. D. University of Freiburg (1943), Konstanz: Self-publishing, 1951), 109. Dominique Catteau also came to the conclusion “that at this time he [Nietzsche] speaks of Berlioz almost certainly without knowing anything” (Dominique Catteau, Nietzsche et Berlioz: Une amitié stellaire (Paris: Publibook 2001), 126). 75 KGW 1/1, 305; 4 [77]. 72

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or avoided with reference to them”76—thus a universally accepted moral instruction for action that an orator would cite. The young Nietzsche might already have known the source of this definition; however, no traces can be found of him reading Aristotle’s subsequent warning: The use of maxims is suitable for one who is advanced in years, and in regard to things in which one has experience; since the use of maxims before such an age is unseemly […]; and to speak about things of which one has no experience shows foolishness and lack of education.77

The value judgments that the young Nietzsche parroted in his “thoughts on music” were not all readily accessible in writing at that time but were rather spread through word-of-mouth. Among them, the catch-phrase “music of the future” was perhaps the most well-known combative term conservatives would have employed in the 1850s. The term seems to have been first used in a Berlin newspaper in 1847 to express the reviewer’s disdain for the music of Hector Berlioz, referring to his compositions as “musical hocuspocus, called ‘the new music’ or ‘the music of the future’.” “We don’t want to deny that he is a spirited man,” the reporter writes, “but this is not enough to be a composer […].”78 Nietzsche’s wording of a “dazzling, brilliant style” to conceal one’s “emptiness of ideas” comes to mind here. Later, the notion “music of the future” played its role in Friedrich Wieck’s didactic and polemic treatise Clavier und Gesang [‘Piano and Singing’] from 1853, reviewed in the Rheinische Musik-Zeitung, where first the author’s “little annoyance [...] about the bewildering addiction to innovation of our music philosophers” is emphasized, and then the “bitter hatred” that grew inside him “when the representatives of the music of the future appeared publicly and acted like missionaries.”79 Nietzsche’s complaint about ‘obscurity’ as a typical characteristic of modern music also picks up on a common usage of the word that goes back to Johann Christian Lobe, who in 1852 first associated the term “music of the future” with the attributes “confused, unclear, dark and chaotic.”80 76

Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric, tr. by J. H. Freese (London: Heinemann, 1926), 279 (Rhetoric, II/21, 2). 77 Ibid., 283í285 (Rhetoric, II/21, 9). 78 Anonymous, “Nachrichten,” Berliner musikalische Zeitung 4, no. 24 (1847): no pagination [3]. 79 [August Ferdinand Riccius], “Leipziger Briefe III,” Rheinische Musik-Zeitung für Kunstfreunde und Künstler 3, no. 23 (1852): 1013. 80 [Johann Christian Lobe], Musikalische Briefe: Wahrheit über Tonkunst und Tonkünstler von einem Wohlbekannten, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1852), 131í132. As evidence that this vocabulary was soon exported beyond the Continent

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“A maxim is a link in a chain of thoughts; it demands that the reader restore this chain on his own […],”81 Nietzsche later wrote. Having tried to meet this task here, the question remains, who might have alerted the young Nietzsche to the latest ongoings in contemporary music and the heated debates about it? The most likely influencer was Gustav Adolph Krug82 (1805í1874), whose primary occupation was as a judge at the local court in Naumburg. He was the brother-in-law of his colleague Eduard Pinder; their sons, Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder, were Nietzsche’s classmates and his closest friends during his school years.83 In 1858, Nietzsche set a monument to Krug calling him “a great music professional84 and virtuoso”:85 “His tall, imposing stature,” he recorded, “his serious intellectual features, his acknowledged competence, all of this made a great impression on me.”86 His sister, too, conceded to him a major influence on her brother’s musical development, but added misleadingly, “although he himself was not aware of it.”87 Lenzinger, who also acknowledged Krug’s “crucial importance for achieving a more solid musical foundation and education of his [Nietzsche’s] taste,”88 integrated him into the larger context of Nietzsche’s lifelong “search for musical leadership,” which began with the “authority of the classical composers cultivated in Krug’s house” and led him from Schumann a passage may serve from the then leading British music journal The Musical World; its 1855 review of the first public performance of Franz Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” for organ—a composition Nietzsche’s friend Gustav Krug would later recommend to him (cf. KGB 1/1, 374; December 10, 1861)—called the piece a “composition of the dark mysterious ‘Future’ […] that might have been played any where but in the house of God […].” (Anonymous, “Leipzig,” The Musical World 33, no. 40 (1855): 647.) 81 KGW 4/2, 457; 20 [3]. 82 Cf. Martin Pernet, “Friedrich Nietzsche über Gustav Krug, seinen „ältesten Freund und Bruder in arte musica“. Aus dem Nachlaß der Familie Krug,” Nietzsche-Studien 19 (1990): 490í494. 83 Roswitha Wollkopf, “Friedrich Nietzsche und die Familie Krug,” in Friedrich Nietzsche, 23 Briefe an Gustav Krug, edited by the Kulturstiftung der Länder (Erfurt: Druck, Repro & Verlag Erfurt, 1992), 7. 84 Presumably Nietzsche used the term “Musikkenner” not with the common denotation of a ‘music connoisseur’, but in the older meaning given above, as opposed to a ‘Musikliebhaber’, i.e. a non-professional music lover, or amateur. 85 KGW 1/1, 292; 4 [77]. 86 Ibid. 87 Förster-Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, 31. 88 Lenzinger, Das Problem der Musik, 106.

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and Berlioz in his youth to Schopenhauer, Wagner, Bizet, and others in his adult life.89 When Krug died, Nietzsche touched on a basic theme of his own life in his letter of condolence to his son, writing that he, “often felt need for a truly familiar and loving advisor.” “I know from experience almost as little about what it means to lose a father as to have a father,” he wrote. “Your father lives on in you, and may the best and noblest of him remain in you without getting lost.”90 The elder Krug was born in Berlin and studied composition with Bernhard Klein,91 a respected composer of his time, known primarily for his church music, and nicknamed the “Palestrina of Berlin.”92 Apart from his law studies Krug was also trained as a pianist, reaching the ability to perform Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto in public while he was still a student.93 His personal acquaintance with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy seems to have been a crucial piece of his identity; in 1840 Krug was the recipient of a printed copy of Mendelssohn’s First Piano Trio, Op. 49, with the composer’s hand-written dedication “In kind remembrance.“94 Four years later Krug dared to send to Mendelssohn some of his own recent musical endeavors in the realm of chamber-music for a professional assessment and received the warm approval “that I liked your new compositions immensely.”95 Later that year Krug took the liberty of dedicating his three String Quartets Op. 8 to the revered composer, and subsequently asked him for the godparenthood for his new-born son Gustav,96 which Mendelssohn accepted willingly, however without being available to show up at the christening. Mendelssohn’s premature death in 1847 impeded any further 89

Ibid., 105. KSB 4, 240; July 6, 1874. 91 Cf. Otto Albrecht, “Mitteilungen aus Briefen von H. E. Schmieder und K. F. Göschel,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Kirchengeschichte der Provinz Sachsen 16 (1919): 52. 92 Wolfgang Sandberger, Das Bach-Bild Philipp Spittas: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Bach-Rezeption im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997), 30. 93 Pernet, “Friedrich Nietzsche über Gustav Krug,” 491, footnote 16. 94 Quoted in: Salome Reiser, “Introduction,” in Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix, Klaviertrios, edited by Salome Reiser [Leipziger Ausgabe, vol. 3/9] (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2009), XXV, footnote 50. 95 Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, letter to Gustav Adolph Krug, April 5, 1844, in: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 10: Januar 1844 bis Juni 1845, edited by Uta Wald (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2016), 136. 96 Cf. ibid., 757. 90

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contact and any influence he might have had on his godson who would become Nietzsche’s lifelong friend and a part-time composer, too,97 and maybe even on Nietzsche himself. Mendelssohn did not live to see Krug being acknowledged in other professional circles as well (apart from the 1843 review by Robert Schumann, who missed, however, “originality and innovation” in Krug’s prize-winning Grand Duo, Op. 398). In 1848, the music critic Gustav Adolf Keferstein, in a rather detailed review, emphasized the “notable place” that Krug had meanwhile acquired in his twofold position as a high-ranking jurist and composer, and took the opportunity to highlight to his readership Krug’s outright conservatism, which he deemed especially striking in the formal design, describing it as “reminiscent of the Mozartian and earlier Beethovenian manner.”99 In the small town of Naumburg, which had about 13,000 inhabitants in the mid-19th century, Krug was considered one of the leading and most respected musicians of his time. He was active as the chairman of the local association “Literaria” that aimed at “the promotion and formation of the academic and moral life;”100 the topics on which he lectured there included “The Essence of Music and the Spiritual Contents of this Art,” “The Relationship of Hegel’s Philosophy to Christian Religion,” his own “Visit to Goethe in 1827,” and life and works of Handel, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, using for the latter the composer’s letters addressed to him.101 Though no related documents have survived, it is highly probable that Krug did not only strive to convey his firmly rooted musical and aesthetic convictions to his musically gifted son, but also to the young Nietzsche who was for years a regular and welcomed guest in his house, which accounts at 97

For examples of Gustav Krug’s compositions cf. Gustav Krug, Die Sonne sinkt: Ein Lied Zarathustras von Friedrich Nietzsche für eine Singstimme mit Begleitung des Pianoforte (Berlin: Ries & Erler, 1901) and Gustav Krug, Streichquartett, edited by Gyula Petendi (Ardez: Ediziun Trais Giats, 1997). 98 Robert Schumann, “Gustav Krug, großes Duo für Pianoforte und Violine,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 10, no. 40 (1843): 158. In the same year, Krug’s Grand Duo was awarded the first prize in a competition organized by the North German Music Association. 99 Gustav Adolf Keferstein, “Introduktion und Fuge, Quartett für Pianoforte, Violine, Viola und Violoncello, komponirt von Gustav Krug,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 50, no. 18 (1848): 299. 100 Quoted in: Pernet, “Friedrich Nietzsche über Gustav Krug,” 492. 101 Bohley, “Nietzsches christliche Erziehung,” 191.

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least for the conspicuous integration of Mendelssohn in the latter’s declared commitment to classical composers of the past in his 1858 autobiography. Given the profile of his compositions and lectures, it goes without saying that Krug could have readily undersigned the boy’s assertion of his “inextinguishable hatred of all modern music”102 together with the (biased) attributes attached to it, if he hadn’t stirred it up in him in the first place.

Learning from chorales In his first autobiography, Nietzsche considered it also worth mentioning that according to him church music was “moving further and further away from its main purpose.” “This also includes the chorales,”103 he added. As is well known, the chorale is foundational to Protestant church music. Nietzsche was familiar with it since his musical beginnings, and there are indications that he was particularly taken by its pietistic manifestation over time. The two earliest copies of chorale texts in his hand date from 1854/55 or 1856;104 in 1857 he copied further chorale stanzas as a “small Christmas gift” for his mother, “at your request.”105 From the same year comes a libretto draft, astonishingly forthwith for a composition for double-choir which, in addition to Psalm texts and own formulations, contains stanzas of the chorale “Jesus, meine Zuversicht” [‘Jesus, my confidence’] and its sequel (to the same melody) “Jesus lebt! Mit ihm auch ich” [‘Jesus lives! I will also live with him’] by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert.106 As this compilation proves these chorales were (rightly) understood as conveying the Easter message, most obvious in Gellert’s lines “Jesus lives! He will also raise me / From the dead.”107 Corresponding to this textual draft, a onepage sketch for a choral composition with vocal soloists, a kind of Easter

102

KGW 1/1, 298; 4 [77]. Ibid., 306; 4 [77]. 104 GSA 71/213, K-II-10. This document is not published in printed form or online. For the copies of the chorales “Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir” and “Jesus lebt! Mit ihm auch ich,” Figl gives the years of origin as 1854/55 (KGW 1/1, IX, footnote 9), while Hödl cites a “school notebook from 1856” as the source for the latter (Hödl, Der letzte Jünger, 89). 105 GSA 71/214,3, Mp-I-76. 106 KGW 1/1, 195í196; 3 [16]. Nietzsche was familiar with this chorale for quite some time, as his earlier handwritten copy proves, cf. footnote 104. 107 Ibid., 196. 103

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cantata,108 is preserved, with his own harmonization of the chorale and the fragment of an independent composition that was possibly intended to begin with the word “Hallelujah,” which appears several times in the draft, but is not present in the score itself.109 The ensuing libretto draft for a vocal quartet and chorus contains the self-penned lines “And now he delivers us from death / O death! Now I see no misery anymore,” again pointing to Easter, but also an adaptation of words of the Requiem, “Give them rest, enlighten them / With your spirit. / Rest in eternity,”110 suggesting that Nietzsche still processed memories of his father’s untimely death eight years ago. The recollection of his father’s funeral in the autobiography mentioned also what was probably his first conscious and simultaneously traumatizing experience of the effect music could exert on the listener: At 1 o’clock noon the celebration began under full bell ringing. Oh, never will the muffled sound of the same depart from my ear, never will I forget the somberly rushing melody of the song “Jesu [sic] meine Zuversicht”!111

In this context Nietzsche also mentions that a pastor named Wimmer delivered one of the sermons at the funeral.112 Wimmer was a founding member of the Naumburg Missionary Society (together with the aforementioned Eduard Pinder)113 and temporarily the successor of Nietzsche’s father in the parish of Röcken;114 the 11-year-old Nietzsche counted him among his “acquaintances.”115 He also was a main revivalist protagonist in what is called the ‘controversy on the Naumburg hymnal’, i.e. the battle members of the Awakening movement fought, unsuccessfully for a long time, against this hymnal from 1818, which they viewed as being stamped by the prevailing rationalism at that time.116 It was still in use during services Nietzsche attended as the second attempt after 1852 to substitute it with a hymnal in the awakened spirit had also failed.117 As early as 1839, Wimmer had authored a treatise on The Harmfulness of Modern 108

The first (aborted) harmonization of this chorale is entitled “Motette v. Nietzsche [‘by Nietzsche’]” (GSA 71/237,12). 109 GSA 71/237,9. 110 KGW 1/1, 197; 3 [17]. 111 Ibid., 286; 4 [77]. 112 Ibid. 113 Cf. Pernet, Das Christentum, 58. 114 Bohley, “Nietzsches christliche Erziehung,” 193. 115 KSB 1, 5; March 30, 1856. 116 Cf. Albrecht, “Mitteilungen,” 56; Pernet, Das Christentum, 58. 117 Nietzsche’s mother recorded this event in her diary, cf. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 156; Goch, “Lyrischer Familienkosmos,” 106.

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Hymnals for the Ecclesiastical and Religious Life, in which he demonstrated his awakened creed by describing the “the work of the church” as “a struggle […] for a kingdom of God against an ungodly world”118 and the chorale as “captivating, through its form and content, sentiment instead of intellectual activity like within the ecclesiastical instruction.”119 When Nietzsche bemoaned in his autobiography the fact that there are “now so many a chorale” that “deviate with their dragging melodies so immensely from the strength and power of the older ones,”120 he hereby also sided with the awakened Christians, as he referred here to both pietistic hymns and those of the Lutheran tradition. “Without sanctification and renewal of the heart, no one can come to God,”121 Wimmer proclaimed. The “sanctification” of one’s life constituted a central demand of the awakened Christians, and was exemplified in a letter Nietzsche received from his uncle Edmund, a pastor in the Harz mountains, for Nietzsche’s confirmation in 1861 which concluded with the prayer, “The God of peace may sanctify you throughout.”122 With this notion, based on Lev. 19:2 and 1 Petrus 15í16, awakened Christians affiliated their convictions to those of Baroque Pietists, who, in turn, are best defined in the famous poem by Joachim Feller, from 1689: The name of the Pietists is now known all over town. Who is a Pietist? He who studies the Word of God And accordingly leads a holy life. This is well done, good for every Christian. For this amounts to nothing if after the manner of rhetoricians And disputants one puts on airs in the pulpit And does not live holy as one ought according to the teaching.123

“Piety above all must rest in the heart,”124 Feller demanded, a conviction that resonates conspicuously in a draft for Nietzsche’s missing letter to his friends Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder from April 1862: 118

Karl Julius Moritz Wimmer, Die Schädlichkeit der modernen Gesangbücher für das kirchlich-religiöse Leben, dargestellt an dem Naumburger Gesangbuche (Naumburg: Zimmermann, 1839), 84. 119 Ibid., 70. 120 KGW 1/1, 306; 4 [77]. 121 Wimmer, Die Schädlichkeit, 71. 122 KGB 1/1, 352; March 5, 1861. 123 This translation is quoted in: Dale W. Brown, Understanding Pietism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 13. 124 Ibid.

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Christianity is in its essence a matter of the heart; only when it has embodied itself in us, when it has become part of our mind [‘Gemüth‘], man is a true Christian.125

In December 1860, while occupying himself with his oratorio,126 Nietzsche requested from his mother for Christmas the “Hauschoralbuch [‘Hymnal for domestic use’] like the one Uncle Edmund has” (which he had certainly studied during his visit there in the summer of that year), and gives as reason that he was completely missing “until now such a hymnal, in which all chorales are in their original form.”127 This remark equally alludes to pietistic hymns as they were disseminated especially by the Geistreiches Gesangbuch [‘Spiritual Hymnal’] (two volumes, 1704/14) published by Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen, which in his time had drawn sharp criticism from the orthodox church authorities: [W]e find in the aforementioned hymnal a great deal of jumping, leaping dactylic poems, which are mostly accompanied by unspiritual and almost lush melodies, and especially do not correspond at all to the gravity of the high mysteries, which they are supposed to contain […].128

Here, the text hints at hymns in triple time, which have a lilting character in contrast to the more widespread songs in dignified quadruple or duple time. For instance, the paradigmatic pietistic chorale “Seelenbräutigam, Jesu, Gottes Lamm!” [‘Bridegroom of the soul, Jesus, Lamb of God!’], from the same year as Feller’s poem, which was known to Nietzsche in a handwritten four-part arrangement in quadruple time only,129 is printed in the Hauschoralbuch also in its original form in triple time, the version Nietzsche was interested in.130 The Hauschoralbuch explicitly contains a section named “Revival to Rebirth” with the subsections “Revival Call,” “Repentance and Conversion,” 125

KSB 1, 202; April 27, 1862. Cf. Chapter 12. 127 KSB 1, 133; December 3, 1860. 128 Expertise of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg from 1716, quoted in: Martin Rößler, “Das 18. Jahrhundert,” in Kirchenlied und Gesangbuch: Quellen zu ihrer Geschichte, edited by Christian Möller (Tübingen: Francke, 2000), 180. 129 GSA 71/253, No. 13. 130 [Friedrich Hermann Eickhoff, (Ed.)], Hauschoralbuch: Alte und neue Choralgesänge mit vierstimmigen Harmonien und mit Texten, 5th Edition (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1858), 140í141. 126

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“Forgiveness of Sins,” “Faith” and “The Divine Peace,” and prints an abundance of songs from the Freylinghausen hymnal. It is a telling testimony of the church music practice of the Awakening movement, as is likewise shown in a condensed history of the pietistic hymn in the preface (by the undisclosed editor Friedrich Hermann Eickhoff131) which describes the baroque pietists as a grouping that “had turned from dogma to life, from the letter to the spirit, from the scholarly quarrel to the community of faith, and that had also touched the right ground for more intimate poetry and heartfelt singing.”132 Against the background set out so far, it is hardly surprising that Nietzsche, presumably in 1857, would use a text by a poet of the Awakening movement for his first attempt to write his own hymn composition. He found the poem “Es zieht ein stiller Engel” [‘There is a silent angel passing’], published under the title “Geduld” [‘Patience’], in the volume Psalter und Harfe. Eine Sammlung christlicher Lieder zur häuslichen Erbauung [‘Psalter and Harp. A collection of Christian songs for the edification at home’] by the pastor Carl Philipp Spitta (1801í1859). Though not listed as part of his surviving library,133 this then highly popular devotional book was attestably available and used in Nietzsche’s home as proven by a letter Nietzsche wrote from Pforta in 1860, asking his mother to send him the book whose exact place of safekeeping he knew (“it’s lying on the glass cabinet”134). The first stanza of the poem reads: There is a silent angel passing Through this earthly land, As consolation for earthly flaws The Lord has him sent. Peace is in his gaze And mild, gentle mercy, O follow him constantly here on earth, This angel of patience!135 131

On his authorship, cf. Paul Eickhoff, “Nach welchem Rhythmus müssen die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder gesungen werden?” in Bericht über den I. Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongreß der Deutschen Musikgesellschaft in Leipzig vom 4. bis 8. Juni 1925 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1926), 360. 132 [Eickhoff], Hauschoralbuch, VIII. 133 Campioni, D’Iorio et al. (Eds.), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek. 134 KSB 1, 108; May 30, 1860. 135 Carl Johann Philipp Spitta, Psalter und Harfe: Erste Sammlung christlicher Lieder zur häuslichen Erbauung (Leipzig: Friese, 1857), 125. This is the edition Nietzsche presumably used.

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By the time of Nietzsche’s composition, the poem was already common musical property in new compositions or in adaptations to existing tunes. The melody in Nietzsche’s hymn the first two phrases of which are shown here, seems to have originated with him. Clumsily notated in faltering musical orthography, it is only partially and partly incorrectly provided with a text, however, it recreates with astonishing accuracy the actually freeswinging meter of a congregational hymn—and has a certain, ‘pietistic’ lilt to it. Fig. 11.1 shows Nietzsche’s original notation of the opening phrases, transcribed with diplomatic fidelity,136 Fig. 11.2 my reconstruction according to the stresses of the vocal text. Fig. 11.1íFriedrich Nietzsche, “Es zieht ein stiller Engel,” diplomatic transcription, mm 1-5.

136

GSA 71/237,13, A-XIIIa, 10; cf. the erroneous version in Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 178.

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Fig. 11.2íFriedrich Nietzsche, “Es zieht ein stiller Engel,” reconstruction by Cornelis Witthoefft, mm 1-11.

The creative energy that Nietzsche’s occupation with the chorale released in him is also recognizable in two examples from 1858 that are merely described in Janz’s edition137 and published here for the first time in their transcription. The experiment that is carried out in the second example is the less spectacular of both, but points to Nietzsche’s increasing compositional curiosity. The heading reads “Choral ‘In allen, meinen’ v. Nietzsche [‘by Nietzsche’].” He first notated the original chorale in written letters (in the German system, a, b, c, d etc.) and subsequently composed two melodic versions of his own, the second of which is shown in Fig. 11.3.138

137 138

Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 321. GSA 71/237,18, A-XVIII, 34.

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Fig. 11.3íThe chorale “In allen meinen Taten,” original melody and a new melody by Friedrich Nietzsche

First, however, Nietzsche took the opposite direction, conceiving a contrafactum of the chorale “Liebe, die du mich zum Bilde.” The chorale is again first notated according to the same system, but is then supported by Nietzsche’s poetry139 which (with some metrical awkwardness) is singable to the melody. Quite manifestly, the chorale notation and the poem that follows belong together as shown in Fig. 11.4. The first stanzas of the original poem (by Johannes Scheffler, or Angelus Silesius, a precursor of pietism) and of Nietzsche’s new version are juxtaposed here: Author: Johannes Scheffler Love, who created me In effigy of your divinity; Love, who has so mildly Restored me after the fall: Love, to you I surrender, To remain yours forever.140

139

GSA 71/237,18, A-XVIII, 32í33. [Johann Scheffler], Heilige Seelen-Lust, Oder Geistliche Hirten-Lieder der in ihren JESUM verliebten Psyche, Gesungen Von Johann Angelo Silesio (Breslau: Baumann, 1657), 338í339. 140

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Chapter 11 Author: Friedrich Nietzsche Heart! why this anxious trembling? Many things a man must endure, Without grumbling, without complaining If he wants to survive in the world. Don’t you see the little birds moving Without fear in their hearts?141

Fig. 11.4íThe chorale „Liebe, die du mich zum Bilde“ with the original text (upper line) and a new text by Friedrich Nietzsche (lower line)

The procedure of a secular contrafactum is in itself less remarkable than Nietzsche’s diametrical transformation of the statement that the original conveys. Scheffler’s collection of poems, Heilige Seelen-Lust, Oder Geistliche Hirten-Lieder der in ihren JESUM verliebten Psyche [‘The Soul’s Holy Zest, or Spiritual Shepherd Songs of the Soul in Love with Her Jesus’] from 1657 gathers, according to the preface, “the loving desires of the bride of Christ for her bridegroom”142 while the poem itself bears the heading “She [the soul] gives herself up to eternal love.“143 Against the Baroque poet’s mystical love of Jesus, the adolescent Nietzsche sets a mocking soliloquy with the pose of self-assertion of the “man” he wants to be, namely a man who succeeds in everything by his own strength. After a short Christian quietist digression—“Be a man! With tender protection / He shields your dearest possession”144 (“he” obviously referring to “God”)—

141

KGW 1/1, 252; 4 [41] (“Herz! Was soll dis [sic] bange Zagen”). [Scheffler], Heilige Seelen-Lust, no pagination. 143 Ibid., 337. 144 KGW 1/1, 253; 4 [41] (“Sei ein Mann! Mit milder Hut / Schirmet er dein liebstes Gut“). 142

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the continuation of the poem contains a quasi-self-therapeutic invitation to make music, which is staged almost as a substitute for religion. With your anxious lamentations You will only bother the merry little birds Who over there in the glow of the evening sun Still give a go to a nice song. Join in the music making! For joyful sound drives away trepidation.145

Nietzsche’s intense preoccupation with the chorale, which left its mark up to his last composition, the Gebet an das Leben [‘Prayer to Life’] of 1882, led him already at this early stage to an experiment that can be interpreted as a burgeoning ‘revaluation of values’.

Bibliography Albrecht, Otto. “Mitteilungen aus Briefen von H. E. Schmieder und K. F. Göschel.” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Kirchengeschichte der Provinz Sachsen 16 (1919): 27–61, 69–117. Aristotle. The “Art” of Rhetoric. Tr. by J. H. Freese. London: Heinemann, 1926. Avraham, Doron. German Neo-Pietism, the Nation and the Jews: Religious Awakening and National Identities Formation, 1815í1861. London: Routledge, 2020. Bohley, Reiner. “Nietzsches christliche Erziehung.” Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987): 164-196. Bloch, Peter André. “„Aus meinem Leben“. Der Selbstporträtcharakter von Nietzsches frühen Lebensbeschreibungen: Selbstdialog als Selbstbefragung.” Nietzscheforschung 2 (1995): 61-94. Brown, Dale W. Understanding Pietism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978. Campioni, Giuliano, Paolo D’Iorio et al. (Eds.). Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003. Catteau, Dominique. Nietzsche et Berlioz: Une amitié stellaire. Paris: Publibook 2001. [Eickhoff, Friedrich Hermann (Ed.)]. Hauschoralbuch: Alte und neue Choralgesänge mit vierstimmigen Harmonien und mit Texten. 5th 145

Ibid. („Wirst mit deinen bangen Klagen (erroneously: Klangen) / Nur die lustgen Vöglein plagen / Die dort in der Abendgluth / Noch ein nettes Lied probieren / Stimme ein ins Musiziren / Froher Sang vertreibt ja Zagen“). In the translation of this poem punctuation marks missing in the original have been added.

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Edition. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1858. [Published anonymously, authorship secured] Eickhoff, Paul. “Nach welchem Rhythmus müssen die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder gesungen werden?” In Bericht über den I. Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongreß der Deutschen Musikgesellschaft in Leipzig vom 4. bis 8. Juni 1925, 360-364. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1926. Eddy, Richard. Universalism in America: A History, vol. 1. Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1891. Ellis, David L. Politics and Piety: The Protestant Awakening in Prussia, 1816í1856. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Figl, Johann. “Die „Ausbildung der Seele erkennen“. Die Bedeutung der frühen Texte Nietzsches innerhalb seiner Philosophie im ganzen.” Nietzscheforschung 5/6 (1998): 433–442. Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s, vol. 1. Leipzig: Naumann, 1895. Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. The Life of Nietzsche, vol. 1: The Young Nietzsche. New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1912. Goch, Klaus. “Erweckungsphilologie: Martin Pernets seltsame Präsentation eines Nietzsche-Familiendokuments.” Nietzscheforschung 14 (2009): 213-236. Goch, Klaus. Franziska Nietzsche: Ein biographisches Porträt. Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1994. Goch, Klaus. “Lyrischer Familienkosmos: Bemerkungen zu Nietzsches poetischer Kindheitserfahrung.” Nietzscheforschung 3 (1995): 103-125. Goch, Klaus. Nietzsches Vater oder Die Katastrophe des deutschen Protestantismus: Eine Biographie. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. Hirzel, Martin. Lebensgeschichte als Verkündigung: Johann Heinrich JungStilling – Ami Bost – Johann Arnold Kanne. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998. Hödl, Hans Gerald. Der letzte Jünger des Philosophen Dionysos: Studien zur systematischen Bedeutung von Nietzsches Selbstthematisierungen im Kontext seiner Religionskritik. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. The Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling. Tr. by S. Jackson. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1844. Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Lebensgeschichte oder dessen Jugend, Jünglingsjahre, Wanderschaft, Lehrjahre, häusliches Leben und Alter. 3rd Edition. Stuttgart: Rieger, 1857. Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Lebensgeschichte, edited by Gustav Adolf Benrath. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976.

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Keferstein, Gustav Adolf. “Introduktion und Fuge, Quartett für Pianoforte, Violine, Viola und Violoncello, komponirt von Gustav Krug.” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 50, no. 18 (1848): 298-300. Klein, Karl. Der Glaube an der Wende der Neuzeit. München: Schöningh, 1962. Kloes, Andrew. The German Awakening. Protestant Renewal After the Enlightenment, 1815í1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Lenzinger, Gustav. Das Problem der Musik und des Musikalischen bei Nietzsche, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Jugendepoche. Ph. D. University of Freiburg (1943). Konstanz: Self-publishing, 1951. [Lobe, Johann Christian]. Musikalische Briefe: Wahrheit über Tonkunst und Tonkünstler von einem Wohlbekannten, vol. 1. Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1852. [Published anonymously, authorship secured] Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix. Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 10: Januar 1844 bis Juni 1845, edited by Uta Wald. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2016. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Der musikalische Nachlass, edited by Curt Paul Janz. Basel: Bärenreiter, 1976. Overbeck, Franz. “Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche.” Die neue Rundschau 17 (1906): 209-231, 320-330. Pernet, Martin. Das Christentum im Leben des jungen Friedrich Nietzsche. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989. Pernet, Martin: “Friedrich Nietzsche and Pietism.” German Life and Letters 48 (1995): 474-486. Pernet, Martin. “Friedrich Nietzsche über Gustav Krug, seinen „ältesten Freund und Bruder in arte musica“. Aus dem Nachlaß der Familie Krug.” Nietzsche-Studien 19 (1990): 488-518. Pernet, Martin. Friedrich Nietzsche und das „Fromme Basel“. Basel: Schwabe, 2014. Reiser, Salome. “Introduction.” In Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix. Klaviertrios, edited by Salome Reiser [Leipziger Ausgabe, vol. 3/9], XXI-XXIX. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2009. [Riccius, August Ferdinand]. “Leipziger Briefe III.” Rheinische MusikZeitung für Kunstfreunde und Künstler 3, no. 23 (1852): 1010–1014. [Authorship attributed] Rößler, Martin. “Das 18. Jahrhundert.” In Kirchenlied und Gesangbuch: Quellen zu ihrer Geschichte, edited by Christian Möller, 170-213. Tübingen: Francke, 2000. Sandberger, Wolfgang. Das Bach-Bild Philipp Spittas: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Bach-Rezeption im 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997.

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[Scheffler, Johann]. Heilige Seelen-Lust, Oder Geistliche Hirten-Lieder der in ihren JESUM verliebten Psyche, Gesungen Von Johann Angelo Silesio. Breslau: Baumann, 1657. [Pseudonym dissolved] Schmidt, Hermann Josef. “„Jeder tiefe Geist braucht die Maske...“. Nietzsches Kindheit als Schlüssel zum Rätsel Nietzsche?” Nietzscheforschung 1 (1994): 137-160. Schmidt, Hermann Josef. Nietzsche absconditus oder Spurenlesen bei Nietzsche: Kindheit, vol. 1-2. Berlin: IBDK Verlag, 1991. [Schumann, Robert]. “Gustav Krug, großes Duo für Pianoforte und Violine.” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 10, no. 40 (1843): 158-159 [Authorship secured]. Spitta, Carl Johann Philipp. Psalter und Harfe: Erste Sammlung christlicher Lieder zur häuslichen Erbauung. Leipzig: Friese, 1857. Wimmer, Karl Julius Moritz. Die Schädlichkeit der modernen Gesangbücher für das kirchlich-religiöse Leben, dargestellt an dem Naumburger Gesangbuche. Naumburg: Zimmermann, 1839. Wollkopf, Roswitha, “Friedrich Nietzsche und die Familie Krug.” In Friedrich Nietzsche. 23 Briefe an Gustav Krug, edited by the Kulturstiftung der Länder, 7-9. Erfurt: Druck, Repro & Verlag Erfurt, 1992. Anonymous. “Leipzig.” The Musical World 33, no. 40 (1855): 647. Anonymous. “Nachrichten.” Berliner musikalische Zeitung 4, no. 24 (1847): no pagination [3].

CHAPTER 12 PAGAN WORLD AND CHRISTIANITY: NIETZSCHE’S PROJECTED ORATORIO AND ITS CONSEQUENCES1 CORNELIS WITTHOEFFT

In the summer of 1860, Nietzsche and his friend Wilhelm Pinder founded the “Germania,” a pre-academic and artistic association, which was soon expanded by Wilhelm’s cousin, Gustav Krug. The members committed themselves to a monthly contribution in the humanities, literature or music to be subsequently discussed and reviewed. Much about the developments in Nietzsche’s youth can be gathered from the preserved documents relating to this association but they require some study of their background, the absence of which can lead to distorted perceptions. The subject of this Chapter is a cautionary tale. Ever since Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche first published one of her brother’s lists of contributions to the “Germania”2 without any further comment in her 1895 biography, rumors abounded concerning an alleged Christmas Oratorio from his pen, only because a title of that name is listed there as relating to four entries of Nietzsche’s compositions submitted between August 1860 and February 1861, notwithstanding the fact that they have all come down to us rather fragmentarily. Unscrupulously, Gustav 1

This Chapter ideally assumes reading of the previous one. All translations from German, French and Italian are by the author, unless otherwise stated in the bibliography. References to Nietzsche manuscripts are given by indicating the call number in the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, beginning with GSA; cf. Chapter 11, footnote 3. 2 Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Naumann, 1895), 144í148, cf. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, vol. 1: The Young Nietzsche (New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1912), 95í96, and KGW 1/2, 13 [28].

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Lenzewski, the projected first editor-to-be of Nietzsche’s musical works, registered a “Weihnachtsoratorium” in his unpublished 1939 work list3 as if it were a proper name, a procedure his successor, Curt Paul Janz, adopted in his 1976 edition, subsuming a variety of completed sections, fragments and sketches under this sole heading4 only to concede that “the scope of events” Nietzsche wanted to depict here “must have been drawn very ample” as opposed to focusing only on the Christmas story,5 an assertion that actually challenges this very title. Wrongly, but consistent with Janz’s misguiding denomination, the Complete Critical Edition listed the Weihnachtsoratorium in 1993 as representing a definitive title given by Nietzsche instead of a provisional one,6 and caused further confusion by attributing the opus number 69 to it,7 which is evidently nothing other than the number Janz assigned to it in his edition.8 This profusion of misinformation was even outdone by an irresponsible “reconstruction” undertaken by Francesco Lotoro, bristling with extensive and irreproducible editorial musical and textual interventions that resulted in a recording,9 a sheet music edition10 and even an academic paper,11 which all impertinently appeared under the caption “Friedrich Nietzsche: Weihnachtsoratorium.” This Chapter aims at a clarification of facts and an evaluation of the actual significance that the compositions associated with this project had for Nietzsche’s musical and religious development. To begin with, the sources tell us clearly that for him the designation of a Christmas Oratorio was no more than a kind of working title, at the most inspired in retrospect by Bach’s opus of the same name. Actually, Nietzsche abandoned this project in the summer of 1861 before he had decided how to name it. Indeed, he never used this title in his surviving music manuscripts and only referred to it once in the list mentioned above which he compiled ex post, in September 3

GSA 71/236. Friedrich Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, edited by Curt Paul Janz (Basel: Bärenreiter, 1976), 254í297. 5 Ibid., 348. 6 KGB 1/4, 847, 850. 7 Ibid., 850. 8 Cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 254. 9 Friedrich Nietzsche, Weihnachtsoratorium, Ars Cantica Choir; Francesco Lotoro, piano; Marco Berrini, conductor (Buccininasco: Sarx Records, 1998, SX 029-2) (CD). 10 Friedrich Nietzsche, Weihnachtsoratorium: Reconstruction of [sic] musical and literary text by Francesco Lotoro (Barletta: Editrice Rotas, 2012). 11 Marco Berrini, “Il Weihnachtsoratorium di Friedrich Nietzsche,” Civiltà musicale 15, no. 41 (2000): 106-122. 4

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1862, when he no longer cared for it, while in his diary from spring 1861 entries simply read “Text zum Orator”12 and “Oratorium.”13 Likewise, in a letter written two decades later he simply called it “my oratorio;”14 similarly, the surviving letters by his friend Gustav Krug refer to it only in a non-specific way, as “your composition,”15 or “your oratorio.”16 When both friends called the work “such a joyful [‘freudenreiches’] oratorio,”17 it does not necessarily point to Christmas. But from Lenzewski onwards the denotation Christmas Oratorio seemed to be a title that was handy to work with and also rich of immediate, if inappropriate associations. For though it seems to suggest itself, any conjectures about an impact that Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio might have had on an alleged homonymous project of the 15- to 16-year-old Nietzsche prove to be misleading. There is no evidence whatsoever to support speculations to this effect as put forward, for example, by Peter André Bloch who claimed that Nietzsche was guided by “the idea of a modern counterpart to Bach’s masterwork”18 and desired “to surpass”19 it, or by Kristina Jaspers, who stated that Nietzsche’s oratorio “is oriented [...] at Johann Sebastian Bach“,20 or by Meinrad Walter, who even claimed that Nietzsche aimed at “rectifying Bach.”21 Bloch went so far as to argue that the superiority of Bach’s work was responsible for Nietzsche’s discontinuation of the project: 12

KGW 1/2, 300; 11 [14]. Ibid., 302. 14 KSB 6, 231; July 25, 1882; for the context of this designation cf. footnote 142. 15 KGB 1/1, 344; end of November 1860. 16 Ibid., 355; April 1861. 17 Ibid. 18 Peter André Bloch, “Nietzsches ‚Weihnachten‘ und ‚Neujahr‘: Feiertage des jungen Nietzsche im Naumburger Familien- und Freundeskreis,” in Der Mensch – sein eigenes Experiment?: Kolloquium 2003 des Nietzsche-Forums München und Vorträge aus den Jahren 2003í2005, edited by Beatrix Vogel (München: Allitera, 2008), 638. 19 Peter André Bloch, “Zur Rolle der beiden Gedichtzyklen in Nietzsches ‚Fröhlicher Wissenschaft‘,” in Nietzsche und die Lyrik: Ein Kompendium, edited by Christian Benne and Claus Zittel (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2017), 135. 20 Kristina Jaspers, “Friedrich Nietzsche: Leben als Experiment,” in Nietzsche und die Lebenskunst: Ein philosophisch-psychologisches Kompendium, edited by Günter Gödde, Nikolaos Loukidelis and Jörg Zifras (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2016), 41. 21 Meinrad Walter, “„Ohne Weihnachtsoratorium ist Weihnachten nur die halbe Wahrheit.“ Johann Sebastian Bachs berühmtes Oratorium im Krisenjahr 2020,” feinschwarz-net, last modified December 10, 2021, https://www.feinschwarz.net/bachs-weihnachtsoratorium-heute. 13

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Chapter 12 The fact that he [Nietzsche] failed in the attempt at creating a Christmas Oratorio, although he worked on it for about three [!] years, intending it to be better than Bach’s, showed him the limits of his high ambitions.22

Finally, Peter Villwock wanted his readers to believe that Nietzsche remembered listening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in his youth when he was working on an aphorism in The Wanderer and His Shadow23 in 1879 that features his restatement of the Angelic Annunciation from the Christmas story, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:1424), “Bach’s Christmas Oratorio […] impressed him so much as a 15-year-old,” Villwock maintained that “he composed his own Christmas Oratorio.”25 It should have been better pointed out that Nietzsche knew the biblical passage in question well enough, since he had set it to music in his adolescence (Fig. 12.1).26 Fig. 12.1íFriedrich Nietzsche, “Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe,” mm 32-36.

Quite certainly, Nietzsche didn’t even know of the existence of the earlier work prior to embarking on his project in August 1860. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, a cycle of six individual cantatas originally performed in Leipzig during separate services in 1734/35, was in the mid-19th century by no means a household name in German-speaking countries as it is today; on the contrary, it was first published in full score only in 1856 within the exclusive first Complete Edition of Bach’s works. After selected parts had been first performed again in 1844, the entity of all six cantatas was 22 Peter André Bloch, “Nietzsches musikalisches Schreiben: Zum V. Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft,” Nietzsche-Studien 45 (2016), 117. 23 Cf. KGW 4/3, 340 (HH, WS §350). 24 King James Version. 25 Peter Villwock, “Unterwegs zur Goldenen Losung: Nietzsches Wanderer und sein christlicher Schatten,” in Engadiner Gedanken-Gänge: Friedrich Nietzsche, der Wanderer und sein Schatten, edited by Timon Boehm and Peter Villwock (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2021), 188. 26 GSA 71/237,9, A-IX-c, 2; cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 284. This composition is supposedly not identical with a later setting of the same text written on Easter Monday 1861; cf. KGW 1/2, 302; 11 [14].

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presented, though in a shortened version, for the first time in Berlin as late as in December 1857 by the Sing-Akademie under August Eduard Grell. The program note of a subsequent performance in Frankfurt am Main in 1859 states accordingly that this work, “hardly known by any serious researcher, presumably has rested in complete oblivion for a full century.”27 Likewise, when it was partly performed again in Leipzig in November 1860 a reviewer called it in his rather dismissive report “a work rarely heard before.”28 Gustav Krug traveled especially to this performance and reported enthusiastically about it to Nietzsche: “I wished you had been with me, you would certainly have been delighted, too.”29 Only now he provided him with a survey of the work’s content and even offered to lend him its libretto, all of which strongly supports the hypothesis that Bach’s Christmas Oratorio should be definitely ruled out as an initial impulse for the composer Nietzsche. However, striking similarities in the compositional design and style that went unnoticed so far direct the attention to a then fairly new and already widely-known Christmas oratorio that apparently served in more than one respect as a model for the young ambitious composer: Hector Berlioz’s “sacred trilogy” L’Enfance du Christ [‘The Childhood of Christ’], whose first complete performance took place in 1854 in Paris and whose bilingual French and German edition was published in the following year using the translation by the Liszt protégé Peter Cornelius. Several sources prove that Nietzsche must have known this work when he worked on his oratorio, and it must have been Gustav Krug who drew his friend’s attention to it. According to his son, Walther Krug, “all important musical initiatives during Nietzsche’s youth in Naumburg […] originated at that time from Gustav Krug.”30 “Nietzsche’s friend Gustav,” he recounted, “had made piano reductions from Berlioz scores which his father owned. Nietzsche was certainly familiar with these reductions and had studied them as well. The reductions were in all likelihood also played in the youthful association ‘Germania’.”31 Later he substantiated this testimony: 27

Anonymous, “Nachrichten,” Euterpe – Eine Musik-Zeitschrift für Deutschlands Volksschullehrer sowie für Cantoren, Organisten, Musiklehrer und Freunde der Tonkunst überhaupt 18, no. 2 (1859), 47. 28 Anonymous, “Correspondenz,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 53, no. 20 (1860), 171. 29 KGB 1/1, 344; end of November 1860. 30 Gustav Lenzinger, Das Problem der Musik und des Musikalischen bei Nietzsche, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Jugendepoche (Ph.D. University of Freiburg (1943), Konstanz: Self-publishing, 1951), 106í107, footnote 2. This does not mean, however, that Nietzsche also yielded to all of Krug’s missionary approaches. 31 Ibid., 106, footnote 2.

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Chapter 12 Here [in his father’s private room in the parental home in Naumburg, C.W.], stood a piano, and a violin lay on the table. Here the friends played piano four-hands or Nietzsche accompanied my father to his violin. Here they studied polarities like Schumann and Berlioz. Excerpts they had made from Berlioz’s Childhood of Christ are still in my hands.32

In addition, three documents have been preserved to prove this knowledge, two lists of contributions to the “Germania” by Nietzsche’s hand, demonstrating that Krug submitted in September 1860 an arrangement of a not-specified chorus from Berlioz’s Childhood,33 and a letter by Krug mentioning “some reminiscences to Berlioz”34 in a chorus of Nietzsche’s oratorio he had reviewed in private. Based on Krug’s precise description, one of these passages is identified here (Fig. 12.2), as well as the model Nietzsche apparently used for it (Fig. 12.3).35 Fig. 12.2íFriedrich Nietzsche, “Hirtenchor” [‘Shepherds’ Chorus’] (1860), orchestral interlude, mm 32-36.

Fig. 12.3íHector Berlioz, from L’Enfance du Christ, “L’Adieu des Bergers” [‘The Shepherds’ Farewell’] (1852), orchestral prelude, mm 1-5

32

Walther Krug, “Friedrich Nietzsche als Freund,” Atlantis 20, no. 2 (1948), 77. KGW 1/2, 470; 13 [23]; ibid., 481; 13 [28]. 34 KGB 1/1, 345; end of November 1860. 35 A first echo of Berlioz’s oratorio can be found in Nietzsche’s initial composition for his own oratorio, the introduction in F minor from August 1860 (cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 254), compared with Berlioz’s overture of the 2nd part of his oratorio. A more detailed examination of this topic cannot be made here. 33

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The score of Berlioz’s Childhood was not merely in the possession of Gustav Krug’s father, Gustav Adolph, it may well have been cherished by him in spite of his general refusal of the musical avant-garde.36 Though Berlioz composed it “during the period of his closest involvement with Liszt’s circle in Weimar,”37 and Richard Pohl, one of this circle’s staunchest advocates, would later praise it as “the first oratorio of a musician of the future,”38 not only the French press of his time observed a certain simplification of style, also given the fact that Berlioz himself declared its second part as written “in the old style.” To test the impartiality of the French press, Berlioz had even attributed its germ-cell, the chorus “L’Adieu des Bergers” [‘The Shepherds’ Farewell’] (Fig. 12.3) at its premiere to a certain Pierre Ducré, a made-up composer allegedly from the 17th century.39 Nietzsche’s appreciative acknowledgment of Berlioz’s Childhood of Christ in late 1860 also serves as a key to otherwise inexplicable entries that he, Nietzsche, made in the spring of the following year in the manuscript of his 1858 autobiography which he used as a reference for a shorter account of his life that was written as a school essay. The passage in question40 is documented in full only in the older Historical-Critical Complete Edition.41 Nietzsche’s remarks, including his later annotations (put in brackets between the lines, referring to the ensuing words), read: Another rather sad phenomenon is that many newer composers strive to write obscurely. But precisely such artificial periods, which may charm (? 1861.) the connoisseur, sound cold to the healthy human ear. Especially this (? 1861.) so-called music of the future [‘Zukunftsmusik’] of a Liszt, Berlioz,

36

Cf. Chapter 11, section 2. Julian Rushton, “‘Oratorium eines Zukunftsmusiker [sic]’: The Pre-history of L’Enfance du Christ,” in Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies. Essays in Honour of François Lesure, edited by Barbara L. Kelly and Kerry Murphy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 36. 38 Richard Pohl, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, vol. 3: Hektor Berlioz: Studien und Erinnerungen (Leipzig: Schlicke, 1884), 58. 39 The title of the first partial print reads: Hector Berlioz, La Fuite en Égypte, op. 25. Fragments d’un Mystère en style ancien, pour Ténor solo, Chœur et un petit orchestre, attribué à Pierre Ducré, Maître de Chapelle imaginaire (Paris: Richault, 1852). 40 This passage is also discussed in Chapter 11, footnote 72. 41 Unfortunately, the commentaries [‘Nachberichte’] to the first section of the Complete Critical Edition, comprising Nietzsche’s earliest writings, are still missing to date. 37

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Chapter 12 seeks something in showcasing passages as peculiar as possible.42

These annotations were first discussed in the biography by Nietzsche’s sister from 1895: Observe, for instance, the change in his views on music. How solemnly had not he expressed himself in favour of classical music as late as 1858. He himself, however, already sets important notes of interrogation to these remarks in 1860 [!]; the great revolution in his views must therefore have taken place in the interval.43

If the maneuver by Nietzsche’s sister is to be believed, which even caused her to pre-date these remarks by a whole year, these question marks are based on the fact that Nietzsche had supposedly become an adherent of Wagner by this time,44 notwithstanding the obvious fact that this particular passage mentions only Liszt and Berlioz, which renders her argument quite meaningless. Her ideological propaganda in this regard, including the invented story that the three “Germania” members in the early 1860s were all “enthusiastic Wagnerites,”45 was successfully refuted by Martine Prange,46 thus, an inclination towards Wagner on Nietzsche’s part can be excluded as a reason for these remarks.47 Although Krug considered Nietzsche’s “Gesang des Mohren” to be “the best and most Lisztian that you 42

WB, Werke, 27; GSA 71/216, handwritten page number 118; cf. KGW 1/1, 306; 4 [77]). 43 Förster-Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, 97. 44 “My own belief […] is that my brother was a Wagnerite before this [before getting to know Wagner’s Tristan in spring 1861, C.W.],” she wrote, “and that Tristan only brought his feelings to boiling point” (ibid.). 45 Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence. New York: Liveright, 1949, 2. 46 Martine Prange, “Was Nietzsche Ever a True Wagnerian? Nietzsche’s Late Turn to and Early Doubt about Richard Wagner,” Nietzsche-Studien 40 (2011); Martine Prange, Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 21í51. 47 An admittedly almost overly obvious quasi-quotation of the Tristan prelude in the section “Pagan World” (Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 284), the use of Wagnerian alliterations in “The Moor’s Song” [‘Gesang des Mohren’] (ibid., 259í260) and Nietzsche’s handwritten copy of the prayer of Elisabeth from Tannhäuser in a manuscript book with compositions for the oratorio (GSA 71/239, B-II, 11-13) reveal nothing more than his incipient knowledge of Wagner and his curiosity to try his hand on his language. The same applies to a short orchestral passage (Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 282) that alludes to the Lohengrin prelude, which for Gustav Krug had “something Wagnerian about it” (KGB 1/1, 345; end of November 1860).

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have delivered so far” (“Keep at the good path!!”,48 he added), a thorough occupation with this composer on Nietzsche’s part is only recognizable in the fall of 1861, when he was working on his tone poem Ermanarich. With Berlioz, however, it was a different matter; having actually studied a work by him, even if it was perhaps not too characteristic for this composer, Nietzsche was now ready to question and revise an earlier judgement that was not based on his own perception.49 Nietzsche’s adolescent oratorio is linked to Berlioz’s Childhood in other respects, too. Fugue-writing and expanded recitative sections represent prominent and memorable features in Berlioz, elements he deliberately installed there to further establish trademarks of the “old style.” Nietzsche and Gustav Krug apparently used this work as their unspoken point of reference when they discussed in 1860/61 the question of whether these two compositional techniques should be deemed appropriate to employ in opera and oratorio.50 48

KGB 1/1, 357; April 30, 1861. Cf. Chapter 11, section 2. Nietzsche’s knowledge of Berlioz’s Childhood is also suitable to answer a question left open by Dominique Catteau, who devoted a whole monograph to the relationship of Nietzsche and Berlioz. Yet he was perplexed when he asked himself, how to explain the strange turn from Nietzsche’s outright rejection of Berlioz in his 1858 autobiography to his remark in a letter to his mother and sister of Christmas 1864 about his then infamous “predilection for Hektor [sic] Berlioz” (KGB 1/2, 31), asking, “between 1858 and 1864, during the six years at Pforta, what happened in the musical mind of the future thinker? Where does this predilection for Berlioz come from? From when does it date, what made Nietzsche change his mind? Nowhere a clear answer” (Dominique Catteau, Nietzsche et Berlioz: Une amitié stellaire (Paris: Publibook 2001), 128). 50 Both young composers apparently adopted Berlioz’s concept of integrating fugues in their works, Krug in his Faust setting, although he was probably also influenced by Liszt’s Faust Symphony (1857) (cf. his Germania contributions for January and February 1861, “Faustsinfoniafuge” I and II (KGW 1/2, 481, 13 [28])), and Nietzsche in his oratorio (cf. e.g. his Germania contribution for May 1861, “Mariensverkündung mit Fuge” (ibid, 482; Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 265í277)). In a reply to a lost letter of Nietzsche, in which Krug also mentioned his own fugue composition (KGB 1/1, 354; letter of April 1861), he approved of his friend’s plan “to conclude the work with a fugue,” but advised him “not to use fugues excessively, for this will exhaust [the listener] too much and leave a dry impression” (ibid., 355). Both agreed on what Nietzsche called a “prerequisite” for the future reformation of the genre of the oratorio: “to expel the recitative” (ibid., 138; January 14, 1861). While Krug—already a devoted Wagnerian—opted for “the new way of composing” (ibid., 345; end of November 1860), namely to fuse recitative and arioso 49

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For his oratorio, Berlioz was his own librettist because he wanted to be able to shape his composition individually and in an unmistakably personal way. Also, this circumstance must have been attractive as a model for Nietzsche, who had already tried his hand at libretti for his sacred works earlier.51 Although he apparently told Gustav Krug in November 1860 that he was “at a loss with the text”52 after three months of work, he had already begun to draft his own libretto a month earlier (and naturally did not respond to Gustav’s rather ridiculous proposal of using parts of the text of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio) 53. Only three pages of this attempt are preserved.54 In the “Shepherds’ Chorus,” passages from Psalms 25 and 42 constitute a kind of prologue, to be sung by a men’s and a women’s chorus, respectively, while Scene 2 consists of fragments of the Christmas Gospel (Luke 1, 28í35 and 38), to be sung by the archangel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary and a choir of angels (both fragmentarily set to music55). For Scene 1, however, Nietzsche was his own poet, versifying five stanzas to be sung by four “Old men [‘Greise’],” the first of which he set to music in a scene called the “Expectance of the Star [’Sternerwartung’]” in the music manuscript.56 First old man. Oh, may in bright splendor The promise of the star soon be fulfilled! Oh, may this gloomy night Soon be draped in wonderful radiance! sections (instead of separating them), the method that his newly discovered idol Wagner used, Nietzsche advocated the melodrama as a “substitute” (ibid., 139). He might have been led to such an advance by an article by Franz Brendel in the progressive journal Anregungen für Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft (3 (1858): 347í349), to which the Germania subscribed and in which the author, despite his general reservations about the genre, considered the reuse of the eighteenth-century model of melodrama by contemporary composers to be promising. While no traces of a melodramatic adaptation of the text in Nietzsche’s oratorio have survived (but also none of traditional recitatives), we do have his successfully completed melodrama from January 1863, Das zerbrochene Ringlein [‘The broken little ring’] on a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff (cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 27í28). 51 Cf. Chapter 11, section 3. 52 KGB 1/1, 344. 53 Cf. ibid. 54 Cf. KGW 1/2, 215௅217; 9 [1]. 55 Cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 267í270. 56 GSA 71/238,4, B-I-d2, 2.

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Second old man. I’m neither finding rest nor peace; Is it day, is it night? It’s not for me to ask: I’m always watching the stars; When will the miraculous sun arise? Third old man. Whither are scepter, crown and power? Whither have time and happiness vanished? O star, consolation in the gloomy night! Only in you have I found peace. Fourth old man. What blows and rustles so wonderfully? (The mountain is shaking [‘Es bebt der Berg’])57 The thunder rolls so hollowly and distant; The dark night becomes light and clear; The star! The star! All old men. O miraculous light, o merciful brightness! O behold the bright divine sign Before which all stars bow down! O miraculous light, o merciful brightness!58

Apparently, these metaphorical verses are to be sung by the biblical Magi known from Matthew 1:1í12,59 the most obvious hint to this understanding being the allusion to the “scepter, crown and power” in the third quatrain. Nietzsche imagined them in a scene not biblically attested, waiting before their arrival in Jerusalem for the star of Bethlehem, which they finally behold with jubilation in the last quatrain according to Matthew 2:2. In this context, the mention of a “miraculous sun [‘Wundersonne’]” may be surprising, but it exactly reflects the word usage of awakened theologians like August Tholuck,60 with which the young Nietzsche had been familiar for years and whose influence is already recognizable in a prose text written in 1857, Kleine Weihnachtsgabe für meine liebe Mutter [‘Small Christmas 57 This rather theatrical stage direction, to be found in GSA 71/214,3, Mp-I-42, 2, is neither printed in WB, Briefe 1, 221 nor in KGW 1/2, 216; 9 [1], apparently since the editors mistook the brackets in which this sentence is put to be the usual mark Nietzsche would use for a deletion. 58 KGW 1/2, 216; 9 [1]. 59 As it seems, the young librettist was aware of the fact that the Gospel never mentions the number of Magi, so he felt free to determine it to four, or elsewhere to twelve, as we learn from a letter by Gustav Krug (KGB 1/1, 355; April 1861), or just to a single “moor” as in his “The Moor’s Song”. 60 Cf. August Tholuck, Die Glaubwürdigkeit der evangelischen Geschichte, zugleich eine Kritik des Lebens Jesu von Strauß, für theologische und nicht theologische Leser dargestellt (Hamburg: Perthes, 1837), 421 (referring to the “Wundersonne Christi”).

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Present for My Dear Mother’] which, with its night-to-day metaphor, anticipates the dramaturgy of the oratorio. The passage in question culminates in the sentence, “The time of sunrise, however, is what we call Christmas.”61 Previously, the 13-year-old depicted another night that is “even much darker, even much more terrible” than the actual one: “It is called ‘the sin’”.62 He proceeds: Then God […] sent messengers who, filled with divine light, proclaimed to the darkness that its reign would come to an end. For he would let arise a light among them, so as to melt and purify even the darkest hearts. […] Finally, the great sun appeared and shone magnificently, to the poor and the rich, the pious and the ungodly. And this sun is Jesus Christ.63

This text is suffused with vocabulary and terms that awakened Christians would have used and believed in. Nietzsche subsequently quotes a wellknown Christmas carol and concludes with another to be sung together. In general, the text is designed in form and content like a sermon that any awakened pastor would typically have delivered, so that the boy Nietzsche, who, as is well known, was destined by his family to later follow in the footsteps of his deceased father, has thus certainly proven his qualification for such a succession. It is difficult to judge to what extent the young Nietzsche merely willingly met his mother’s expectations by producing such texts64 or whether he had already internalized her desired image to such an extent that

61

KGW 1/1, 205; 3 [23]. Ibid., 204. 63 Ibid., 204í205. 64 According to Karl Klein the young Nietzsche behaved “like an actor”: “depending on the audience he addresses, […] he recites the appropriate role, admittedly with the secret discomfort of having to overcome it in order to find himself” (Karl Klein, Der Glaube an der Wende der Neuzeit (München: Schöningh, 1962), 93), thus also in religious matters “playing along with this role, not because he wanted to deceive those near to him but because he didn’t want to disappoint them” (ibid.). In the Small Christmas Present for My Dear Mother Klein diagnosed a “pastoral pathos,” concluding: “He knows what is required of him, what is good for his mother, how much she admires him, the child prodigy and future theologian” (ibid., 84). Hermann Josef Schmidt also understands this text to mean that “this child, too, courts his mother’s affection,” so that “the empathic son presents us almost completely […] with her religious use of words” (Hermann Josef Schmidt, Nietzsche absconditus oder Spurenlesen bei Nietzsche: Kindheit, vol. 1í2 (Berlin: IBDK Verlag, 1991), 306). 62

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he felt it to be his own ideal.65 (The question will be taken up again below, in relation to a similar text from later years.) Here, it is necessary to show that Nietzsche, with the three stages presented in his draft libretto, has established a basic conception that will characterize his entire oratorio: Prologue: Human need for redemption by God as expressed in Psalm 25 (“Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me! Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.” 66) and in Psalm 42 (“My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”67). Scene 1: expectation of God’s imminent act of salvation (“Expectance of the Star” of the four Old Men). Scene 2: God’s saving action (the Christmas Gospel).

However, Nietzsche left his oratorio as a torso, the recognizable parts of which shall be compiled here. In the period from August 1860 to July 1861, he worked on the following parts of his oratorio, of which we have knowledge either through preserved music manuscripts68 or through written notes. In the following overview, it is shown how the surviving compositions were presumably assigned to the originally planned scenes, to which a third is eventually added.69 Prologue: Pagan World [‘Heidenwelt’] (instrumental), “Guardian, is the night soon gone?” (Isaiah 21:1170) (choral),71 and a Shepherds’ Chorus (Psalm 25). 65

Instead, Jørgen Kjaer plead for taking this text seriously: “To my judgement, this is not just to be interpreted as a courtesy, and definitely not at all as opportunism or a misleading masquerade. By expressing these views, Nietzsche presumably identifies himself to a large extent with them” (Jørgen Kjaer, Friedrich Nietzsche: Die Zerstörung der Humanität durch ,Mutterliebe‘ (Wiesbaden: Springer, 1990), 100). 66 Psalm 25:16a, 22 (King James Version). 67 Psalm 42:2 (King James Version). 68 Regrettably, Janz’s edition is incomplete insofar as it does not print the original versions for piano two-hands of the sections “Heidenwelt” (GSA 71/239, B-II, 22í23), “Sternerwartung” (GSA 71/238,4, B-I-d2 2), and “Der Könige Tod” (GSA 71/239, B-II, 20) (cf. the respective commentary in: Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 349), but contents itself with a synoptical print of the relevant sources that Nietzsche re-used in Schmerz ist der Grundton der Natur (cf. ibid., 350), now set for piano four-hands, that does, however, not mention these subheadings. 69 The only mention of a third scene is GSA 71/239, handwritten page number 18; cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 278 (“Introduction to the 3rd scene,” dated “Easter to Dog Days [1861]”). 70 My translation. 71 Cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 255í257.

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Chapter 12 Scene 1: Expectance of the Star [’Sternerwartung’] (partly instrumental), “The Moor’s Song”, a liturgical prayer (“Blessed are Thou who bore all sin on the trunk of the holy cross”), combined with prophetic words72 from the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 18:15, Jeremiah 23:6). Scene 2: Fragments of the Christmas Gospel, including the Annunciation to Mary [‘Mariae Verkündigung’], another Shepherds’ Chorus, a “Magnificat” and a scene “At the manger [‘An der Krippe’]” (lost). Scene 3: The Death of the Kings [‘Der Könige Tod’] (instrumental, partly identical with the introduction to this scene), possibly to be replaced by a fugue.73

Striking features of the surviving sketches are the high proportion of purely instrumental passages, and, above all, a third scene, a significant expansion compared to the first draft libretto. From a letter by Gustav Krug we learn that Nietzsche temporarily planned “to interweave the 3 Kings into the main section ‘At the manger’, ‘even if it is very anachronistic’” and that he considered to conclude the work with “the death of the 12 Kings,” although, at some point, he had doubted whether this was “suitable for such a joyful oratorio.”74 One can infer two conclusions from these hints: that Nietzsche was in doubt as to whether, according to Matthew 2:11, he should represent (in Scene 2) the gift-giving of the Magi, and that it was important to him to have the Magi die, which means nothing other than the demise of the ‘paganism’ they symbolize. Nietzsche did not abandon his oratorio project altogether. On the contrary, during the summer vacation 1861 he succeeded in fusing three extended instrumental sections of his oratorio into a new and independent composition,75 which served as a monthly contribution to the “Germania;” to corroborate its definitive and dignified status Nietzsche produced a fair copy, neatly written in black ink, for which he took special care. In a letter from early August, he instructed his mother to urgently deliver the precious manuscript to his friends Wilhelm Pinder or Gustav Krug, “but to no one else.”76 He even asked his friends to take care of the binding.77 Apparently, 72

Here Nietzsche takes up again a motif from the Small Christmas Present: “But how did the prophets fare? They were mocked, ridiculed, and even killed” (KGW 1/1, 205; 3 [23]). 73 Cf. ibid., 282í283 and KGB 1/1, 355; April 1861. 74 KGB 1/1, 355; April 1861. 75 Cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 288í297. The composition is intended as a kind of symphonic poem for orchestra and scored for piano four-hands merely out of necessity, given the fact that orchestral writing exceeded Nietzsche’s abilities. 76 KGB 1/1, 167í168, shortly after August 5, 1861. 77 Cf. ibid., 166; draft, presumably August 3, 1861.

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he had only managed to finish the score at the last moment, presumably after working intensively on it during the last week of his vacation. As in the case of his oratorio there is some far-reaching confusion regarding the title of his new compilation. In the same list from 1862, in which Nietzsche had entered the title Weihnachtsoratorium he called it: “‘Schmerz ist Grundton der Natur.’ Tonstück78” [‘“Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature.” Musical piece’]79 and later: “’Schmerz ist der Grundton der Natur’, vierhändig [‘four-hands’]“;80 both Lenzewski and Janz adhered to the latter entry in their work lists.81 This choice of title has left most Nietzsche scholars puzzled. For instance, Martin Albrecht and Bernd Kulawik considered this title “not all too Christian,” it seemed to them “all the more surprising, as one may wonder how music which was originally supposed to represent the festivity of Christmas and its ‘glad tidings’ should suddenly be able to correspond to the new title.”82 Daniel Blue also stated, “There is nothing about God in that title, and, more significantly, the Christmas Oratorio was shelved and never mentioned again.”83 Other authors like Gustav Lenzinger84 and Cesare Natoli85 resorted to the solution of assuming an anticipation of Nietzsche’s later reception of Schopenhauer. But here is a crucial misunderstanding that may originate in Curt Paul Janz’s interpretation of this composition as a secularization of music originally intended for a sacred oratorio. “His [Nietzsche’s] compositions are inspired by religious subjects,” Janz explained in a panel discussion in 1977, in line with his interpretation put down variously, including in his influential Nietzsche biography,86 “it goes on like this until his confirmation 78 The term “Tonstück” is insignificant here for it simply identifies this submission as a musical composition as opposed to a written text. 79 KGW 1/2, 482; 13 [28]. 80 KGW 1/3, 3; 14 [1]. 81 GSA 71/236; Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 325. 82 Martin Albrecht and Bernd Kulawik, “Nietzsches Jugendkompositionen der Pfortenser Zeit,” Nietzscheforschung 1 (1994): 315. 83 Daniel Blue, The Making of Friedrich Nietzsche: The Quest for Identity, 1844í1869 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 127. 84 Lenzinger, Das Problem der Musik, 119, footnote 2. 85 Cesare Natoli, Nietzsche musicista: Frammenti sonori di un filosofo inattuale (Palermo: L’Epos, 2007), 65. 86 Curt Paul Janz, “Die Kompositionen Friedrich Nietzsches,” Nietzsche-Studien 1 (1972): 178; Curt Paul Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie, vol. 1 (München: Hanser, 1978), 90; Curt Paul Janz, “Die Musik im Leben Friedrich Nietzsches,” Nietzsche-Studien 26 (1997): 76.

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in [March] 1861. Soon afterwards, however, Nietzsche’s tendency changes. He removes e.g. three instrumental movements from the Christmas Oratorio and ‘converts’ them […] into a four-hand piano fantasy.”87 Later Janz became even more specific: [W]ith the “conversion” of these parts of the Christmas Oratorio into a free piano fantasy, he [Nietzsche] […] overcomes his attachment to the piety of his closest circle.88

For Simone Zacchini, for whom Nietzsche’s first encounter with Wagner’s Tristan during the Easter vacations of 1861 was the decisive event that brought about an “abrupt, sudden and unexpected revolution”89 in his life, this transfer also signifies a “secularization of the religious”: The same music, with its uniqueness and clarity that was supposed to lead to and directly indicate God is used here to direct to a nascent pessimism.90

However, a close examination of the sources and insight into the young Nietzsche’s working habit and reading experiences convey quite the opposite picture and will eventually illuminate the meaning of this peculiar choice of title. To begin with, the wording on the title page of the fair copy is sufficiently precise: Motto.

“Schmerz ist der Grundton der Natur.” Kerner.91 Thus, Nietzsche chose the line by Justinus Kerner just because it suited him best to summarize the content of his composition that, nota bene, otherwise

87 Curt Paul Janz, “Friedrich Nietzsches Verhältnis zur Musik seiner Zeit,” Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978): 330. 88 Curt Paul Janz, “Das Form-Inhalt-Problem in Friedrich Nietzsches Musikauffassung,” in Philosophische Tradition im Dialog mit der Gegenwart: Festschrift für Hansjörg A. Salmony, edited by Andreas Cesana and Olga Rubitschon (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1985), 178. 89 Simone Zacchini, “Qualcosa come il pane. La musica di Nietzsche tra ispirazione religiosa e demoniaco wagneriano,” in Destinazioni: Attualità e inattualità del pensiero di Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Federica Fanizza, Giorgio Penzo and Graziano Riccadonna (Rapallo: Editrice Zona, 2001), 214. 90 Ibid., 215. 91 GSA 71/240,1.

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remained as nameless as his oratorio.92 Nietzsche had no intent whatsoever to repurpose this music into a musical representation of the poem he alluded to. This observation naturally results in the question of what called Nietzsche’s attention to the particular line by this Swabian poet and physician (1786í1862). Kerner has left no further traces in Nietzsche’s writings or letters, and was also never considered by him as a textual source for one of his songs. However, two crucial sources are disclosed here for the first time. Given the fact that Nietzsche was an attentive reader of the then popular and affordable paperback series Moderne Klassiker, authored by Arthur Friedrich Bussenius,93 and the influence that the latter’s introduction to Friedrich Hölderlin exerted on him only a few months later when he would virtually exploit this source for his school essay on the poet,94 it is very likely that he was directed to his caption through the same channel, namely by a passage in Bussenius’ introduction to Kerner from the same series that

92

The quotation marks in which Kerner’s line is placed should be noted here as well as in the two later entries of the contributions to the “Germania” (cf. footnote 2 above). 93 This series, subtitled Deutsche Literaturgeschichte der neueren Zeit in Biographien, Kritiken und Proben, appeared from 1852 to 1854 in the Kassel publishing house Ernst Balde in sixty volumes, supplemented by the series Die Componisten der neueren Zeit. According to Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Arthur Friedrich Bussenius (1824í1858) was the sole author and editor of all volumes, which he published anonymously or using the pen-name “W. Neumann” (August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Mein Leben: Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen, vol. 6 (Hannover: Rümpler, 1868), 26, footnote 3). Nietzsche first mentioned this series in a letter from November 1858 (KSB 1, 25); numerous volumes thereof are part of his library, cf. Giuliano Campioni, Paolo D’Iorio et al. (Eds.), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003), 209, 241, 301í302, 314, 329, 628. 94 KGW 1/2, 338í341; 12 [2]. The essay, Letter to My Friend, in which I Recommend that He Read my Favorite Poet, is dated October 19, 1861. Nietzsche’s usage, or rather plagiarism of Bussenius’s introduction was first demonstrated “beyond any shadow of a doubt” (Daniel Breazeale, “Lange, Nietzsche, and Stack: The Question of “Influence”,” International Studies in Philosophy 21, no. 2 (1989): 99) by Geoffrey Waite (Geoffrey Carter Wallace Waite, Nietzsche/Hölderlin: A Critical Reevaluation (Ph. D. Princeton University, 1978), 198í238) who dated Nietzsche’s reading of his source to the summer of 1861 (ibid., 198), the period when he was also busy compiling Schmerz ist der Grundton der Natur. Waite, however, also pointed out the lasting impact this Hölderlin introduction had on Nietzsche (ibid., 420).

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Nietzsche demonstrably possessed.95 This is all the more probable as the line in question is here already palpably presented as a motto: The actual main content of Kerner’s poetry is less the outer, far more the inner life of man, thereafter man’s life in nature. Kerner hasn’t written any large, powerful, deeply touching poems; mostly he moves in the area of human suffering, only rarely his poetry is colored by joy. He took, as it were, a wording that appears in his poems as a motto [‘Wahrspruch’] for his poetry: Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature [‘Schmerz ist Grundton der Natur‘].96

In view of the attested quick comprehension, which already the young Nietzsche possessed,97 it should come as no surprise if he drew his motto directly from this source without further consulting the quoted poem itself (which is not printed in the book and whose details do not fit the structure of his composition). Further evidence to support this hypothesis is that the author points on the same page to Kerner’s religious poems, or to poems related to this topic “in which he [Kerner] expresses his longing for the Beyond, for certain superhuman things,” and quotes an undisclosed “critic,” identified here as Johannes Scherr, who had discussed poems in which Kerner expressed “his homesickness for the home above [‘Heimweh nach der höhern Heimath’].”98 For knowledgeable readers this formulation would have readily recalled the famous opening line of Jung-Stilling’s allegoric novel Das Heimweh [‘The Homesickness’] (1794í1796), “Blessed are those who are homesick, for they shall come home,”99 which Nietzsche was probably familiar with, given his revivalist religious upbringing.100 Scherr goes on to say:

95 The volume is listed as part of his library, cf. Campioni, D’Iorio et al. (Eds.), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek, 329. 96 [Arthur Friedrich Bussenius], Moderne Klassiker: Deutsche Literaturgeschichte der neueren Zeit in Biographien, Kritiken und Proben, vol. 40: Justinus Kerner (Kassel: Balde, 1854), 25í26. 97 Waite’s detective work revealed that Nietzsche wrote his Hölderlin essay “with great haste,” seemingly within a few hours (Waite, Nietzsche/Hölderlin, 200). 98 [Bussenius], Justinus Kerner, 26. 99 Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling, Das Heimweh, edited by Martina-Maria Sam (Dornach: Verlag am Goetheanum, 1994), 5. 100 On Jung-Stilling cf. Chapter 11, section 1.

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[W]e always feel elevated by the religious trait of this pure poetic soul when it […] aspires to heaven in childlike devotion and draws new nourishment for its pious trust in God even from the sentiment of being abandoned by everything in this world.101

The second source stems from quite another context. In 1899 Carl Gustav Jung pointed out that there was a remarkable similarity between a passage in ‘Von großen Ereignissen’ [‘Of Great Events’] in Part Two of Also sprach Zarathustra and the account of an incident which was […] reprinted in Blätter aus Prevorst […], a collection of reports of occult and unexplained phenomena put together by […] Justinus Kerner […]. Jung was so struck by the similarity of these passages that he maintained that Nietzsche must have read this account and then reproduced it almost word for word many years later, without knowing that he was doing so.102

Subsequently Jung asked Nietzsche’s sister for assistance, who replied to him, without confirming forthrightly her brother’s reading of this particular source, that he was “vividly occupied with Justinus Kerner in his childhood years between the ages of 12 and 15,” and that Kerner’s writings were in the possession of “our grandfather Pastor Oehler in Pobles, at least I remember that we both immersed ourselves in this author at his home during our vacations.”103 In his 1858 autobiography Nietzsche remembered his maternal grandfather, David Ernst Oehler, as “serious, but also cheerful.”104 This unimposing wording might be a hint to his broad-minded and liberal attitude that is also reflected in the composition of his library. “I liked best to stay in my grandpa’s study,” Nietzsche recorded, “and delving among the old books and magazines was my greatest pleasure.”105 Oehler passed away in December 1859 when Nietzsche was 15 years old, which accounts for the age mentioned by Förster-Nietzsche. Though, as generally known, the credibility of Nietzsche’s sister is highly disputable, there is no reason not

101

[Bussenius], Justinus Kerner, 26í27; cf. Johannes Scherr, Poeten der Jetztzeit in Briefen an eine Frau (Stuttgart: Franckh, 1844), 84. 102 Paul Bishop, The Dionysian self: C. G. Jung’s reception of Friedrich Nietzsche (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), 83. 103 Quoted in: Paul Bishop, “The Jung/Förster-Nietzsche Correspondence,” German Life and Letters 46, no. 4 (1993): 328 (letter draft of November 24, 1899). With books or writings ‘on Kerner’ she certainly meant to say ‘by Kerner’. 104 KGW 1/1, 303; 4 [77]. 105 Ibid.

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to trust her here;106 it seems a well-established fact that Nietzsche discovered Kerner before 1859 at his grandfather’s house, who presumably also introduced him to this writer. The twelve volumes of the Pages from Prevorst (1831í1839) were a sequel to Kerner’s most popular book, The Seeress of Prevorst: Being Revelations Concerning the Inner-Life of Man, and the Inter-Diffusion of a World of Spirits in the One We Inhabit (1829/1832).107 The book gives an account of Kerner’s treatment of his patient Friederike Hauffe, who had communicated with spirits and experienced visions of the Beyond. The Christian foundation of this book is made clear, for example, by the inclusion of a statement by Kerner’s friend, the physician and philosopher Carl August Eschenmayer, who declared: The return to the higher center is only possible through faith, and all men who trust in and boast of their own cleverness and wisdom deviate from the straight path and fall victim to the power of error and delusion.108

Like The Seeress, which used as an esoteric motto the words of Jesus, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. (Luke 10:21)109

the Pages from Prevorst could not be more appropriate for the library of a pastor, even if he had, like Oehler presumably, no particular neo-pietistic inclinations. In his introduction to the first volume Kerner proclaimed that “when man’s ado is not directed to the true, beautiful and good, to the holy, to the kingdom of God, it’s always a vain activity,”110 and declared in a 106

Babette Babich came to the same conclusion: “[O]ne might expect commentators to be quick to ask whether Elisabeth was lying, but lying would serve no purpose here” (Babette Babich, “Le Zarathoustra de Nietzsche et le style parodique. À propos de l’hyperanthropos de Lucien et du surhomme de Nietzsche,” Diogène 232 (2010): 100, footnote 45). 107 Justinus Kerner, The Seeress of Prevorst: Being Revelations Concerning the Inner-Life of Man, and the Inter-Diffusion of a World of Spirits in the One We Inhabit, tr. by C. Crowe (New York: Partridge & Brittan, 1855). 108 Justinus Kerner, Die Seherin von Prevorst: Eröffnungen über das innere Leben des Menschen und über das Hereinragen einer Geisterwelt in die unsere, 4th Edition (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1846), 266. 109 Kerner, The Seeress of Prevorst, 5. 110 Justinus Kerner (Ed.), Blätter aus Prevorst: Originalien und Lesefrüchte für Freunde des innern Lebens, vol. 1 (Karlsruhe: Braun, 1831), V.

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motto-like poem that these pages were assembled for those “who are still held in bonds by mundane matters” in order to “wake them from their safe calm”: Let them contemplate what they will attain Once the coffin will close its lid Above their corpses at their parting!111

In a chapter signed with “– y –“, presumably a code for Kerner himself, in the volume that contains the story Jung in which was interested, the Lutheran pastor and forerunner of Baroque pietism, Johann Arndt, is mentioned as an example of a pious Christian who had experienced in his hour of death the glory of God “that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, that has never entered a human heart,”112 and the incident which Nietzsche would later quote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is introduced by a larger reflection of the author on human sin, divine punishment and the need for reversal.113 The examples given of the newly identified sources of Nietzsche’s knowledge of Justinus Kerner suffice to show that he most likely did not meet him as some unspecified Romantic poet, but as an occultist, religious visionary, and devout Christian whose 1839 poem Der Grundton der Natur114 reflects, according to Alan Cottrell, his “belief in the painful quality of all nature, separated from the Beyond through its existence in space and time.”115 In complete agreement with this religious mood, Nietzsche selected three extended instrumental sections from his previous compositions for his oratorio and combined them with Kerner’s motto. In doing so, he was able to draw on the clear structure that he had created in his oratorio up to that point, something that must have been of particular concern to him. At the height of his preoccupation with this work, he demanded in a letter to Gustav Krug that an oratorio, in order to “make a sacred impression,” must consist of “few but larger parts, following the course of events and bearing a uniform character throughout.”116 Obviously, he took this requirement into

111

Ibid., no pagination. Justinus Kerner (ed.), Blätter aus Prevorst: Originalien und Lesefrüchte für Freunde des innern Lebens, vol. 4 (Karlsruhe: Braun, 1833), 64. 113 Cf. ibid., 48í51. 114 Justinus Kerner, Dichtungen, vol. 1, 3rd Edition (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1841), 309. 115 Alan P. Cottrell, “Justinus Kerner: „Der Grundton der Natur“,” The German Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1966): 181. 116 KSB 1, 138; January 14, 1861. 112

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account in his own work, as this overview of its presumed structure, reduced to the most basic statements, shows: 117 Prologue: Depiction of the pagan world, human need for redemption. Scene 1: Expectance of the Star, symbolizing God’s imminent act of salvation. Scene 2: God’s saving action as related in the Christmas Gospel. Scene 3: The death of the Magi,118 symbolizing the demise of the pagan world, thus the victory of Christianity.

In comparison, Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature has the following outline; interestingly, Nietzsche reverts to his original idea of how to conclude the work: 1. Pagan World [‘Heidenwelt’] 2. Expectance of the Star [‘Sternerwartung’] 3. The Death of the Kings [‘Der Könige Tod’]

Since Janz was unable to discern an overall conception of the oratorio,119 his view of the message of the later composition was obscured, which becomes clear when one realizes that in the last instance the former overall conception has actually been preserved, except for the conspicuous omission of Scene 2, the very scene one would most readily associate with a Christmas Oratorio. Since instrumental sections of this scene were also available, it must have been a conceptual decision. On the one hand, Nietzsche consciously deviated from the traditional Christmas message that he may have deemed “anachronistic”120 (also equal to Berlioz in this respect121), on the other hand, the new composition remains decidedly Christian.

117

In terms of content, one can also assume a revivalist influence here, as it is expressed, for example, in the Hauschoralbuch that Nietzsche had wished for Christmas 1860 (cf. Chapter 11, section 3). 118 Provided that Nietzsche had dropped his idea to replace this section with a final fugue. 119 Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 348; Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche, 89. 120 KGB 1/1, 355; April 1861. 121 In his Childhood of Christ, Berlioz so obviously avoided presenting the actual Christmas story in the libretto that his oratorio has been listed among the “many fine nineteenth-century religious compositions by unbelievers” (Rushton, “Oratorium eines Zukunftsmusiker,” 48).

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Another indication of this Christian dimension is the word “Heidenwelt” [‘pagan world’], which, unlike the more commonly used “Heidentum” [‘paganism’], is a rare, striking term. After using it in 1861 to designate a section of his oratorio, Nietzsche employed it again in the following year in the title of a short writing, Pagan World and Christianity [‘Heidenwelt und Christenthum’] (thus linking these two works together), which openly affirms the Christian faith to such an extent that most scholars were perplexed when they considered it in the context of a neighboring Fate and History [‘Fatum und Geschichte’], which occupies a significant place in Nietzsche scholarship as his first philosophical writing that is unequivocally critical of Christianity.122 The text is quoted here in full; letters (A, B, C) referred to below have been added. Pagan World and Christianity (A) A gloomy night image ʊ deeply gray clouds rush across the sky ʊ now and then ghostly streaks of light from the rising moon glide over the landscape. Painfully tattered, the wailing of humanity in need of redemption can be heard from the depths of the night. Eerie thoughts, lurid outbursts of despair and enthusiastic longing for a saving redeemerʊ, at one time sounds of madness, a strangely indefinite intertwining of sounds, at another time gentle and touching changes of harmony. ʊ (B) Quietly, rising from the depths, Christianity announces itself in tender chords, not in a titanic abundance of sounds, but modestly and yet enveloping the world. A fierce struggle begins; rigid and grim, paganism seems to resist; in rumbling figures it rises to threatening heights, (C) but the sounds of the sweet Gospel pierce it, annunciating comfort to the restless, yearning world, until at last the heavenly promise resounds in full chords; the pagan voices fade away; Christianity has triumphed and now rolls in mighty, vast harmonies across the globe, tying the world back to the heaven it has lost, not without hard struggle, yet flowing in measured calm, a universal stream, unstoppable, rolling gloriously, whose source is God’s infinite, world-encompassing love. ʊ123

122

E.g. Klein, Der Glaube, 112; Manfred Kaempfert, Säkularisation und neue Heiligkeit: Religiöse und religionsbezogene Sprache bei Friedrich Nietzsche (Berlin: Schmidt, 1971), 34; Johann Figl, “Ästhetische Theorie und tragische Existenz: Musikverständnis als Erlebnishorizont des jungen Nietzsche,” Mesotes – Zeitschrift für philosophischen Ost-West-Dialog 2, no. 4 (1992): 470í471; Hermann Josef Schmidt, Nietzsche absconditus oder Spurenlesen bei Nietzsche: II. Jugend, vol. 2 (Berlin: IBDK Verlag, 1995), 121. 123 KGW 1/2, 440௅441; 13 [8].

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On a purely linguistic level, the abundance of musical terminology (sounds, harmony, chords, figures, voices) is outstanding. Hermann Josef Schmidt, the pioneer in the study of the earliest Nietzsche, came very close to deciphering this text when he observed: Significantly, no argument is made anywhere in the whole text, feelings, moods, images are conjured up that give the impression of a musical composition.124

Indeed, this text is a musical composition, or, more precisely, a verbal paraphrase, written down retrospectively, of his composition Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature, with two differences to the content of the three parts within the oratorio: The proclamation of Christianity, musically represented by a solemn chorale, now emerges from the depths, which, however, corresponds to Nietzsche’s music at this point, and a struggle is introduced between Christianity and paganism, with the rumbling figures of the latter foreshadowed in the ‘shaking mountain’ in the first draft libretto.125 As far as style and vocabulary is concerned, Pagan World and Christianity resembles in an astonishing way the description of his tone poem Ermanarich that Nietzsche had put down in a review of his own work half a year earlier, as some examples may show. Ermanarich several very bold transitions. […] Weltschmerz is introduced by strange harmonies, which are very rough and painful […].126

Pagan World and Christianity at one time sounds of madness, a strangely indefinite intertwining of sounds, at another time gentle and touching changes of harmony.

Now the sounds of the wedding march approach him from afar, happy and sad, bitter and sweet […].127

Quietly, rising from the depths, Christianity announces itself in tender chords, not in a titanic abundance of sounds, but modestly […].

124

Schmidt, Nietzsche absconditus, vol. II/2, 119. Cf. footnote 57. 126 KGW 1/3, 7; 14 [2]. 127 Ibid., 6. 125

Pagan World and Christianity sudden cries of despair128

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lurid outbursts of despair129

In Pagan World and Christianity, musical metaphors are used not only as a literary method, but like in the review of Ermanarich as a description of music that actually exists. The three sections of Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature are clearly discernible in the flow of the text: (A) Pagan World (“the wailing of humanity in need of redemption,” “enthusiastic longing for a saving redeemer,” Kerner’s “Fundamental Tone of Nature”), (B) Expectance of the Star (“Christianity is proclaimed in tender chords”), (C) The Death of the Kings (“the pagan voices fade away; Christianity has triumphed”).

Since the later piece is a compression of the oratorio—minus the Christmas story—this text also quasi-represents the program of the oratorio, whose subject-matter originates in the Small Christmas Present for his mother discussed above, but eventually goes far beyond the concern of a “Christmas oratorio.” While Fate and History was submitted to the “Germania” in March 1862, Pagan World and Christianity is an utterly private note, or rather Nietzsche’s way of depicting the history of the victorious church, for the text is connected with excerpts about the beginnings of Christian music in Europe, which he made from the then new history of music by Franz Brendel.130 There, the author proclaimed by way of introduction, we are dealing here with the history of Christian music, in the double sense that not only the music of the pre-Christian, but also that of the later nonChristian peoples is excluded.131

He reasoned as follows:

128

Ibid. KGW 1/2, 440; 13 [8]. 130 Franz Brendel, Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich von den ersten christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, vol. 1. 2nd Edition (Leipzig: Matthes, 1855). 131 Ibid., 7. Here Brendel followed the point of view of the textbook Geschichte der europäisch-abendländischen oder unsrer heutigen Musik by Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, which appeared in its second edition in 1846. 129

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This statement points to the core of Nietzsche’s problem. Schmidt rightly observed that in Pagan World and Christianity “the component of rational problem solving does not seem to be present, Nietzsche exclusively seems to emphasize emotionality.”133 If one understands this text not as an intellectual challenge but as a poetic verbalization of existing music shaped by the sentiments of a “religion of the heart,”134 then it does not contradict the statements of Fate and History which are critical of Christianity; on the contrary, it embodies the fundamental dilemma expressed in this writing: I have tried to deny everything: oh, tearing down is easy, but building up! And even tearing down seems easier than it is; we are determined to the marrow by the impressions of our childhood, the influences exerted by our parents, of our education so that these deeply rooted prejudices are not easily eradicated by rational arguments or sheer will power.135

For the fusion of music and religion was too deeply rooted in Nietzsche’s infancy; he could not easily separate himself emotionally from what he had already rationally rejected. In Fate and History Nietzsche also blames “painful experiences” and “sorrowful events” for “leading our hearts back again to our old childhood belief.”136 We know of such an incident through a letter that Nietzsche addressed to his mother shortly after the end of his Easter vacation in 1861 which he spent by composing what would be his last contributions to the oratorio137 and, for several years, to sacred music in general.138 He told her that

132

Ibid., 8. Brendel calls music „die Kunst des Gemüths“. Schmidt, Nietzsche absconditus, vol. II/2, 119. 134 Ibid., 121. 135 KGW 1/ 2, 433; 13 [6]. 136 Ibid. 137 Cf. ibid., 300௅302; 11 [14]. 138 These compositions were followed only by a fragmentarily preserved Kyrie for chorus, solo voice and orchestra, which he composed five years later for his mother’s birthday (cf. Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass, 79, and KSB 2, 108; January 31, 1866) and a theological parody from his Basle period, Responsory of Church History between a Chorus of Students of Theology and a Chorus of Enraged Listeners (1871). 133

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to me, too, this Easter vacation, otherwise so beautiful, seems to be clouded and darkened by the ugly incidents, and whenever I think of it, I feel most painfully disturbed about having aggrieved you so much. I beg your pardon again, dear mom! For it would be sad indeed if I had troubled our lovely mutual relationship through this discord. […] Furthermore, I will try as hard as I can to fill the rift that has been caused by me with my conduct and my love for you.139

Richard Blunck surmised that the “rift” in the relationship with his mother was due to a dispute over religious issues.140 If this is the case, this would have resulted a few months later precisely not in a further detachment from the faith, but in a final, utmost effort to realize it, at least by artistic means. The completion of his oratorio in the new garb of the tone poem Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature will then have to be counted among the “inner effort[s]” Nietzsche mentioned two decades later that he had undertaken since his childhood for the “ideals” of Christianity.141 With impressive devotion, he would thus have succeeded in a work that is both a glorification of Christianity and a farewell to it. More than twenty years after its creation, Nietzsche was again confronted with his youthful oratorio. On July 26, 1882, the long-announced premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal took place in Bayreuth. His sister attended this event together with Lou Andreas-Salomé, while Nietzsche refrained from doing so, offended by not having been personally invited by the composer. The Sunday before, however, he spent in Naumburg to prepare his sister “a little more for Parsifal. What happened then was strange enough for me,” he wrote to Heinrich Köselitz: Finally I said: “My dear sister, quite this kind of music I made as a boy, back when I was making my oratorio”—and now I took out the old manuscripts and, after a long interval, played them again: the identity of atmosphere and expression was fabulous [’märchenhaft’]! Yes, some passages, e.g. “The Death of the Kings,” seemed more poignant to both of us than anything we had performed for ourselves from P, but still quite parsifalesque! I confess: with a real horror I became aware again how closely I am actually related to W.142

139

KSB 1, 154í155; April 1861. Reprinted in: Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche, 93. 141 KSB 6, 110; July 23, 1881; cf. Chapter 11, footnote 6, p. 225. 142 Ibid., 231; July 25, 1882 (highlights are from the original). 140

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Fig. 12.4 shows the opening bars of the section The Death of the Kings from Nietzsche’s Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature in its original notation for piano, two hands.143 Fig. 12.4íFriedrich Nietzsche, “Der Könige Tod” [‘The Death of the Kings’], mm 1-6.

When Nietzsche, in his unpublished 1884 poem An Richard Wagner [‘To Richard Wagner’], called out to the composer who had died the previous year: Alas! That you too sank before the cross You too!144

he knew that he was addressing these words partly to himself.

Bibliography Albrecht, Martin and Bernd Kulawik. “Nietzsches Jugendkompositionen der Pfortenser Zeit.” Nietzscheforschung 1 (1994): 313-334. Babich, Babette. “Le Zarathoustra de Nietzsche et le style parodique. À propos de l’hyperanthropos de Lucien et du surhomme de Nietzsche.” Diogène 232 (2010): 81-104. Berrini, Marco. “Il Weihnachtsoratorium di Friedrich Nietzsche.” Civiltà musicale 15, no. 41 (2000): 106-122. Bishop, Paul. “The Jung/Förster-Nietzsche Correspondence.” German Life and Letters 46, no. 4 (1993): 319-330. Bishop, Paul. The Dionysian self: C. G. Jung’s reception of Friedrich Nietzsche. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995.

143

GSA 71/239, B-II, 20; this version is not included in Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass; cf. footnote 68. Missing accidentals have been added editorially in small print. 144 KGW 7/3, 27; 28 [48].

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Bloch, Peter André. “Nietzsches „Weihnachten“ und „Neujahr“: Feiertage des jungen Nietzsche im Naumburger Familien- und Freundeskreis.” In Der Mensch – sein eigenes Experiment?: Kolloquium 2003 des Nietzsche-Forums München und Vorträge aus den Jahren 2003í2005, edited by Beatrix Vogel, 613-650. München: Allitera, 2008. Bloch, Peter André. “Nietzsches musikalisches Schreiben: Zum V. Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft.” Nietzsche-Studien 45 (2016), 113-131. Bloch, Peter André. “Zur Rolle der beiden Gedichtzyklen in Nietzsches ‚Fröhlicher Wissenschaft‘.” In Nietzsche und die Lyrik: Ein Kompendium, edited by Christian Benne and Claus Zittel, 135-160. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2017. Blue, Daniel. The Making of Friedrich Nietzsche: The Quest for Identity, 1844í1869. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Breazeale, Daniel. “Lange, Nietzsche, and Stack: The Question of “Influence”.” International Studies in Philosophy 21, no. 2 (1989): 91– 101. Brendel, Franz. Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich von den ersten christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, vol. 1. 2nd Edition. Leipzig: Matthes, 1855. [Bussenius, Arthur Friedrich]. Moderne Klassiker: Deutsche Literaturgeschichte der neueren Zeit in Biographien, Kritiken und Proben, vol. 40: Justinus Kerner. Kassel: Balde, 1854. [published anonymously, authorship secured] Campioni, Giuliano, Paolo D’Iorio et al. (Eds.). Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003. Catteau, Dominique. Nietzsche et Berlioz: Une amitié stellaire. Paris: Publibook 2001. Cottrell, Alan P. “Justinus Kerner: “Der Grundton der Natur”.” The German Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1966): 173-186. Figl, Johann. “Ästhetische Theorie und tragische Existenz: Musikverständnis als Erlebnishorizont des jungen Nietzsche.” Mesotes – Zeitschrift für philosophischen Ost-West-Dialog 2, no. 4 (1992): 466–477. Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s, vol. 1. Leipzig: Naumann, 1895. Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. The Life of Nietzsche, vol. 1: The Young Nietzsche. New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1912. Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence. New York: Liveright, 1949. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, August Heinrich. Mein Leben: Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen, vol. 6. Hannover: Rümpler, 1868.

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Janz, Curt Paul. “Die Kompositionen Friedrich Nietzsches.” NietzscheStudien 1 (1972): 173-184. Janz, Curt Paul. Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie, vol. 1. München: Hanser, 1978. Janz, Curt Paul. “Friedrich Nietzsches Verhältnis zur Musik seiner Zeit.” Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978): 308-338. Janz, Curt Paul. “Das Form-Inhalt-Problem in Friedrich Nietzsches Musikauffassung.” In Philosophische Tradition im Dialog mit der Gegenwart: Festschrift für Hansjörg A. Salmony, edited by Andreas Cesana and Olga Rubitschon, 173-191. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1985. Janz, Curt Paul. “Die Musik im Leben Friedrich Nietzsches.” NietzscheStudien 26 (1997): 72-86. Jaspers, Kristina. “Friedrich Nietzsche: Leben als Experiment.” In Nietzsche und die Lebenskunst: Ein philosophisch-psychologisches Kompendium, edited by Günter Gödde, Nikolaos Loukidelis and Jörg Zifras, 38-46. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2016. Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Das Heimweh, edited by Martina-Maria Sam. Dornach: Verlag am Goetheanum, 1994. Kaempfert, Manfred. Säkularisation und neue Heiligkeit: Religiöse und religionsbezogene Sprache bei Friedrich Nietzsche. Berlin: Schmidt, 1971. Kerner, Justinus (Ed.). Blätter aus Prevorst: Originalien und Lesefrüchte für Freunde des innern Lebens, vol. 1. Karlsruhe: Braun, 1831. Kerner, Justinus. (Ed.). Blätter aus Prevorst: Originalien und Lesefrüchte für Freunde des innern Lebens, vol. 4. Karlsruhe: Braun, 1833. Kerner, Justinus. Dichtungen, vol. 1. 3rd Edition. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1841. Kerner, Justinus. Die Seherin von Prevorst: Eröffnungen über das innere Leben des Menschen und über das Hereinragen einer Geisterwelt in die unsere. 4th Edition. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1846. Kerner, Justinus. The Seeress of Prevorst: Being Revelations Concerning the Inner-Life of Man, and the Inter-Diffusion of a World of Spirits in the One We Inhabit. Tr. by C. Crowe. New York: Partridge & Brittan, 1855. Kjaer, Jørgen. Friedrich Nietzsche: Die Zerstörung der Humanität durch ,Mutterliebe‘. Wiesbaden: Springer, 1990. Klein, Karl. Der Glaube an der Wende der Neuzeit. München: Schöningh, 1962. Krug, Walther. “Friedrich Nietzsche als Freund.” Atlantis 20, no. 2 (1948): 77-80.

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Lenzinger, Gustav. Das Problem der Musik und des Musikalischen bei Nietzsche, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Jugendepoche. Ph. D. University of Freiburg (1943). Konstanz: Self-publishing, 1951. Natoli, Cesare. Nietzsche musicista: Frammenti sonori di un filosofo inattuale. Palermo: L’Epos, 2007. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Der musikalische Nachlass, edited by Curt Paul Janz. Basel: Bärenreiter, 1976. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Weihnachtsoratorium. Ars Cantica Choir; Francesco Lotoro, piano; Marco Berrini, conductor. Buccininasco: Sarx Records, 1998, SX 029-2 (CD). Nietzsche, Friedrich. Weihnachtsoratorium: Reconstruction of [sic] musical and literary text by Francesco Lotoro. Barletta: Editrice Rotas, 2012. Pohl, Richard. Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, vol. 3: Hektor Berlioz: Studien und Erinnerungen. Leipzig: Schlicke, 1884. Prange, Martine. “Was Nietzsche Ever a True Wagnerian? Nietzsche’s Late Turn to and Early Doubt about Richard Wagner.” Nietzsche-Studien 40 (2011): 43-71. Prange, Martine. Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Rushton, Julian. “‘Oratorium eines Zukunftsmusiker [sic]’: The Pre-history of L’Enfance du Christ.” In Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies. Essays in Honour of François Lesure, edited by Barbara L. Kelly and Kerry Murphy, 35-51. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Scherr, Johannes. Poeten der Jetztzeit in Briefen an eine Frau. Stuttgart: Franckh, 1844. Schmidt, Hermann Josef. Nietzsche absconditus oder Spurenlesen bei Nietzsche: Kindheit, vol. 1-2. Berlin: IBDK Verlag, 1991. Schmidt, Hermann Josef. Nietzsche absconditus oder Spurenlesen bei Nietzsche: II. Jugend, vol. 2. Berlin: IBDK Verlag, 1995. Tholuck, August. Die Glaubwürdigkeit der evangelischen Geschichte, zugleich eine Kritik des Lebens Jesu von Strauß, für theologische und nicht theologische Leser dargestellt. Hamburg: Perthes, 1837. Villwock, Peter. “Unterwegs zur Goldenen Losung: Nietzsches Wanderer und sein christlicher Schatten.” In Engadiner Gedanken-Gänge: Friedrich Nietzsche, der Wanderer und sein Schatten, edited by Timon Boehm and Peter Villwock, 165-211. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2021. Waite, Geoffrey Carter Wallace. Nietzsche/Hölderlin: A Critical Reevaluation. Ph. D. Princeton University, 1978. Walter, Meinrad. “„Ohne Weihnachtsoratorium ist Weihnachten nur die halbe Wahrheit.“ Johann Sebastian Bachs berühmtes Oratorium im Krisenjahr 2020.” feinschwarz-net. Last modified December 10, 2021. https://www.feinschwarz.net/bachs-weihnachtsoratorium-heute.

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Zacchini, Simone. “Qualcosa come il pane. La musica di Nietzsche tra ispirazione religiosa e demoniaco wagneriano.” In Destinazioni: Attualità e inattualità del pensiero di Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Federica Fanizza, Giorgio Penzo and Graziano Riccadonna, 209-231. Rapallo: Editrice Zona, 2001. Anonymous. “Correspondenz.” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 53, no. 20 (1860): 170-172. Anonymous. “Nachrichten.” Euterpe – Eine Musik-Zeitschrift für Deutschlands Volksschullehrer sowie für Cantoren, Organisten, Musiklehrer und Freunde der Tonkunst überhaupt 18, no. 2 (1859): 46-48.

CHAPTER 13 NIETZSCHE’S USE OF MUSIC AS A RHETORICAL DEVICE BENJAMIN MORITZ

Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings have become part of Western culture’s vocabulary and consciousness to a larger extent than most philosophers. One could argue that it is not only the unique content of his works that lead to its pervasiveness, but also his hyperbolic style and tone. His texts are filled with exhortations, exaggerations, polemical attacks, metaphors and wild comparisons. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Nietzsche’s works could surely bring to mind numerous inflammatory or “unphilosophical” passages. To provide but one brief example, Nietzsche introduces The Gay Science not with a philosophical history lesson, or examination of a contemporary ethical question, but with a “Prelude of Rhymes,” including the following poem of provocation: Those old capricious fancies, friend! You say your palate naught can please, I hear you bluster, spit and wheeze, My love, my patience soon will end! Pluck up your courage, follow me— Here's a fat toad! Now then, don't blink, Swallow it whole, nor pause to think! From your dyspepsia you'll be free!1

Passages such as these represent a decisive and remarkable break from the previous 2000 years of philosophical writings. Some scholars have approached this difference as if it were merely a stylistic one and moved on to examine the content of the work, as if Nietzsche and Kant differed only 1 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001), 15.

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in their “style.” Much to the contrary, Nietzsche’s writing is characterized by his “most multifarious art of style” (to borrow a phrase from Alexander Nehemas)2 rather than a consistent adherence to one style. Furthermore, Nietzsche uses these varying styles as literary devices to convey his message and involve the reader. In short, Nietzsche’s styles are not a vapid surface superimposed over a philosophical skeleton; they are simultaneously form and content. Considering Nietzsche’s focus on style, his intimate connection with music—as student, admirer, performer, and composer—is not surprising. Amongst all the arts, music is the most abstract and least descriptive, and therefore the best medium in which to engage with style qua substance. Nietzsche’s interest in music went far beyond mere appreciation, and he was in fact a talented amateur composer and pianist. At the risk of repeating what my fellow contributors have described elsewhere in this anthology, a summary of his early musical experiences will provide useful context. In his teenage years he aspired to become a professional musician, and it was only during college that he decided to pursue philology instead. As these new studies began to play a larger role in his life, he was forced to concentrate less on music and, consequently, most of Nietzsche’s musical output comes from his late teenage years, although he continued to compose periodically throughout his life. Letters dating to his final years attest to the fact that he always saw himself as a composer3, and his musical works were important enough to him to warrant inclusion in his final published work, Ecce Homo. Given Nietzsche’s surprisingly extensive musical output and his literary emphasis on style, a close reading of his music akin to the many readings of his literary works appears justified. Although the considerable size of Nietzsche’s musical output allows for numerous opportunities to investigate his rhetorical use of style, this chapter will focus on four musical “case studies” providing a glimpse into a compelling, fertile, and until recently, relatively untouched area of Nietzsche scholarship. I would ask that these case studies be received as acts of interpretation rather than persuasive arguments, similar to the relationship between performer and 2

Alexander Nehamas, “The Most Multifarious Art of Style” in Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987). 3 “I have reviewed and ordered my youthful compositions. It struck me how the music reflected the consistency of the composer’s character; that which was expressed as a boy is so clearly the language of his entire being, the grown man could not wish to change it.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe: Briefe, 4 Vols, ed. Hans Joachim Mette and Karl Schlechta, (Munich: C.H. Bck’sche, 1938-42), vol.3, 1.

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audience member. Just as a musician does not perform a piece of music to convince or persuade an audience of a particular interpretation’s primacy, the following explorations of Nietzsche’s musical stylings are intended to compel others to undertake their own interactions with Nietzsche’s music. In all likelihood, the reader may disagree with one or more of the following interpretations of these works but will nonetheless appreciate the value of engaging with Nietzsche’s musical compositions. The first musical case study is a work composed when Nietzsche was just 16. In 1862, he composed a set of piano pieces entitled “Two Polish Dances.” These pieces were written with the intention of performing them for the musical-literary club he and his teenaged friends had formed— Germania. The purpose of this group was to discuss aesthetic theories, evaluate and critique musical and literary works, and create their own artistic works. Nietzsche led the group, and according to the scrupulous minutes he took, Nietzsche also contributed a majoriedurty of the discussion material and original artistic works. In this context, therefore, it follows that these compositions were intended for a critical and aesthetically aware audience. There needs to be an important distinction drawn between Nietzsche’s published works and his private notes, and this distinction must be applied to his musical works as well. The two categories reflect differing purposes for their creation; the works for public consumption are performative in nature—that is, they put on a show and produce an intended effect, while he wrote the private texts (both literary and musical) for a variety of personal uses: simple communication, internal dialogue, rhetorical practice, etc. The titles themselves present a fertile ground for interpretation and grant us insight into Nietzsche’s use of rhetoric and style. The complete title is as follows: Zwei Polnische Tänze: Mazurka, Aus der Czarda (Two Polish Dances: Mazurka, On the Czarda). On the surface, this is completely straightforward. A Mazurka is a type of Polish dance, and the Czarda is a river in Poland. It is odd, however, that his mode of titling the works is inconsistent. The term “Mazurka” applies to the form and style of the dance, while “Aus der Czarda” is a descriptive phrase meaning “On the Czarda.” Composers usually choose one method for their nomenclature, such as tempo designation or programmatic description, and apply that consistently through a set of pieces. For example, Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke for clarinet and piano are all named for their tempo markings, while all the pieces in his Carnival collection contain programmatic titles. Therefore, we must assume that Nietzsche was using this discrepancy to achieve some end.

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To gain some insight into his intentions, we must look to his literary works and their subsequent interpretations with an eye to analogous rhetorical devices. Within this context, let us first examine the unusual use of titles before examining the music itself. By changing descriptive categories, Nietzsche is changing perspectives; a modus operandi (habitual way of operating) frequently found in his literary works. It is so pervasive in fact, that many scholars point to perspectivism as a central tenet of the entirety of Nietzsche’s thought. Briefly summarized, perspectivism assumes that objective knowledge is impossible, leaving the observer only able to approach the object (conceptual or physical) from different perspectives, slowly accumulating more angles of perception. Although an increase in perspectives provides a more thorough understanding, there is no ultimate accumulation of perspectives that will provide anything related to objective knowledge. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s perspectivism differs from relativism because he claims a hierarchy of perspectives. In other words, not all perspectives are created equal. He frequently writes of gaining higher perspectives and criticizes others for clinging to “frog perspectives.”4 It is therefore in the individual’s best interest to acquire numerous effective perspectives when attempting to gain knowledge of some object, be it physical or mental. By changing the perspective from which the pieces are titled—from a formal mode to a descriptive mode—Nietzsche is approaching his “Two Polish Dances” from multiple perspectives. This interpretation of Nietzsche’s intent is supported not only by his later writings on perspectivism, but also by pragmatic considerations. Nietzsche’s letters suggest that he decided to write a set of Polish dances before embarking upon the individual pieces. Once he chose the title of the set, it would be easiest to think within one category; i.e., two Polish dances (Polonaise, Mazurka, March, etc.) or two descriptive phrases (Evening in Warsaw, The Cold Plains, etc.). Going beyond straightforward categories seems to imply a specific intent and given the rich context of Nietzsche’s writings on perspective, such an assumption, albeit without direct written corroboration, appears justified. From a musical perspective, an intriguing paradox quickly appears—the Mazurka is misnamed, for it does not contain the characteristics traditionally applied to the form. A mazurka is defined as a lively Polish peasant dance

4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990), 34.

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in 3/4 time with an emphasis on the second beat. Nietzsche’s mazurka is in 2/4 – the proper time signature for a march, but not a mazurka. Compare a phrase from Nietzsche’s Mazurka (Fig. 13.1) with the opening measures of Frederic Chopin’s Mazurka, Op. 33., No. 4 (Fig. 13.2). While mazurkas were performed for centuries in Polish folk music, Chopin famously brought the music of his Polish homeland into the classical mainstream and for all intends and purposes codified the form’s musical characteristics. Fig. 13.1 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “Mazurka,” mm.49-58.5

Fig. 13.2 - Frederic Chopin, “Mazurka, Op. 33., No.4,” mm.1-8.6

How can we explain this discrepancy? We cannot attribute it to ignorance— any culturally-aware middle-class German would be familiar with Chopin’s mazurkas and their defining characteristics, even more so for one as musically inquisitive as Nietzsche. And we cannot attribute it to apathy, for it was composed for a highly critical and well-read audience: the members of Germania. Taking a cue from his literary works, it is reasonable to assume that he chose this apparent error in order to do something with this musical text. Just as his hyperbole and aphorism impact the reader in a way that lends strength to the text, this musical malaprop must provide some rhetorical value. Given the rich vocabulary of literary devices Nietzsche uses throughout his written works, there is no shortage of ways to approach this particular case study. 5

All musical examples of Nietzsche’s music are from the Janz publication. Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche: Der musikalische Nachlaß, ed. Curt Paul Janz (Basel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1976), 24-25. 6 Frederic Chopin, Klavierwerke, Band I, ed. Herrmann Scholtz (Leipzig: Edition Peters, 1900), 96.

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The first possible rhetorical scheme is related to the paradox of nomenclature that occurs when Nietzsche composes a work that is and is not its title. The title Mazurka, although usually considered a formal indication, is here both a descriptive and formal title. It is a formal title as far as the piece’s structure matches the form of a typical mazurka. For example, the formal title “Sonata” applies to pieces that have a very specific form but says nothing about the music’s non-formal attributes. In this case, the term mazurka has a formal component whereby it refers to pieces that display a certain structure. It is comprised of a primary theme alternating with contrasting sections in unexpected key areas. It has a playful tone that suggests humor through its prolonged avoidance of expected resolutions. Ironically, the title also has a descriptive component, because it describes the overall sound of the piece without defining its relation to similar pieces. As demonstrated previously the piece is not, strictly speaking, a Mazurka. Yet if the meter is ignored, it sounds as much like a mazurka as most of Chopin’s works by the same name. In this way, Nietzsche is describing the piece without classifying the piece. To put it another way, he is using the title to describe the piece as Mazurka-sequel! By effectively creating a Mazurka while blatantly ignoring the supposedly fundamental characteristic Nietzsche shows remarkable ability for someone so young and without formal musical training. He accomplishes this by identifying and exaggerating other important characteristics to compensate for the obvious alteration. The dotted figures on the first beat lead to the second beat, creating a stress that is unusual in a duple meter. While most marches (the most typical style for duple meters) stress the first beat, Nietzsche takes great pains to deflect the accent to the second. Secondly, Nietzsche exploits an unusual characteristic of Chopin’s own mazurkas—their unusual rubato. Rubato refers to the performance practice of subtly slowing and speeding the tempo for expressive purposes. Chopin was famous for his rubato, which far exceeded the norms of his day. In fact, several respected pianists of his day, including Meyerbeer and Halle, reported that Chopin’s mazurkas in particular sounded as if they were in 4/4 time because of the extensive rubato on the third beat.7 While we lack first-hand accounts of Nietzsche’s own performances of his compositions, it can be assumed that his thorough immersion in mid-nineteenth century music culture would have familiarized him with Chopin-esque rubato, and its fundamental connection to the mazurka form in particular. After establishing Nietzsche’s wilful and effective creation of a paradox, the question arises: What does he mean to do with his musical paradox? 7

James Huneker, Chopin: The Man and his Music (Dover: New York, 1966), 196.

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This question provides a wonderful opportunity to engage with one of Nietzsche’s most unique approaches—that of genealogical investigation. Genealogy rises to prominence in Nietzsche’s writings due to his dismissal of absolute truths and falsities. In the epistemological void created by the movement “beyond good and evil,” genealogy steps in to provide an evaluative framework for conceptual knowledge. In a process later refined and popularized by Foucault, Nietzsche approaches “truths” and “facts” as conventions agreed upon by a population that constantly refines and adjusts these truths as society changes. Therefore, a genealogical study of a concept allows the investigator to highlight its conditional nature, as well as identifying the specific contexts that generated the decisions leading to the concept’s ossification as “fact.” Nietzsche’s writings are filled with case studies in which he uses this method to deconstruct concepts, from romanticism to good and evil to morality to metaphysics. With this in mind, it is not unreasonable to approach this mazurka as a musical case study in genealogical deconstruction. Nietzsche goes beyond the textbook definition of a mazurka—the one that dares to provide a stepby-step instruction manual for the replication of a typical mazurka—to ascertain the qualities that describe the diverse musical works that comprise the genre of mazurkas. His musical acumen is revealed by his ability to omit one of the qualities while retaining its overall likeness. His philosophical acumen is revealed by his ability to bring into question the necessity of certain identifying traits, namely a triple time signature. If he had chosen other characteristics to omit, it is likely that even his handpicked critical audience would have overlooked the discrepancy. By choosing the most obviously verifiable trait he forces his listeners to doubt, and question accepted definitions. It is this interaction between reader and text that Nietzsche evinces that is a hallmark of his literary works. Readers are not allowed to sit back and passively imbibe knowledge, rather they are challenged, goaded, and insulted into creating their own truths and re-evaluating accepted wisdom. The other possible theory to account for Nietzsche’s unusual mazurka is to view it as a parody, a rhetorical device he uses generously in his published writings. Thomas Mann, in Doctor Faustus, (a work with considerable Nietzschean influences) defines parody as the creation of an artwork through scrupulous adherence to an accepted, although bankrupt, formula.8 Although the author realizes that the resulting creation will be flawed, this

8 Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn

as Told by a Friend, trans. John E. Woods (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1997).

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knowledge is cloaked behind a charade of good faith. The most famous instances of parody in Nietzsche’s works are his poems “Songs of Prince Vogelfrei” which parody Goethe and others, and passages in Thus Spoke Zarathustra9, in which stock characters are made to appear ridiculous for their adherence to traditional moralities. Likewise, Nietzsche’s Mazurka can be seen as the creation of a simple-minded but trusting musician who forgets which time signature a mazurka employs. The fact that Nietzsche does know the typical characteristics of a mazurka but makes no allusion to it raises the work to parody. He presents the work behind the mask of good faith and dares us to discover his parodic intent. Nietzsche’s parody here and elsewhere goes beyond mere rhetoric. Although his use of this device succeeds in drawing the reader or listener into his discussion and is an effective mode of convincing others to accept Nietzsche’s views, its most important role lies in the simple act of drawing attention to his authorship. When Nietzsche calls people worms or dismisses whole groups as decrepit or weak, when he suddenly shifts from parable to logical demonstration, when he presents a parable from an unusual point of view, or when he wilfully alters an accepted musical genre; all these events force the audience to focus on the author. He uses bombastic rhetoric to powerfully interject the author between the text and the reader. It is this interjection of Nietzsche, the fictional character, at which Nietzsche, the historical figure, excels. But to what purpose? The perspectivist theory that Nietzsche puts forward precludes logical argumentation, so when Nietzsche seeks to discredit the concept of “truth” in the objective sense, he faces a dilemma: the very process of discreditation requires the concept of truth. Simply put, he seems forced to say, “You cannot know anything objectively, including this.” The way around this paradox is to stress the specificity of the individual and the subjective quality of his views. Nietzsche does not say “You cannot know anything objectively, and I realize that this means that my statement has no absolute truth, but you should still believe me.” This would undermine his effectiveness. Rather, he uses rhetoric to demonstrate the individual nature of his own “truths.” The views included in Nietzsche’s writings result from the perspectives of a very specific individual. As he states in Beyond Good and Evil, “My judgement is my judgement—no one else is easily entitled to it—that is what such philosophers of the future may perhaps say of themselves.”10 In fact, it is

9

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge UP: Cambridge, 2007) 26. 10 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 37.

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the claims of other philosophers (those not of “the future”) that they have discovered objective truth that so infuriate him. In his words, “they are one and all advocates who do not want to be regarded as such, and for the most part no better than cunning pleaders for their prejudices, which they baptize ‘truths.’”11 The second case study is drawn from Nietzsche’s songs, another area of his musical output that is rich in rhetorical material. By the mid-nineteenth century, the lied had become one of the most respected musical genres in Europe, and its formal structure had become well established. Originating from the da capo arias of eighteenth-century opera,12 virtually all lieder had some variation of ternary form—a formal designation for A-B-A structure. Although Nietzsche adopted many of these accepted formal constraints, his use of keys represented a radical departure from accepted custom. All western music at this time was expected to begin and end in the same key, with very few exceptions.13 Of Nietzsche’s lieder however, more than half end in a different key from that in which they begin. As Nietzsche’s first completed lied, “Mein Platz vor der Tür,” (My Spot in Front of the Door) provides an excellent example of this tonal experimentation. Completed in the fall of 1861 “Mein Platz” most closely resembles a ternary form, although significant departures from traditional aspects make its application here conditional at best. It begins in the key of G with an eight-bar phrase comprised of two highly similar four-bar melodies (Fig.13.3). Another eight-bar phrase follows and begins in the relative minor (e). After reaching a half-cadence on the dominant, the original melody returns, and an authentic cadence ends the section. This opening section is remarkable for its adherence to late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century forms and harmonies. In fact, it could easily be mistaken for an early Schumann lied and it possesses a degree of charm and grace rarely found in Nietzsche’s works.

11

Ibid. 7.

12Meaning

“to the head,” indicating the performers were to repeat the opening material upon reaching the end of the piece. 13 The Baroque use of the “Piccardy Third” is one example of such an exception in which a piece in minor ends with a major third. The effect of this is mildly surprising, although the close relationship of parallel major and minor provide a strong sense of unity.

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Fig. 13.3 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “Mein Platz vor der Tür,” mm.1-9.

It is not until the B section begins that Nietzsche’s individualism asserts itself in the form of several unexpected harmonic shifts. After several surprising harmonies, enharmonic shifts, and a series of applied dominants, a D7 chord appears suddenly on the antepenultimate word, and establishes a perfect authentic cadence to end the vocal line (Fig.13-4). To this point, other than an unusual cadenza-like section in the middle, the song still fits into the nineteenth century paradigm. The final five measures however, rather than reaffirming the original tonality and predictably concluding the piece, instead present a considerable interpretive and evaluative challenge to the listener. Nietzsche calls for the ending to be played “presto” and ceases to write within the time signature, indicating (it can be assumed) a rhythmically free interpretation. The unison line differs little from the opening phrase except for the substitution of sixteenths for the original eighths in the pick-up notes. The adoption of opening material for use in a piece’s conclusion is hardly unusual, but here Nietzsche adopts only half of the phrase, therefore ending on the dominant (D). The uncertainty of this ending is further emphasized by the marking of PPP “pianississimo.”

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Fig. 13.4 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “Mein Platz vor der Tür,” mm.23-36.

Nietzsche’s intentions for this unusual ending are left to the listener to untangle, as none of his existing letters directly address his strange choice. It is inconceivable that he merely forgot in which key the piece began – his circuitous harmonic journey through the “cadenza” could not have accidentally led back to G major, rather it implies a conscious choice to return to the tonic. It is also illogical to wonder if Nietzsche knew pieces generally began and ended in the same key – his training and exposure to music would have surely taught him that. The only choice left us is that he chose to abandon the tonic and end the piece with an impression of uncertainty. To begin looking for reasons for this choice, the text of the song—a poem by Klaus Groth—presents a logical point of departure. The path along our fence, how wonderful it was. Early mornings I would walk through grass up to my knee, Then I would play at building a dam out of rocks and sand Until grandfather came in the evening and took me by the hand. I wished to be taller to see over the fence. Grandfather said, “Let it be! It will come soon enough!”

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Eventually the time came and I saw the world outside, But it was not half as beautiful as my time at the gate.14

The poem itself has a pleasing symmetry in which the opening description of the fence is recalled in the final line. The development occurs in the grandfather’s advice to enjoy life now and not be too quick to enter adulthood. Nietzsche embellishes the line by setting it in the adagio section that is ripe with unusual harmonies and minor tonalities. Specific emphasis is given to the line “Let it be!” through three held notes in octave doublings. Through the distinct change in mood present in the adagio section Nietzsche distinguishes between the narrator and the grandfather. In light of this interpretation, it follows that the grandfather’s words and the adult reality they reflect had an effect on the narrator, making a simple, happy ending impossible. In as much as “Mein Platz” describes an awakening to the harsh reality of the world, Nietzsche rhetorically ends the piece differently than it began. The claim to rhetorical motivation is further strengthened when one considers his other lieder. Dynamic texts that relate an evolution from initial to final conditions consistently begin and end in different keys (e.g., “Mein Platz,” and “Gern und gerner,”) while texts portraying static situations such as “So lach doch mal” and “Nachspiel” (“Just Laugh for Once” and “Postlude”) observe traditional key relationships. His extreme application of musical rhetoric allows the songs to manifest and realize ideas only hinted at in the original text. In this particular case, his distaste for hypocrisy does not allow him to return to the opening tonality in light of such a fundamental shift in perspective portrayed in the text. The possible parallels between these early musical works and his later literary and philosophical contributions are intriguing. His mature views toward Christianity in particular illustrate a similar reaction against hypocrisy, and the fact that many of his writings contemporaneous with “Mein Platz” begin to address certain problems of Christianity brings up fascinating questions concerning the relationship of these two strong influences. In April of 1862, only a few months after he began his lieder, Nietzsche wrote a letter to Krug and Pinder15 as well as several journal

14 Friedrich

Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlaß, ed. Curt Paul Janz, 1-2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Historischkritische Gesamtausgabe: Briefe, ed. Hans Joachim Mette and Karl Schlechta (Munich: C.H. Beck’sche, 1938-42), vol. I, p.181.] 15

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entries concerning Christianity’s irreconcilability with reason.16 At this early date he was unwilling or unable to present his criticisms of Christianity with the fervor of later works such as The Gay Science, On the Genealogy of Morals, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and merely hints at what conclusions might be drawn. The depth of his doubts at this time, however, is certain as he writes, “Through difficult doubts [concerning God’s human incarnation] and battles, humanity becomes masculine: it recognizes in itself ‘the beginning, the middle, the end of religion.’”17 Although this remark foreshadows his later views, he has yet to explicate its full ramifications. It is fitting therefore, that these same documents address music and its ability to manifest Christianity’s unique characteristics. In a fragment entitled, “Paganism and Christianity” he depicts a musical battle between the two forces that ends with a peaceful calm, “…whose source is the endless, world-embracing love of God.”18 Whether Nietzsche considered this ending a reason for joy or for sorrow can be debated – especially in light of his letter to Krug and Pinder – but his use of music to extrapolate issues is evident. It can be reasoned that while the problems he saw in Christianity remained largely internal as he awaited the degree of intellectual and emotional freedom necessary to authentically address the issues, music presented him a venue in which to address analogous conflicts more explicitly. His application of rhetoric to dismantle established structures – so evident in his writings from the 1870’s and 1880’s, was here evident in his musical output from the 1860’s. Another example of Nietzsche’s musical sculpting can be found a few years later while he was studying in Leipzig. Having dropped his theology studies to concentrate fully on philology, he threw himself into the subject and developed a keen interest in Greek and Roman conceptions of rhythm and meter.19 In fact, he would write an article a few years later on the Danae fragment by Simonides and attribute the beginnings of his interest in the subject back to his time in Bonn.20 What he discovered was a system of rhythm (both spoken and musical) completely alien to western tradition. Western rhythm is organized around uniform collections of temporal units, 16

Friedrich Nietzsche, Historischkritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, ed. Hans Joachim Mette and Karl Schlechta (Munich: C.H. Beck’sche, 1934-40), vol. II, p.65.] 17 Ibid. 18 Nietzsche, Werke, vol. II, p.63. 19 James Porter, Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000) 127-131. 20 Nietzsche, Briefe, vol. II, 102-103.

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with an internal hierarchy of emphasis within each collection. Specifically, western rhythm is composed of measures of equal length, each of which contains the same number of beats. Depending on the number of beats per measure (the time signature) certain beats will be accented, enabling the listener to anticipate rhythms throughout the piece. The Greek system differs through its lack of metric emphasis. Instead of indicating an organizational hierarchy through volume or timbre, it is indicated by duration. Certain notes are held longer than other notes (frequently associated with spoken habit), and all the tones represent various integer accumulations of an underlying pulse or chrono. For example, Schubert might give emphasis to a word by placing it on a strong beat (the first or third in common time) which the performer would give a slight stress. In this setting, the duration of the note is not nearly as important as its location within the metric scheme. In ancient Greek music however, a composer would create emphasis by giving a word a proportionally longer duration. In contrast to western music, the placement of the stressed word is secondary to its length as measured by an accumulation of chronoi. Aristoxenus describes this “atomistic” system as follows: “…chronoi are the minima of rhythmical synthesis, or composition, that get thrown into complex interrelations, the perceptual effect of which is rhythm. They are, in effect, atoms of rhythm.”21 Therefore, while modern western rhythm is metric, ancient Greek rhythm was quantitative. In the midst of his rhythmic studies, Nietzsche composed two short works setting texts by Lord Byron. Nietzsche’s “Sonne des Schlaflosen” and “O weint um sie” (“Sun of the Sleepless” and “O Cry for Her”) were composed in December of 1865 and January of 1866; both unfinished, the former was scored for voice and piano, and the latter for accompanied choir. Though incomplete, both pieces exhibit enough continuity and detail to establish certain unique traits; in fact, the second of these was deemed complete enough for performance at Concordia University in Montreal in 1992-1993 under the watchful eye of Mr. Janz. Both pieces display an unusual rhythmic pattern in which a persistent eighth-note pulse appears and reappears throughout the works. In itself an eighth-note ostinato is not unusual and can be found in many of Schubert’s lieder and Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Two aspects of this application, however, make it worthy of note: the unusual juxtaposition of the ostinato with the melodic material, and its odd, inconsistent appearance. In both cases, they represent significant departures from Nietzsche’s earlier works that - although also employing 21

Porter, Philology of the Future, 132.

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eighth-note ostinati – do so in a highly conventional, if not clichéd, manner. Compare, for example, the first six measures in “Ständchen.” (Fig.13.5) with measures 10-12 of “Sonne des Schlaflosen” (Fig.13.6). In the former song, the eighth notes are used to create an accompaniment pattern and have a rhythmic and harmonic shape that emphasizes the meter. In the latter, the eighth notes do little to establish the harmony and frequently change their metric alignment. Fig. 13.5 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “Ständchen,” mm. 1-6.

Fig. 13.6 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “Sonne des Schlaflosen,” mm. 10-12.

The melodies of both pieces exhibit a rhythmic complexity that weakens the meter. The opening of “Sonne des Schlaflosen” presents a metric challenge to the listener with its pentuplet, overlapping quarter and dotted quarter-notes, and ties across bar lines (Fig.13.7). In “O weint um sie,” the opening pick-up notes and frequent syncopations make any identification of a triple meter difficult and imply, if anything, a sort of alternating meter between duple and quadruple. Throughout both this work and “Sonne des Schlaflosen,” conventionally emphasized beats are de-emphasized and flourishes are placed on conventionally weak beats. After such rhythmically ambiguous introductions, the intermittent eighth-note pulse acts as a measure of durations and provides proportions between melodic notes. Traditionally, a note with a duration of one and a half beats, starting in the middle of the primary pulse, and that resides entirely within one measure, is most frequently notated as a quarter-note tied to an eighth-note (Fig.13.8). The implication of this is that a syncopation is involved and that the eighthnote is either a rhythmic anticipation or suspension. The quarter-note usually appears on the beat and the eighth-note represents the syncopation of that beat. When the system of metric emphases is weakened, however,

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so are the implications of rhythmic notation. In this unique setting, traditional notational implications are deconstructed and shown in a new light. It is difficult to say if Nietzsche explicitly depicts such a deconstruction through his note-writing because the Janz edition favored a layout most conducive to performance. In this example however, Nietzsche inconsistently notates the above-mentioned situation, in one instance writing it as an eighth-note tied to a quarter-note (indicating the metric placement) and in another instance as a dotted quarter note. Another detail that seems to point to an experiment with quantitative rhythm can be found in the individually flagged eighth notes. While eighth-notes within a measure are usually barred together in relation to the prominent subdivisions of the meter, the Janz notation tempts us to see an intentional use of chronoi in the un-barred eighth-notes (Fig.13.9). It should be noted, however, that this is most likely in deference to traditional choral writing in which different syllables are not barred together. Without more specific notational instruction however, the performer may still react to such nomenclature by stressing notes as if a syncopation existed, but the framework of expectation that creates the surprise and rhythmic interest inherent in syncopation is absent. In short, the overall context favors a nonsyncopated, quantitative structure. Fig. 13.7 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “O weint um sie,” mm.1-3.

Fig. 13.8 - Example of traditional barring for syncopation.

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Fig. 13.9 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “O weint um sie,” mm.9-14.

In both Byron fragments, Nietzsche repaints individual rhythmic values as durations, rather than metric indicators. The half-note tied to an eighth note is therefore reduced to a note lasting the equivalent of five eighth-note pulses. The rhythmic emphasis of placement is here replaced with an emphasis of duration. In the short phrase, “ihr Tempel wüst, ein Traum ihr Land,” “Traum” and “Land” are emphasized by having the longest durations (8 pulses) despite their appearances on the second beat and the third beat, respectively (Fig.13.10). Highly unusual for mid-eighteenth-century composition, Nietzsche’s use of quantitative rhythm is comparable to that of late 20th century composer Steve Reich’s. Although Reich utilizes consistent pulses to create phase shifts that operate over extended temporal distances, Nietzsche’s application of the technique in miniature is remarkable for its originality. The probability of a connection between this unusual musical experiment and his simultaneous study of ancient Greek and Roman texts on meter and rhythm is difficult to refute and provides another example of musical prototyping. Fig. 13.10 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “O weint um sie,” mm.17-22.

The final case study is fundamentally different than the previous examples, being significantly longer, written several years later, portraying

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a fundamental shift in Nietzsche’s approach to composing, and being qualitatively far inferior. “Hymnus auf die Freundschaft” (“Hymn to Friendship”) was written over the course of several years from 1872 to the end of 1874 and went through several different incarnations before the final piano version was completed. The piece consists of six distinct sections entitled: Introduction, Hymn – 1st strophe, 1st Intermezzo, Hymn – 2nd strophe, 2nd Intermezzo, Hymn – 3rd strophe. Each section comes to a full stop and could be seen as self-contained. Although “Hymnus” is occasionally effective and moving, it contains fundamental musical flaws that disrupt the work’s musicality. But before examining the nature of Nietzsche’s musical missteps—an important task if we are to understand Nietzsche’s motivation in writing this piece — let us examine the rhetorical devices he deploys. Throughout “Hymnus,” as well as “Sylvesternacht” and “Monodie a Deux” (“New Year’s Eve” and “Monody for Two”)—two other compositions written around this same time—he repeatedly writes almost comically long pedal tones juxtaposed with high, relatively unsupported melodic material (Fig. 13.11). Although these passages have the practical effect of disrupting the musical continuity, taken by themselves the contrast between unmoving bass note and the drifting upper voices suggest vast spaces or depths. Furthermore, the harmonic ambiguity in the upper voices create a vertiginous quality as if being suspended over a chasm. Is this imagery intentional? If it is, then it clearly foreshadows Nietzsche’s frequent use of bridge and chasm metaphors in his discussion of the Übermensch (superman) in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.22 The years 1872-1876—the period in which much of this music was written—were a period of rich intellectual growth in which indications of Nietzsche’s impending break with Wagner and the establishment of his mature philosophy began to appear in such works as and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.23 It is conceivable that his preoccupation with these metaphors was first realized in his music from this time, but also dangerous to assert this with any degree of certainty. The use of a pedal tone is a standard musical device in which a harmonic note (usually the dominant) is held in the bass to build tension as the listeners increasingly anticipate its resolution to the tonic. It was frequently used in organ music where the bass was held in the pedal, hence its name: “pedal tone.” In Nietzsche’s application however, rather than building anticipation

22

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 23. Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici (Dodo Press: Moscow, 2019). 23

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by increasingly establishing the dominant, he gradually weakens the dominant harmony through the wandering upper voices. We are left to guess as to Nietzsche’s intentions. Did he intend this effect to create a protoübermenschian bridge, or did he simply mishandle a pedal tone? Fig. 13.11 - Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, mm. 291-299.

In either case, the overall effect is largely unsuccessful because the continuity of the piece is compromised by the passage. This musical error is indicative of a larger problem in Nietzsche’s later works: his difficulties with counterpoint. Many of his critics have thrown about this objection without commenting on specifics, and I suspect that many in the philosophical world do not fully understand what this charge entails. Counterpoint is the technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality. Counterpoint is almost synonymous with the work of J.S. Bach, seen by many as the epitome of contrapuntal composers. Some scholars may take umbrage at this comparison of Nietzsche and Bach given the former’s critique of Baroque music in general and counterpoint in particular for its “…arithmetic abacus of the fugue and the dialectic of counterpoint…”24 Despite his professed distaste for this “dialectical” technique, Nietzsche undeniably uses the contrapuntal style in “Hymnus.” This is supported by note values that imply a multi-voiced texture and examples of imitation amongst the different voices. Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s counterpoint fails because the melodic lines do not retain their linear cohesion. They contain huge leaps that confuse the ear, they are constantly moved from register to register, and the number of voices constantly fluctuates. One of Nietzsche’s particularly irritating habits is his placement of long notes in the upper-voice while simultaneously moving the middle parts into the same register with shorter notes, effectively 24 Friedrich Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, trans. Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), 94.

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negating several voices and creating the impression of one misguided part (Fig. 13.12). Fig. 13.12 - Friedrich Nietzsche, Hymnus auf die Freundschaft, “First Strophe,” mm. 64-69.

Ideally, counterpoint allows the composer to combine melody and harmony to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Nietzsche’s counterpoint is characterized by harmonies that strangle the melodies, and melodies that force the harmonies into ridiculous voicings. This poor counterpoint is so pervasive that it demands a reckoning. How can we explain it? A true Nietzsche apologist might venture a guess that it is meant in the spirit of parody. As discussed earlier, Nietzsche uses parody to great effect in his literary works and it is conceivable that he uses it here as well. The problem, however, lies in Nietzsche’s failure to establish his contrapuntal facility. One must be adept at a technique before one can parody it, and an exhaustive search throughout Nietzsche’s musical output reveals no substantial examples of effective counterpoint. The possibility of parodic intent exists in the Mazurka because Nietzsche is able to effectively write in the style of a mazurka. That relationship does not exist in this situation. Could Nietzsche be rejecting the rules of counterpoint in a daring musical experiment? If so, then this daring experiment is carried out in every large-scale work he wrote—the exact type of piece, strangely enough, that would most benefit from counterpoint. If it is a musical experiment, then it must be judged a failure when one considers the poor musical results. If it is a rhetorical experiment, then it also fails because of the poor musical results. In the end, the only acceptable explanation is simply that Nietzsche lacked the musical genius needed to overcome a complete lack of contrapuntal training.

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Conclusion Whether addressing Nietzsche’s musical works or his literary works, one cannot separate content from style. There exists a performative aspect to all his works, as his works are the product of an individual actively practicing his philosophy, who was equally adept at providing examples as he was axioms. This method of inquiry has long been practiced with his literary works, and a great deal of important scholarship and insight into Nietzsche’s thought has resulted. It is now time to take the same approach to his musical output, and the preceding case studies are intended to provide a starting point from which this line of investigation can progress. His early works are filled with rhetorical experiments and provide the scholar with ample opportunity to examine Nietzsche’s first forays into his new way of thinking. They are especially important for their inclusion of thought experiments that do not have a literary analog, such as his investigations into Greek rhythm. For the interested scholar, these brief examinations should also identify some of the hazards that could be encountered along this path. The scope of his later music gives the listener ample time to realize the shallow scope of Nietzsche’s musical training and provides less opportunity to find instances of musical sculpting. Perhaps this later music should not be held to the same standards as his earlier works and should be seen simply as Nietzsche’s very personal application of the “will to power.” After all, should the overflowing abundance of strength that characterizes the Übermensch be limited to the production of effective creations? If we are to accept this shift in compositional motivation, it becomes all the more ironic that this musical period would epitomize all those things Nietzsche despised as sick and overindulgent. After listening to “Hymnus,” one would likely characterize it as “ponderous, viscous, and solemnly dusty; all long-winded and boring types of style are developed in profuse variety among the Germans.”25 Even the kindest critic must admit that it falls far short of Nietzsche’s calls for music to “approach(es) lightly, supplely, politely. It is pleasant, it does not sweat. ‘What is good is light, whatever is divine moves on tender feet:’ first principle of my aesthetics.”26 Yet within the context of Nietzsche’s output as a whole, even this music contributes to the creation of the Nietzsche persona. or the creation of a persona—an exemplar of this “new man”—is

25

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I:28. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici (Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1911) 2.

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an integral part of Nietzsche’s new style of philosophy after he tears down philosophy’s claims to methodological purity. Given such an unusual challenge – that of addressing philosophical issues while simultaneously discrediting philosophical language – Nietzsche resorts to the entire spectrum of communicative means. He uses poetry, literature, essays, and music to accrete a mass of musical-literary personality. After creating this platform—adequately quarantined against the concept of objectivity—Nietzsche preaches his perspective to the world. Nietzsche’s project is so dependent upon different genres and rhetorical tools that any investigation into his works must take into consideration his creative output as a whole. It is antithetical to think that the Nietzsche of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil would suddenly adopt an entirely traditional approach to music, while simultaneously undermining the foundations of western thought in all his other pursuits. When scholars begin approaching his music with the same thirst for knowledge that they have brought to his literary works, the area of Nietzsche scholarship will greatly benefit.

Bibliography Chopin, Frederic. Klavierwerke, Band I. Edited by Herrmann Scholtz. Leipzig: Edition Peters, 1900. Huneker, James. Chopin: The Man and his Music. Dover: New York, 1966. Mann, Thomas. Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn as Told by a Friend. Translated by John E. Woods. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1997. Moritz, Benjamin. “The Music and Thought of Friedrich Nietzsche.” DMA diss. Northwestern University, 2002. Nehamas, Alexander. “The Most Multifarious Art of Style.” In Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Friedrich Nietzsche: Der musikalische Nachlaß. Edited by Curt Paul Janz. Basel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1976. Porter, James. Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000.

CHAPTER 14 PIANO MUSIC OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: AN ECLECTIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED PIANO COMPOSITIONS AYSEGUL DURAKOGLU

Exposition Nietzsche’s greatest value lies in the fact that he embodied not only the true philosophic spirit of “searching into myself and other man,” as stated by Kaufmann,1 but also, in the true spirit of music in his lifelong search. Music was a significant part of Nietzsche’s being, and the center of his emotional and intellectual worlds. His thinking reflected a true musician’s in his writings, yet his musical compositions do not show the same level of mastery in handling the structural elements of music. Nietzsche composed about seventy musical works; and only fifty of them survived, remaining mostly unknown to the public, even to musicians. Yet, they are charming musical miniatures, still effective to the listener, deserving the same attention as his philosophical thoughts. Nietzsche’s music has been analyzed and evaluated mainly in relation to the underlying presumptions based on his philosophical thoughts more so than the elements of its syntax. In this article, I will focus on Nietzsche, the composer, and analyze his selected compositions from a performer-analyst’s perspective, then I will further bridge the intrinsic elements of his music into his onto-historical world. However, a critical review of his philosophy is necessary to evaluate his musical experiments to gain insights about the foundation of his creative process. Several Nietzsche writers have observed his music from the perspective of his philosophy and agreed that they are worth to be known by other musicians and audiences. Nicholas Hopkins appreciates Nietzsche’s 1

Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1974), XXIV.

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consistency in music and confirms that his musical achievements have not had the attention they deserve. Nietzsche was a remarkable figure, in that he was active as philosopher and as a musician, arguably, with equal facility in each discipline…. His philosophic contributions have thrived to the present day, yet his musical achievements, particularly his compositions, remain largely overlooked, even unknown.2

Then, he describes Nietzsche’s musical works featuring a series of loosely connected musical events that will also be investigated in this article, in order to draw conclusions for the validity of Nietzsche’s musical experiments. Hopkins does not agree with Cosima Wagner who compared Nietzsche’s musical experience to “a pastime, or a hobby in addition to philosophy,” and defends his music as of special interest because Nietzsche was able to reconcile these “two disciplines in a way that no one else yet has.”3 On the same note, George Liebert suggests that we are to understand Nietzsche as musician and philosopher as he believes that both were inseparable in his life: “Nietzsche never thinks music because it is unthinkable, happily unthinkable, he might have said his thinking begins with music.”4 Liebert agrees that Nietzsche’s compositions are worthy of attention because they suggest illuminating comparisons between the composer and the writer, however, he does not consider his compositions masterpieces. There is no question that, behind Nietzsche’s philosophical thoughts there are musical influences. Therefore, we need to focus on his music not as a result of his philosophy but as a generating source of his philosophical expression. Both Kaufmann and Hopkins relate Nietzsche’s musical style to aphorisms achieved by experimenting rather than producing a systematic process. Nietzsche’s experimental style in music might be aphoristic manifesting itself in his unique way of expression, since he suggests: “the philosopher must be willing to make ever new experiments,

2

Nicholas Hopkins, Friedrich Nietzsche: Selected Works for Piano (Piano Solo and Piano, Four Hands), compiled and edited by Nicholas Hopkins, (New York: Carl Fisher, 2017), 8. 3 George Liebert. Nietzsche and Music. Translated by David Pellauer and Graham Parkes. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 8. 4 Ibid., 9.

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retain an open mind, and be prepared, if necessary, boldly at any time to declare himself against his previous opinion.”5 Nietzsche’s experimental style has also been evaluated by Benjamin Moritz in The Music and Thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, as a result of an act of creation from an existentialist perspective. He agrees that Nietzsche adopts an aphoristic style in his musical experiments acting upon the authenticity of creation. It is interesting that Moritz finds Nietzsche’s experimentation most evident in his musical works that might be due to his lack of musical training, in contrast to his extensive literary background.6 Both Kaufmann and Moritz believe that Nietzsche was driven from one style to another without bringing a systematic approach both to philosophy and music. Kaufmann describes Nietzsche’s stylistic approach: Nietzsche is driven from style to style in his ceaseless riving for an adequate medium of expression. Each style is characteristically his own, but soon found inadequate, and then drives him on to another newer one. Yet all experiments cohere because they are not capricious. Their unity one might call existential.7

Despite Nietzsche’s musical spirit and efforts, the validity of his music was not enough to elevate Nietzsche’s position as a composer in history. According to most theorists, the reason for his failure in music lies in the fact that Nietzsche lacked the necessary musical training that would have allowed him to develop his ideas in accepted musical norms. In a letter written in winter, 1884-1885, he confessed to Carl Fuchs that he lacked knowledge and competence in all those areas; and years passed with nobody playing music for him, himself included.8 Surrounding himself with music and musicians, Nietzsche played music by great composers like Beethoven, Haydn, and others, happily improvising on the piano, and eventually began composing. Early in his life, he was more productive as a composer; later, there were interruptions due to career decisions and discouragements by musicians like Hans von Bülow and Richard Wagner. Despite disappointments, music remained Nietzsche’s indispensable companion that 5

Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 74. Benjamin Moritz. The Music and Thought of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Illinois: Northwestern University, 2002), 98. 7 Ibid., 93. 8 Friedrich Nietzsche, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited and translated by Christopher Middleton (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1969. Reprint, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), 233. 6

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inspired him not only to create musical compositions but also to feed his philosophical thoughts. However, without a critical view of the syntactical aspects of his music, we cannot provide a satisfactory understanding of the validity of his compositions or draw conclusions for his failure or success as a musician.

Transition to analysis In this article, I would like to first examine the formal and structural elements in Nietzsche’s music, then connect them to a referential meaning to provide a better understanding and relevant interpretation of his selected piano works. In order to make this connection, a comprehensive method of analysis will be pursued following Lawrence Ferrara’s eclectic approach presented in his Philosophy and Analysis of Music. After reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of conventional and non-conventional methods, Ferrara forms his eclectic method by integrating philosophical approaches to analysis for the sake of musical understanding. He mainly categorizes these approaches in three broad classifications, such as: conventional methods explaining the elements of musical form and structure; phenomenological methods describing the sound-in-time; and hermeneutic methods supporting the interpretation of musical reference.9 In the beginning, he investigates the meaning of music and various methodologies offered by philosophers like Heidegger and Husserl, and music theorists like Clifton, Smith, and Meyer who try to connect musical meaning to syntax. He focuses on Meyer’s theory of emotion and meaning in music divided into two types: first, the absolute meaning based on the musical syntax; then, the referential meaning referring to extra-musical events such as the life and cultural world of the composer. Departing from these conceptions, the purpose of this analysis will be building a bridge between the intrinsic elements of Nietzsche’s music and their representation in his musical experiments. Blending multi-dimensional methodologies, Ferrara offers a step-bystep analysis beginning with “the onto-historical world of the composer”10 including major influences, related musical forms as well as critical approaches of others to Nietzsche’s music. That is followed by an open9

Lawrence Ferrara, Philosophy and the Analysis of Music: Bridges to Musical Sound, Form, and Reference (Bryn Mawr, PA: Excelsior Music Publishing Co., 1991), 3. 10 This is a term used by Lawrence Ferrara referring to ontological interpretations of the musical reference related to the composer’s world.

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listening or playing through the composer’s works focusing on overall sound and general aspects with the purpose of bringing an orientation to the analytical process. Then, I will examine the musical syntax containing all the structural elements of harmony, melody, rhythm, and articulation, dynamics, and tempo markings; then, all findings will be blended in a sound-in-time process. At this stage, the syntactical elements are connected to referential meaning through sound-in-time analysis. According to Ferrara, this constitutes the main step to establish a philosophical ground relating the experience to a phenomenological approach in the analysis. “Feeling in music is abstracted and transformed from an actual into a virtual form,” meaning that the syntactical and temporal elements are used to support and corroborate insights into musical expressiveness.11 Such meaning illuminates the ambiguity in Nietzsche’s use of syntax and provides a better interpretation for a performance. In the final steps, my purpose is to connect the previous elements to the expression of feelings and thoughts, then to ‘the onto-historical world of the composer’ where the weight of extrinsic elements affecting Nietzsche’s creative process are evaluated in relation to his philosophy. Ferrara’s ten consecutive steps are modified following the same conception into six steps in this analysis where they are applied to Nietzsche’s selected piano pieces composed in 1862: 1- Heldenklage (Hero’s Lament); 2- Da geht ein Bach (There Goes a Brook). The first step into analysis begins with the composer’s musical background followed by an open listening of both pieces in step two, then analysis of the syntactical elements and virtual feeling in sound-in-time are individually provided for each composition. Following the performance implications, all findings from both analyses will be drawn to a referential meaning onto the historical world of the composer at the end.

Development to analysis Step 1: Nietzsche’s background in music and influences Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in SaxonyGermany where his first musical activities began with singing Hymns in the Lutheran Church at Röcken, Saxony. The son of pastor, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, he received his first musical education from his father, then his mother Franziska Oehler. After two years of training, he developed enough skills to be able to play works like transcriptions of Haydn’s Symphonies and Beethoven Piano Sonatas. Working on these major works helped 11

Ibid., 183.

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Nietzsche connect with music and find a way of expressing himself through these early experiments. These joyful musical activities led to early compositional experiments, such as Allegro written for solo piano in 1857, and Einleitung (Introduction) in 1861. Between the years of 1862 and 1871, his musical experiments resulted in a collection of short piano pieces for solo and four hands. During that time, there had been a few important events that inspired young Nietzsche, such as: the foundation of a small society, Germania, with his close friends Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug; and the discovery of Tristan and Isolde’s piano reduction by Hans von Bülow. There are numerous accounts of Nietzsche spending most of his time playing and singing Tristan’s score. During his studies at Schulpforta, Nietzsche confessed to his friend Carl von Gersdorff that he had written countless compositions and had acquired a more than amateurish knowledge of music theory to advance his skills in composition.12 Shortly after his 20th birthday, Nietzsche departed to Bonn to study philology at Bonn University with music in his mind and heart. He first visited Schumann’s grave, then participated in the performance of Schumann’s Faust, singing in the choir. Nietzsche always felt a close affiliation with Robert Schumann who was also a great writer and an improviser on the piano. He later adopted Schumann’s style of short character pieces as a model in his early piano compositions. 1868 marks a turning point when he met with Richard Wagner which signaled the beginning of an intense but controversial relationship. The first meeting had a great impression on Nietzsche who enjoyed hearing him speak of Schopenhauer. A year later, he expressed his thoughts in a letter to Carl von Gersdorff saying that three things were his consolationsSchopenhauer, Schumann’s music, and solitary walks.13 While working on The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche found inspiration to compose a piece in the form of longish composition for two pianos, “I am excited as to what I shall hear about my musical work from there, for I have never heard a competent judgement. Because it connects with a youthful memory, the opus is called Echo of a New Year’s Eve.”14 Nietzsche was excited to make this piece a new year gift to Frau Wagner and told Gersdorff that he could detect the warm, contemplative, and happy tone which sounds through the whole work. After hearing the piano duet, Wagner was not only pleased with Nietzsche’s music, but also quite amused rolling and laughing on the floor. Discouraged by Wagner, and later by Hans von Bülow who advised him to 12

Nietzsche. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, 47. Ibid., 12. 14 Ibid., 85. 13

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assimilate the basic elements of musical language, Nietzsche stopped playing piano and composing music for a long time. In his prologue of Nietzsche, Kaufmann states that: “The stupidity of his contemporaries that drove him mad caused him to stop writing music.”15 After their breakup in 1877, Nietzsche turned against Wagner and claimed that Wagner was representing a great corruption in music, and he was more of an actor, not a musician of instinct, but an “artist of decadence.” However, Nietzsche’s inspiration in music gave birth to his highly acclaimed work, The Birth of Tragedy, published in 1872. It was dedicated to Wagner who received this precious gift with great enthusiasm. The work is based on the art of Greek tragedy applied to his conception of the aesthetic values in music bringing the notions of Apollonian and Dionysian. Apollo representing the beauty and formal structure exciting the eye in painting; and Dionysus acting to destroy all the forms and codes appealing to the ear in music and dance. The reflection of these dual aspects on Nietzsche’s compositions is crucial to understand them in relation to his philosophical thoughts. From his early musical experiments to his last years, music had been a leitmotif in Nietzsche’s life appearing in his philosophical thoughts and musical experiments. From 1880 until his collapse in 1889, Nietzsche had been very productive despite frequent travels between Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France. His last composition, The Hymn to Life, a musical setting for mixed chorus and orchestra was published in 1887. Nietzsche was quite satisfied with this work and expressed to his friend Peter Gast (1887) that the Hymn had “some passion and seriousness” and defined emotions from which his philosophy had grown.16 Following his collapse in 1889 in Turin, Nietzsche spent the last eleven years of his life in mental darkness. During the period of asylum, he did not speak as much, when he did, he spoke mostly about music while improvising on the piano from time to time until his death in 1900.

Step 2: Open listening and preliminary exposure The preliminary orientation to Nietzsche’s musical background, influences and the views of leading writers on his music raise important questions to be addressed in the following analytical steps. Most critics agree that Nietzsche’s compositions have validity, but his contribution did not get deserved attention despite his musical spirit and efforts in his experiments. 15 16

Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 28. Nietzsche, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, 273.

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Until I met with Dr. Yunus Tuncel at the Nietzsche Circle, I did not know much about Nietzsche’s music. Listening to his compositions for the first time, I felt familiar with the general sound and feeling that reminded me Schumann’s early music. Most of Nietzsche’s piano works are short, character pieces evoking nostalgic and melancholic emotions. They are not technically difficult but pose some challenges about the aspects of harmonic and thematic developments. As I first began playing his piano music, I developed an interest in learning more and performing them in concert venues. Upon first hearing, the explosion of emotions are distinctly heard in his early piano works. Some of them, like the Das Fragment an sich and So lach doch mal, carry the influences of J.S. Bach and Handel’s choral writing; others like the Mondschein auf der Puszta, Albumlatt, and Heldenklage evoke more emotional intensity. His late works like ManfredMeditation present dense and complicated textures building dramatic tension in the development sections. Most of them are written in short ABA forms starting with a well-designed material but lacking a proper development later in his works. In many cases, the harmonic structure becomes ambiguous showing no consistency between the beginning and ending tonalities. In between, we often hear frequent modulations to some related, but also unrelated keys displaying chromaticism and dissonances in harmonic progressions along with textural and syntactical inconsistencies. Another aspect that caught my attention during the open listening is the improvisatory character, and natural feeling of continuity. However, the sound of his music did not match my expectations when I came face to face with his score, and I wanted to explore this conflict further by looking deeply into his compositions. For example, in Heldenklage and Da geht ein Bach, the linear and homophonic textures of the beginning suddenly break into a freely evolved improvisational section providing a floating character in the middle. Most of the time, the forward motion is suspended or interrupted with rests and fermatas at the end of sections. The use of chromatic and enharmonic delineations in chord progressions create textural density and intensity without a proper development. The use of certain intervals like perfect fourths are placed and repeated at the end of sections in both pieces. Generally, his piano texture presents a variety of levels of homophonic and contrapuntal structures without showing a consistency in the development. In the following steps, I will analyze each piece dividing the syntax into multiple structural aspects such as: the melodic and harmonic; metric and rhythmic; articulation, tempo and dynamics followed by the examination of texture and virtual feeling. All the findings will then

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be connected to referential meaning and interpretation of his compositions in performance implications.

Heldenklage Step 3: Analysis of syntax Heldenklage, translated as Hero’s Lament, is one of Nietzsche’s most popular pieces written as a contribution to the Germania Society in1862. It is a short character piece in the key of F-sharp minor suiting the general mood carrying a Schumannesque feel, directly touching the listener upon first hearing. According to Benjamin Moritz, Heldenklage can be and should be a song without words with its narrative quality and choice of tonality.17 This became one of my favorite piano compositions of Nietzsche which I included in my repertoire and performed many times. The natural flow of its melodic motion immediately evokes melancholic emotions and makes the listener enter the composer’s inner world. One cannot escape to relate it to Nietzsche’s thoughts on suffering that invites the performeranalyst to examine the formal and structural elements to reveal its emotional meaning. General Outline and Form For such a short piece, Heldenklage is quite sectional separated with suspensions, rests, and fermatas occurring three times before the end. The general form poses ambiguity since the organization of structural elements does not present a conventional ABA form since there is no clear distinction of their organization. It may also be considered as a mini-sonata form transitioning to a quasi-improvisatory section (mm.19-26) in the middle, even though it lacks a complete development in terms of harmonic and melodic structures. Then, it connects back to the first theme that can be considered a varied recapitulation (m.27). The main themes of A and B presented in the exposition partially recur here and connect to the closing section through a transitional harmonic. The general outline of Heldenklage has three sections: Exposition (mm.1-18); Development (mm.19-26); varied Recapitulation (mm.27-38); and a Coda (mm. 41-44). The main tonality of F-sharp minor indicated in the key signature shifts to related A major on A pedals, then resolves in D Major at midpoint (m.23). It moves back to Fsharp minor through a descending chordal progression and settles in D 17 Benjamin Moritz, The Music and Thought of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illinois: Northwestern University, 2002), 67.

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minor at the end. The beginning and ending tonalities are different, but not totally unrelated presenting similar harmonic and melodic structures.18 Fig.14.1 - General Outline of Syntax

Melodic and Harmonic Structures The main Theme A has 8 measures proportionally divided in 4+4 with segments of Aa and Ab followed by two measures of prolongation P1 (mm.1-10). The beginning tonality unfolding the traditional harmonic design of I-IV-V-I moves to the dominant key, then goes back to tonic (mm.1-6) following a short switch to F-sharp major. The overall harmonic sound highlights an added-sixth chord on F-sharp that determines the harmonic structure of the entire piece. Theme A starts on C-sharp at the top, moves down a major-third, then a P4 moving up to D; then, it moves from A to B in stepwise motion, and ends on A (m. 4). In the second part, a tritone occurs between G-sharp and D (mm.5-6) following a grupetto, then continues in a descending motion forming another P4 interval between C# and G#. The first melodic theme ends with a succession of P4 intervals between C# and F# repeated three times (mm.8-10), with the last one moving to the upper register (m.10).

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All musical examples of Nietzsche’s music are from the Janz publication. Friedrich Nietzsche: Der musikalische Nachlaß, edited by Curt Paul Janz (Basel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1976).

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Fig. 14.2 - Theme Aa, mm.1-10.

Theme B begins following the same melodic structure and gesture with the segments of Ba and Bb, this time highlighting A major tonality on A pedals (mm.15-22). The main harmony switches to A major becoming an applied dominant to D major (mm.22-23). The melodic structure of B is same with A, except the harmonic embellishment between C# major and C# minor (m.14). The tonal shift is reinforced with the use of descending P5 followed by an Aug.4th (m.16), then a dim.5th (m.18). The chromatic motion between E-sharp and E-natural, and the enharmonic exchange between F-natural, Esharp, and E-natural add textural density to the progression (mm.18-22). Fig. 14.3 - Theme Ba, mm.11-14.

The development begins following the transition of TS1 over A pedals (mm.19-22). In the last measure, dominant-seventh harmony resolves in DMajor (m.23). The entire development has four measures with an equal distribution of TS1 and Theme D. After the arrival of D major, the harmony moves back to F-sharp minor following the traditional design of VI-IV-V-I (mm.26-32). The upper line forms an aug.4 (m.20) and ascending P4 (mm.20-21), the last one leading to D major (mm.22-23). By the time one experiences a consistency in the development of thematic and harmonic structures, an improvisatory section begins stretching arpeggiated figures

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between the lower and upper registers. D major tonality switches back to Fsharp minor unfolding a traditional cadence while the upper melodic line forms a stepwise-descending motion from D to G-sharp (mm.23-27). Fig. 14.4 – Development, mm. 23-26.

Upon the arrival of the dominant tonality C-sharp, the arpeggiation happens only on the downbeat(mm.27-31). The whole progression settles in F-sharp minor highlighting P4 intervals for another prolongation of P2 (mm.30-32). That is followed by the partial return of Bb in A major presenting the same thematic and harmonic material over A pedals in octaves (mm.33-38). Fig. 14.5 - Prolongation P2, mm.29-32.

B-flat connects to the transitional section TS2 followed by a descending chordal progression (mm.37-40). The emphasis on G minor harmony shifts the tonality to D minor through a stepwise-descending progression (mm. 38-42), that aligns with the stepwise descending progression from B-flat to E in the upper voice. The arrival of F-natural announces D minor tonality forming a minor-ninth on A pedal with a strong appoggiatura (m.41). A similar descending progression happens in the middle line moving down to F-natural in chromatic motion (mm.38-42). Everything comes to an end in

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D minor highlighting P4 intervals between A and D three times with the last one moving to a higher register (m.44). Fig. 14.6 - Transition to Development, mm.34-37.

The piece is mainly built on diatonic structures with some chromatic and enharmonic delineations. The switch between E-sharp and F-natural is apparent and also used in harmonic transition between F-Natural, E-sharp and E-natural (m.18-19; 36-37), then in descending chromatic motion from F-sharp to E (m. 41). These motions are used with emphasis on the dominant A as transitional passages to A major creating a neighbor-note motion. The same attitude is also seen between B-natural, B-flat and A in descending motion (m.16-17; 34-35; 20-21) with the last one leading to D minor. The strongest harmonic accent happens with the occurrence of a minor-ninth on the downbeat forming a contrapuntal motion to D minor (m.41-42). Fig. 14.7 – Coda, mm.39-44.

Rhythmic and Metric Structures The time signature of Heldenklage is in 2/4 that has been consistent throughout the piece. The metric structure is well defined with the strong establishment of downbeats and pedal markings in the original manuscript. At first glance, the left-hand accompaniment is made of eighth notes with the first one written separately on the downbeats. The rhythmic activity of

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dotted figures becomes stable with the use of quarter notes, then it slows down during the prolongation of P4 intervals in quarter notes (mm.8-10). Fig. 14.8 - Theme Aa, mm.1-10.

Theme B begins with the same rhythmic and metric structures, except the first part of Ba ends in quarter-notes tied together (m.14). In the next segment, the rhythmic structure is activated with eighth notes (m.16-18) transitioning to the development (m. 23). By the time it becomes consistent, a quasi-improvisatory section begins providing a dreamy character. This transition is made of eighth notes accompanied by recurring half notes on the downbeats (m.19-22). Fig. 14.9-Theme Ba, mm.14-18.

The rhythmic structure of the development is based on arpeggiated sixteenth-note patterns exchanged between two hands (m.23-32) and presented three different levels: half-notes on the downbeats; arpeggiated sixteenth-note patterns at the middle; and quarter-notes occurring in the upper line for four measures.

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Fig. 14.10 – Development, mm.21-24.

With the return of Ab in varied Recapitulation, the rhythmic structure goes back to the beginning. The lower line displays sixteen-note figures on the first beat followed by an eighth note, then an eighth rest on the second beat (m.28-31). The whole progression settles in F-sharp minor highlighting P4 intervals moving to the upper register in quarter-notes (m.30-32). The secondary theme Bb comes back with dotted-eighth figures followed by eighth-note patterns in the bass (m.33-36). The transition to the closing begins in eighth notes over half-note pedals with quarter-notes in the middle line (m.41-43). Eventually, the tempo slows down with the use of quarter and half notes marked with fermatas at the end. Fig. 14.11-Closing, mm.39-44.

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Tempo, Articulation, and Dynamics The expressive marking, Mit tiefem Gefühl (With Deep Feeling) fortifies the general mood of the piece. There are only a few dynamic markings appearing with no tempo indication in the original manuscript. However, there are two Ritardando markings: the first one followed by A tempo (m.10). Some performers maintain the sostenuto tempo throughout, while others continue in the beginning tempo right after the transition (m.19). It is obvious that the second ritardando sign is missing here (mm.32-44). With the ritardando and fermata signs occurring on larger rhythms in multiple lines, the tempo gradually slows down at the end. The general dynamic level is soft as indicated in the beginning. There are no other dynamic markings, except one decrescendo sign that is not clearly marked (m.5). A triple piano sign, ppp, appears followed by a piano (m.32), then another ppp in the last measure. The only phrasing marking occurs in the development section, connecting the arpeggio figures (mm.3941), and in Coda connecting the descending chordal progression (mm.3941). There is more consistency in pedal markings written almost in each measure throughout the piece. The longest pedals happen at the end of prolongations of P1, P2, and P3. Nietzsche’s intention to create an echo effect is very clear in these sections, all emphasized with tempo, articulation and pedal markings.

Step 4: Virtual feeling and sound-in-time At this point, the findings from previous analysis will be evaluated in relation to the textual and temporal processes in Heldenklage. The overall temporal structure presents seven temporal units following the general form: exposition having two temporal units TU1 and TU2; development starting with unit TU3 connecting to TU4; and, varied recapitulation having two units, TU5 and TU6, followed by the closing unit TU7. The recapitulation mirrors the syntactical elements presented in the beginning but is not repeated in the same way. Both exposition and varied recapitulation have eighteen measures that are proportionally designed in a homophonic texture. The only consistency seems to be the use of P4 intervals that appear throughout the piece providing a sense of longing at the end of phrases. Even though the beginning and ending tonalities seem unrelated, the ending tonality D minor is announced in the added sixth chord (F#-A-C#-D) having two pairs of P4 intervals. The organization of the syntactical elements shows the composer’s careful organization from the beginning. Harmonically, the most interesting transition happens in TU3 preparing A major tonality that

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resolves in D major (mm.19-22). The harmonic resolution creates a contrast to the rhythmic structure displaying an uncertain character in TU4. The settlement in D major does not take long and moves back to F-sharp minor while the rhythmic activity in the left hand is decreased in TU5 with the repetition of P4 intervals at the end (mm.31-32). The chromatic and enharmonic delineations are used in short ascending and descending motions creating counterpoint in the transitional sections (mm.18-21). The use of counterpoint has not been consistent throughout the piece and shows the lack of composer’s skills in handling the texture. The transitional units of TU3 and TU5 display similar characteristics: TU3 transitions to development following an upward motion, and TU7 moves down to D minor. The inconsistencies of the development section are balanced with the return of thematic material in D Major. The chromatic motions in TU7 flow well in descending chordal progression (mm.40-44). The emphasis on F-natural is heard three times in the upper- and middlelines preparing D minor harmony. A sudden contrapuntal action occurs in descending motion between B-flat and A creating a thicker texture against the rhythmic flow. The piece ends with the prolongation of P4 intervals that have been significant throughout the piece, and posing questions about its meaning beyond the syntax.

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Fig. 14.12 - Temporal Units and Markings 19

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Step 5: Performance implications According to Wallace Berry: Any serious investigation of structure and effect must significantly inform the critical evaluation, stylistic understanding, and interpretation of music, while laying important bases for decision in musical creativity. 20

The most important finding after the syntactical analysis is the use of addedsixth chord that generates the whole harmonic and thematic structures in the piece. The simple dotted figure in minor tonality sets the general feeling of suffering and melancholy that needs to be projected by holding them longer while pressing gently into the keys. Then, it happens in major tonality providing a much stable mood that can be projected with a more forward motion. The use of dissonances creates tension in descending chromatic and enharmonic delineations. It is important to emphasize the transition between E-sharp and E-natural (m.14), B and B-flat (m.16), and F-E#-E-natural (m.18) to add more intensity. A crucial decision needs to be made during the transition to development since there is no tempo indication following the Ritardando. However, the main tempo needs to be re-established to build the climax accompanied by a crescendo. After the arrival of D major, the performer may continue in a slower tempo creating a dreamlike state or push the tempo and dynamics fortifying the feeling of climax. The latter will create a more convincing interpretation before the arrival of recapitulation. With the decreasing rhythmic activity in TU5, the tempo slows down, and the process of decline begins accompanied by a gradual decrescendo to triple piano. Motion in music may, in principle, be erratic, but its usual condition is one of directed activity-courses of change-in lines of growth or decline at various levels. A line of decline at one level may be observed to be subsumed within a broader line of growth at another. 21

The texture becomes dense with the descending chordal progressions, while the successive eighth notes create a rhythmic activity. I would suggest bringing out more of the middle line, slightly accenting the chromatic motions, to provide more sonority and intensity. The introduction of minor20

Wallace Berry, Structural Functions in Music (New York: Dover Publications, 1987), 3. 21 Nicholas Cook, A Guide to Musical Analysis (New York: George Braziller, 1987), 1.

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ninth needs to be emphasized by pressing gently into the keys (m.41). The final prolongation of P4 intervals is worth expanding and supplying more resonance with the use of right and left pedals, letting the sound completely fade away in eternity.

Da Geht ein Bach Step 3: Analysis of syntax This piece was composed in 1862 for solo piano and for voice and piano based on the poem by Nietzsche’s friend Klaus Groth (1819-1899). The poem is associated with the brook projected in steady eighth-note accompaniment in a flowing and lively manner. According to Nicholas Hopkins, the piano version is seemingly a sketch for the vocal version because of Nietzsche’s addition of the word Skizze (sketch) on the title page.22 In this analysis, the focus will be on the structural and formal elements of the piano version. General Outline and Form Da geht ein Bach is written in ABA’ form made of 42 measures including the repeats. Sections A and A’ are identical in both versions. There is no key signature indicated in the beginning, and the time signature is in 4/4 throughout the piece. Section A (Exposition) has 14 measures beginning with an anacrusis on F-sharp, written in B major (mm.1-14); Section B (Development) starts in the related G minor, then goes back to B Major for 10 measures (mm.15-24); Section A’ (Recapitulation) has the same structure with A moving to G minor (m. 39); and, connects to the Coda in G minor and ends in B-flat Major (mm. 38-42). Following the F-sharp anacrusis, the use of P4 intervals is apparent between F# and B in the upper and middle lines and is repeated again between different notes. The melodic motion is interrupted at the end of phrases with rests and fermatas, twice in the beginning section, and later in the development. Long pedal notes are placed in the bass on B before returning to the beginning. After the exact repetition of Section, A, Heldenklage connects to the Coda and ends in Bflat major.

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Hopkins, Nietzsche, 35.

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Fig. 14.14 - General Outline of Syntax

Melodic and Harmonic Structures The main theme A1 begins on F-sharp leading to B major triad on B and Fsharp pedal notes. The melodic motion of the upper line is imitated at the middle first in unison, then in parallel motion in A1 and A2 (mm.1-10) where perfect-fourth intervals come back and are repeated (m.5 and 10). Following the P4 between F# and B, the melodic line moves up a dim.5th from A-sharp to E, then forms a stepwise motion connecting again to P4 at the end. The second theme A2 begins the same way but shifts to E-flat minor forming another P4 between G-flat-C-flat over an E-flat pedal (mm.9-10). A harmonic drop occurs from B to B-flat creating a tonal ambiguity that resolves in E-flat minor at the end of Section A (mm.7-10).

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Fig. 14.15 - A1 and A2, mm.1-10.

A sequential development happens in the following section where TR1 transitions to Section B. The melodic motives start with a descending P5 from E-flat to A-flat (m.11), then a dim5th from G-flat to C (m.13), both continuing by stepwise motions (m.12-14). Meanwhile the bass notes form a descending P4 between C-flat and G-flat, then an ascending one between F and Bb. The contrapuntal motion between the upper and middle lines continues in opposite directions while the harmonic structure provides a resolution in G-flat and B-flat tonalities. Fig. 14.16 - TR1, mm.11-14.

The entire development section is improvisatory shifting between passing harmonies and uncertain motivic figures on a B pedal (mm.18-22). The progression begins in G minor (m.15), transitions to B major for six measures, then resolves in B major following a dominant-tonic resolution in the bass (mm.23-24). A descending stepwise motif DM1 appears twice in the upper line, both moving a P5 up to D (mm.16-17). The B major tonality is established following an ascending chordal progression over the long-held pedal on B. A scale-motion on B (B-C-D#-E#-F#-G#-A#) is

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formed starting from the lower register moving up to the upper register (mm.17-24). This ascending motion creates a contrast with the descending arpeggio of D7th harmony (C#-E-G-A#) that resolves in B Major (mm. 2021). The tonality is confirmed with the use of P4 between F-sharp and B in the lower bass (mm.23-24), then connects to the beginning section. Fig. 14.17 – Development, mm.15-24.

The recapitulation (Section A’) is repeated exactly the same way as in Section A, then it connects to a short Coda having four measures (mm.3942). It starts in G minor, continues with the repetition of B-flats in recitative style, then is followed by DM3 in chordal motion (m.39). The descending notes of DM3 are marked with fermatas and settle in E-flat major that is sub-dominant to B-flat major. The dominant-seventh harmony appears following a 4/6 chord that resolves in B-flat tonality (mm.41-42).

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Fig. 14.18 – Coda, mm.39-42.

Rhythmic and Metric Structures The eighth-note anacrusis establishes the rhythmic structure which has been consistently used in the beginning. The quarter-notes of the melodic line are mirrored in the lower line forming a contrapuntal motion. However, they are tied to eight-notes accompaniment providing a rhythmic activity at the middle (mm.1-5). The pedal notes in whole-notes are placed on the downbeats of the lower-bass line. The rhythmic flow of A1 and A2 is interrupted with eighth rests: first one indicated with a fermata (m.5); and the second with no fermata (m.10). This can be a misprint or done deliberately to maintain the flow with no interruption in the following section. Fig.14.19-Section A and A1, mm.1-9.

The transitional passage TR1 to Section B presents similar structure in lower voices, but changes in the upper level. A dotted eight-note figure appears followed by quarter notes (mm.11-13) that are not tied to eighth notes in the middle. Instead, the triads are individually written in eighth notes followed by eighth rests. This provides a strong pulse and drives to the development section over the stability of quarter notes in the bass.

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Fig. 14.20 - TR1

The climactic G minor chords appear in eighth notes and are suspended for another beat creating a strong syncopation (m.15). Following an eighth rest, the descending motif DM1 comes in single eighth-notes, and a dottedquarter figure occurs in the upper line. At this point, the rhythmic and metric structures pose an uncertainty with constant interruptions and expanded chords with fermatas (mm.15-17). The rhythmic flow of transition is contrasted with a recitativo-like passage in the development. Despite the bar lines, there is no sense of meter in this section (m.17). The whole progression leads to B-major strongly established on the downbeat with a more consistent rhythmic structure (mm.18-21). The tempo slows down with quarter notes and rests toward the resolution of B major tonality (mm.23-24). Fig. 14.21 – Development, mm.15-17.

After the return to the beginning section, the tempo and rhythmic flow are re-established in the same way until Coda where the recitative comes back on a G minor chord on the downbeat. It begins with the repetition of eighth notes followed by DM3 appearing with fermatas (m.39). Then, a syncopation occurs on the diminished-seventh chord leading to the dominant harmony in dotted-eighth notes. All resolve in B-flat tonality using quarter notes in the upper and half-notes in the lower lines (m.42).

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336 Fig. 14.22 - Coda

Tempo, Articulation, and Dynamics Da geht ein Bach begins with Lebhaft (Lively) reflecting the general character and flow of the piece. The expression markings of zogernd (hesitating) are indicated three times at the end of A1 and A2 sections (mm.5-10). The last one is marked in fragend (questioningly) with fermatas between the broken chords (m.17). The use of these markings contributes to the general feeling of hesitation that slows the tempo. The descending chordal motion of DM3 and the last chord are marked with fermatas. All the articulation and expression markings contribute to the general feeling of disorientation at the end (m.39). Da geht ein Bach begins with a lively mood but ends with an emotional decline in a much slower tempo. As for dynamic markings, there is no indication in the beginning. However, a mezzo-piano can be suitable for this section followed by a crescendo in A1 and A2. The only dynamic markings appear in double forte (ff) at the development of climax (m.15), followed by a piano (p) creating a great contrast right after. There is no consistency in pedal markings throughout the piece. The pedal marking is indicated in first few measures on B pedal-notes in immer ed. (same pedal) throughout (mm.18-22); finally, mit Pedal in Coda (mm. 4042). See Fig. 23.

Step 4: Virtual feeling and sound-in-time The overall temporal structure offers a very clear division into six temporal units: TU1 (mm.1-5); TU2 (mm.6-10); TU3 (mm.11-14); TU4 (mm.15-17); TU5 (mm.18-24); and TU6 (39-42). From the beginning to the development, the syntactical elements work together in building continuity despite the interruptions at the end of themes A1 and A2. The contrapuntal motion between the upper and middle lines provides textural density intensifying the general flow. The thematic material is very distinctive and straightforward unfolding clear tonalities. With the harmonic drop from B to B-flat in the bass, the rhythmic drive is interrupted for a moment without diminishing the intensity of the melodic flow. The chromatic and enharmonic delineations alternating between A-sharp and G-flat; G-sharp

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and A-flat; D-flat and C-sharp; C-flat and B (mm. 9-12) add textural density and emotional intensity. Even though these transitions seem quite different in each temporal unit, the enharmonic sonorities work well together. The rhythmic structure supports them with the accompaniment of syncopated eighth notes against the stability of quarter notes in the lower line. This simple change in the rhythmic structure adds a strong pulse with a sense of urgency to the climax. Fig. 14.23: Temporal Units and Markings23

The development of these elements prepares the arrival of G minor chord in a glorious way. However, a sense of uncertainty is created right after the suspension of the second chord. The transition between TU3 and TU4 creates a conflicting tension right after the climax. The textural density is diminished, and the feeling of hesitation is infused with the introduction 23

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of single notes of DM1 written with fermatas. One can easily sense Nietzsche’s questioning and wondering at this crucial point (TU4). Following an ascending chordal progression, the arrival of the main tonality re-establishes stability and strength. The accompaniment of major thirds between the ascending chords helps to build the energy again. Following a descending dim.7th arpeggio in arch form, the whole progression is prolonged over B-pedal settling the B Major tonality. The descendingstepwise motion of G to F-sharp on appoggiatura adds intensity to this harmonic resolution. The last P4 happens between F-sharp and B in the lower bass, then everything goes back to the beginning section. The use of larger rhythmic values in the melody provides stability against the agitated eighth notes throughout the piece. After the repetition of TU1, TU2, and TU3, G minor harmony is re-introduced in the Coda followed by single Bflats. With the introduction of DM3 in descending chordal progression, the texture becomes dense again bringing back the hesitating mood with the use of fermatas. Then it is contrasted with an ascending chordal motion creating dissonant sonorities in the upper and lower lines. Overall texture shows more density in the beginning but displays inconsistencies after the development. The clarity of the beginning turns into a much ambiguous ending as the energetic drive is transformed into a melancholic pathos.

Step 5: Performance implications Exposition: The lively character and flow of successive eighth notes resemble water running, as described by Nicholas Hopkins. “the liveliness of the music and steadiness of the eighth notes in the accompaniment suggest the onward flowing of the brook through the valley.”24 It feels natural for the performer, to get into the flow and maintain the motion through the exposition. The middle-melodic line needs to be brought up to provide a dialogue with the upper melody. The pedal markings in the first measures might be applied throughout TU1 and TU2, as marked in Hopkins’ edition. However, I’d suggest using half pedals due to changes in the harmonic progression. The eighth rest marked with an expression marking zogernd (hesitating), must be executed in a sostenuto tempo (mm.5-6). However, it is necessary to go back to the main tempo even though there is no indication of A Tempo. The harmonic drop in TU2 must be highlighted with a slight delay in tempo and softer dynamics. Then, TU3 can start in softer dynamics, then build an accelerando and crescendo to the climax (mm. 11-15). The syncopated eighth notes require stronger pulse and 24

Hopkins, Nietzsche, 24.

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louder dynamics to infuse the sense of urgency resulting in an emotional explosion (m.15). Development: The emotional intensity does not last long and is soon suspended with a syncopation followed by an eight rest (m.15). It is relevant to wait longer on G minor harmony before starting the following motif DM1. This is the most crucial point in the piece providing a great sense of uncertainty and ambiguity. The high level of intensity at the climax is interrupted with rests and fermatas. In this case, it is important to create more contrast to intensify the state of disorientation. In TU5, the ascending chordal motion can be executed with a slight crescendo, or with softer dynamics to create a more mysterious mood before the arrival of B-major harmony. One must bring out the notes of B scale starting in the lower line, then connecting to the top notes. A slight crescendo and accelerando will suit this motion that is contrasted with the descending one going back to softer dynamics (mm. 19-24). I would recommend reducing the dynamics to pp but highlighting the anacrusis with a sostenuto before going back to the beginning (m.24). Recapitulation: The return to the beginning must be executed with more hesitation followed by a forward motion. The transitional TU3 can be projected with less intensity arriving to G minor harmony in softer dynamics. The repetition of B-flats in recitative can be stretched with more liberty at this final act. DM3 in chordal motion must be expanded in a slower tempo using softer dynamics. Following a delay on the eighth rest, the final gesture can be executed either with a crescendo for a majestic ending, or a diminuendo diminishing all the elements to intensify the sense of decline. Nevertheless, neither one will provide a real sense of completion at the end.

Recapitulation Step 6: Referential meaning onto-historical world of Nietzsche In this step, findings from the analysis of both pieces will be evaluated merging to a referential meaning. Reflecting on Nietzsche’s life with music, we can see the effects of early influences in the development of his musical experiments. Both pieces are highly Romantic paired with wealth of emotions and ideas. The duality of Dionysian urges and Apollonian efforts has been seen throughout the analytical process. They have a better sense of organization in the beginning reflecting the general mood and character. Nietzsche’s musical aphorism appears in a gesture of emotions that are not

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so much developed into satisfying conceptions, instead they are transformed into a state of deterioration interrupted with pauses and suspensions providing a sense of longing. Nietzsche successfully achieves this sense of decline more than a well-developed musical climax in his musical experiments. In that sense, we cannot deny Nietzsche’s deliberate intentions to create such ambiguities and inconsistencies in the use of his musical syntax. That may not necessarily originate from a lack of training, but mainly his philosophical wondering in the background of his music. Melody as Gesture of Emotions The melodic development is mostly presented in gesture of emotions rather than the traditional motion of phrases. In a letter to Fuchs written in 1884, Nietzsche emphasizes the need for melody, gift of melody, and the deterioration of the melodic sense with increasing attention to the gesture of emotion, as observed in the analysis of both pieces: The deterioration of the melodic sense, of which I seem to catch a whiff at every contact with German musicians, the increasing attention to the particular gesture of emotion, likewise the increase of skill in the performing of particulars, in the rhetorical means of music, in the histrionic art of shaping the moment as convincingly as possible: these things, it seems to me, are not only compatible, but they are also inter dependent. 25

Even though Nietzsche refers to the music of German musicians, the shaping the moment through these gestures becomes more important than developing them into a whole in these works. In his letters to Fuchs, he also mentions the frequent use of the ambiguity of rhythm, particularly in Tristan which produces wonderful effects, that becomes a sign of dissolution of the unity. We can see similar ambiguities in building rhythmic and melodic structures as part of a dissolution process. All the qualities introduced in the beginning cannot help avoiding deterioration in the whole, as he stated: “but as the symptom of an entire art it is and remains the sign of dissolution.”26 Pathos and Ethos of Rhythmic Structures. Nietzsche’s conception of rhythm and meter is mainly related to words and accentuation of syllables. He differentiates between the barbarous use of meter, by German poets, based on the emotional accentuation of strong and weak beats, contrasting with the ancient Greek rhythm used to master emotions. Then, he summarizes: “In sum: our kind of rhythm relates to 25 26

Nicholas Cook, A Guide to Musical Analysis (New York: George Braziller, 1987), 1. Ibid., 60.

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pathology, ancient rhythm relates to ethos.”27 The beginning rhythmic structures in both pieces reveal both strong and weak beats, then the rhythmic ambiguity begins during the development section leading to a sense of disorientation. After reading his philosophical thoughts and analyzing the elements of his music, we can better understand the nature of anomalies occurring in his musical experiments. Harmonic Ambiguity The harmonic and tonal structures pose ambiguity as well in terms of the change between the beginning and ending tonalities. The switch between them is aurally more convincing than visually and conceptually, as brought to attention during the first exposure to his music, in Step 2. His music sounds conformed at first listening but becomes ambiguous on the score. The analysis shows the use of chromatic and enharmonic delineations makes these ambiguities sound together and relevant particularly during transitions. Another aspect revealed in the analysis is the obsessive use of P4 intervals that are introduced at the end of sections, mostly creating a sense of hesitation instead of resolution. That shows the philosopher's deliberate action in using this specific interval carrying both the dominant and tonic functions, tension and resolution in its own structure. Articulation and Expression Markings Despite Nietzsche’s experience in reading the most sophisticated scores earlier in his life, his musical score does not show the same level of mastery in terms of markings. According to him, articulation markings become a deteriorating element bringing attention to details more than to the whole: "Phrase-marking would, accordingly be the symptom of a decline of the organizing power: or, to put it differently, a symptom of incapacity to bridge big areas of relations rhythmically.”28 He then links the absence of phrasing to performance, saying that he did not find a value for the performer’s understanding of the smaller parts because it does not matter for the audience to hear a performance focusing on phrasing or not. 29 It is true that the listener is not consciously aware of phrasing, however, the performer’s approach is reflected in connecting the elements during performance. Nietzsche claims that his music becomes more interesting and manageable if the performer focuses on shaping the moment and the particulars as convincingly as possible. In that sense, a performance highlighting the

27

Nietzsche, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, 310. Ibid., 307. 29 Ibid., 307. 28

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momentary gestures is more relevant to the essence and interpretation of his music.

Coda The part dominates the whole, phrase dominates melody, the moment dominates time (also the tempo), pathos dominates ethos (character, style, or whatever you want to call it?), finally even esprit dominates sense.30

Behind Nietzsche’s philosophical thoughts and writings, we can sense his spirit of music as a driving force, but we cannot deny the presence of his philosophical spirit behind his musical experiments. Analyzing his piano compositions has been a rewarding and revealing experience bringing out these dual aspects of his lifelong search. During the analytical process, I kept reflecting on The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, and realized that each piece is a mini tragedy presenting the dialectics between Dionysian and Apollonian forces. The Dionysian urges give rise to emotional gestures somehow organized by Apollonian efforts to build the form and structure in the beginning, then everything is transformed into deterioration taken over by Dionysian impulses at the end. Once one takes more profound steps in analysis, the intrinsic elements of his syntax became more relevant and meaningful as part of a theatrical act, rather than particles of a traditional composition. It was also interesting to observe Nietzsche’s Apollonian efforts to organize his music despite Dionysian urges. His failure in composition might come from the lack of musical training in one respect, however, I’ve sensed more of his philosophical inclinations playing a role in his deliberate actions to build the musical syntax. I believe Nietzsche would continue to deconstruct and deteriorate the elements of his syntax even though he had the necessary training. In that sense, he was successful in building and deconstructing the traditional elements in such a theatrical act, and in creating musical decadence at the end. He wrote to his friend, Gersdorff, saying that: Above all, a few gay spirits in my own style must once more be unchained; I must learn to play on them as on a keyboard, but not only pieces I have learned by heart-no-but also free fantasias, as free as possible, yet still very logical and beautiful.31

30 31

Ibid., 233. Ibid., 22.

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In the end, Nietzsche’s early experimentation in music results in miniatures lacking grandioso forms of his time, but they are creative and honest in their own rights, not glamourous but affectious. They may not match the accepted norms of music, but they are unique in their own style reflecting his philosophical thoughts.

Bibliography Baugh, Hansell. “Nietzsche and His Music.” The Musical Quarterly 12, No. 2: 238-247. Oxford University Press, 1926. Berry, Wallace. Structural Functions in Music. New York: Dover Edition, 1987. Cook, Nicholas. A Guide to Musical Analysis. New York: George Braziller, 1987. Ferrara, Lawrence. Philosophy and the Analysis of Music: Bridges to Musical Sound, Form, and Reference. Excelsior Music Publishing Co., 1991. Fry, Katherine. “Nietzsche, Tristan und Isolde, and the Analysis of Wagnerian Rhythm.” The Opera Quarterly 29, Issue 3-4 (March 2014): 253-276. Oxford University Press, 2014. Higgins, Kathleen. “Nietzsche on Music.” Journal of the History of Ideas 47, No. 4: 663-672. University of Pennsylvania, 1986. Hopkins, Nicholas. Friedrich Nietzsche: Selected Works for Piano (Piano Solo and Piano for Four Hands). Carl Fisher, 2017. Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1974. Liebert, George. Nietzsche and Music. Translated by David Pellauer and Graham Parkes. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. Love, Frederick R. “Nietzsche, Music and Madness.” Music & Letters 60, No. 2: 186-203. Oxford University Press, 1979. Moritz, Benjamin. The Music and Thought of Friedrich Nietzsche. Illinois: Northwestern University, 2002. Thatcher, David S. “Nietzsche and Brahms: A Forgotten Relationship.” Music and Letters 54, No. 3: 261-280. Oxford University Press, 1973. Young, Julian. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography. Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

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Musical Scores Nietzsche, Friedrich. Heldenklage , 1862. https://imslp.eu/files/imglnks/euimg/a/ac/IMSLP25043-PMLP56242Nietzsche_-_Heldenklage.pdf Nietzsche, Friedrich. Da Geht ein Bach, 1862. https://imslp.hk/files/imglnks/euimg/0/06/IMSLP25046-PMLP56248Nietzsche_-_Da_geht_ein_Bach.pdf

PART V: MUSIC IN NIETZSCHE’S WRITINGS

CHAPTER 15 THE SYMPHONIC STRUCTURE OF THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA: A PRELIMINARY OUTLINE GRAHAM PARKES1

You will be able to tell from the Finale [of Zarathustra] what the whole symphony is really saying.2

The power of music “Without music life would be simply an error, exhausting toil, exile.” This well- known pronouncement makes a fitting motto for Nietzsche’s life and work.3 He grew up in a milieu pervaded by music. As a teenager, he wrote 1

I am grateful to my colleague Gerald Groemer, at the University of Yamanashi, for pointing out some musicological errors in the first version of this essay. 2 Nietzsche, letter to Franz Overbeck, 6 February 1884 (KSB 6, 475). In a discussion of Zarathustra in his Nietzsche Biographie, Curt Paul Janz asks in a section heading, ‘Is Zarathustra a “Symphony”?’ His conclusion is, “To a certain extent, but one must first completely forget about the formal conception of “the symphony” in favour of the musical in general.” (Curt Paul Janz, Nietzsche Biographie [Munich 1978], 2: 211, 220.) Michael Allen Gillespie is more sanguine, saying that ‘Nietzsche employs musical forms to coordinate the various aphorisms within a larger whole’ in his late works and ‘probably in Zarathustra’. (“Nietzsche’s Musical Politics”, in Nietzsche’s New Seas, ed. by Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy B. Strong [1988], Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 119.) I regret that Gillespie’s insightful essay, which beautifully demonstrates that Twilight of the Idols is composed in sonata form, came to my attention too late to discuss it here. 3 Letter of 15 January 1888 (KSB 8, 232); a shorter version, “Without Music Life Would Be an Error,” is in TI, “Maxims and Arrows” § 33. Among studies of this topic, Georges Liébert’s Nietzsche and Music is especially to be recommended, despite the author’s occasional testiness with respect to the first of his two subjects. See also the section ‘The Musicality of Zarathustra’ in the Introduction to my

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of his departed father: ‘He would fill his hours of leisure with study and music. In piano playing he attained a significant level of skill, especially in free improvisation.’ Naumburg, where Nietzsche spent his childhood, offered like many towns in Germany at the time an unusually rich array of musical possibilities, from oratorios in the cathedral to chamber music in private homes. The young Nietzsche writes fondly of his best friend, Gustav Krug, and the musical riches of the Krug family home, where the paterfamilias was a good friend of Mendelssohn’s and himself an accomplished amateur composer and musician. As well as playing music together, Nietzsche and the younger Krug would spend hours reading and discussing musical scores. In his early autobiographical essays, Nietzsche describes several encounters with the sublime in the town’s churches and cathedral while listening to works by Händel, Mozart, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. Piano lessons from an early age developed his own talent on that instrument, and after he left home for boarding school, his correspondence is filled with requests to his mother to send him musical scores. In an autobiographical fragment ‘On Music’ he writes: ‘Music often speaks to us more urgently in tones than poetry does in words, engaging the most secret folds of the heart. May this glorious gift from God always be my companion on the pathways of life.’ Once when an illness deprived him of piano playing, he wrote to his mother from boarding school: “Everything seems dead to me when I can’t hear any music.”4 In another letter from the same period: “I look for words for a melody that I have, and for a melody for words that I have, and these two things I have don’t go together, even though they come from the same soul. But such is my fate!”5 Nevertheless, during his teens and twenties he wrote prolifically for piano and voice, producing close to a hundred compositions, most of them short piano pieces and Lieder somewhat in the style of Schubert and Schumann.6 Nietzsche’s desire to compose music seriously remained strong, though it was of necessity dampened in the course of his decade-long friendship with Richard Wagner, the world’s most famous composer at that time. Nietzsche’s joy in composing reasserted itself through his translation of Zarathustra (Oxford, 2005). 4 Hans Joachim Mette, Editor, Friedrich Nietzsche Jugendschriften, five vols, 1: 1– 2; 1: 12–13; 1: 18; 1: 27, Munich: Beck, 1994. 5 Letters of 27 April 1863 (KSB 1, 238) and 6 September 1863 (1, 253). 6 See Curt Paul Janz, Editor, Der musikalische Nachlass, Friedrich Nietzsche, Basel: Barenreiter-Verlag, 1976.

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presenting compositions to Wagner’s wife, Cosima, and sustained a violent setback when Cosima’s former husband, the conductor Hans von Bülow to whom he had given one of his stormier scores, famously called it “a rape and violation of Euterpe [the muse of music].” – Ouch. More charitable was Heinrich Köselitz, one of Nietzsche’s longest standing and most faithful friends, and a composer (under the artistic name Peter Gast) of fairly undistinguished operas. Nietzsche and Köselitz discussed music constantly during their years of correspondence, and whenever they met in person they would play music together if there was a piano available. After eventually giving up composing, Nietzsche continued to play the piano when the opportunity arose, and he remained a frequent concert- and opera-goer throughout his career. As far as social intercourse was concerned: “In the whole history of philosophy it would be impossible to find another philosopher who frequented musicians [composers, conductors, pianist, musicologists, music publishers] to such an extent.”7 Nietzsche’s aesthetic attitude towards existence is exemplified in his idea that we are tasked as human beings to make our lives into works of art, and in some cases works of music. Writing about the way certain rare moments in life ‘speak to our hearts’, he talks of ‘the symphony of actual life’. In denigrating ‘idealist’ thinkers who reject that this world revealed to the senses in favour of “the cold realm of ideas,” he claims: “A genuine philosopher [in those days] could no longer hear life, insofar as life is music, and so he denied the music of life.” For Nietzsche, insofar as all life is will to power, which manifests itself through the drives (Triebe) or affects that operate mostly beneath the level of consciousness, music can reveal those operations: Only now is the human being coming to realize that music is a signlanguage of the affects: and we shall later learn to recognize clearly the drive-system of a musician from his music...There are many more languages than one thinks...What does not speak to us! – but those who hear are becoming ever fewer.8

Even after having admitted to himself that the proper medium for his work was the language of words rather than tones, Nietzsche still hoped to attain some kind of fusion between the two. In 1887 he wrote to Köselitz: “Beyond a doubt, in the very depths of my being I would like to have been able to compose the music that you yourself compose – and my own 7 8

André Schaeffner, cited in Liébert, Nietzsche and Music, 1. Nietzsche, HH I: 586; The Joyful Science, 373; KSA 10: 7[62].

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music (books included) was only done faute de mieux.”9 And when he writes two years later that ‘one becomes more of a philosopher the more one becomes a musician’, he is clearly referring to himself as one whose musicianship had infused his philosophizing.10 When Nietzsche wrote in a letter to the conductor Hermann Levi, “Perhaps there has never been a philosopher who was so fundamentally a musician as I am,” the only possible exception that comes to mind is Rousseau.11 What is certain, however, is that Nietzsche’s writings have inspired the composition of more music than have those of any other philosopher – which is some measure of the success of his efforts to infuse his philosophy with music. By 1975, over 170 composers had created some 370 musical settings of 90 texts by Nietzsche, among them 87 pieces that are settings of excerpts from Zarathustra or are explicitly inspired by the text as a whole.12 “The whole of Zarathustra might perhaps be reckoned as music,” Nietzsche writes in retrospect about his favourite book, “– certainly a rebirth in the art of hearing was a precondition of it.” The first mention of the idea that inspired this work, the eternal recoming of the same, occurs in a notebook entry marked “Beginning of August 1881 in Sils-Maria.”13 It is significant that in the letter to Köselitz which announces this inspiration he also writes: “I have been forced to give up reading scores and playing the piano once and for all.”14 Shortly thereafter, a notebook entry mentions a projected work with the title Midday and Eternity and a first sentence that begins: “Zarathustra, born near Lake Urmi, in his thirtieth year left his home . . .” The work will consist of four parts, and the sketch begins: “First Book in the style of the first movement of [Beethoven’s] Ninth Symphony.”15 Nietzsche recounts in EH that the first part of Zarathustra came to him – “and above all Zarathustra himself, as a type . . . overwhelmed me “ – 9

Letter to Köselitz, 22 June 1887 (KSB 8: 95). CW, § 1. 11 Letter of 20 October 1887 (KSB 8, 172). 12 David S. Thatcher, “Musical Settings of Nietzsche-Texts: An Annotated Bibliography”, Nietzsche-Studien, 4: 284–323; (1976) 5: 355–383. 13 KSA 9: 11[141]. I translate Nietzsche’s ewige Wiederkunft here as ‘eternal recoming’ rather than ‘eternal return’, to distinguish it from his use of ewige Wiederkehr, which is best rendered as ‘eternal return’. He surely intends a play on the usual meaning of die Wiederkunft, which means ‘the second coming’ of the Lord. 14 Letter of 14 August 1881 (KSB 6: 113). 15 KSA 9: 11[195, 197]. 10

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shortly after he had moved to Rapallo, a small town on the Ligurian coast east of Genoa.16 In a letter to Köselitz from Rapallo, Nietzsche discusses the problem, raised by Wagner but still unsolved, of “how a whole act of an opera could achieve a symphonic unity as an organism.”17 A crucial point is “that the flow of affects, the whole structure of the act has to have something of the schema of the movement of a symphony: certain responsions and so forth.” Three weeks later, another letter to Köselitz announces the completion of “a small book . . . my best It is to be called: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. With this book I have entered into a new Ring.” The allusion to Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen, not to mention the challenge to the world’s longest, if not greatest, opera, is not as far-fetched as it sounds18. When on the same day he writes to his best friend, Franz Overbeck, to tell him about the new book, he adds: “I am now engaged for a couple more days with the Nagelprobe revisions, a work requiring refined hearing, for which one cannot be sufficiently alone” (324). The mix of metaphors is significant: Nagelprobe alludes to the Latin ad unguem, which refers to the sculptor’s practice of running a fingernail across a surface to test its smoothness – and yet Nietzsche is testing the perfection of his language by listening to it.19 Two months later, when he asks his Köselitz, “Under which rubric does this Zarathustra really belong?” he reverts to the symphonic in answering his own question: “I almost believe that it comes under “symphonies”. What is certain is that with this I have crossed over into 16

EH, ‘Zarathustra’, § 1. Letter of 10 January 1883 (KSB 6: 316). 18 Letter of 1 February 1883 (KSB 6, 321). In another letter to Köselitz six months later, Nietzsche writes that it should be easy to recognize ‘that the first part comprises a ring of feelings that is a presupposition for the ring of feelings that make up the second part’ (KSB 6, 442). For an intelligent articulation of the ways in which Zarathustra is a challenge to The Ring (as well as to Parsifal), see Roger Hollinrake (1982) Nietzsche, Wagner, and the Philosophy of Pessimism, London: Allen & Unwin. 19 Letter of 1 February 1883 (KSB 6, 324). In an earlier letter to Lou Salomé, Nietzsche uses the expression ad unguem to refer to his work on revising The Joyful Science: ‘The final decision on the text requires the most scrupulous “hearing” of every word and sentence. Sculptors refer to this last phase of the work as ad unguem’ (KSB 6, 213). Horace uses the expression ad unguem, recommending that one “condemn that poem which/many days and many erasures have not pruned and/revised and chastened ten times to the nail” (Ars Poetica, 292–294). Some think it refers to the phase of polishing in which the sculptor perfects the very fingernails of the statue. 17

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another world.” Finally, after finishing the third part he refers to it several times as “the finale of my symphony.” And at the same time he writes to Köselitz: “Music is by far the best thing; now I want more than ever to be a musician.”20 Why does Nietzsche insist on calling this work a symphony? Given that the protagonist not only speaks but also sings at crucial junctures in the book, then why not an opera – a new Ring in a different medium? Or, given the predominance of Zarathustra’s voice over all the others, why not an oratorio with a dominating soloist, or even a concerto with Zarathustra’s voice as the solo instrument? Yet no lesser authority than Gustav Mahler confirms Nietzsche’s claim about his favourite work: “His Zarathustra was born completely from the spirit of music, and is even “symphonically” constructed.”21 Given that Mahler understood the structure of the classical symphony as well as any human being that ever lived, this comment demands to be taken seriously. The word ‘symphony’ (or sinfonia) was first used in the musical sense to refer to an instrumental prelude for, or interlude in, an opera or oratorio.22 The classical symphony grew out of several different musical forms and especially from the French overture (as perfected by Lully) and the Italian sinfonia (with Alessandro Scarlatti as exemplary). When these forms became independent works, they usually consisted of three movements, in a pattern of fast – slow – fast. The pre-classical symphony, as developed by numerous composers in Paris, northern Italy, Mannheim, and Vienna, favoured this three-movement structure until the 1760s. After 1770, four movements became standard, with the insertion of a minuet between the second, slow movement and a final, dance-like movement in rondo form. Half of Haydn’s early symphonies (Nos. 1–30), for example, are in three movements, while almost all of those he wrote after the mid-1760s have four. The world of Zarathustra scholarship divides into those who think the work properly ends at the conclusion of Part Three (which Nietzsche 20 Letter of 2 April 1883 (KSB 6, 353); 18 January 1884 (KSB 6, 466); 6 February 1884 (KSB 6, 475); 30 March 1884 (KSB 6, 491); 25 February 1884 (KSB 6, 480). 21 As quoted by Bernard Scharlitt, “Gespräch mit Mahler,” Musikblätter des Anbruchs II, Verlag, , 1920, 310. 22 Ralph Hill cites the introductory sinfonia to Peri’s opera Eurydice of 1600, which may be the first significant instance. Ralph Hill, The Symphony, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1949, 11.

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certainly thought was the end at the time he finished it) and those who think it should include the fourth part, which he wrote around a year later but chose not to publish.23 If one is of the three-part persuasion, the book’s structure would reflect the pre-classical symphony in three movements: a first movement in sonata-allegro form; a second, slow movement (andante or adagio) usually in ternary (A-B-A) or binary (A-B-A-B) form; and a third movement either ‘in the tempo of a minuet’ (sometimes minuet or scherzo and trio) or else in a faster dance-like tempo (allegro or presto). For those who include the fourth part, the form would be that of the later classical symphony in four movements, where the third would be a minuet and trio in ternary form, and the final movement dance-like in rondo. But since Nietzsche writes of ‘the finale of [his] symphony’ in four different letters after completing Part Three, it makes sense to compare the structure of the first three parts of Zarathustra with that of the early classical symphony in three movements.

First movement The first movement of this symphony is in sonata-allegro form – which often has an introduction leading into the first part, the exposition, then the development, which is followed by a closing section leading to a recapitulation. The introduction to the first movement tends to establish a serious tone and a grand scale that sets up the rest of the movement. This is certainly the function of “Zarathustra’s Prologue”, which introduces the major places and themes to follow: the solitude of Zarathustra’s mountaintop cave, ‘the death of God’, his descent and return to human beings, the problem of the audience, the last human, and his teaching concerning the Overhuman.24 The first of Zarathustra’s speeches, “On the Three Transformations” (1.1), is like a second, much shorter introduction, insofar as it depicts a general process, invoking through vivid imagery three transformations of the spirit to be exemplified in the three sections (exposition, development, recapitulation) of the First Part. Taking chapters 1.8 (“On the Tree on the Mountainside”) and 1.15 (“On the Thousand Goals and One”) as transitions, the exposition, development, and recapitulation would each consist of six chapters (2–7, 9–14, 16–21), with 23 One of the most persuasive proponents of the three-part view is Laurence Lampert, in his masterly study Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1986). My understanding of the book’s structure owes a great deal to his interpretation. 24 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Graham Parkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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the last chapter (16.22) understood as a coda. The exposition in a symphony’s first movement generally presents two themes in contrasting keys. The exposition chapters (2–7) correspond to the ‘camel’ stage of the spirit insofar as they discuss traditional teachings concerning human existence. The first theme, virtue, is sounded by the ‘wise man’ who occupies a professorial chair for that subject, advocating the practice of virtue as a means to sound sleep. Zarathustra wryly comments on the splendidly soporific effects of these rote prescriptions. The next two speeches, “On Believers in a World Behind” and “On the Despisers of the Body,” introduce the second group of themes: the way suffering and weariness of will prompt people to invent Gods and “worlds behind,” and to denigrate the earth and the living body as the loci of suffering. The next two speeches, “On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions” (1.5) and “On the Pale Criminal” (1.6) resume the theme of the virtues, but in a different key, insofar as the audience of ‘brothers’ for the speech ‘On Believers in a World Behind’ has now shrunk to a singular ‘brother’ to whom a more intimate form of address is appropriate, and the despisers of the body have been replaced by the narrower class of “judges and sacrificers.” Zarathustra now revisions the virtues as transformations of the passions, of drives originating from the body – though the Triebe (drives) are not mentioned by name until the eighth speech. The last two speeches of the exposition, “On Reading and Writing” and “On the Tree on the Mountainside,” intimate Zarathustra’s responsion to the second theme, whereby spiritual transcendence to a divine realm beyond this world is replaced by an ecstatic flight within this world occasioned by the dancing of a God (Dionysus) through the human body. “On the Tree on the Mountainside” introduces a closing theme with a cadential function by showing the reaction of a young man who has been powerfully drawn to Zarathustra’s teaching: namely hatred and envy of Zarathustra as “one who can fly,” incited by what Zarathustra will call ‘the spirit of heaviness’. For the first time we hear a dialogue between teacher and student, and we are shown a milder aspect of Zarathustra as he explains to the young man that he is still ensnared by conflicting drives that have not yet been mastered. The conclusion to his speech effects a transition to the next section insofar as he exhorts the young man to emulate the noble man and avoid succumbing to the despair that enveloped noble types who lost hope: “Hold sacred your highest hope!”

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The next six chapters (9–14) make up the ‘development’ section, in which Zarathustra elaborates the themes of the exposition in a more combative set of speeches addressed mostly to an audience he refers to as ‘my brothers’, attacking in the spirit of the lion such adversaries as priests and politicians. “On the Preachers of Death” opens forcefully, with a direct attack on the priests of the old religions: There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom rejection of life must be preached. Full is the earth of the superfluous; corrupted is life by the all too many. Let one use ‘eternal life’ to lure them away from this life!

The speech revisits the theme of suffering as a reason for rejecting life, and now shows “furious labour and distraction” and the desire for “what is fast, and new, and strange” as symptoms of the drive to escape from suffering. Zarathustra ends the speech with the wish, whether one calls it death or eternal life, that the preachers of death would just pass on to it quickly taking their disciples with them. In the next speech, “On War and Warrior Peoples” (1.10) Zarathustra incites his ‘brothers in warfare’ to become “warriors of understanding” and to wage spiritual and intellectual warfare – ‘war for your own thoughts’ – against the traditionally entrenched teachings. He sets a good example by attacking the institutions of the state and its public sphere in his next two speeches, showing how their suppression of vital originality promotes death and destruction rather than life and creativity. In the following two speeches, which are softer in tone, Zarathustra revalues the virtue of chastity and the institution of friendship by revealing the repressed vice that often lurks behind chastity and the need for enmity in friendship. Zarathustra’s next speech, “On the Thousand Goals and One” (1.15), constitutes a transition to the recapitulation, in which the previous themes are revisited in the spirit of the spontaneity of the child and in the light of the overcoming of the human by way of the Overhuman. “On the Thousand Goals and One” is a crucial speech that brings together the first movement’s two theme areas by inquiring into the origins of the virtues and moral evaluations such as good and evil – and finding them to come not from some God or heavenly realm but from interpretations of peoples in the form of “will to power” (first mention in the book). The recapitulation returns to themes laid out in the exposition and also alludes to their elaborations in the development section. Whereas two

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chapters in the exposition and two in the development mention the Overhuman, four chapters do so in the recapitulation. There is for the most part a close correspondence with the six chapters of the exposition. “On Love of One’s Neighbour” (1.16) is a responsion to the ‘wise man’s’ maxim, “Peace with God and one’s neighbour” (1.2), which exposes love of the neighbour as false selflessness and ‘bad love of oneself’ and commends instead love of the friend and thereby the Overhuman. “On the Way of the Creator” (1.17) replaces the suffering creator God of chapter 1.3 (“On Believers in a World Behind”) with a suffering human creator, who corresponds on the level of the solitary individual to the creator peoples discussed in “On the Thousand Goals and One.” Now, the “creating, willing, valuing I” of the third chapter is replaced by a multiplicity consisting of “yourself and your Seven Devils.” The next speech, “On Old and Young Little Women” (1.18) counters the despisers of the body (1.4) who are “no bridges to the Overhuman” with a woman in whose love the light of a star shines, and whose hope is to “give birth to the Overhuman.” The next two chapters correspond to the next two themes of the exposition in reverse order. “On the Bite of the Adder” (1.19) revisits the theme of justice first announced in “On the Pale Criminal” (1.6), except that the criminal who was earlier the victim of a petty and vengeful justice, is replaced by the solitary Zarathustra, for whom “a little revenge is more humane than no revenge at all’, and who demands a justice that is ‘love with seeing eyes” and that wittily gives to each his – Zarathustra’s – own. “On Children and Marriage” (1.20) reprises the discussion of the virtues in “On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions” (1.5): whereas the singular ‘brother’ in the earlier chapter was liable to become “a battle and battlefield of virtues” driven by “envy and mistrust and calumny,” Zarathustra’s later question for “you alone, my brother” is whether he is ready for marriage through having become “commander of the senses, master of your virtues.” To have one’s animal passions turn into virtues is a first step, after which the human as virtuous is to be overcome (1.5); but now marriage can help raise sexual love above the level of “two animals finding each other out” to “a sympathizing with suffering and disguised Gods” and thereby “an arrow and yearning for the Overhuman” (1.20). Lastly, the speech “On Free Death” (1.21), with its exhortations to welcome “death at the right time” as ‘a festival’ and thereby “love the earth more,” harks back to the “courage that wants to laugh,” that can kill with laughter “the Spirit of Heaviness, through whom all things fall” and all mortal creatures are brought down and back into the earth (1.7).

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The final speech, “On the Bestowing Virtue” (1.22), is a kind of coda, set outside the town, in which Zarathustra takes leave of his disciples (first mention of them as ‘disciples’) – but not before speaking to them of “the highest virtue.” He recapitulates several main themes from Part One: the body as something that “goes through history” incorporating error as well as reason; the will (to power) as “the origin of virtue;” the exhortation to his brothers to ‘stay true to the earth’. Then he finishes by encouraging his disciples to question his teachings and reject him as a teacher: “Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves.” The climax of the speech amplifies and exalts the ineffectual image from his first speech to the people in the marketplace, “The human is a rope fastened between beast and Overhuman,” by confidently proclaiming the advent of “the Great Midday:” when the human stands in the middle of its path between beast and Overhuman and celebrates its way to evening as its highest hope; for it is the way to a new morning.

Second movement The second movement of the early classical symphony is a slow movement, usually consisting of a main theme that recurs in alternation with contrasting sections (A-B-A-B). The slow movement sometimes begins with an introduction and ends with a coda that is distinct from the main theme. Taking wisdom as the primary theme, the structure of Part Two would look like this: introduction (chapter 1), main theme (2), first contrasting section (3–7), main theme developed (8–12), second contrasting section (13–19), final statement of main theme (20), coda (21–22). The motto that stands at the head of Part Two of Zarathustra is a repetition of a sentence-and-a-half from the last page of the previous part: ...and only when you have all denied me will I return to you. Verily, with different eyes, my brothers, shall I then seek my lost ones; with a different love shall I then love you.

Nietzsche comments in a letter to Köselitz: “From this motto there emerge – it is almost unseemly to say this to a musician – different harmonies and modulations from those in the first part. The main thing was to swing oneself up to the second level – in order from there to reach the third.”25 25

Letter of 13 July 1883 (KSB 6, 397).

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The upswing happens through Zarathustra’s departure from his disciples for the solitude of his mountaintop cave, followed by a sojourn in a site far from the marketplace and town of Part One: the Isles of the Blest. According to Hesiod, these islands are inhabited by departed heroes who “dwell with carefree heart … beside deep-swirling Oceanus, and for whom the grain-giving soil bears its honey-sweet fruits thrice a year.”26 A suitably serene setting, then, for the slow exposition of the theme of wisdom. Whereas all the chapters in Part One bear titles beginning with ‘On ...’ as befitting their status as speeches, Part Two begins with “The Child and the Mirror” and “Upon the Isles of the Blest,” alluding to a mythic story and a mythical place or state of mind, respectively. The beginning of “The Child and the Mirror” (2.1) echoes the beginning of the Prologue, with Zarathustra spending ‘months and years’ in his mountaintop solitude until one morning he is awakened by a frightening dream, in which a child shows him his reflection in a mirror. This alludes to the story about the infant Dionysus (Zagreus) whom the envious Titans distract by giving him a mirror to play with, so that they can kill, dismember, and devour him. Concluding that his friends have denied him and that he should therefore return to them, Zarathustra resolves to go back down – by way of an Orphic-Dionysiac dissolution into forces of nature: he becomes a mountain torrent plunging into the valleys and a hailstorm with lightning- laughter pealing into the depths. There is a lot of Dionysiac Rausch here for the beginning of a slow movement – conveyed in the German by a steady stream of sibilants (a surge of initial ‘s’ and ‘sh’ sounds over a page-and- a-half) – but it eventually resolves into the calmer image of Zarathustra’s ‘Wild Wisdom’ in the form of a lioness wanting to put her young to bed on the soft greensward of his friends’ hearts. Zarathustra’s Wild Wisdom will be contrasted with the various traditional wisdoms it will replace. Nietzsche later quotes the slow opening of the speech “Upon the Isles of the Blest” (2.2): The figs are falling from the trees, they are good and sweet; and as they fall, their red skins burst. A north wind am I to all ripe figs. And thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now drink their juice and their sweet flesh! Autumn is all around and clear sky and afternoon. 26

In Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, trans. M.L. West, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, 170-73.

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In EH, he writes of these lines: “From an infinite fullness of light and depth of happiness there falls drop after drop, word after word – a tender slow- ness is the tempo of these speeches.”27 A tender slowness indeed, in which Zarathustra’s wisdom presents itself as an understanding that God is a thought, a supposition, while the Overhuman is a possibility that can actu ally be created by humans, though only through hard work and pain and suffering, joyful begetting and the pangs of giving birth. He also catches a glimpse of the wisdom that regards creating as ‘the great redemption from suffering’ and willing as the ultimate ‘liberator and joybringer’. The next five speeches (2.3–7) constitute the first contrasting section by introducing different understandings of wisdom drawn from the JudeoChristian and modern democratic perspectives. Zarathustra understands these perspectives because he himself has inhabited them earlier in his life, but he now finds them wanting. In “On Those Who Pity,” he proposes that his friends favour “great love [which] overcomes forgiveness and pitying;” in “On the Priests” he confesses his being related to those brethren, and gently ridicules their susceptibility to “those whom the people call redeemers.” In “On the Virtuous,” he apologizes to them for depriving them of the ideals of their immaturity – ‘reward’, ‘retribution’, ‘punishment’, ‘righteous revenge’ – while promising that the next wave from the sea of ideas will shower them with ‘new colorful seashells’ with which to play. Turning to what Nietzsche sees as the extension of Christianity (as ‘Platonism for the people’) into the modern period in the form of egalitarian democracy, “On the Rabble” laments the way the rabble’s pretensions towards ruling and creating have co-opted politics and culture. “On the Tarantulas” exposes the “preachers of equality” as vengeful spiders compensating for their own impotence by poisoning the efforts of those more gifted than they. Near the beginning of his exposé, Zarathustra sounds a note of hope that anticipates the return to the main theme, when he says, fortissimo: “That humanity might be redeemed from revenge: that is for me the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after lasting storms” (2.7). With “On the Famous Wise Men” and the next four chapters (2.8–12), Zarathustra returns to the theme of his Wild Wisdom. Here for the first time he directly addresses his predecessors in the philosophical tradition as “You famous wise men.” His speech is direct to the point of bluntness, 27

EH, Preface, § 4.

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insofar as he accuses them (Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling?) of pandering to the people and the people’s rulers while merely feigning a “will to truth.” Having “made of wisdom a poorhouse and hospital for wretched poets” and being now “not driven by any strong wind or will,” they are incapable of following Zarathustra’s Wild Wisdom which goes across the sea “like a sail, rounded and swollen and trembling from the violence of the wind [and] of the spirit” (2.8). At the beginning of the next three chapters – “The Night-Song,” “The Dance-Song,” “The Grave-Song” – Zarathustra suddenly bursts into a new mode of discourse: singing rather than speaking. Slow movements are usually lyrical, and this section is as lyrical as philosophy can become. In EH, Nietzsche calls the Night-Song “the language of the dithyramb,” the song sung at ancient Greek festivals in honour of Dionysus.28 He writes of it as “the immortal lament that, through an abundance of light and power, through one’s sun-like nature, one is condemned not to love” – and then he quotes the Night-Song (all 74 lines of it) in its entirety. “Thus suffers a God, a Dionysus,” is his comment. “The response to such a dithyramb of sun-like isolation in light would be Ariadne” – and we hear it near the symphony’s end, in “On the Great Yearning” (3.14). Zarathustra characterizes the Dance-Song (2.10) as “a mocking-song on the Spirit of Heaviness, my supreme and most powerful Devil”, and he sings it for the God Cupid, or Eros, and some young maidens as they dance together on a green meadow. There is no actual mention of the Spirit of Heaviness in the song, though we do hear two new voices – those of Life and Zarathustra’s Wisdom personified as feminine figures – as Zarathustra tries to decide between them, and concludes that, while he is fond of Wisdom, it is ultimately Life that he loves. (He is the opposite of the traditional Platonic philosopher, who loves wisdom so much as to demean life.) His song mocks the Spirit of Heaviness presumably because Zarathustra loves Life as “changeable and wild and in all things a woman, and not a virtuous one” – even though he is going to have to leave her in the end. So, as he asks his friends when the song is over: “Is it not folly to go on living?” In “The Grave-Song,” (2.11) his wise mockery of the Spirit of Heaviness (representative of Platonic-Christian wisdom) continues as he leaves the Isles of the Blest and sails to the Isle of the Graves, where he 28

EH, ‘Zarathustra’, § 7.

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will sing to the “visions and apparitions of [his] youth” who are buried there. In singing this song, Zarathustra becomes aware of his will as “something invulnerable, unburiable, within,” something that can “continue to break through all graves!” Appropriately directed, the will can resurrect ‘what is unredeemed from his youth’, thereby making a mockery of the Spirit of Heaviness that brings everything down to an earthy grave. This reprise of the theme of wisdom culminates in the chapter “On Self- Overcoming” (2.12), where Zarathustra addresses his most select audience, “you who are wisest,” and intimates to them what Life has taught him (what is the profoundest philosophical teaching in the book): that all life is will to power, and that Life herself claims to be – in her own words, fortissimo – “that which must always overcome itself.” As perpetual self-overcoming, life takes form in the wise as a constant process of reinterpretation which anni hilates old and creates new values. The second contrasting section (2.13–18) examines various pretensions to wisdom: about beauty and the sublime on the part of thinkers like Kant (“On Those Who Are Sublime”), about culture and education by “men of the present” (“On the Land of Culture”), about abstract knowledge of the world which is untainted by passion (“On Immaculate Perception”), about the world in general by scholars (“On the Scholars”) and poets (“On the Poets”), and about the future on the part of political revolutionaries (“On Great Events”). With quiet irony, Zarathustra shows, Socrates-like, all these pretensions to be empty. Then suddenly, without warning: “… and I saw a great mournfulness come over humankind.” Another speech by one other than Zarathustra, “The Soothsayer” (2.19). Zarathustra is transformed by hearing the darkly nihilistic tidings: “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!” For three days “he took neither drink nor food, had no rest, and lost his speech,” fell into a deep sleep, and when he awoke he recounted a terrifying dream that echoes, in a minor key, as it were, themes from “The Grave-Song.” As “a night- and grave-watchman in the lonely mountain- castle of death,” he is guarding “glass coffins [containing] life that had been overcome” when a wind breaks open the castle gates and casts before him a black coffin which bursts open and spews forth “a thousand peals of laughter from a thousand masks of children, angels, owls, fools, and child-sized butterflies.” His favourite disciple offers an optimistic interpretation to the effect that Zarathustra is himself the wind and the coffin, and will overcome by

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means of laughter all nihilistic death-weariness. But Zarathustra refuses this interpretation, knowing that nihilism is not so easily overcome. The next chapter, “On Redemption” (2.20), shows the culmination of Zarathustra’s wisdom in Part Two, which affirms his premonition at the beginning of the movement (2.2) of creating as “the great redemption from suffering” and willing as the ultimate “liberator and joy-bringer.” Now he can proclaim to his disciples: “To redeem that which has passed away and to re-create all ‘It was’ into a ‘That is how I wanted it!’ – that alone should I call redemption!” The bridge to the highest hope, “that humanity might be redeemed from revenge” (2.7), might be crossed now that Zarathustra realizes revenge’s profoundest form: “the will’s ill-will toward time and its ‘It was’“. The question remains – keeping this section in a minor key – whether Zarathustra has recovered from the tarantula’s bite, which threatened to make his “soul whirl with revenge” (2.7). After all, he confessed in “The Night-Song” to devising revenge himself (2.10). But his wisdom asserts itself in the last sentences of his last speech in this chapter, which contain the last mention in the book of “will to power” and bring that idea together with the thought of eternal recoming: “Something higher than any reconciliation the will that is will to power must will – yet how shall this happen? Who has taught it to will and want back as well?”29 No one as yet – though Zarathustra will, as soon as his own will can ‘unlearn the spirit of revenge’. The last two chapters of Part Two, “On Human Prudence” and “The Stillest Hour” (2.21–22), constitute a kind of coda to the slow movement. Having given direct voice to his wisdom in the speech “On Redemption,” Zarathustra now lowers the volume and intensity to talk about three instances of a more modest attribute: his “human prudence.” And in the final chapter the mood becomes quieter still as he prepares to leave his ‘friends’ again and return to his solitude, telling them of another dream, in which he is addressed by his Stillest Hour who speaks to him 11 times – but always “without voice.” She urges him to say what he has learned from Life and Wisdom and “command great things,” but to do so piano (or pianissimo) rather than forte, on the grounds that: “It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves’ feet direct the 29

The term Zurückwollen can also mean “willing backwards,” but I have included “wanting back” to emphasize the allusion to the willing of eternal recoming. Compare the recurrence of this verb at the end of section 10 of “The Drunken Song” (4.19).

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world.” But he claims not to be ready, and after a bout of weeping he takes leave of his friends once again.

Third movement The third and last movement of the early classical symphony assumes a variety of forms – sonata-allegro, minuet (and trio), or scherzo and trio, or rondo – though the tempo is always fast (allegro to presto) and usually dance-like. While it is possible to regard Part Three of Zarathustra as having a minuet/scherzo and trio structure (with chapters 9–11 as the trio), it is more illuminating to see it as having the form of a rondo (A-B-A-C-A) with chapters 1–4, 9–11, 13–16 sounding the main theme (A) of eternal recoming, and Chapters 5–8 and 12 supplying contrasting episodes (B and C). “The Wanderer” (3.1) shows Zarathustra speaking to his heart (as Odysseus often does) while climbing the ridge of mountains on the Isles of the Blest, standing on top contemplating the other sea on the far side, and descending to the foot of the cliffs on the farther shore. When his Hour says to him, “Summit and abyss – they are now joined in one!” this anticipates the finale with its conjunction of opposites that comes from thinking the thought of eternal recurrence: “the farthest to the nearest and fire to spirit and joy to pain and the wickedest to the kindest” (3.16 §4). The scene for the next three chapters (3.2–4) is on board a ship that takes Zarathustra over the open sea back to the mainland. In “On the Vision and Riddle” he recounts to the seafarers on board (“whoever has embarked with cunning sails upon terrifying seas”) his first vision of eternal recurrence, in which the thought is intimated through a series of questions: “Are not all things knotted together so tightly that this moment draws after it all things that are to come?” “Must we not eternally come back again?” “Who is the shepherd into whose throat the snake thus crawled [and] all that is heaviest and blackest will crawl?” (3.2). The answer will come at the beginning of the main theme’s final iteration in “The Convalescent” (3.13 §2). In the next speech, “On Blissfulness Against One’s Will,” Zarathustra speaks to his “jubilant conscience” and rebuffs the “blissful hour” that has approached him, since he knows that he has yet to find “the lion’s voice” strong enough to summon up the thought of eternal recurrence. In “Before Sunrise” (3.4), still out on the open sea, he addresses the open Heaven above him shortly before dawn. Nietzsche later characterizes

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this speech too as a dithyramb: “Let one hear how Zarathustra talks to himself before the sunrise: such emerald happiness, such divine tenderness was never given voice before me.”30 The speech touches on the profoundest matters, insofar as Zarathustra evinces the supremely affirmative attitude towards the world which comes from the thought of recurrence: But this is my blessing: to stand over each and every thing as its own Heaven, as its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security . . . For all things are baptized at the fount of eternity and beyond good and evil.

The speech ends with an affirmation of still deeper wisdom: The world is deep – and deeper than ever the day has thought.

The next four chapters (5–8) find Zarathustra back on terra firma, eager to discover whether humanity has become greater or smaller during his absence, and addressing an unspecified audience about what he finds. In “On the Virtue That Makes Smaller,” he derides the people’s “doctrine of happiness and virtue,” which has diminished human stature. As “Zarathustra the Godless,” he brings his speech to a climax by fulminating like an Old Testament prophet against the pathetic weariness of the people: “Oh blessed hour of lightning! Oh mystery before midday! – Raging fires will I yet make of them one day and heralds with tongues of flame.” The quietly lyrical interlude that follows, “Upon the Mount of Olives” (3.6), was originally called “The Winter Song” and still ends with the refrain “Thus sang Zarathustra.” The song recounts how he has learned to survive in public by concealing his “sun and unshakeable solar will” beneath a veil of wintry silence. Zarathustra addresses the last part to “You snow-bearded silent winter Heaven,” echoing his ecstatic apostrophe to the light-abyss of Heaven before sunrise and thanking the winter Heaven for teaching “the long and luminous silence.” “On Passing By” brings our speaker to “the great city,” where the foaming fool known as “Zarathustra’s ape” delivers a harangue on “the slaughter- houses and soup-kitchens of the spirit” (3.7). Zarathustra’s 30

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response deprecates the revenge evidenced by the fool’s harangue, culminates in another Old Testament fulmination: “Woe unto this great city! – And would that I might already see the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed!” But it ends with a sudden drop in volume, with Zarathustra’s wise advice: “Where one can no longer love, there one should – pass by! – .” This sets the tone for the last speech in the episode, “On Apostates,” in which he chides with gentle humour his former disciples who have “become pious again.” He tells of how the Gods laughed themselves to death when one of them claimed, “There is one God! Thou shalt have no other God before me!” In response all the Gods laughed, shouting: “Is just this not Godliness, that there are Gods, but no God?” With “The Return Home” (3.9), Zarathustra comes back to the solitude of his cave and to another feminine figure, Solitude – so he is not alone – and he remains there until the end of Part Three. This move also marks a return to the theme of eternal recurrence (though it is not mentioned by name), since in his solitude Zarathustra is able to speak, and hear himself speak, a different language – one that often speaks itself. As he says to his Solitude: “Here the words and word-shrines of all Being spring open for me: all Being wants to become word here, all Becoming wants to learn from me here how to talk.” Practice in listening for and speaking such words is necessary for his being able to summon and give voice to the thought of eternal recurrence. The speech “On the Three Evils” (apparently addressed to his Solitude) begins with a dream in which Zarathustra weighs the things of the world anew, and revalues traits that have traditionally been denigrated: sensuality, the lust to rule, and selfishness. In the light of eternal recurrence, which affirms “the innocence of becoming,” these apparent vices can be seen to be virtues. Once more the culmination is biblical in tone (though now New Testament): “But for all these [world-weary cowards and cross-spiders] the day is now at hand, the transformation, the sword of judgment, the Great Midday: then shall much be revealed!” In the next speech, “On the Spirit of Heaviness” (3.11), Zarathustra takes on his arch-enemy whose task is to impede the self-love and selfknowledge that are necessary for affirming eternal recurrence. Since “much that is in the human being is like an oyster: namely, disgusting and slippery and hard to grasp,” the self-knowledge that is the prerequisite for self-love is difficult to attain – not least because the Spirit of Heaviness

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wants to impose a fixed, traditional standard upon all. “But he has discovered himself who can say: This is my good and evil; with that he has struck dumb the mole and dwarf who says: “Good for all, evil for all”. In the light of eternal recurrence, one realizes that (one’s) evil is necessary for and necessarily connected with (one’s) good, so that to affirm one is to affirm the other. Yet, what is to be cultivated is affirmation on the basis of taste, to avoid the slack quietism of ‘all-contentment’, which is inclined “to chew and digest everything – truly the way of swine!” Cultivation of taste requires a questioning and trying out of many ways, which leads to the statement of judicious pluralism with which this speech and section conclude: ‘This – is just my way: – where is yours?’ Thus I answered those who asked of me ‘the way’. For the way – does not exist!

The next chapter, “On Old and New Tablets” (3.12) is by far the longest in the book, though its division into 30 short sections lends it a tempo suitable for an episode in the fast final movement of a symphony. While the first five sections seem continuous with the preceding three chapters, insofar as Zarathustra is “recounting himself to himself” in solitude, the tone changes with the sixth, which begins “O my brothers,” and ushers in a long series of speeches in which Zarathustra addresses an imaginary audience of his brothers in preparation for going down to humanity once again.31 Some two dozen previous themes return here, some appearing on old tablets that are to be broken, others on new tablets that are to be brought down to humanity, even the occasional new tablet that already deserves to be shattered. Remember that such tablets are the “voices of will to power” (1.15). Towards the end of the episode, Zarathustra’s voice reaches its highest pitch when he inveighs against “the good and the righteous” who “crucify [the creator] who writes new values on new tablets” (3.12 § 26). The good and the righteous thus pose “the greatest danger for all human future,” so Zarathustra shouts fortissimo: “Shatter, shatter for me the good and the righteous! – O my brothers, have you understood these words too?” (§ 27). Surely the hardest tablet for his imagined disciples to swallow. But with the last speech, which Zarathustra addresses to his Will, comes a diminuendo – although the wild richness of the poetic imagery here reaches an intensity as high as anything in the book. 31

The last 25 sections are addressed explicitly to “my brothers,” with the exceptions of § 17 (to “you who are world-weary”) and the last section (to ‘my will’). There is no mention of ‘my brothers’ in §§ 22 and 23, but they seem to be addressed to the usual, imagined audience.

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The last four climactic chapters (13–16) return to the theme of eternal recurrence, as we see Zarathustra finally confront and incorporate the thought. The confrontation nearly kills him, and it takes seven days for the supine ‘convalescent’ to recover – just enough time for a Buddha to attain Enlightenment or a God to create a world (3.13 §2). His eagle and serpent speak for the first time in the book, addressing seven speeches to Zarathustra in which they encourage him to sing instead of speak, and to fashion a new lyre for his new songs. He replies to the first six, but by the time they finish the seventh – “he lay still with his eyes closed . . . conversing with his soul.” That conversation is recounted in the next chapter, “On the Great Yearning” (3.14). The last three highly lyrical chapters show us a Zarathustra who has successfully confronted and incorporated the thought of eternal recurrence. They also echo, in sequence, the previous three most lyrical chapters in the book, the “Night-Song,” “Dance-Song,” and “Grave-Song” from Part Two, which anticipated the transformation of Zarathustra’s will as a force that will “break through all graves” and resurrect “what is unredeemed from [his] youth” (2.11). The original title of “On the Great Yearning” (3.14) was ‘Ariadne’, which signals that the “great releaser” that Zarathustra tells his soul (Ariadne) to anticipate is Dionysus. After he reminds his soul of all he has given her, she replies to the Night-Song’s lament over “the wretchedness of all who bestow” by asking him: “Should the giver not be thankful that the taker has taken? Is bestowing not a need? Is taking not – being merciful?” In “The Night-Song,” he had called his soul “the song of a lover,” and now at the end of “The Great Yearning” he exhorts her to sing. She obliges with “The Other Dance-Song” (3.15) in which Zarathustra, wearing the mask of Dionysus, asserts his mastery over the Maenad Life. The tempo of this song, with its rhyming couplets in irregularly syncopated rhythms, calls attention to its briskness at the end, when Zarathustra sings: “You shall dance and also scream to my whip-crack’s brisk tempo! I did not forget the whip, did I? – No!” The song also has overtones of the duets between Don José and Carmen in Bizet’s opera (perhaps “the best opera there is”), which Nietzsche heard many times in the two years before he wrote this chapter.32 Life then confesses her love for Zarathustra and her jealousy of his Wisdom – yet is candid in 32 Nietzsche’s early evaluation in a letter to Köselitz from December 1881 – “I am close to thinking that Carmen is the best opera there is; and as long as we live it will be on all the repertoires in Europe” (KSB 6: 147) – made at a time when Bizet’s opera was relatively unknown has turned out to be highly prescient.

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admitting that, if his Wisdom were to leave him, she would too. After all, so she claims, Zarathustra is not true enough to her, entertaining thoughts of leaving her, of dying, whenever he hears the “ancient heavy, heavy booming-bell” strike the 12 strokes of midnight. Each of the first 11 strokes precedes a line of the most famous poem Nietzsche wrote, “O Mensch! Gieb Acht!” which Gustav Mahler set to profoundly haunting music in his Third Symphony. But after the twelfth stroke is silence, the silence of the grave which precedes the joyful and triumphant final song, “The Seven Seals (or: The Yea- and Amen-Song),” which hymns the resurrection and mystic marriage of Zarathustra/Dionysus and Life/Ariadne in a finale that recalls numerous themes from throughout the work. Since this is now Zarathustra’s ultimate victory over the Spirit of Heaviness, the last words are spoken by the ‘bird-wisdom’ of the one who has finally learned to fly: “Are all words not made for those who are heavy? Do all words not lie for one who is light! Sing! speak no more!” And then, sung for the seventh time, the refrain: Oh how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of all rings – the ring of recurrence? Never yet have I found the woman from whom I wanted children, except for this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity! For I love you, O Eternity!

This love is not of the “eternal life” promised by the New Testament for “the world to come,”33 but is rather love for this radically ephemeral life that eternally recreates itself at every moment.

Coda So, what do we learn from trying to read and hear Zarathustra as music, and to discern its symphonic structure? When Nietzsche tells us that a condition for understanding the wisdom in the book is that “One has above all to hear properly the tone, this halcyon tone, that issues from [Zarathustra’s] mouth,” he is suggesting that the meaning of the text is conveyed not only by the syntax and semantics of the language but also by its music. In the book that he wrote to elucidate the meaning of Zarathustra, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of listening with “the third ear” if one is to appreciate “the art in every good sentence:”

33

Mark, 10: 30.

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Chapter 15 A misunderstanding of its tempo, for example – and the sentence itself is misunderstood! Let there be no doubt concerning the rhythmically decisive syllables … and let us lend a subtle and patient ear to every staccato, every rubato, and let us discern the meaning in the sequence of vowels and diphthongs, and how delicately and richly they can take on colour and change colour as they succeed one other.34

This passage suggests we are unlikely to divine Nietzsche’s meaning unless we read Zarathustra aloud, paying close attention with the reading ear to how the sentences sound over time in the imagination. Taking our cue from Nietzsche’s claim, “I have always written my writings with my whole body and life,” we can also try reading with more of our bodies than usual.35 We can enlist the musculature in the process of reading by letting the pitch and tempo of the imagery innervate a subtle play of the muscles, in a variation of the “ideokinesis” practised by dancers. At the beginning of the book, Zarathustra is said to “walk like a dancer,” and at the end we hear, as if from a new book of Revelation, his Alpha and Omega: “that all that is heavy become light, all body become dancer, all spirit become bird.”36 The better one’s sense of Zarathustra’s symphonic structure, the more, quite simply, one can appreciate the work. Some aspects of the book’s structure remain indistinct: why, for instance, is this particular chapter right here, following that chapter and preceding the one after? To the extent that one can imagine the kind of symphony Nietzsche had in mind when he was writing Zarathustra, one can more fully experience, somatically as well as imaginatively, the myriad interrelations and correspondences that inform the book. Considerations of space restrict the resolution attainable by this chapter, which is just a preliminary outline – but one that calls for other eyes and ears to make out, and other voices and hands to fill in, the worlds of detail in Nietzsche’s masterpiece.

34

Nietzsche, BGE 246. KSA 9: 4, 285. 36 Zarathustra, Prologue § 2; Revelation 1: 8; Zarathustra, 3: 16 § 6. 35

CHAPTER 16 NIETZSCHE’S THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA AS A SCORE OF METAPHORS, CORRESPONDING WITH BEETHOVEN’S NINTH SYMPHONY GAILA PANDER

Nietzsche described his major work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, among other things as a symphony and as a tower.1 In the three sections of this article I investigate how these two characterizations help us to understand this narrational and metaphorical text.2 Basic for a symphony is typically that the finale is melodically developed in the previous parts. When we follow this development up to and including the complete closing melody, we gain an overview and insight in the total composition as to its coherence and harmony (see second section below). Nietzsche also spoke about the “architectonic build-up” of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “very artistic and stepwise, more or less like the construction of a tower.”3 The finale of this tower-like symphony can be found, as we shall see, in the dithyrambic texts following the speech “The Convalescent.” Everything that came before comes to fulfillment in a concentrated form, like in a symphonic finale. In short, I propose to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a score written in images. Like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (see first section below) Nietzsche’s literary symphony is built up in three parts, and concluded in the dithyrambs at the end of the third part – which in fact make up a fourth 1

See KSB 6, 353, 466, 475. Cf. also KSB 8, 565. The present article leans on Gaila Pander, Een zuivere toon. De beeldtaal van Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra, 2nd ed. (Almere: Parthenon, 2020), especially chapters 2, 3, and 4. 3 KSB 6, 475. 2

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part.4 To understand this finale – i.e. the closing dithyramb, or the “speechsong” (Sprechgesang) – it is essential that the interpreter is aware that in the course of the process which leads to these speechsongs the subsequent circles of metaphoric figurations dominate and absorb the preceding ones. Accordingly, the later circle is also a higher one. Here the image of the tower takes on meaning. In accordance with Zarathustra’s Mesopotamian origins we can also describe Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a Ziggurat5 the pinnacle of which is the cella: the holy place for the mythological holy marriage (see third section below). The closing dithyramb of Thus Spoke Zarathustra voice the yearning for this sevenfold: Oh, how should I not lust for eternity And for the nuptial ring of all rings, – The ring of the Second Coming Never yet have I found the woman from whom I wanted children, Other than this woman whom I love: For I love you, oh eternity! FOR I LOVE YOU, OH ETERNITY!6

This dithyrambic ending, entitled “The Seven Seals (or: The Yea and Amen Song),” is repeated seven times, and according to Nietzsche in Ecce Homo testified to the great rhythm giving expression to the dynamics of overhuman passion.7

Beethoven’s Ninth as upbeat for Thus Spoke Zarathustra Remarkably, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is called a symphony. Nietzsche does not qualify his work as an opera or a musical drama, in spite of the fact that Zarathustra appears acting and speaking, and that the whole text features a visual and dramatic progression. In the text that contains the most important

4 This should not be confused with the fourth part that was added later. In support of this choice see Pander, Een zuivere toon, 10-1. Cf. Graham Parkes, "The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A Preliminary Outline." In Luchte, J. (ed.): Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Before Sunrise (London/New York: Continuum, 2010), 12-3 (reprinted in this volume). 5 See Pander, Een zuivere toon, 181-3. Cf. T. Oshima, "The Babylonian God Marduk." In G. Leick (ed.), The Babylonian World (London: Routledge, 2007), 356; Harriet Crawford, “Architecture in the Old Babylonian World.” In G. Leick (ed.), The Babylonian World (London: Routledge, 2007), 85. 6 TSZ, 287-291 (page numbers of Nietzsche’s works follow KSA). 7 EH, 305.

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structural design of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he selects Beethoven’s Ninth symphony as appropriate framework. To illustrate the striking similarity between the two compositions, I begin with a brief description of the structure of Beethoven’s Ninth. Like Nietzsche’s composition, this symphony consists of three parts plus a finale.8 The work begins rather austere, with a melody that strives to develop but disintegrates. There is a ghostlike atmosphere of emptiness around this apparently failing attempt towards a melody; the tension and the struggle are very clearly audible. Most likely this refers to the tragic hero Prometheus. Part Two is the scherzo, devilish and Mephistophelian in a light-footed way. This part is fast and dancing, and the timpani play an important role. Heaviness is transposed into rhythm and speed. Also, this part is the most seductive. Part Three is serene in tone, heavenly and light as a late summer day. Here, silence and stillness dominate. The tone is not set by restlessness and struggle; it is rather determined by an awareness of eternity that transcends all conflict. In the final part, everything, with regard to both tension and harmony, once again comes to expression in a concentrated way. Like in a kaleidoscope, the beginning of the finale recapitulates the previous parts with their contrasts. All of it comes back, after which the finale’s melody unfolds itself but disintegrates again in a chaotic tumult, unable to regain coherence. The ending of this orchestral chaos is initiated by the bass who sings: “Oh friends, not these sounds! Let us tune in to the more agreeable and more joyful.” This vocal strophe leads to a logical transition to the chorale, which adds a large number of voices to the so far instrumental symphony. The closing part is built up in blocks that keep shifting back and forth. The composer here takes full liberty to sacrifice the text to what he deems musically appropriate. The dominant mood is one of jubilation and ecstasy. The famous closing choral Alle Menschen werden Brüder (All men will emerge as brothers) expresses this mood both in form and content.

8

For the description of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, I follow Wouter Paap, De symfonieën van Beethoven (Utrecht: Wagenaar, 1946), 229-268 and Selmar v. Bagge, “Ludwig von Beethoven’s Neunte Symphonie.” Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 12, no 4/5 (1877/1981). About the reception of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, see Stefan Kunze (ed.), Ludwig von Beethoven. Die Werke im Spiegel seiner Zeit (Beiern: Laaber, 1987), 470-546.

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A comparison of the course of the Ninth with a draft outline for Thus Spoke Zarathustra yields striking analogies.9 Book 1. In the style of the Ninth Symphony. Chaos sive natura: “on the dehumanization of nature.” Prometheus is chained to the Kaukasus. Written with the savagery of Kratos, the Power. Book 2. Capricious-skeptical-Mephistophelian. “On the incarnation of experiences.” Knowledge = delusion that becomes organic and organizes. Book 3. The most intimate and soaring-above-the-heavens piece ever written: “On the ultimate happiness of the lonely” – that is, written by one who from being heteronomous has become autonomous to the highest degree: the perfect ego: only this ego knows love. In earlier stages, where the greatest loneliness and autonomy has not yet been achieved, there is something other than love. Book 4. Dithyrambic–comprehensive. – “Annulus aeternitatis” (Ring of eternity). The desire to experience everything once again and forever.10 The Ninth Symphony closes with the celebration of the connectedness of people experienced as natural – Alle Menschen werden Brüder – expressed in the words of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”: Joy! A spark of fire from heaven, Daughter from Elysium, Drunk with fire we dare to enter, Holy One, inside your shrine. Your magic power binds together, What we by custom wrench apart, All men will emerge as brothers, Where you rest your gentle wings. Join if in the whole wide world there's Just one soul to call your own! He who's failed must steal away, Shedding tears as he departs.11

9

KSA 9, 11[197]; 519-20. Cf. KSA 8, 197-828. KSA 9, 11[197]; 519-20. 11 In 1824 Beethoven added three lines at the beginning of Schiller’s poem from 1785. Michael Kay transl., saxonica.com/ ࢍ mike/Ode to Joy. 10

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Thus Spoke Zarathustra is driven by a similar desire. This symphony also strives towards the natural, self-evident connectedness that comes to expression in the closing song. Nietzsche’s views about the importance of the unison choir song in which the human voice is the primary toneinstrument presumably goes back to Beethoven’s intentions with this closing chorale.12 The content of the “Ode to Joy” no longer functions as text in the finale of the Ninth, rather, it dissolves in music and interaction. Here Schiller’s words are liberated as it were from their semantic context. They transpose into a wealth of tones, meaningful only for like-minded and kindred spirits. In an unpublished fragment13 Nietzsche writes that in the Ninth the content submerges in a sea of sounds in an unheard manner. Nietzsche’s admiration for Beethoven concerned especially his “long breath.”14 This enabled Beethoven to maintain the pathos from start to finish without losing any of the tension. The tension is discharged at last in the harmony of the dithyrambic ending. In Beethoven’s compositions, the dramatic course of the passions is given an imperative form. Often, he isolated three or four phases from the course of desire, and allowed “the line of the total passion to be guessed … by emphasizing four points of the flight it takes”15. In this reference to Beethoven’s Ninth we recognize the “classical style” of sustained rhythm and stable dynamics, highly appreciated by Nietzsche and demanding a schooled ear on the part of the listener. Further evidence of admiration for Beethoven is found in how Nietzsche sketches the development in his design in the concept text referred to above from the unpublished fragments. He too selects the mythological figures of 12 Beethoven’s work played an important part in the period that Nietzsche was a member of the Wagner Circle (see H. Sachs, The Ninth. Beethoven and the world in 1824 (New York: Random House, 2011), 241-250). On the occasion of laying the first stone of the Bayreuth Festival Theater, for example, Beethoven’s Ninth was performed, conducted by Wagner (see Curt Paul Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie, Bd.1 (München: DTV, 1981), 425, 434, 460, 581. Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, Bd. 1X (E.W.Fritsche Verlag, Leipzig, 1870) / Geschriften over kunst, politiek en religie (Uitgeverij IJzer, Utrecht, 2014), 202277). About the effect of this influence up to Nietzsche’s last period, see Karl Pestalozzi, “Hörte Jemand ihr zu?’ Nochmals – zu Nietzsches letztem Gedicht.” Nietzsche Studien 46 (2018), 168-172, 181. 13 See KSA 7, 12[1]; 368. 14 See Pander, Een zuivere toon, 161-177. Cf. in this connection the reproach regarding the short-breathed “mood music” of Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn (KSA 8, 11 [15]; 196-7). 15 KSA 8, 11[15]; 197.

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Prometheus and Mephistopheles. The first battles chaos and brings light; the second is lord and master of the dark who destroys the divine order. At this point I leave aside the more precise significance of the use of these names in the four books mentioned in his draft. I just want to call attention to some compositional similarities with Beethoven’s Ninth. It is important, though, to realize that the contrast between Prometheus and Mephistopheles is overcome in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra – in the person of Zarathustra/Dionysus, when he is able to integrate light and darkness into himself: We celebrate, assured of mutual victory, This feast of feasts: Friend Zarathustra came, the foremost guest! Now laughs the world, the darksome veil destroyed Darkness and light in nuptial rite enjoyed.16

The question is: does Thus Spoke Zarathustra merit the predicate “symphony” in a more general sense as well? Does it have the compositional characteristics that mark the symphonic style figure as such? The next section offers some insight into the structure of a symphony.

The symphony: a brief orientation The symphony was derived from the sonata and reached its full bloom in the nineteenth century, in Beethoven’s work. Many music historians think of his Ninth as an absolute pinnacle, some also as its culmination, as Wagner did, though without agreeing with the significance Wagner ascribed to this description.17

16

BGE §5, 243. Nietzsche characterized Beethoven in his late work as a transition figure (see KSA 13, 14 [58-61]; 247-8. Cf. Martine Prange, Nietzsche’s Ideal Europe. Aestheticization and Dynamic Interculturalism from The Birth of Tragedy to The Gay Science (Wormer: Centurion Printing, 2007), 109. According to Wagner, the introduction of the human voice in Beethoven’s Ninth was the first step on the way to the symphonic drama, a higher development in music (definitively manifested in Wagner himself). See Wouter Paap, De symfonieën van Beethoven (Utrecht: Wagenaar, 1946), 228; Sachs, The Ninth, 243-46. Nietzsche however thinks differently. His view is that the “Göttlichkeit der Musik Beethovens” (the god-likeness of Beethoven’s music) is not meant to please the public, as is the case in Wagner; rather, Beethoven composed deeply personal music. See KSA 13, 15 [6]; 405. 17

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Typical for the composers of the classical form, among whom Mozart and Beethoven can also be counted to a certain degree, is a clear and wellbalanced form.18 Although numerous interpretations and reinterpretations occurred, the form as used here is based on the classical doctrine of form dominated by ancient rhetorical principles such as simplicity, transparency and a recognizable structure. It is important that, even when personal quirks and emotions play a role, the composition as a whole remains unscathed. In this classical form, it is the melody that provides clarity and coherence.19 In this respect Nietzsche’s symphony Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be seen as classical as well. Like Beethoven, Nietzsche pursues a clear tone underlying the basic melody. He refers, for example, to the transparent and halcyonic tone of Thus Spoke Zarathustra20, as testifying to the classical Roman style (rĘmischen Stil).21 His own symphony, too, conforms to the basic form of the classical symphony, which, as noted above, upheld the principles of classical rhetoric.22 Viewed in terms of music history, the symphony evolved from the sonata for solo music, initially conforming to the same classical form laws. This basic form – in its orchestral use in the symphony, we speak of the first-movement form, also called the main form – originally applied to the first part of a symphony. We recognize the classical rhetorical arrangement of the main form in the successive parts of exposition, development and recapitulation. Application of this triad, refined and extended to other parts,

18

Nietzsche repeatedly mentioned them together, as is KSA 7, 32[43]; 767 / WS 2, 615-6. 19 Gernot Gruber, “Nietzsches Begriff des “Südländischen” in der Musik.” In G. Pöltner, H. Vetter (ed.), Nietzsche und die Musik (Frankfurt a.M. et al.: Peter Lang, 1997), 115-128. 20 EH 6, 259. The halcyonic days – when the halcyon breeds – are the wind-free and calm days in the week before and the week after the shortest day. “Halcyonic” refers to transparent, ice-cold and well-defined clarity (see BGE 5, 159). Nietzsche also names the halcyonic tone as basis for the longest scale: EH 6, 344; KSA 11, 38[15]; 615. On the halcyonic tone see Pander, Een zuivere toon, 18-9, 25 and about the halcyonic tone as “original tone” 322-33, 46-47, 96-97. Nietzsche’s views on a basic tone go back to Johann Georg Albrechtsberger’s textbook, Sämtliche Schriften über Generalbass, Harmonielehre und Tonsatzkunst, zum Selbstunterrichte (1792). For the main source for his self-taught acquaintance with music theory, see Janz, Biographie, Bd I, 91; KSB 4, 77. 21 See KGA 13 24 [1] 8; 623. 22 Parkes, Symphonic Structure, 5-6 incorrectly calls Thus Spoke Zarathustra an early classical symphony.

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but also continued in smaller subsections, is characteristic for the extreme extension Beethoven gave to the main form. In general, we can say that the application of the main form stands or falls with the way in which the themes presented in the exposition are processed. These themes set the tone and guarantee the coherence of the work as a whole. Usually, there are two themes. The first, the so-called main theme, sets a line in an energetic and decisive tone. It is followed up with a second theme, usually of a lyrical and melodic kind. The themes themselves are built up from motifs that in fact represent the smallest musical entities. They provide the germinating power of the theme and make up its musical energy. The themes presented in the exposition, then, consist of a coherence of motifs, that is to say: consist of melodic elements that as such do not make for a completed unit, but which in coherent conjunction with other motifs make up a musical theme. These themes recur in always different and higher reaching arrangements, whereby “the higher circle (höhere Kreis) … gradually controls the lower”.23 Once the exposition has introduced the melody that provides coherence, the main themes separate again in the development. In the development we hear how the various motifs are elaborated in shifting constellations, often in contrasts. The germinating power of each distinct motif receives its maximum strength in that part, so that the motifs can exert their influence on each other and can intertwine. Sometimes we very explicitly recognize in the development motifs from the exposition. More often, however, the tone that made for the germ cell is reprised. As such this does not stand out, but it penetrates (as does the motif) the musical environment and takes sufficient care of the progress and coherence of the composition as a whole. Thus Beethoven’s Ninth starts out with a primeval sound, a pure quint, which in the range of natural tones in a certain sense represents the initial stage of all music. Music theorist Paap described the specific beginning of the symphony as follows: “It is as if Beethoven at this mysterious moment led the music back to its genesis, in order to be able, as immediately as possible, to deduce it from the forces of nature themselves … the horns24 suggest the “primeval-idea.””25.

23

Cf. KSA 7, 3[16]; 64. As wind instrument the horn is listed closest to the “vox humana”—which music theory includes with wind instruments. 25 Paap, De symfonieën van Beethoven, 229-30, 240; Pander Een zuivere toon, 192. 24

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This primeval sound guarantees the purity and honesty of the composition’s main form. In Nietzsche’s words: “Example is Beethoven’s Ninth symphony: here the first tone presents the over-all tone (“Gesammtton”) and the course and sweep of passion: it keeps on rolling.”26 Sometimes a primeval tone like this is also described as “germ cell” or “cellule génératrice.” It is typical for compositions that derive their impact from repetition and concentration of the tone material thus achieved. As noted above, the Ninth begins very clearly with a long, stretched primeval sound, which in its non-restrictedness represents the wellspring of music. It is a tone, as yet without coherence and meaning, and in terms of function comparable to the function of the cry in various places in Nietzsche’s writings.27 The next section investigates the extent to which classical form principles are at work in Nietzsche’s symphony Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Application of the main form in Thus Spoke Zarathustra Eloquence transformed into music Nietzsche himself took seriously the possibility that Thus Spoke Zarathustra could be read along musical lines, as a kind of written score: “Perhaps the entire Zarathustra can be counted as music”28. When one reads the work as the score of a symphony, one is struck by the consistency with which this musical form is applied. In the score, a new semiotics and a new language are developed, expressing tones by images.29 Claus Zittel made an interesting move in this direction by noting the coherence, or at least the consistency of the aesthetic forms in Nietzsche’s composition. On this basis it is possible to discover logic or even an argumentation in images. The coherent linking of these argumentations

26

KSA 8, 11[15]; 197. See KSA 7, 3 [16]; 64 / Pander Een zuivere toon, 68-81. 28 EH, 335. 29 See EH 6, 344; cf. Josef Simon, “Ein Text wie Nietzsches Zarathustra.” In Volker Gerhardt (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000); Werner Stegmaier, „Anti-Lehren. Szene und Lehre in Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra.“ In Volker Gerhardt (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), 194. 27

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yields “a complex tissue of images.”30 To discover the logic of the images in Thus Spoke Zarathustra along this line of thinking we must find out how they are interconnected. It would seem that discovering this logic requires study of a great many details, that is, focus on the separate words and images. However, words and images as tonalities derive their meaning not from themselves but from their relation to other tones or images. This mutual coherence is not based on the logical ordering of abstract ideas; rather, it emerges from organic relations between the images with their wealth of nuances. Every detail influences other details, so that a coherent composition arises via repetition, intertwinement and transition. The point is that we learn to recognize this complicated composition as feature of Nietzsche’s classical style: “…this mosaic of words, in which every word, as sound, as location, as concept, to the left and the right and through the entire work streams out its strength, this minimal scope of the signs and the maximal energy of signs thus obtained”.31 Like the small motifs and chords, the images weave into a close-nit whole. In that sense a focus on detail is just as senseless as the focus on separate notes. A guideline for the search after coherence in Nietzsche’s “score” is his statement in Ecce Homo about the language of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Eloquence turned into music… The most powerful ability to create parables [“Bildlichkeit32”] currently available, is poor, a mere game compared to this return of language to natural speaking in images.33

Language has to return to natural speech in images, we read. By means of the return to the naturalness of the images the lines that give structure to Nietzsche’s text become visible. Metaphors which refer to certain parts of the day for example, or to specific seasons, raw materials, natural phenomena and so on, display a line of development in their recurrent and shifting

30

Claus Zittel, Das ästhetische Kalkül von Friedrich Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000), 65: “In diesem Sinn kann von einem Erzeugen bildhafter Argumentationszusammenhänge gesprochen werden” (“In this sense one can speak of the production of a pictorial reasoning complex”). 31 KSA 13, 24[1]; 624. 32 33

EH 6, 344.

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realms of signification. As mentioned above, the point is to find patterns and figures that tend towards the all-embracing finale.34 As I indicated earlier, in the draft text these patterns on the successive stages are identified by means of personal names: Prometheus for Part One, Mephistopheles for Part Two, and, as the definitive text shows, Zarathustra for Part Three. Thus Spoke Zarathustra ultimately moves to the figure of Dionysus, which integrates the precursors Prometheus, Mephistopheles and Zarathustra. Compositionally, the name Dionysus refers to the dithyramb that comes to expression in the finale. The element of proportioning is essential for the architectural build-up that Nietzsche sought. In his explanations about style he stresses its importance. Although numerical proportions play an important role in it, this style figure is special because of the organic development rather than on account of numerical schemes. Nietzsche’s frequently used images of “germ cell” and “germinating power” proved helpful and revealing. The point is to follow the development that starts out from the germ cell or, put in other words: the germ as alpha of the text, to the omega in which the halcyonic tone has grown into a song.35 This song, “The Yea and Amen Song,” has in Thus Spoke Zarathustra the function of the ancient (Roman) Saturnalia.36 The ripened seed launches itself into this song about the desire for woman and child that would guarantee the eternal cycle of life.37 The halcyonic tone that has set the whole movement in motion finally comes to expression with Dionysus as song of desire. Just as in Beethoven, this last song is about a mythical rediscovery, in Zarathustra’s case not a celebration of earth with “All brothers,” but with the cosmic and human eternity in the bonding of man, woman and child.

34 Regarding cross-referrals, see Niklas Corall, “Friedrich Nietzsche - Die frТhliche Wissenschaft.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 48 (2017), 132. Rhythmic repetition evokes “figures.” See Zittel’s reference to Adorno, who speaks of figures in the sense of constellations indicating shifting configurations of musical patterns, in Zittel, Das ästhetische Kalkül, 117-18 note 227. 35 KSA 4, 287-9. 36 On the Saturnalia as dithyrambic sowing feast, see Pander, Een zuivere toon, 2020, 368-9; cf. KSA 1, 558; GS 3,345; and TI 6, 128. 37 Compare KSA 12, 61: “Halcyon Songs, Ariadne”. The cry to be heard by Ariadne is from this perspective the thread of the fabric that structures the text.

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Application of the main form Like Beethoven’s construction of the Ninth Symphony, Nietzsche too opts for a structure consisting of an introduction, three major parts and a closing section. Except for the last part he follows every time the classical rhythmic scheme of “decadic ordering” (“dekadische Gliederung”).38 “Zarathustra’s Prologue” has ten texts; Parts One and Two each consist of twenty-two texts, distributed over a prologue, twenty texts in the middle section and a closing text; the third part, finally, has sixteen texts: three prologues, ten texts in de middle section and three end texts.39 These mathematical ratios40 display a balanced application of the build-up of this symphony within the pattern of exposition, development and recapitulation typical for a mainform composition. As mentioned above, to really understand Nietzsche’s score, however, we should not only focus on this numerical order. We need appreciably more than this outside approach. In musical terms we can qualify Thus Spoke Zarathustra as “developing music” with a cumulative character. The process of development starts, as is usual for the main form, in the exposition, that is, in “Zarathustra’s Prologue.” Here the themes and motifs are introduced that represent the tone material which upholds the entire composition. Seen in this way the “Prologue” has, in a way, a programmatic character. In musical terms, it is the prelude in which the basis melody is set out: “Everything must come to fruition, specifically, everything from the prologue.”41 Exposition in the “Prologue,” Two Themes In agreement with my remarks in Section 2 regarding the main form, “Zarathustra’s Prologue” has a dominant theme with a dynamic and 38

Claus-Arthur Scheier, Nietzsches Labyrinth. Das ursprüngliche Denken und die Seele (Freiburg/München: Typoskript-Ed, 1985), 167. 39 Concerning numerical structuring supposedly based on the classical “Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder” (“the law of growing limbs”), see Janz, Biographie, Bd. 2, 214; in this regard see also 211-219. Cf. Wen-Tsien Hong, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Musik im Spiegel der Kompositions- und Geistesgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main et al.: Peter Lang, 2004), 154; 171-3. 40 See Henning Ottmann, „Kompositionsprobleme von Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra.“ In Volker Gerhardt (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche. Also sprach Zarathustra (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), 53-63. Especially the numbers one, three and ten, and their multiple, 30. These numbers give shape to a cumulative development, as does the finalizing number 7 in “The Seven Seals.” 41 KSA 10, 16[38]; 512.

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methodical character, and next to that a second theme, lyrical and melodic and less stringently defined. Musicologists often call them masculine and feminine, respectively. In the context of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the goaldirected masculine theme sets a linear movement in motion. The feminine theme is less explicit, but can be recognized from the rhythmic repetition of images and combinations of images. This theme can be characterized as that of the “ewige Wiederkehr” (eternal return). However, it does not appear until the end of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in “The Convalescent.” In the exposition of “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” the first theme, which can be indicated as that of the Übermensch, is introduced with great emphasis as the main theme. This is what the book promises to deal with: “I teach you the Übermensch.” 42 Following an introduction of two sections, in the third section of the prologue this main theme makes its appearance in a spread of motifs. Remarkably, this image material colors the main theme by contrasts. It tells us primarily what the Übermensch is not. After this presentation of the first theme, section four of the prologue sets out the less strictly defined theme. This fourth section is a lyrical declaration of love and, in contrast with the main theme, is affirmative and consonant in tone. Its stanzas repeatedly begin with “I love him/them.” After the introduction of the leading symphonic themes, Zarathustra notes that his teachings do not resonate. He looks at his audience and sees that they laugh, “They do not understand me, I am not the mouth for these ears”43. The next texts of the “Prologue” address the most effective interpretation of the themes and what should be done to manage this: “Should we first cut off their ears, so that they learn to hear with their eyes? Should we rattle like drums and penance preachers? Or do they only believe the stammering?”44 Development The “Prologue” is followed by the development throughout the speeches of the first parts which vary, contrast and interweave all kinds of motifs from the atmosphere of both themes. Stated in musicological terms, in these speeches the ‘’germ cells” and “lesser motifs” are carried through. That is, the specific images from the “Prologue” are here combined and worked out, thus gaining subtlety. Like in the symphonic main form, here too a force field arises between two musical themes that exclude each other, and which, 42

TSZ, 414. TSZ, 18. 44 TSZ, 18 43

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in view of its refined character, can only be received by a subtle ear and eye. Here too, the goal-directed first theme has a directive function. It proves to dominate the reprise at the end of Part One, as becomes clear in the last stanza of "On the Bestowing Virtue:" “All the gods are dead: now we want the Übermensch to live – let this be at the highest noon our last will.” 45 Application of the main form is not limited to the construction of the larger parts, that is, Part One and the successive parts. On the whole, the triad of exposition, development and repetition/reprise even dominates in the build-up of the separate speeches. In general, they open with the presentation of a given topic, presented in its first, affirmative form. Often, too, it is projected towards the future as a sketch of what is exemplary. The next development passages contrast this sketch with the negative existing situation, and chart the rise of this situation. Finally follows the call to do away with and overcome this reprehensible situation. On account of this arrangement especially the beginning and the ending of a speech guarantee the coherence. They are important, then, for the composition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a whole. In the middle we find that which distinguishes the given speech from others. The ending, sometimes consisting of a number of lines, functions like the symphonic reprise. To illustrate the developmental structure on the level of the compositional coherence between the separate speeches and the part they belong to, I mention the first part of “On the Joys and Sufferings of the Passions.”46 “Virtue” is the topic of this fifth text of “Zarathustra’s Prologue.” The reprise in this speech is put together in just one line: “The human being is something that must be overcome; that is why you must love your virtues – for they will ruin you.”47 This last line repeats and underscores a small motif from the “melody line” of the “Prologue”: “I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to come to ruin and the arrow of desire.”48 This way, the preceding text of “On the Joys” is taken up in the wider context of the first part; at the same time, it is true that, without the preceding, the closing line would only be a repetition of the prologue. Moreover, the developmental character of the movement as a whole returns in the closing text of Part One, which, as reprise of the whole first part, carries the title “On Bestowing Virtue,” and takes up into itself both the 45

TSZ, 102; “On the Bestowing Virtue.” TSZ, 42-44. 47 TSZ, 44. 48 TSZ, 17. 46

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motif from “Zarathustra’s Prologue” and the reprise in “On the Joys.” This developmental effect operates most strongly in the reprises. In sketching the intertextual coherence, one of which I just worked out, we must beware of the tendency to limit the ‘topic’ of a specific speech. In that case, logical consistency simplifies as it were the assimilation structure of thinking into an identification model. That is, instead of an analysis that closely follows the symphonic development of the image words, it becomes a treatment of the logical relationships between recognizable concepts. In that case, narrowing to one single perspective, as above in focusing on virtue, threatens to block the coloring in many perspectives. After all, fixing a topic can lead to restriction of the wealth of meaning the images can contribute to a particular subject. For example: the speech “On the New Idol”49 seems to be about the state, but also involves the wider context of religion. The multivocality of the images that are used allows the text to branch out to religion and the doctrine of good and evil, but also to the theme of culture in general, including society, science, art, etc. Against the background of these references, the text builds relationships with many other speeches and the kindred perspectives these bring to light. On the other hand, this does not mean that the speeches introduce no ‘topic’ at all. The speeches do not only display the development of aspects of the image material from one speech to the next, they also contain the stepby-step, continued treatment of specific subjects. As example I point to the texts spread around in Part One: “On the Pale Criminal,”50 “On the Tree on the Mountain”51 and “On the Way of the Creator.”52 These make for a cumulating triad around the themes of loneliness and independence. Again, “On the Despisers of the Body,” “On the Preachers of Death” and “On the New Idol” show a cohering movement. In this series contempt for life and the penchant for comfort have a leading role. The thematic development noticeable in the succession of texts moves on in a multi-perspective way that fits the model of a symphony, where the absent remains present in the reuse of the images. Actually, thematic lines like these are not limited to one single part; they continue throughout the three parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. For example, “On the Flies of the Market” (in Part One), “On the Rubble” (Part 49

TSZ, 61-4. TSZ, 45-7. 51 TSZ, 51-4. 52 TSZ, 80-3. 50

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Two) and “The Return Home” (Part Three), are closely interrelated.53 Each of them deals with loneliness. After the first presentation of this theme in Part One, it is highlighted in Part Two from a contrasting point of view, to be finally taken up again in Part Three where in a sense it is meant to rise above the contradiction between the two earlier texts. The movement that comes into play in this way is one of an ever ascending spiral. These repetitions and surpasses can be shown throughout the whole book. Development in Part Three It is certainly evident that the development in Thus Spoke Zarathustra aims at increasing complexity and refinement. By way of the accumulation of repeated images and themes it has an extremely complicated and subtle character, while not leading to a formless and endless juxtaposition of referrals. This is prevented by the application of a finale that embraces and closes the entire composition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, hence including Part Three as well. Let me offer a brief sketch of the complex development structure of Part Three. The development in this part covers the texts between the exposition in “The Wanderer”54 and “On Face and Riddle”55 and, at the end of the reprise, in “On Old and New Tablets”56 and “The Convalescent.”57 In the texts of the “Durchführung” (“development”) we encounter all sorts of themes from Part One and Part Two again. The texts mentioned earlier that revert to Part One and Part Two, “The Return Home,”58 followed with “On the Three Evils”59 are resumed on a higher level and in a sense closed off by “On the Spirit of Heaviness.”60 This last text follows right after “On the Three Evils.” This in turn links up immediately with the reprise “On Old and New Tablets”61 mentioned above. The thematic connections and coherences are even more complex than noted here. A structural description like this unavoidably remains rather formal and abstract, but more support in terms of the image coherence would require a 53

Cf. Janz, Biographie, Bd 2, 218-9. TSZ, 193-6. 55 TSZ, 197-202. 56 TSZ, 246-269. 57 TSZ, 270-7. 58 TSZ, 231-4. 59 TSZ, 235-240. 60 TSZ, 241-5. 61 TSZ, 246-269. 54

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complicated analysis at great length. Because whatever holds for the speeches as a whole, applies to a possibly even stronger degree to the level of separate images. The enormous quantity of images that Nietzsche works with in texts like “On the Three Evils” and “On the Spirit of Heaviness” plays an ongoing role, in always changing compositions and contractions, up to “The Convalescent” in Part Three. Every one of the images used gets its more or less natural place in an effectively ordered coherence of texts. After that, in the apotheosis of Part Three, this purposiveness disappears, in consequence of which insertion of the images in a linear order ceases as well. The maximal use of repetition and shifting of images thus gives the closing texts an extremely and simultaneously heterogeneous character. A good example of this is the text immediately following “The Convalescent,”62 namely “On the Great Yearning.”63 Addressed here is the soul that has learned to take in and relativize all perspectives in a circle dance: O my soul, I taught you to say “Today” as well as “Someday” and “Formerly” and to dance your round-dance over every here and there and yonder.64

The third part of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony offers a striking analogy with what happens in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The compression and increasing complexity of the development applied in both works give Beethoven’s music and Nietzsche’s texts a kind of explosive power. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra this eruption takes place in the last three dithyrambs. The dazzling pinnacle of this is “The Seven Seals (or: The Yea and Amen Song).” In a sevenfold repetition it integrates the previous repetitions in image concentrations and gives all these repetitions and reruns a refrain-like character. Organic Solidity, Two Examples The application of the main form, with all the bifurcations to both the speeches and the smaller constellations of images, gives Thus Spoke Zarathustra a high degree of organic solidity.65 To illustrate this statement, I select two examples from the many that are available. They demonstrate the structurally dense compaction of Nietzsche’s work.

62

TSZ, 270-7. TSZ, 278-281. 64 TSZ, 278; “On the Great Yearning.” 65 See Parkes, Symphonic Structure, 4-5. 63

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The first example is a case of development within a single speech. In "On the Bestowing of Virtue," the closing text of Part One, i.e. the reprise, we recognize a triad similar to those, speaking globally, used in the various speeches. This speech consists of three separate parts. The transitions to a next part go together with a change in Zarathustra’s mood. In the first subportion the focus is on “bestowing virtue,” the positive starting point of this speech. The next lines speak of the existing negative situation and its origin. Finally, there is the appeal to overcome this existing position on behalf of the future. As an example of development throughout Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a whole, I mention the speeches “On Child and Marriage,”66 “On Free Death”67 and “On the Bestowing Virtue.”68 These three speeches, placed at the end of Part One, make up a cluster in which the dynamic main theme dominates. In their coherence they also demonstrate the cumulative movement throughout the book, providing an initial impetus to this movement. This is immediately clear in Part Two. Just like Part One, it is dominated by the first main theme, but halfway it is suddenly interrupted with a lyric-melodic interlude. In these three songs in the middle of Part Two the second main theme dominates:69 “The Night Song,”70 the “Dance Song”71 and “The Grave Song.”72 These are not closed with “thus spoke,” but with “thus sang Zarathustra.” At the same time, they stimulate in their own way the development of the first main theme. Together, they fulfill a pivotal role in the whole composition by retaking and varying the mentioned cluster, and simultaneously by laying out a line to a harmonizing finale.73 After many developmental variations are carried through in smaller units, the cluster comes back in the closing texts of Part Three, that is, in “On the Great Yearning,” “The Other Dance Song,” and “The Seven Seals (or: The Yea and Amen Song).”74 66

TSZ, 90-2. TSZ, 93-6. 68 TSZ, 97-102 69 About “Thus sang Zarathustra” see Hong, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Musik, 145. Concerning “die dreifache Mitte” (“the threefold middle”), see Scheier, Nietzsches Labyrinth, 178-192. 70 TSZ, 136-8. 71 TSZ, 139-141. 72 TSZ, 142-5. 73 These pivotal passages stand, as is the case in Beethoven’s Ninth, as an isolated island in the midst of the composition. In Beethoven they are presented by two wind instruments (see above, note 14). Cf. Parkes, Symphonic Structure, 20, 26-27. 74 TSZ 4, 278-281, 282-286, and 287-291, respectively. 67

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The repetitions and variations as pointed to in this example are very important for the compositional coherence of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Dualistic tensions of diverse kind, though always related to the masculine and feminine theme, ultimately fuse in the finale in “The Yea and Amen Song,” which embraces the entire composition. Extension of the Main Form by Nietzsche (and Beethoven) The argument offered in this section justifies the claim that Nietzsche’s symphony in words, just as Beethoven’s Ninth, can be seen as an enrichment and extension of the classical main form. It even proves possible to describe this composition, in regard to both the whole and its parts, in terms of one all-embracing structure. “Zarathustra’s Prologue” can be read as a general introduction. After this introduction follows the exposition in “On the Three Transformations,”75 in which the threefold metamorphosis of the spirit is anticipated. These transformations become reality in the development of Part One up to and including Part Three (“On the Spirit of Heaviness”). The following speech “On Old and New Tablets”76 functions as reprise. This consists of thirty separate texts, so that numerically too the ternary and decadic structure comes to a conclusion. In “On Old and New Tablets” many small motifs and accords are taken up again, often with literal quotations. It is a summation of all that came before which, admittedly, cannot be compared to the waterfall of musical scales that characterizes the ending of the third part of Beethoven’s Ninth, but initially does not seem a cohering whole either. The closing texts following this reprise can, corresponding with the finale of the Ninth, be understood as a coda. In his draft overview Nietzsche characterized the apotheosis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as “tail.” He states its function as follows: “Book four. Dithyrambic-embracing. ’Annulus Aeternitatis.’” Desire to experience all once again and forever.”77 Between this finale and the reprise in “"On the Old and New Tablets”78 there is, as in Beethoven’s composition, a “dead point,” described as a literal death experience,79 which functions like a link, a point that gives meaning to the immediately preceding summary and places it in a new light. The point is a reorientation of what went before, comparable to how the solo 75

TSZ 4, 29-31 TSZ 4, 246-269 77 KSA 9, 520. 78 TSZ, 246-269. 79 TSZ, 270; “The Convalescent.” 76

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human voice of the bass at the end of Beethoven’s Ninth introduces the closing song: “Oh friends, not these sounds! Let us intonate the more agreeable and more joyful ones.” By placing all that came before in a more joyful light the continuity is maintained, and this coda gives compositional unity to the work, for both Beethoven and Nietzsche.

Conclusion Nietzsche offered two keys that clarify the structure and intention of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: the tower and the symphony. I took these two keys as my starting point. The work proves to be a solid construction and a coherent musical score. I read this work as a score displaying the pattern of an ascending spiral movement – comparable to the function of the tower steeple – finding its culmination in an apotheosis that embraces the whole in a new cohesion. First, the perspective of the tower as symbol of an “artistic and step-bystep” development of images. The build-up leading to the steeple of this “tower” takes place in a gradual process of purification. I studied the requirements this process demands of the quality of the images. Nietzsche wants to restore natural speech in images, and in doing so to render visible how intimately his metaphoric is linked to the physical self. Thus, language becomes what it originally was, namely a medium of natural selfexpression. This is the only way for it to contribute to the revitalization of culture. The second key is the symphony, to which I paid most attention in the present article. Nietzsche’s literary symphony follows the structure of the classical sonata form as exemplified in Beethoven’s Ninth. The thematic development of this symphony is dominated by the rhythm and dynamics derived from the sonata form. This symphonic model contributes to the architectural construction of the book. In stepwise and cumulative progression, the book moves towards its musical climax: the dithyrambic closing songs. The steps or stages of spiritual purification that must be traversed can be traced in the structure of the text as based on the symphonic sonata form. Just as Beethoven’s Ninth unfolds its splendid glory in the “Ode to Joy,” a song of praise upon entering the Elysium, so the text of Thus Spoke Zarathustra prepares the reader for the experience of submergence in the Dionysian mystery. This mystery gains meaning for whoever is ready to

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participate in it and cannot come to definitive revelation in a discursive text. Zarathustra’s (and Nietzsche’s) quest cannot come to fruition in a text, nor in just a score of metaphors: it aims with increasing clarity at the transformation of Zarathustra to Dionysus, the figure in whom that which is searched for in the text becomes reality in the practice of singing. Through the numerous twists in the story, the reader is led to this intended culmination.

Bibliography Bagge, S. v. “Ludwig von Beethoven’s Neunte Symfonie.” Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, 12, no 4/5 (1877/1981). Corall, Niklas. “Friedrich Nietzsche - Die frТhliche Wissenschaft.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 48 (2017): 131-136. Crawford, Harriet. “Architecture in the Old Babylonian World.” In G. Leick (ed.), The Babylonian World. London: Routledge, 2009. Gruber, Gernot. “Nietzsches Begriff des “Südländischen” in der Musik.” In G. Pöltner, H. Vetter (ed.), Nietzsche und die Musik. Frankfurt a.M./Oxford: Peter Lang, 1997, 11-127. Hong, W.-T. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Musik im Spiegel der Kompositions- und Geistesgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt am Main/Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004. Janz, Curt Paul. Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie, Bd.1-3. München: DTV, 1981. Kunze, Stefan (ed.). Ludwig von Beethoven. Die Werke im Spiegel seiner Zeit. Beiern: Laaber, 1987. Oshima, T. "The Babylonian God Marduk." In: G. Leick (ed.), The Babylonian World. London: Routledge, 2007. Ottmann, Henning. „Kompositionsprobleme von Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra.“ In Volker Gerhardt (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche. Also sprach Zarathustra. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. Paap, Wouter. De symfonieën van Beethoven. Utrecht: Wagenaar, 1946. Pander, Gaila. Een zuivere toon. De beeldtaal van Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra, 2nd ed. Almere: Parthenon, 2020. Parkes, Graham. "The Symphonic Structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A Preliminary Outline." In J. Luchte (ed.), Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Before Sunrise. London/New York: Continuum, 2010. Pestalozzi, Karl. “’Hörte Jemand ihn zu?’ Nochmals – zu Nietzsches letztem Gedicht.” Nietzsche Studien 46 (2018): 167-183.

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Prange, Martine. Nietzsche’s Ideal Europe. Aestheticization and Dynamic Interculturalism from The Birth of Tragedy to The Gay Science. Wormer: Centurion Printing, 2007. Sachs, H. The Ninth. Beethoven and the world in 1824. New York: Random House, 2011. Scheier, Claus-Arthur. Nietzsches Labyrinth. Das ursprüngliche Denken und die Seele. Freiburg/München: Typoskript-Ed, 1985. Simon, Josef. “Ein Text wie Nietzsches Zarathustra.” In Volker Gerhardt (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. Stegmaier, Werner. „Anti-Lehren. Szene und Lehre in Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra.“ In Volker Gerhardt (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. Wagner, Richard. Sammelte Schriften und Dichtungen 1X. Leipzig: E.W.Fritsche Verlag, 1870 / Geschriften over kunst, politiek en religie. Utrecht: Uitgeverij IJzer, 2014. Zittel, Claus. Das ästhetische Kalkül von Friedrich Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000.

CHAPTER 17 WHEN PHILOSOPHY YIELDS TO MUSIC: THE CASE OF NIETZSCHE’S NACHGESANG DANIEL CONWAY

It should have sung, this “new soul”—and not spoken! What I had to say then—too bad that I did not dare to say it as a poet: perhaps I had the ability. —Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” I took myself in hand, I made myself healthy again…I turned my will to health, to life, into a philosophy. —Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Wise”

Nietzsche closes Beyond Good and Evil with an “Aftersong” (Nachgesang), in which he extends a heartfelt invitation to those unknown “friends” who, he hopes, may join him in his efforts to produce a philosophy of the future. Those readers who genuinely aspire to the nobility of soul described in Part Nine of Beyond Good and Evil are now urged to join him in friendship and mutual recognition, but only if they reunite with him as equals. That Nietzsche elects in this final installment of the book to sing to his best readers is certainly noteworthy. Having offloaded his most precious teachings and insights, and having acknowledged the folly of his efforts to “immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer,”1 he presumably has nothing more to say to say to these readers. This does not mean, however, that he has nothing more to offer them. He has been concerned throughout Beyond Good and Evil not simply to make his case discursively and 1

BGE §296.

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dialogically, but also to initiate his best readers into the affective-somatic modes of existence—e.g., habits, customs, practices, and routines—that he deems appropriate to the preparatory labors to which he has recruited them. As we know, in fact, the envisioned philosophy of the future will attain its optimal realization not as a set of teachings, but as a way of life that is closely attuned to the mortal rhythms of an affirmatively worldly existence. Unlike those philosophers who do not practice what they preach, Nietzsche bids adieu to his readers by demonstrating (and, so, modeling) to them the acquired depth and intensity of his feelings. Placing himself in the tradition of the Provençal knights of the gay science, who were guardians in their own right of a lineage that may be traced back to the epic origins of Western civilization, Nietzsche treats his best readers to a lyrical valediction. That he now sings to them is meant to provide them with a final souvenir of the affective-somatic transformation he has endeavored to induce in them. Having offered to produce in his best readers an alternative set of “value feelings,” which are meant to convey their acquired wish to embrace “untruth as a condition of life,”2 he closes his lessons to them with a song, whose “truth value” is likely to be considered beside the point.

Section I: Stanzas 1-13 The poem “From High Mountains” comprises fifteen stanzas. The initial thirteen stanzas are re-purposed (with minor emendations) from a poem composed by Nietzsche in 1884. The final two stanzas of the “Aftersong” were added in 1886 and provide a Zarathustra-inspired resolution to the hermit’s baleful plight. Presumably, it is the addition of these final two stanzas that qualifies the “Aftersong” as an appropriately lyrical coda to the expository body of Beyond Good and Evil. In its original form, the poem was presented as conveying “A Hermit’s Yearning” (Einsiedlers Sehnsucht). The hermit in question is none other than Nietzsche,3 and the “yearning” to which the poem lends its lyric is his

2

BGE §4. In his letter of 24 September 1886 to Malwida von Meysenbug, Nietzsche refers to himself twice as “the hermit of Sils Maria.” In this same letter, he informs her that he has sent her a copy of Beyond Good and Evil, which he urges her neither to read nor to “express to [him] [her] feelings about it. Let us assume that people will be allowed to read it in about the year 2000” (Christopher Middleton, ed. and trans., Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 196, 3

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desire for worthy companionship. As the poem in its original form makes clear, the hermit Nietzsche has determined that the “time of day” is ripe for the task that awaits him. Having arrived at the “noon of life,” which is a significant achievement in its own right, he pauses to gauge the proximity of the “friends” whose approach he awaits. In its original form, the poem concludes without arriving at a proper resolution. The hermit’s yearning has been voiced, his former friends have been banished, his invitation to worthy companions has been renewed, and the urgency of the “time of day” has been duly noted. Whether any potential friends accept this invitation, much less join the hermit on his terms and at his altitude, is not revealed. As we shall see, the original poem is very much a reflection of Nietzsche’s experience in Sils Maria. A “hermit” there by choice, he was fortified by the crisp, clean mountain air and enthralled by the picturesque Alpine setting of the village. His long, usually solitary walks afforded him the time, cadence, and inspiration to work out some of his most influential philosophical insights. His experience in Sils Maria was also important for the clarity with which it prefigured his destiny and the obstacles he would encounter along the way. While his work obliged him to cultivate a hermit’s solitude, his ensuing loneliness rendered him vulnerable to the temptations of pity and disgust. Those who made the extra effort to visit him in Sils were likely to be overvalued, while those who never bothered were likely to be undervalued. For reasons both personal and philosophical, the themes of isolation and loneliness became ever more central to his philosophy. Nietzsche presented the original poem to Heinrich von Stein (1857-87) in a letter composed in November of 1884. Stein had visited Nietzsche in Sils Maria, and Nietzsche evidently saw in him a potential “friend” who might satisfy a hermit’s yearning for companionship. But the envisioned friendship was not to be. Stein replied to Nietzsche’s display of intimacy by inviting him to join a group of Wagnerian acolytes who discussed the works and reception of the Master. Having sealed his break with Wagner and Wagnerism, Nietzsche was appalled at the prospect of a friendship predicated on a common appreciation (or idolatry) of Wagner.4 Simply put, Nietzsche

256). Here I follow Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010), 393-94. 4 I am indebted here to Ronald Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life (London: Penguin Books, 1980), 276-83; Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche’s Task: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 295-99; Young, Friedrich Nietzsche, 392-94; and Christa Davis Acampora and Keith Ansell Pearson,

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realized that he had misjudged his young acquaintance, owing perhaps to a wishful naïveté born of the hermit’s loneliness. This specific misjudgment bears further attention, for it is an occupational hazard encountered by Nietzsche, Zarathustra, and all higher types who are burdened by the loneliness of their pursuit of a singular existence. Having spied in Stein the promise of a meaningful friendship, Nietzsche determined that an invitation to intimacy might close the gap between promise and fulfilment. In other words, he took pity on Stein and, in doing so, revealed the depth of his yearning for meaningful recognition.5 Availing ourselves of a distinction drawn by Zarathustra, we may conclude that Nietzsche wishfully mistook a (mere) neighbor—to whom one turns when one does not “love [one]self enough”—for a (genuine) friend, “in whom the world stands completed (fertig).”6 In any event, as we shall see, the upshot of Zarathustra’s speech is echoed in the final lines of the revised version of this poem: One will acquire worthwhile friends only when one has succeeded in befriending oneself.7 In its essence, that is, the hermit’s yearning lends voice to an as-yet-undiagnosed yearning for himself, which, as Nietzsche and Zarathustra eventually come to understand, is in fact an undiagnosed expression of the hermit’s self-contempt.

Stanzas 1-3 The first three stanzas of the “Aftersong” establish a nervously celebratory tone. Having arrived at the “noon of life,” Nietzsche pauses as he waits for his “friends” to catch up to him before pressing onward and upward. Indeed, the “noon of life” is presented here as a signal achievement on his part, a milestone he has earned by merit of his diligence in attending to his labors of self-improvement and self-overcoming. As Nietzsche explains elsewhere, the “great noon” marks the season or time of day “at which the most elect consecrate themselves for the greatest of all tasks.”8 No longer bound or hindered by the claims pressed by unworthy others, one is free, finally, to Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: A Reader’s Guide (London: Continuum, 2011), 212-14. 5 That Nietzsche pitied Stein—and subsequently overcame his pity for Stein—is confirmed in EH: “wise” §4. 6 Z I: 16. 7 Cf. Z I: 14. 8 EH: bt §4. The metaphor and image of “noontide” is productively explored by Sheridan Hough, Nietzsche’s Noontide Friend: The Self as Metaphoric Double (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1997), chapter 3.

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accede to a life of self-determined range, risk, and amplitude. Nietzsche has paused, presumably, to welcome those with whom he will undertake the “task” he has revealed to them in Beyond Good and Evil, that of “translating humanity back into nature.”9 That Nietzsche finds himself waiting, impatiently, is our first sign of the hermit’s distress. If he has arrived at his “noon of life,” why does he not continue to press forward (and upward) on his own? While it certainly would be enjoyable to do so with friends and companions, why would he allow a single precious moment to pass? As we shall see more clearly as we progress, Nietzsche’s pause in the first stanza is indicative of his tendency to pity the poky friends he awaits. As we also shall see, his pity for them is indicative in turn of his failure as yet to achieve the self-reverence that he has identified as the hallmark of the “noble soul.”10 He pauses, in other words, not so much to hail his prospective friends one more time—this is but a pretext—but to grant himself a temporary reprieve from his difficult, lonely labors of self-overcoming. Rather than address his besetting selfcontempt, of which his “yearning” is symptomatic, the hermit prefers to blame those nameless others who, he pretends, cause him to delay his ascent.11 In the second and third stanzas of the poem, Nietzsche continues to favor an apostrophic mode of address, speaking to those who are not (yet) within earshot. Confirming that the glacial summit where he now stands is the ideal place for them to begin their work together, he sweetens his pitch to them. Describing the breathtaking Alpine scene as set for them, as incomplete without them, and as yearning, much as he does, for their approach, he wonders aloud where the recipients of his “sweet honey” may be. Suggesting that the education and support he has lent thus far ought to have sufficed, he lays the foundation for his insistence that he is not at fault for the failure of the anticipated rendezvous. As we know, Nietzsche mobilizes a similar image in the opening scene of Zarathustra, Part IV, where we find the central character sequestered in his mountaintop retreat. Rather than descend once again, Zarathustra has resolved to reserve himself for those who make their way to the mouth of his cave. Convinced that this new strategy will insulate him from the pity 9

BGE §230. BGE §287. 11 As Nietzsche astutely observes, “Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises” (BGE §78). 10

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and disgust that wrecked his initial efforts to recruit worthy disciples, Zarathustra awaits the arrival of those who, enticed by nothing more than the “honey” of the “wisdom” he exudes, are willing to risk themselves to enjoy his company.12 As we shall see, this strategy is preferred by those who have not yet fully befriended themselves, i.e., those who remain as yet dangerously reliant on the companionship, recognition, and affirmation of unworthy others.

Stanzas 4-8 In the fourth stanza of the poem, Nietzsche’s mood turns dark and dismissive. His friends have arrived, but his reunion with them is not the joyful, galvanizing event he had hoped it would be. Detecting in them an apprehension that he probably should own for himself, he claims to sense their dissatisfaction, as if they, too, had been looking forward to a more joyful reunion. Rather than voice his own disappointments with respect to them, however, he dwells on what he conjectures to be their disappointments with him. What he senses in his recently arrived companions, from whom we hear neither confirmation nor dissent, is that he has changed. The Nietzsche whom they had expected and hoped to meet, presumably on the strength of their earlier interactions with him, is not the Nietzsche who welcomes them to this halcyon summit. That he has “changed” in their eyes is no doubt true in several respects: First, his ongoing labors of self-overcoming have delivered him to an elevated state of soul. Having struck out on his own, he has “learned to dwell / Where no one lives, in bleakest polar hell.” What they see before them, or so he conjectures on their behalf, is a Nietzsche who has learned to live (and thrive) at a height that may not suit them. Second, he apparently will do nothing to ease their acclimation to his company in this new setting. Having shed the teacherly pose, tone, and countenance through which they originally came to know him, he is now disinclined to cheer or spur their progress. Third, he is apparently prepared to evaluate their friendship not on the basis of their potential progress, which may elicit his pity for them, but on the basis of their actual progress, which, he insists, is underwhelming. Despite the risks they have endured and the stamina they have displayed, they apparently have misplaced his main lesson for them. Claiming to detect in them “the shock of love and fear,” he resolves to send them away. 12

Z IV: 1.

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Nietzsche’s reception of his late arriving friends thus betrays a significant measure of narcissism on his part. Is it not possible to interpret their ascent as a sign of their growth and outgrowth? Perhaps they too have arrived on this glacier at their own “noon of life”? If he would invite (or allow) them to speak, he might learn of their trials and adventures, of their growth and advance in excess of his prescriptions for them. That they are in fact (and wish to remain) his disciples, as he suggests is the case, may not be true at all. If anyone remains invested in maintaining an unbalanced friendship, is it not he, the hermit who yearns, it would seem, simply for the sake of yearning? And even if his conjectures about these late-arriving friends are correct: so what? Why must he tarry with them, even if for their own good, and compromise his own progress? As we know from Beyond Good and Evil, expressions of pity for others are often outward expressions of selfcontempt. One discovers or invents flaws in others in order to remain attached to them and, thereby, to distract oneself from the task of addressing one’s own failings. Indeed, the Nietzsche who appears in the opening stanzas of the “Aftersong” is a Nietzsche who as yet lacks the courage to move forward on his own, a Nietzsche who has failed as yet to befriend himself. His soul is not yet noble, for it lacks as yet the telltale virtue of selfreverence.13 In Stanza 8, Nietzsche’s disappointment in his late-arriving friends gives way to outright hostility. Here it becomes clear that he cannot abide their gaze, in the glare of which, he is revealed as needy, vulnerable, lonely, and dependent on them for recognition. Having acquired the “strength” of a “wicked archer,” he warns these former friends not to test his skill with the bow.14 They must leave, he thus insists, “for [their] own good.” No longer merely dismissive of them, which might imply his indifference, he now presents himself as a potential menace to their well-being.

Stanzas 9-12 Having persuaded his (former) friends to turn back, Nietzsche now addresses his heart, which is understandably shaken by the collapse of the anticipated rendezvous. He advises his heart not to “shut [its] gates,” for 13

Cf. BGE §287. For an account of Nietzsche as a Philoctetes figure (and Stein as a Neoptolemus figure), see Lampert, Nietzsche’s Task, 296-99.

14

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“new friends may come along.” He similarly cautions his heart to relax its ties to those former friends who have failed to measure up. Although his heart may feel “old” as a result of this most recent disappointment, it is now “even younger” than before, perhaps as a result of this particular misadventure. Here we may be put in mind of the unripe Zarathustra, who, throughout his Prologue, spoke regularly to his heart, occasionally urging it, much as Nietzsche does in this stanza, to remain open despite multiple setbacks. The case of Zarathustra is also relevant inasmuch as he dared to open his heart to unknown others, but not, at least initially, to himself. As we shall see, this self-imposed limitation is a recipe for persistent disappointment and the “yearning” to which it gives rise. Indeed, the Nietzsche whom we encounter in the initial thirteen stanzas of the “Aftersong” is a Nietzsche who has not yet opened his heart to himself, which is why he conjectures ad nauseam about those friends who have disappointed him. Until he is able to befriend himself, the status of other, potential friends—including those whom he is so keen to banish—will remain indeterminate. Although he initially claimed to have disowned these erstwhile friends for their own good, as if he were concerned to spare them his wrath, he finally concedes in Stanza 12 that they are not “the friends of which [he] dreamed.” Simply put, he has outgrown them, or so he now believes. Despite their success in joining him in the rarefied air of this Alpine setting, they are not prepared to renounce their subordinate status. As he explains to no one in particular, “One has to change to stay akin to me,” implying without evidence that his newly arrived (and hastily departed) friends were either unwilling or unable to keep up with him. Again, how he knows this is not at all clear. His minimal and distanced contact with them suggests that his concerns about their persistent inadequacy may be ingredient to a self-fulfilling prophecy. So long as “the friends of which [he] dreamed” do not arrive, after all, he may rationalize the pause he seems determined to prolong, thereby deferring indefinitely his remaining labors of self-overcoming. In that event, he would have been correct when he wondered, in Stanza 5, if, as a function of his ongoing “selfestrangement,” he was “wounded and stopped by his own victory.” As we shall see, he is unable as yet to enjoy his “victory” because he remains dependent on the recognition and affirmation of worthy others, none of whom are available to praise his achievement. Despite his very real “victory,” as confirmed by the advent of his “noon of life,” he persists in a condition of ongoing “self-estrangement.” As yet unable to “rechristen”

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what is “evil” in him as what is “best” in him,15 he continues to deny himself the recognition and affirmation for which he yearns. If he is to continue his ascent and revel in his “noon of life,” he will need to heal this wound and become to himself the worthy friend he seeks in unworthy others.

Stanza 13 Finally returning the focus of his address to the “noon of life,” Nietzsche claims to be refreshed and renewed. Rather than settle for companions who would require his ongoing patronage, whose education would oblige him to forsake the mountain air he prefers to breathe, he looks forward to the arrival of real “friends”—namely, those who will ascend to his height on the strength of their own volition, initiative, and resolve. These new friends will join him, he believes, not because they need him to ease their burdens, but because they enjoy his company and admire in him the nobility they have cultivated in themselves. Such “friends,” we apparently are meant to believe, will approach Nietzsche neither as needy supplicants nor as greedy subordinates, but as full partners in the great “task” they will tackle together. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Heinrich von Stein was meant to see himself as one of these “new” friends. The problem with this seemingly self-reviving resolution is that any “new friends” who happen along are likely to elicit and receive the same treatment as the “old” friends whom he has most recently banished. Until Nietzsche addresses his self-contempt, i.e., his failure thus far to befriend himself, he will remain locked in a tiresome cycle of repetition. Any “new” friends who appear are likely very soon to become “old” friends. Not unlike the great Groucho Marx, the hermit Nietzsche presents himself as reluctant to join any club that would welcome him as a member.16

Section II: Stanzas 14-15 Thus concludes a slightly altered version of the original poem. As it turns out, Nietzsche was wrong about Stein, mainly because he was wrong about himself. Rather than simply replicate the poem in its original form, he crafts the “Aftersong” on the strength of three notable upgrades:

15 16

BGE §116. Cf. BGE §102.

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First, he has grafted the original poem onto the expository body of Beyond Good and Evil, which may prompt us to interpret the poem as addressed no longer to its original recipient (Stein), but to the members of the “we” he has cultivated throughout the book. Gathered under the brilliant light of the “great noon,” he and they will “translate humanity back into nature” and thereby restore “the eternal basic text of homo natura.”17 That he proceeds to banish these friends, as we shall see, thus implies an indictment not of their limitations but of his own. Nietzsche thus cautions the readers of Beyond Good and Evil not to idealize him (or anyone else whom they might encounter) and to attend to any deficits they might detect in their own capacities for self-reverence. Second, he adds two new stanzas to the original poem, which, in altering its context and presentation, warrants the (new) title he affixes to the repurposed poem. As we shall see, these additional stanzas update the original poem by exposing the overwrought “yearnings” of the hermit as symptomatic of his failure to achieve the desired levels of self-integration and self-reverence. Rather than continue to engage in baleful yearning, we learn, the hermit must become a friend to himself. Only then will he be in a position to end his cycle of repetition and welcome the friendship of others. Third, he explicitly identifies his repurposed poem not only as a song, but also as a particular type or genre of song, viz. an aftersong (Nachgesang), which, as some scholars have suggested, may be modelled on the Greek epode.18 Inasmuch as the song in question appears “after” the expository body of Beyond Good and Evil, it serves as a valedictory coda to the program of education and training in which Nietzsche has enrolled his readers. If we bear in mind that Nietzsche reveals himself in Part Nine as a “disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus,”19 we may receive his “Aftersong” as an attempt at composing a late modern dithyramb. At the same time, however, the song in question is also meant to serve a memorial or commemorative function. It is to be sung, eventually, in remembrance of one who has departed. Taken together, these two meanings of Nachgesang suggest a mixed or hybrid musical genre: Nietzsche sings 17

BGE §230. See Lampert, Nietzsche’s Task, 295-97; and Acampora/Ansell Pearson, Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, 212-13. While the “Aftersong” plays a conclusive role, like the epode, it is difficult to see what triadic structure or composition it is meant to conclude. 19 BGE §295. 18

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his farewell to his readers, thereby completing their education and training, and he does so by modelling to them the therapeutic art of composing in advance of one’s death the requiem one hopes will be sung in one’s memory.20 The process of composing such a song, which, as we shall see, obliges one to summon the friends one needs and deserves, is thus recommended by Nietzsche as an effective hedge against the twin temptations his best readers are likely to face as they become hermits in their own right: pity and disgust.

Stanza 14 It is worth noting here that Nietzsche does not attempt to finesse or disguise the discontinuity between the original poem and the final two stanzas that complete the “Aftersong.” The discontinuity stands forth like a scar, which he displays to his best readers as an enduring sign of his growth and selfovercoming. Much as the dueling scar on the bridge of his nose bears public witness to the youthful folly of his days as a University student, so the nested presence of his original poem adverts to the maturation to which the “Aftersong” attests. Rather than rubbish the original poem or disown his efforts to befriend Stein, Nietzsche presents these missteps as productive of his current incarnation. Apparently, that is, the properly noble soul regrets nothing.21 Every mistake, failing, rash judgment, or faux pas has contributed to the constitution of Nietzsche’s current self. Even an ill-considered gift to an overvalued recipient may be rehabilitated and re-purposed for a new occasion. In short, the likelihood (or necessity) of failure is built into the poem and affirmed as such. For all who aspire to climb ever higher, there will be hardships, setbacks, challenges, temptations, and crises of courage along the way. These are presented in the “Aftersong” as conducive to the growth his best readers will undergo as they trace their own paths through the high mountains. If one wishes to grow and ascend, one must seek out sources of resistance that credibly bespeak the possibility of failure.

20 In his letter to Carl Fuchs on 14 December 1887, Nietzsche explains that “The Hymn [to Life]…is of course really intended to be sung one day ‘in my memory’: it is meant to be something of mine that will survive, assuming that I myself survive” (Middleton, Selected Letters, 280-281). 21 I am indebted here to the general interpretation advanced by Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), chapter six.

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Nietzsche’s affirmative response to his misjudgment of Stein thus accounts for his decision to add the final two stanzas of the “Aftersong.” Rather than renew indefinitely an invitation that may have been prematurely extended, he tacks in a very different direction, as evidenced by his confirmation (in Stanza 14) that the hermit’s lament has come to an end. The yearning to which the hermit lent his plaintive voice is now attached to (and satisfied by) a new “friend” who is worthy of his companionship. Before revealing the identity of this “friend of noon” (Mittags-Freund) Nietzsche acknowledges the mediating efforts of an unlikely benefactor, whose timely intervention positioned him to cease his baleful yearning.22 This unlikely benefactor, whom Nietzsche identifies in Stanza 14 as a “wizard” (Zaubrer), is not the long-awaited “friend of noon,” but he qualifies as a friend nonetheless, for he arrived at “just the right time” (der Freund zur rechten Stunde) to disrupt a self-limiting cycle of repetition. Owing to this intervention, the hermit’s yearning finally “died in [his] mouth” as he turned his attention from the alleged deficiencies of his former friends to the very real self-estrangement from which he continued to suffer. The intervention of this benefactor was neither pleasant nor kind, but it compelled Nietzsche to identify the genuine cause or source of his lament, which lay, as we have seen, in his as-yet-unacknowledged reserves of selfcontempt. If we may generalize from the experiences related by Nietzsche and Zarathustra, we may conclude that one’s “just-in-time friends” are those who cruelly disabuse one of an enabling fantasy, while one’s “friends of noon” are those who, gently but firmly, guide one toward the best version of oneself. The case of Zarathustra is exemplary in this respect. In the wake of his long-deferred confrontation with his “abysmal thought,” which was stirred in him by his “just-in-time friend”—viz. the soothsayer23— Zarathustra relies on his companion animals to succor him throughout his period of convalescence. Rather than allow him to wallow in self-pity, the animals pointedly remind him of who he is and must become, going so far as to preview for him what are likely to be his final (and triumphant) words

22

For an interpretation of Mittags as a time or season ripe for self-overcoming, see Hough, Nietzsche’s Noontide Friends, 106-18; Robert Gooding-Williams, Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 249-50; and Paul S. Loeb, The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010), 133-38. 23 Z II: 19.

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before “going under.”24 As we learn in Stanza 15, a similar assistance is afforded Nietzsche by “friend Zarathustra,” who accompanied Nietzsche as he pursued a similar goal of self-integration. Owing to the encouragement of such a friend, Nietzsche avows, “one turned into two,” which is his way of saying that the succor provided by “friend Zarathustra” enabled him, finally, to befriend (and recognize) himself. The trope of “one becoming two” (da wurde Eins zu Zwei) recurs occasionally in Nietzsche’s poetic oeuvre.25 In the “Aftersong,” Nietzsche employs this trope to convey an achievement of self-integration. A previously derelict “one”—viz. the yearning hermit—becomes “two” by adopting a newly welcoming and newly inclusive relationship (or cluster of relationships) to himself. Rather than continue to accept (or insist on) an opposition between what is said to be good (or “light”) and evil (or “dark”) within himself, the hermit in question eliminates (or at least relaxes) these oppositions and subsequently reclaims the passions, affects, limitations, and vulnerabilities he had been taught to disown. In becoming productively diverse and manifold,26 the “one” in question becomes “two” in the sense of finally befriending himself. (The cure for Sehnsucht, we might say, is Selbstsucht.) In this newly achieved posture of self-reverence, the “one” in question has become more fully immunized against the twin threats of pity and disgust. Having become a friend to himself, the no-longer-yearning hermit may survive indefinitely on a steady diet of his own company and his own recognition. If (or when) he falters along the way, the hermit may summon his “friends of noon,” who will remind him once again of who he is and must yet become. Bolstered by their company, the no-longer-yearning hermit may confidently refuse the flattery dispensed by unworthy friends and unripe disciples. Rather than yearn, he will sing. For those who endeavor to climb ever higher, as Nietzsche hopes is true of the readers to whom he sings at the close of Beyond Good and Evil, both types of friend will be needed. As his best readers become Alpine “hermits” in their own right, they are likely to require the services of the first type of friend, the “just-in-time friend,” especially if, in their loneliness, they are tempted to tarry with acolytes and flatterers whom they know to be unworthy. As they are made aware of their residual self-contempt, which they will understand to account for their willingness to delay their 24

Z III: 13.2 Here I follow the interpretation advanced by Loeb, Death, 198-204. Philip Grundlehner, The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 252-58. 26 BGE §212. 25

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prescribed ascent, they will have need of the second type of friend, the “friend of noon,” who will guide them through their convalescence and escort them to their desired achievement of self-reverence and selfintegration. In Stanza 14, Nietzsche describes his unnamed benefactor, i.e., his “justin-time friend,” as a “wizard” (Zaubrer). This is almost certainly an allusion to Richard Wagner, whom Nietzsche occasionally described in similar terms, especially when documenting Wagner’s deleterious influence on the besotted youth of Germany.27 Of course, Nietzsche also may mean on this occasion to acknowledge Wagner’s (unwitting) benefaction on a more personal level. Nietzsche was understandably smitten, when, after making Wagner’s acquaintance in Leipzig, he embarked upon a friendship with the already famous composer. After an initial period of infatuation, however, Nietzsche came to realize that their friendship was permanently and unacceptably unbalanced. He had grown dangerously dependent on Wagner’s recognition and affirmation, which he would continue to receive, he eventually understood, only if he agreed to remain frozen in the subordinate position of an errand boy or junior partner. Most notably, his friendship with Wagner would oblige him to consign his own musical aspirations to a state of permanent eclipse. No other place or position was available to him if he wished to remain in Wagner’s circle. Owing to his friendship with Wagner, that is, Nietzsche became painfully aware of a weakness within himself—namely, a need for recognition verging upon servility—which he would need to address if he were ever to become the philosopher and person he wished to be. Wagner became Nietzsche’s benefactor, his “just-in-time friend,” by delivering a painful lesson pertaining to the perils of unbalanced, nonreciprocal friendships. As Nietzsche took this lesson to heart, moreover, he gained insight into the dynamics of unbalanced relationships more generally, e.g., those between Zarathustra and the “higher men,” and those between himself and the readers of Beyond Good and Evil. For that bounty of insight, he assures us, he is “grateful” to Wagner,28 whom he hails as “the great benefactor of [his] life.”29 According to Nietzsche, moreover, he repays Wagner for his benefaction by preserving his living legacy, as expressed in his creation of Siegfried, while denouncing his degenerate 27 See, for example, the (first) Postscript to The Case of Wagner, where he refers to Wagner as “this old magician [Zauberer]…this Klingsor of all Klingsors!” (CW P) 28 CW E. 29 EH: “Clever” §6.

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legacy, as exemplified by Parsifal. On the strength of this odd currency of repayment, Nietzsche boldly nominates himself as Wagner’s proper heir and foremost appreciator.30

Stanza 15 As we learn in the final stanza of the “Aftersong,” Nietzsche’s “friend of noon” is none other than Zarathustra, who, we know, was himself the beneficiary of an intervention staged by a “just-in-time friend”—namely, the aforementioned “soothsayer,” who returns in Part IV of Zarathustra as a “magician” (Zaubrer) to deliver yet another healing wound. The hermit of Sils Maria has satisfied his yearning, in other words, not by wasting his time on yet another promising (but callow) protégé, but by reserving himself for those “friends of noon,” even if invented and/or imaginary, who are supportive of his pursuit of self-integration.31 The takeaway here is that invented (but worthy) friends are preferable to real (but unworthy) friends. Indeed, here we encounter a practical sense in which “untruth” may be regarded as a “condition of life”32: If one’s flesh-and-blood companions are impediments to one’s ongoing labors of self-improvement and selfovercoming, fabricated companions may (and perhaps must) be summoned in their stead. Much as Nietzsche earlier “invented” the “free spirits” who would keep him company throughout his protracted period of “convalescence,”33 so he summoned another imaginary friend, Zarathustra, who was tasked with escorting him to the desired achievement of self-integration. Although the “Aftersong” does not specify the benefits provided by “friend Zarathustra,” we are warranted in assuming that he assisted Nietzsche much as his own “friends of noon”—viz. his gregarious animal companions—had served him in a similar period of convalescence. Just as Zarathustra’s animals exhorted him toward the very best version of himself, reminding him of his vocation34

30

CW E. I am indebted here to Hough, Nietzsche’s Noontide Friends, especially pp. 91100 and 116-18. 32 BGE §4. 33 HAH P. 34 Zarathustra’s companion animals remind him that his “destiny” lies in being and becoming “the teacher of eternal recurrence” (Z III:13.2). And although Zarathustra does not explicitly assent to this destiny—he has barely begun his period of “convalescence,” after all—Nietzsche himself concludes the expository body of 31

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while anticipating his final words,35 so “friend Zarathustra” urged (and enabled) Nietzsche to become what he was. Hence the wedding announcement that appears in the final line of the “Aftersong,” which heralds in Nietzsche the long-awaited merger of the “light” and “darkness” he carries within himself. If we continue to pursue this (admittedly speculative) line of interpretation, we may conclude that the constitution of Nietzsche’s “we” may represent a similar product of poetic fabrication. Rather than limit himself in Beyond Good and Evil to his actual (or likely) readers, which would have obliged him to lower himself to a potentially intolerable depth, Nietzsche addresses himself to the idealized “we” whose company and assistance he both enjoys and eagerly awaits. Unlike the unripe Zarathustra, who conducted unworthy companions through a remedial course of instruction, Nietzsche restricts his clientele to those already well-formed “gentlemen” who will benefit from (and perhaps also appreciate) the finish he offers to apply to them.36 If his actual readers were eventually to join him, not as subordinates but as equals, he no doubt would have welcomed them with open arms. If they do not, however, he is content to sing to the idealized “we” he has constructed in Beyond Good and Evil.

Conclusion The hermit of Sils Maria yearns no more. And although Nietzsche idealizes his readers in order to immunize himself against pity and disgust, his idealization of the “we” also serves to remind his real readers—much as Zarathustra reminded Nietzsche, and Zarathustra’s animals reminded Zarathustra—of who they are and must yet become. If they can manage to glimpse themselves in the “we” he has consecrated in Beyond Good and Evil, they may be able to persevere in their lonely labors of self-improvement and self-overcoming. When tempted in their loneliness by either pity or disgust, Nietzsche’s best readers need simply recall his teachings and renew the companionship these teachings presuppose. Although he will not accompany them in person along the Alpine paths they will tread, his teachings (and the wisdom these

Twilight of the Idols by unambiguously claiming this destiny for himself (TI, “Ancients” §5). 35 Z III: 13.2. 36 EH: bge 2.

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teachings contain) will be with them, potentially, forever. As they recall their experiences with Nietzsche and/or Zarathustra, they too may know the joy and self-sufficiency of the “one turned to two.” This is the case, he apparently means to suggest, because his best readers will be those who have not only heard and considered his teachings, but also made these teachings their own, thereby incorporating his wisdom into the newly configured habits and practices they have come to enact. He will be with them not in person—which, we are meant to understand, is an over-rated mode of being-with-others—but in spirit. In short, he will succeed in producing the “philosophy of the future” precisely to the extent that he is able to replicate himself in his best readers, thereby turning “one into two” as a hedge against the missteps that a hermit’s loneliness is likely to induce. As we assess the poetic conclusion of Beyond Good and Evil, we are in a good position to consider—and, perhaps, to appreciate—why Nietzsche insisted all along on producing in his best readers a somatic-affective transformation. As they gather for the “task” reserved just for them, it will not suffice for them to see and understand the world differently. If Nietzsche is to succeed in consecrating the “we” he has provisionally directed, his readers also must come to feel differently about the world, such that they acquire a different set of relationships to themselves and their contemporaries. This transformation is meant to be permanent, moreover, inasmuch as Nietzsche’s best readers have incorporated and now embody the wisdom he has imparted to them. Their membership in the “we” he has cultivated throughout Beyond Good and Evil is thus meant to immunize them against the loneliness they are bound to experience and the temptations that are reserved for them. As members of this select, battle-tested “we,” Nietzsche’s best readers may avail themselves when necessary of the “one becomes two” companionship to which he alludes in his “Aftersong.” If their education and training have progressed and taken shape as planned, Nietzsche (and Zarathustra) will always be with them, replicated in them through the somatic-affective training they have undergone.37

37 I am grateful to Michael Steinmann and Yunus Tuncel for their instructive comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

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Bibliography Acampora, Christa Davis, and Ansell Pearson, Keith. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: A Reader’s Guide. London: Continuum, 2011. Gooding-Williams, Robert. Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Grundlehner, Philip. The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Hayman, Ronald. Nietzsche: A Critical Life. London: Penguin Books, 1980. Hough, Sheridan. Nietzsche’s Noontide Friend: The Self as Metaphoric Double. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1997. Lampert, Laurence. Nietzsche’s Task: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Loeb, Paul S. The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Middleton, Christopher (ed. and trans.). Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. Young, Julian. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.

PART VI: NIETZSCHE AND CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

CHAPTER 18 RUSSIAN MUSICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF NIETZSCHE REBECCA A. MITCHELL

In 1899, the young Russian pianist Aleksandr Gol’denveizer noted in his diary that he had just finished reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s two most significant works: The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Gol’denveizer was troubled by Nietzsche’s lack of morals and glorification of the self, concluding that in both works there was “much [that is] intelligent, clear, brilliant, but overall [it is] crazy raving.” Nonetheless, the experience left a lingering aesthetic pleasure: “to read every phrase is music. I don’t think that German prose anywhere has ever been so euphonious.”1 Just a few months after Gol’denveizer’s private musings, music critic and composer Aleksandr Koptiaev presented a lecture entitled “The Musical World-View of Nietzsche” at the Society of Musical Pedagogues in St. Petersburg that subsequently received broad dissemination in the contemporary Russian press.2 Responding to a surge of interest in Nietzsche amongst his Russian compatriots, Koptiaev complained that insufficient attention had been paid to Nietzsche as a musician. Koptiaev insisted that the philosopher’s “strivings and passions grew out of a passionate worship of musical art, from a cult of music, that his general worldview was first of all the worldview of a musician, passionately seeking ever newer and newer conquests for his art.”3 Nietzsche, Koptiaev contended, demonstrated a 1

A. Gol’denveizer, Dnevnik: Pervaia tetrad’ (1889-1904) (Moscow: Tortuga, 1995), 122. 2 A. P. Koptiaev, “Muzykal'noe mirosozertsanie Nitsshe,” in Koptiaev, Muzyka i kul’tura: Sbornik muzykal'no-istoricheskikh i muzykal'no-kriticheskikh statei (Moscow, Leipzig: Jurgenson, 1903), 57-109. The speech was first published in the literary journal Ezhemesiachnyie sochineniia no. 2-3 (April 1900): 165-193 and lengthy excerpts appeared in Russkaia muzykal'naia gazeta (henceforth RMG) no. 18 (April 30, 1900): 504-507; RMG no.19-20 (May 7, 1900): 538-539. 3 Koptiaev, “Muzykal’noe mirosozertsanie Nitsshe,” 57.

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“new, musical-Dionysian culture in the process of being born,” and served “as a sign of the sovereignty that music has achieved in the contemporary time.”4 In place of the “Apollonian spirit” that reigned in contemporary Russian music, Koptiaev envisioned a music of the future that, in its rejection of rationality and embrace of Dionysian flux, would transcend the problems of the modern age. It was in Russia, Koptiaev concluded, that Nietzsche’s ideas found greatest resonance. Was Nietzsche an immoral individualist or a musical prophet? Such clashing reactions to Nietzschean thought encapsulated broader debates that shaped Russian cultural life at the turn of the twentieth century. By the time of his death in 1900, Nietzsche’s ideas attracted, challenged and repelled a wide range of Russian cultural and intellectual elites. In an 1892 article in the journal Problems of Philosophy and Psychology, philosopher V. P. Preobrazhenskii highlighted Nietzschean philosophy as a possible path out of the utilitarianism and positivism reigning in Russian culture, sparking a surge in Russian-language discourse about Nietzsche’s significance, despite strict press censorship.5 Nietzsche’s ideas resonated with a growing educated society that viewed the country’s autocratic governmental structure as insufficient for the demands of a modern age. Read alongside Wagner and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche challenged his Russian musical interlocutors to rethink the role of music in cultural life. Nietzsche’s glorification of music as the ultimate Dionysian unifying art form in The Birth of Tragedy was of particular interest. This, in combination with contemporary Russian concerns over social, political and cultural malaise, sparked expectations of a contemporary Russian composer who would fulfill the mission that Nietzsche had hoped that Wagner would fulfill: reuniting the Dionysian spirit of collective creation with Apollonian balance, thereby giving rise to a new culture and humanity. This chapter draws upon contemporary debates in the Russian periodical press to demonstrate how Nietzschean ideas about music’s Dionysian power sparked visions of societal and cultural transformation that melded with Russian messianic thought. While section one explores general discourse regarding Nietzsche, section two focuses on the creative output and 4

Ibid., 59. Ann M. Lane, “Nietzsche Comes to Russia: Popularization and Protest in the 1890s,” in Nietzsche in Russia, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Princeton University Press, 1986), 51-68. Though not the first Russian-language article dedicated to Nietzsche, it was Preobrazhenskii’s article that sparked wide commentary. See Iuliia Sineokaia, Tri obraza Nitsshe v russkoi kul’ture (Moscow, 2008), 59. 5

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reception of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Scriabin (1871-1915), the composer who most completely embodied the Russian version of Nietzschean thought espoused by his contemporaries. While individual responses to Nietzsche’s ideas varied, a general consensus emerged that rejected extreme individuality in favor of collectivity, associated with Dionysian unity, as the desired impact music should have. Music’s active role in shaping the psychology of the listening audience was embraced: through its immediate evocation of new “moods” (nastroeniia) or emotions, this “music of the future” would transform listeners, thereby helping to usher in the emergence of a new kind of human. Extreme individualism, itself often associated with Nietzsche, came to symbolize the greatest threat of modernity, which was popularly equated with contemporary German culture. Only in Russia, his interpreters concluded, could Nietzsche’s Dionysian vision find expression, and the dangers of rampant individualism be overcome through music.

Nietzschean thought in a Russian key When World of Art announced the death of Nietzsche in 1900, the artistic journal touted the philosopher’s significance in helping contemporary Russians shake off the tradition of utilitarian, positivist approaches to art as purely a form of social critique (embraced by an earlier generation of revolutionaries and intellectuals): [Nietzsche] is particularly dear to us Russians. The battle between two gods or two demons, Apollo and Dionysus, took place in his soul – the same battle that eternally takes place in the heart of Russian literature from Pushkin to Tolstoi and Dostoevskii. For this circle of thoughts and actions that are close to World of Art, and for all future Russian and European culture, Friedrich Nietzsche has not died. Regardless of whether we are “for” or “against” him, we must be with him, close to him… understanding and accepting both agreement and contradiction in ourselves to the final depth of our feeling and thought.6

Rather than being confined to the realm of social critique, World of Art emphasized art in general – and music in particular – for their intrinsic value (the slogan of impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s World of Art movement was “art for art’s sake”) as well as the insight music could offer into other realms of experience. For religious philosopher Vladimir Solov'ev, whose own aesthetic ideals deeply influenced early twentieth century Russian cultural life, music was a “magical” art, which intuitively gave access to the underlying 6

Quoted in Sineokaia, Tri obraza Nitsshe, 67-68.

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unity of existence.7 Contemporary music commentators were explicit in their indebtedness to Nietzsche for this insight: music critic Boris Schloezer noted approvingly that “following Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the new philosophy gives music a particular, leading role,”8 while philosopher and composer Konstantin Eiges argued that music was the purest embodiment of the unity that underlay all existence, “the spiritual state of the Creator, the superhuman (sverkhchelovecheskoe) being which is free from division into physical and psychological, external and internal worlds.”9 Nietzsche’s image of the unifying Dionysian spirit of music as the key to cultural rebirth presumed that contemporary culture had entered a transitional moment, an idea that was adopted by his Russian interlocutors. In his 1900 article on Nietzsche’s musical philosophy, Koptiaev drew from Nietzsche's analysis of contemporary German culture to diagnose the ills of Russian reality. The present age was one in which rational, Socratic culture, “the culture of knowledge rather than intuition,” had gained hold in Russia as well as Germany.10 The only means of rejuvenating human existence was through appealing to “Dionysian consolation”: the creation of new myths and value systems to give meaning to life.11 Only the “mysterious, hidden art” of music could provide the transformative impetus for recreating life on a fundamentally new basis.12 In a 1906 assessment for the literary-artistic journal Golden Fleece, Eiges agreed that Nietzsche's diagnosis of the fundamental sickness facing contemporary German culture — an overly rationalistic, scientifically based approach to life — was equally applicable to Russian life. This one-sided development of human existence could only be cured through increased focus on the development of what Nietzsche considered the culture of the future, based “not only on a scientific-theoretical, but also on an artistic-esthetic and tragic (religious) consciousness.”13 Russian

7

V. Solov’ev, “Obshchii smysl iskusstva,” in Filosofiia iskusstva i literaturnaia kritika (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1991), 73-89, here 84. 8 Boris Shletser, “Konsonans i dissonans,” Apollon 1 (January 1911): 54-61, here 54. 9 Konstantin Eiges, “Osnovnaia antinomiia muzykal'noi estetiki,” in Stat’i po filosofii muzyki (Moscow: A.I. Mamontova, 1912). First published in Zolotoe runo no. 11-12 (1906): 122-125, here 125. 10 Koptiaev, “Muzykal'noe mirosozertsanie Nitsshe”, 103 11 Ibid. 12 A.P. Koptiaev, “Kniga ob ‘intimnoi muzyki’,” in Evterpe: vtoroi sbornik muzykal’no-kriticheskikh statei (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia glavnogo upravleniia udelov, 1908), 1. 13 Konstantin Eiges, “Muzyka i estetika,” in Stat’i po filosofii muzyki. First published in Zolotoe runo no. 5 (1906): 60-62, here 60.

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Symbolist theorist Emilii Medtner similarly insisted that music was the key to contemporary culture, and sought to inspire public debate on the subject.14 Drawing on Nietzsche, music was further envisioned by Russian music critics as playing a role in the development of the “new person.” Evgenii Braudo argued in a 1909 article for the literary-artistic journal Apollo that “[music] opens before us a realistic picture of the feelings of the new future human and, as it were, calls us, amid the prosaic conditions of contemporary life, to the spiritual life of the future” and connected the discarding of old musical forms with the need for the free development of the human spirit.15 In his writings for the Russian Musical Newspaper, Gr. Prokof’ev combined Nietzschean phrasing with this prophetic reworking of Nietzsche, concluding that “the charm of art generally, and music particularly is that, by giving the natural, familiar feelings of a simple human without sometimes stepping outside the limits of the moderate, it can open in these ‘all too human’ experiences a beauty of soul, a beauty of the appearance in it of the heavenly beginning, of heavenly harmony.”16 In his musical criticism for the modernist-leaning journal Music, Leonid Sabaneev repeatedly argued that “the time has dawned, the time of revaluation of values” in reference to music.17 Viacheslav Karatygin, one of the most ardent supporters of modernist musical tendencies, though generally skeptical of excessive philosophizing, nonetheless imbibed this general Nietzschean mood, referring to Tchaikovsky’s music as “human, all-too-human” for the early twentieth century.18 As Nietzsche’s ideas were translated into the Russian context, certain themes received greater focus, while other aspects were omitted or underplayed. While some members of educated society read Nietzsche in

14 Vol’fing [Emilii Metner], Modernizm i muzyka: stat’i kriticheskiia i polemicheskiia, 1907-1911 (Moscow: Musaget, 1912). 15 Braudo, “Muzyka posle Vagnera,” 54. 16 Gr. Prokof’ev, “Muzyka chistoi emotsii. (Po povodu ‘vechera nastroenii’ iz proizvedenii V. Rebikova),” RMG no. 5 (January 31, 1910): 136-141, here 138. 17 L. Sabaneev, “Nauka o muzyke,” Muzyka no. 74 (April 28, 1912), 377. Italics added. 18 Iu. V. Keldysh, “Muzykal’naia polemika,” in Russkaia khudozhestvennaia kul’tura kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka (1908-1917). Kniga tret’ia. Zrelishchnye iskusstva. Muzyka. (Nauk: Moscow, 1977), ed. by A. D. Alekseev, Iu. Ia. Barabash, S.S. Ginzburg, Iu.S. Kalashnikov, A.A. Sidorov, G. Iu. Sternin, O.A. Shvidkovskii, 288-309, here 306.

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German or French translation (a full Russian translation of The Birth of Tragedy did not appear until 1912), many participants in Russian musical life gained knowledge of his main ideas through Russian-language summaries or excerpts, thereby furthering this process of cultural translation.19 Popular discussion of Nietzsche tended to elide his ideas with those of Schopenhauer and Wagner, even though Nietzsche’s initial infatuation and later rejection of Wagner were well known. Schopenhauer’s interpretation of music as the will underlying the phenomenal world was referenced interchangeably with Nietzsche’s interpretation of Dionysian ecstasy, while Wagner’s influence was evident in the common use of the phrase “music of the future” in discussing contemporary musical trends.20 Nietzsche’s rejection of Christianity was similarly underemphasized in Russian musical circles. When explicitly discussed, Nietzsche’s rejection of both Wagner and Christianity were generally viewed as symptomatic of Nietzsche’s extreme individualism, which was in turn cited as the philosopher’s greatest weakness and probable cause of his mental breakdown. Koptiaev argued in 1900 that “perhaps one of the reasons for the spiritual disorder of the thinker was his idea of the impossibility of bringing together – even in the realm of thought – the Dionysian cult with proud individualism.”21 Russian artists, he concluded, were left with the task of melding Nietzsche’s Zarathustrian and Dionysian elements. Koptiaev suggested that through collective participation in the creative process of music, a time would come “when there will be no antagonism between the Dionysian cult of society and individualism, the proud self-determination of the personality.”22 This perceived conflict between the Nietzsche of Zarathustra and the Nietzsche of Dionysus – and the need to transcend it – was reiterated by other Russian critics and musicians.

19

Sineova, Tri obraza Nittshe, 62. For contemporary Russian views of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music, see Konstantin Eiges, “Vstupitel’naia stat’ia,” in Artur Shopengauer, O sushchnosti muzyki, vyderzhki iz soch. Shopengauera (Petrograd-Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe muzykal’noe izdatel’stvo, 1919), iii-xv. On Russian Wagner reception, see Rosamund Bartlett, Wagner and Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Rebecca Mitchell, “How Russian Was Wagner? Russian Campaigns to Defend or Destroy the German Composer during the Great War (1914-1918),” in Stephen Muir and Anastasia Belina-Johnson, ed., Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2013), 51-71. 21 Koptiaev, “Muzykal'noe mirosozertsanie Nitsshe”, 104. 22 Koptiaev, “Muzykal'noe mirosozertsanie Nitsshe”, 104. 20

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Ironically, for many Russian commentators the solution to Nietzsche’s Dionysian-Zarathustrian conundrum was to be found in a renewed Christianity. Nietzsche’s claim that “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified” was melded with the thought of Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Solov’ev, who (himself shocked at Nietzsche’s amorality) had argued for the importance of art as a transformative, theurgic force – the spiritualization of the physical world through human creative action.23 Writing for the journal World of Art in 1904, the poet Andrei Belyi further developed this thread, arguing that Nietzsche’s intellectual development “unconsciously touches upon religious-mystical questions”. Nietzsche’s philosophy “offers the goal of historical evolution of the appearance of the all-unified personality, the Overhuman. The question of the appearance in personality of the universal spirit demonstrates the history of the path to Godmanhood.”24 By combining Nietzschean criticism with Solov’evian mysticism, one reached the path of “theurgy”: deification or spiritualization of the physical world through human creativity. This, Belyi concluded, was the true purpose of contemporary art.25 Fellow Symbolist writer Viacheslav Ivanov specifically linked Nietzsche’s discovery of Dionysus with Christianity and saw the philosopher’s mental illness as a symptom that he had fallen short: The tragic guilt of Nietzsche was that he did not believe in God, who himself uncovered the world. He understood the Dionysian beginning as aesthetic, and life as an ‘aesthetic phenomenon’. But that beginning, first of all, is a religious beginning, and the rainbow of life’s waterfall, to which Nietzsche’s face was turned, was a refraction of the heavenly Sun.26

This explicit melding of a Nietzschean celebration of the aesthetic justification of existence with art as a form of theurgy found expression in music writing as well. Building on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, Eiges

23 Rebecca Mitchell, “‘Musical Metaphysics’ in late Imperial Russia,” in Caryl Emerson, George Pattison, Randall Poole, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 379-395, here 381-394; Irina Paperno, Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 5-8. On Solov’ev’s reception of Nietzsche, see Lane, “Nietzsche comes to Russia,” 65-67. 24 A. Belyi: “Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie”, Mir iskusstvo no. 4 (1904): 173-196, here 175. 25 Belyi, “Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie,” 184-185, 192. 26 V. Ivanov, “Nitsshe i Dionis,” in Po zvezdam: stat’i i aforizmy (Ory: St. Petersburg, 1909): 1-20, here 18-19.

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viewed music as the “highest spiritual embodiment”27 of all the arts in which the “uplift into another, higher world” 28 was embodied. Music “immediately touched upon heavenly beauty, which has no relation at all to the phenomenal world, the world of representation.”29 Nietzsche’s rejection of Wagner’s discovery of Christianity in Parsifal was also read within this tradition of Russian religious philosophy. Indeed, the Russian Symbolist poet Ellis concluded in 1913 that the “main theme of battle” between Nietzsche and Wagner was the question of Christianity. Though it had initially seemed to all that Nietzsche was the victor, “only now we begin to understand, justly, that it is the opposite, the theme of the Holy Grail is being reborn in our soul and begins to sound in us in new, in different ways!”30 The role of the artistic genius as bridging a divide between individual creativity and collective inspiration received renewed attention in the aftermath of the first revolution that rocked Russia in 1905, after which Nietzschean ideas increasingly melded with a redoubled emphasis on the importance of the collective aspect of Dionysus, an idea that melded easily with Solov’ev’s philosophical goal of “all-unity” (vseedinstvo) and the earlier Russian Slavophile ideal of “unity-in-multiplicity” (sobornost’).31 Recent scholarship has emphasized the role that mood (Stimmung) and emotions play in Nietzsche’s thought.32 Martha Woodruff traces Nietzsche’s own development from mood (Stimmung) to passion (Leidenschaft) in his works. She highlights how Nietzsche both “explores the philosophical significance of moods and arouses moods for the reader,” and notes that “from new moods and passions emerge new modes of writing and thinking.”33 Nietzsche’s Russian readers were attuned to such implications; they particularly valued Nietzsche’s evocation of mood and saw music’s 27 Eiges,

“Osnovnoi antinomiia muzykal'noi estetiki,” 125 “Muzyka i estetika,” in Stat’i po filosofii muzyki. First published in Zolotoe runo no. 5 (1906): 60-62. 29 Eiges, “Krasota v iskusstve,” in Stat’i po filosofii muzyki, 45-64, here 59-62. First published in Zolotoe runo no.11-12 (1909). 30 Ellis, “Parsifal” Rikharda Vagnera, Trudy i dni no. 1-2 (1913): 24-53, here 53. 31 Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, “The Spirit of Music in Russian Symbolism,” Russian History 10:1 (1983): 66-76; Rebecca Mitchell, Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics and the Twilight of the Russian Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). 32 See for instance The Agonist XIII/I&II (Fall 2019/Spring 2020): “Nietzsche and Affect”. 33 Martha Kendal Woodruff, “Nietzsche On Moods, Passions, and Styles: Greek Inspirations,” in The Agonist XIII/I&II (Fall 2019/Spring 2020): 114-131, here 117, 121. 28 Eiges,

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ability to evoke mood (nastroenie) and lived experience (perezhivanie) as the means through which music would enact the longed-for transformation of listeners. For Eiges, the mood (nastroenie) that art evokes “carries us outside the boundaries of the phenomenal world, lift[s] us above the earth.... to the other side of the world of will and representation.”34 This otherworldly experience was mystical at its base, reachable not through rationality, but only through immediate intuition.35 Musical mood, Eiges argued, was something distinct from other artistic states, giving the purest experience of both unity and creativity. Melding novelist Lev Tolstoi’s idea of music as a kind of “infection” that directly spread emotions from performer to listener with Nietzsche’s fascination with ancient Greece, composer Vladimir Rebikov called for a new style of “Orphic” music that would “seize the soul of the listener and force him to feel everything that the author wanted,” awakening him to the “experiences of the human soul” rather than mere “physical feelings.”36 Such ideas affected compositional style. Music critics Boris Schloezer and Leonid Sabaneev both stressed the role of musical consonance and dissonance in awakening new moods and ultimately a new spirit in the listener. In Sabaneev’s view, new, never-before-experienced moods would be awakened by new sound combinations. Contemporary listeners would come to hear chords previously considered dissonant as harmonious, expanding the possible scope of their spiritual experience and ushering in a change in human nature itself.37 While offering a different definition of consonance and dissonance, Boris Schloezer reached a similar conclusion. New music, he argued, had abandoned the need for dissonant chords to resolve, and served to prepare people to embrace the flux of uncertainty and torment of modern life rather than seeking either escape or transcendence through the resolution of dissonance. In this way, Schloezer opined, a new kind of human being was being formed directly through musical experience.38

34 Eiges,

“Krasota v iskusstve,” 61-63. “Muzyka, kak odno iz vyshikh misticheskikh perezhivanii,” in Eiges, Stat’i po filosofii muzyki. First published in Zolotoe runo no.6 (1907): 54-57. 36 Vladimir Rebikov, “Muzyka cherez 50 let,” RMG no. 6 (1911): 149-157, here 152; RMG no.7 (1911): 185-188, here 186. Lev Tolstoy, What is Art?, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (London: Penguin, 1995). 37 L. Sabaneev, “Novye puti muzykal’nogo tvorchestva,” Muzyka no. 54 (December 12, 1911): 1210-1214, here 1211. 38 Boris Shletser, “Konsonans i dissonans,” Apollon no. 1 (January 1911): 54-61, here 61 35 Eiges,

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Of course, not all Russian commentators accepted that the new “moods” or “emotions” awakened by music were theurgic in nature. An ardent Nietzschean, Koptiaev fully embraced the philosopher’s rejection of traditional moral systems, claiming that “[music] is eternal motion, it is that which eternally strives somewhere, to heaven or to hell – it is all the same; it is unquenchable thirst, eternal, saintly unrest. . .”.39 The Dionysian spirit, or “World Will,” of which music was the most perfect embodiment, had no eternal ethical value system underpinning it. Rather it was the absolute embodiment of the “hidden desire for life, the destroyer of good and evil, something unquenchable, hungering and greedy.”40 Music was “the single artistic cult beyond good and evil”41 and, by extension, the musical genius was the creator or founder of new value systems, based on his own powerful individual personality. Musical action could have genuine impact on society, bringing with it change and even revolution through its development of collective unity among the Russian people. But that process was governed, Koptiaev opined (in contrast to Solov’ev’s conception of theurgy), not by eternal values of Beauty or Good or Justice, but by the creative power of genius, who would create new values for society.42 Indeed, regardless of their view of artistic theurgy, Russian music commentators tended to share an assumption that Russia was inherently more “spiritual” and therefore more open to Nietzsche’s ideas than contemporary German culture. While readily embracing the Germanic musical canon of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, Eiges concluded that, in the present era, “music composers of contemporary Germany (Richard Strauss) and his imitators... little understand their own purpose.” 43 For Sabaneev, the post-Wagnerian period was a time of German musical decline, and he critiqued Richard Strauss’s empty use of dissonance that did not seek to expand human psychology through the introduction of new sounds and new emotions. Rather than participating in the spiritual moulding of a new humanity, the path of modernism in contemporary Germany was that “of a market product for which there is demand at the

39

Koptiaev, “Skriabin: iz svobodnykh muzykal'nykh besed,” 103. Ibid., 103. 41 Koptiaev, “Muzykal'noe mirosozertsanie Nitsshe,” 106. 42 A. Koptiaev, “Pevets ekstaza: A. Skriabin,” in K muzykal’nomu idealu: tretii sbornik muzykal’no-istoricheskikh i kriticheskikh statei (Petrograd, 1916): 195-210, here 207-209. 43 Eiges, Muzyka, kak odna iz vyshikh misticheskikh perezhivanii,” 57. 40

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present moment.”44 According to Koptiaev, German composers “passively responded both to Schopenhauer's musical ideas and to the 'Dionysian ecstasy' of Nietzsche.”45 Both Nietzsche and Wagner, though German, had in fact spoken directly to the Slavic Russian spirit rather than the contemporary German spirit. Thus, Wagner was a “Slav by character,”46 while Nietzsche was unambiguously a “Polish thinker.”47 Developing this theme further, Russian Symbolist writer Sergei Durylin argued in his 1913 book Wagner and Russia that Wagner’s failure to create a genuine Christian myth with Parsifal was caused by a lack of Christian sentiment amongst the German people. It was only in Russia that a true Nietzschean melding of myth-creation and Christianity was possible.48 Perhaps inspired by Durylin’s analysis, composer Aleksandr Scriabin concluded in 1914 that “any artist can only create and embody his images in the forms which are accessible to his contemporaries, and it is for this reason that Wagner could create a drama – a form in which the individual “I” is expressed, and not something higher, standing outside everything individual.”49 For Nietzsche’s Russian interlocutors, the cultural ascendence of a young Russia, inherently more collective in its spiritual aspirations, over an aged, individualistic and increasingly decadent Germany was self-evident. With the outbreak of war between Germany and Russia in 1914, this rather schizophrenic relationship with Nietzsche reached new heights. One music critic concluded that Nietzsche’s Overhuman, Wagner’s Siegfried and Wilhelm II were all part of the same tendency towards militarism that it was Russia’s duty to defeat.50 But military hostilities simply reaffirmed a trend already present in cultural thought. Nietzsche’s Dionysian unity, whether it served as a theurgic path to higher spiritual insight or as an affirmation of

44

L. Sabaneev, “Modernizm,” Muzyka no. 72 (April 14, 1912): 334-337, here 336. On Sabaneev’s rejection of contemporary “mercantilist Germanism”, see also Sabaneev, “Muzykal’nye besedy,” Muzyka no. 95 (September 15, 1912): 780-783. 45 Koptiaev, K muzykal'nomu idealu, p.i 46 Koptiaev, “Skriabin: iz svobodnykh muzykal'nykh besed”, 101. 47 Ibid., 102. 48 Sergei Durylin, Rikhard Vagner i Rossiia: O Vagnere i budushchikh putiakh iskusstva (Moscow: Musaget, 1913), 20-21. 49 Simon Nicholls, “Introduction,” in Simon Nicholls and Michael Pushkin, trans., The Notebooks of Alexander Skryabin (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 15. 50 L. I-ov, “Po povodu stat’i ‘Ob iskusstve vragov’, RMG no. 44 (1914): 782-85, here 784.

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human ability to create a better future, was best achieved in Russian rather than German culture.

Aleksandr Scriabin: A Russian-style Nietzschean composer When Koptiaev first presented his assessment of Nietzsche’s musical ideals in 1900, he awaited a future Russian composer who would embody Nietzsche’s demands and usher in a new cultural epoch through his musical creations. By 1908, Koptiaev believed that the composer prophesied by Nietzsche had appeared in the figure of Aleksandr Scriabin.51 Indeed, as a philosopher and self-proclaimed messiah who ardently believed it was his mission to bring about the end of the current phase of human existence through music, Scriabin was undoubtedly the Russian composer in whom the philosophical strivings of the time were most immediately expressed. Nonetheless, disentangling Nietzsche’s particular influence is difficult: Scriabin freely borrowed and combined ideas from a wide range of sources (including German idealist philosophy, Russian religious philosophy, Russian Symbolist theory and theosophy), which he adapted to fit his own evolving creative worldview.52 Indeed, Scriabin’s firsthand knowledge of Nietzsche’s writings was relatively limited: apart from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which Scriabin admired greatly around 1900, the composer’s only direct exposure to Nietzsche’s writings seems to date to sometime between 1909-1910 when he read The Birth of Tragedy, finding there affirmation of his own aesthetic and philosophical ideals.53 Nonetheless, as Koptiaev suggested, it is likely that Scriabin “unconsciously soak[ed] up the great influence” of Nietzsche through the “general intellectual trends seizing 51 Koptiaev, “Pevets ekstaza,” 206. See also idem., “‘Skriabin’ (iz svobodnykh muzykal’nykh besed),” 102. 52 On the multi-faceted influences on Scriabin, see Nicholls, The Notebooks of Alexander Skriabin; Mitchell, Nietzsche’s Orphans, 61-85. 53 On Scriabin’s library in 1902-1903, see Boris Shletser, A. Skriabin: monografiia o lichnosti i tvorchestve (Berlin: Grani, 1923), 26-27. In response to Koptiaev’s questioning in 1909 as to whether his idea of ecstasy came from the Dionysian teachings of Nietzsche, the composer told him he had only read Thus Spoke Zarathustra. See Koptiaev, A.N. Skriabin: Kharakteristika (Moscow: Iurgenson, 1916), 47. By 1910, Scriabin told Ellen von Tideböhl that he had been greatly influenced by The Birth of Tragedy. See Ellen von Tideböhl, “Memories of Scriabin’s Volga Tour (1910),” The Monthly Musical Record (May-June, 1926): 137-138; 168-169. Taken together, these two accounts suggest that Scriabin read The Birth of Tragedy in late 1909 or early 1910.

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the Scriabin epoch.” 54 Scriabin had been impressed by Schopenhauer’s interpretation of music in The World as Will and Representation that also inspired Nietzsche’s early thought.55 Moreover, Scriabin read Birth of Tragedy alongside the writings of his compatriot, Russian Symbolist poet Viacheslav Ivanov, with whom he became acquainted in 1909. Given this context, certain parallels between Nietzsche’s ideas and Scriabin’s philosophical musings and compositions might well be the result, not of direct knowledge of Nietzsche’s writings, but of subconscious absorption of these themes from other sources. Indeed, both Scriabin’s evolving musical style and contemporary responses to it parallel a general shift in Russian reception of Nietzschean ideas from an initial celebration of the strong individual who speaks a new word to society (framed as an artist-poet or “Overhuman” (sverkhchelovek)) to a vision of collective, Dionysian ecstasy in which all existence will meld into the singular unity underpinning all existence read through the Russian philosophical lenses of artistic theurgy and sobornost’ - a term popularized in earlier Slavophile thought that referred to the unity-in-collectivity that was purportedly a unique aspect of Russian culture and artistic theurgy.56 Scriabin’s early philosophical writings (ca. 1900) echo the spirit and aphoristic style of Thus Spoke Zarathustra that resonated in Russian culture at the time. His declaration, “I go to tell them that they are strong and mighty, that there is nothing to grieve over, that nothing is lost! That they should not fear despair, which alone can give rise to genuine triumph. Strong and mighty is he who has experienced despair and conquered it,”57 echoes Nietzsche’s vision of self-overcoming in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “And life itself confided this secret to me: ‘Behold’, it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself.’”58 In an unfinished opera (ca. 1900-1901), Scriabin’s Zarathustrian hero seeks to bring higher insights to humanity.59 The

54

Koptiaev, Skriabin, 47. “Vypiski iz knig po filosofii s pometkami A.N. Skriabina,” in Igor Belza, ed., Skriabin: Chelovek. Khudozhnik. Myslitel (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi memorial’nyi muzei A N. Skriabina, 1994), 173-200. 56 For further discussion of the concept of “sobornost’” and its relation to Nietzsche’s conception of Dionysus, see Mitchell, Nietzsche’s Orphans, 33-34. 57 Nicholls and Pushkin, Notebooks of Alexander Skryabin, 50. 58 Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” in Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin, 1982), 227. 59 Shletser, Skriabin, 159-161. Nonetheless, Schloezer highlights a key difference between Scriabin’s artist-philosopher and Nietzsche’s “Overhuman” (sverkhchelovek): the former sought to bring all people to happiness. 55

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complete absence of the ethical problem in the opera was akin to Nietzsche, as was Scriabin’s denial of God and dismissal of universal morality.60 Although these early philosophical texts and unfinished opera libretto were not intended for public consumption, contemporaries highlighted the parallels between Nietzsche and Scriabin in the latter’s compositional output.61 Nietzschean themes were publicly discussed in relation to Scriabin’s Third Sonata in F-sharp minor for piano (op. 23), written in 189799. A 1901 concert program suggested that the sonata was an embodiment of “the history of moods from Byron to Nietzsche,” ending with a vision akin to Nietzsche’s Overhuman that would “long shine as a distant star of ideal of all strong people who do not want to submit to unknown strengths that lead people through suffering and evil to death and perishing.”62 In a 1908 analysis of Scriabin’s compositional development for the Russian Musical Newspaper, philosopher and music critic Boris Schloezer, (whose sister Tatiana was Scriabin’s life partner), offered a Nietzschean-inspired analysis of Scriabin’s compositional development to Russian readers. Framing the Third Sonata as an important break between the composer’s early “unconscious” period of creativity and his shift toward “conscious” creation, the sonata depicted, in Schloezer’s terms, the “tragedy of an individual, not surviving its own deification.”63 Scriabin’s subsequent “conscious” period identified by Schloezer was commonly framed by contemporaries as Nietzschean in inspiration.64 This loosely spanned his Fourth Piano Sonata (op. 30) through his Fifth Piano Sonata (op. 53), and incorporated several of his major symphonic works, most notably the Third Symphony (“Divine Poem”, op. 43) and the “Poem of Ecstasy” (op. 54). Music critic Evgenii Braudo described Scriabin’s trajectory through these works in Nietzschean terms for the artistic journal

60

Shletser, Skriabin, 162-163. Scriabin’s philosophical notebooks were first published in 1919. See Mikhail Gershenzon, ed., Russkie propilei: Materialy po istorii russkoi mysli i literatury (Moscow: M. and S. Sabashnikov, 1919). 62 A.V. Kashperov, A.N. Skriabin: Pis’ma (Moscow: Muzyka, 2003), 258-259. Though the author of these program notes, which appeared on a concert program in Piatagorsk, is unknown, Schloezer echoes this same phrase in his 1908 article on Scriabin, suggesting his familiarity with these earlier program notes. Gol’denveizer similarly noted that he believed Scriabin had been familiar with this program. 63 B. Shletser, “A.N. Skriabin,” RMG no. 6 (February 10, 1908), 145-157, here 145. 64 Evgenii Gunst, A.N. Skriabin i ego tvorchestvo (Moscow: Iurgenson, [1916]), 3538. 61

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Apollo. From an early expression of the experience of tragedy in which the individual “cannot exit its own limitedness,” Scriabin evolved to the celebration of the “self-pleasing joy of free creation, of endless striving in art.”65 While music critic and Scriabin disciple Leonid Sabaneev did not explicitly mention Nietzsche in his own account of the composer’s development, he similarly differentiated a new compositional period starting with the Fourth Piano Sonata (op. 30) and employed the terms “Dionysian” and “Apollonian” in his assessment.66 Schloezer concluded that Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata celebrated transcendence of individual suffering through the embrace of “new, consciously playful joy,” transforming necessary, unavoidable suffering into a free experience.67 As a review of the sonata stated in the pro-Scriabin journal Muzyka, the most important characteristics of the “true” Scriabin were embodied here – “an original arsenal of harmonic resources, a bright, ecstatic color of creation.”68 In the words of Scriabin’s friend, music critic Evgenii Gunst, the Fourth Sonata expressed the “idea of the affirmation of the absolute value of creative activity, freeing the person intoxicated by it, from a goal he has forgotten.”69 In contrast to the Third Sonata, with its constant use of dissonance and resolution, the Fourth Sonata was “enriched with new harmonies, not appearing in earlier sonatas.”70 In a poem written after the composition of the sonata, Scriabin similarly captured the Fourth Sonata’s sense of seeking, desire, and play: It is a keen, voluptuous, and mad desire, and so sweet that always, without ceasing, I would wish to desire with no other aim than this desire itself. But no! I leap upward with a joyous bound, freely I take my flight. Mad dance, divine play! Intoxication of light!71

In contrast to the first movement’s slow opening, a faster second movement captures the same breathless quality expressed in the poetry. Indeed, the use of short, breathless musical phrases became a typical feature of Scriabin’s 65

Evgenii Braudo, “Pamiati A.N. Skriabina,” Apollon no. 4-5 (April-May 1915): 5459, here 57-58. 66 L. Sabaneev, “List i Skriabin,” Muzyka no. 45 (October 8, 1911): 961-964. 67 B. Shletser, “A. N. Skriabin”, RMG no. 5 (February 3, 1908): 113-120, here 119. 68 “Chetvertaia sonata fis-dur A. Skriabina,” Muzyka no. 3 (December 11, 1910): 6669. The poem was first published in B. Shletser, “A.N. Skriabin,” RMG no. 6 (February 10, 1908): 147-157, here 149-150. 69 Evgenii Gunst, A.N. Skriabin i ego tvorchestvo (Iurgenson: Moscow, 1916), 33. 70 Gunst, Skriabin, 35. 71 Nicholls and Pushkin, Notebooks of Alexander Skryabin, 240.

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compositions at this time, associated with the evocation of Dionysian-like ecstasy. The Fourth Sonata was repeatedly interpreted by Scriabin’s contemporaries as the first impetus towards a phase of conscious Nietzscheanism that incorporated the quest for ecstasy as a mood or experience through which to transcend the individual. This quest culminated in Scriabin’s 1906 text, “The Poem of Ecstasy,” his eponymous symphonic poem (op. 54) and the Fifth Piano Sonata (op. 53), completed shortly after the symphonic work and incorporating a quotation from the 1906 poem as an epitaph: I summon you to life, Hidden strivings! You, drowned In the obscure depths Of the creating soul, You, timid Embryos of life, To you I bring Audacity!72

According to Schloezer, in these works, Scriabin “strove for free composition, for free activity, not connected to any external goal, but entirely self-satisfying. He experienced his own suffering and joy as his own creation, as different forms created by his will and delighted in this experience. From this comes his understanding of the universe as the Spirit at play; Universe (= Spirit) is eternal creation without a goal, without motives, [it is] Divine play with worlds and with joy and with suffering.”73 The primary distinction, drawn by Schloezer, was that, in contrast to Nietzsche’s Dionysian aesthetic justification of life, Scriabin wanted ecstasy to be universal.74 Sabaneev agreed, describing these compositions as embodying “goalless creative play” and the affirmation of life as it is.75 According to Koptiaev, Scriabin’s “absence of a final goal” in the Poem of Ecstasy echoed Zarathustra’s “Dance of all things”.76 Scriabin’s vision of 72

Ibid., 121. B. Shletser, “A.N. Skriabin”, RMG no. 7 (February 17, 1908): 177-187, here 186187. See also B.F. Shletser, “Ot individualizma k vseedinstvu,” Apollon no. 4-5 (April-May 1915): 48-63. 74 Ibid. 75 Sabaneev, “‘Bozhestvennaia Poema’ A.N. Skriabina,” Muzyka no. 31 (July 1, 1911): 651-655. 76 Koptiaev, Skriabin, 47-49. 73

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transfiguration was linked with the evocation of ecstasy as a means of transformation. While the Fourth Piano Sonata still dwelt loosely in the realm of tonality, by the Fifth Sonata, Scriabin freely explored new forms of harmony that could better encapsulate the transcendence of individuality through the experience of ecstasy – an emphasis similar to Nietzsche’s vision of the role of Dionysian ecstasy. In this work, Koptiaev emphasized Scriabin’s striving to free himself from “the slavery of cadences” as an example of the composer’s musical expression of “eternal play” without a final goal through a compositional style that challenged traditional (“German”) limitations of consonance and dissonance.77 Koptiaev combined Slavophile preferences with Nietzscheanism, concluding dramatically, “[Scriabin] returns to music its elemental strength, its Dionysian principle, and here, as it were, he corresponds to the theories of Nietzsche. And it is well-known that no one understood the essence of music so well as that Polish thinker.”78 Indeed, Nietzsche’s vision of dance as the embodiment of Dionysian experience in The Birth of Tragedy reverberates in the ecstatic dances featured in the finales of Scriabin’s later piano sonatas.79 Like Nietzsche, Scriabin’s music engendered passionate responses – positive and negative – from his contemporaries. In a 1909 critique of Scriabin’s egocentric worldview for the journal Music and Life, A. Maslov concluded that “Scriabin’s creation entirely corresponds to the spirit of the time, when all that is living and healthy hides away somewhere, repressed by dark strengths, and all that is deformed floats out and proclaims its existence ‘without goal and without motives’.”80 His objection to Scriabin’s “music of the future” was that, rather than embodying the search for truth and beauty of life, it embodied the idea of “cynical deification of personality, having nothing in common with healthy life.”81 Similarly, in a 1910 review of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, Arakchiev referenced Nietzschean ideas directly, writing that “this unquestionably original work, carries the listener

77

Ibid., pp.45. Koptiaev, "Skriabin (iz svobodnykh muzykal’nikh besed),” 102. 79 On Nietzsche’s vision of dance as an embodiment of Dionysian experience, see Kathleen Higgins, “Nietzsche on Music,” Journal of the History of Ideas (OctoberDecember 1986) 47:4, 663-672, here 670. 80 A. Maslov, “Noveishee tvorchestvo A.N. Skriabina,” Muzyka i zhizn’ no. 3 (March 7, 1909): 2-4, here 3. 81 Ibid. 78

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‘beyond good’”; but at the same time he wished that the composer would “come back to this side and speak in a general human language.”82 While Koptiaev had embraced Scriabin’s Nietzschean affiliation in his 1908 article, after meeting with the composer in 1909, he became aware of Scriabin’s interest in theosophy and limited familiarity with Nietzsche’s writings. Nonetheless, in 1910 Koptiaev argued that Scriabin was unconsciously following the German philosopher’s path, not “by reading The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music and Zarathustra and planning to express their moods, but by his entire nature responding to this new world of emotions.”83 In this way, Scriabin understood “ecstasy in his own way” and “expressed the essence of Russian music” through “responding to the Dionysian spirit of Nietzsche.”84 Nonetheless, the critic was disappointed with Scriabin’s further compositional evolution and responded skeptically to the composer’s 1910 work Prometheus, in which Scriabin entered into a new era of creative development, striving for a more mystical expression and use of harmonies. Indeed, Prometheus, which incorporated a complete abandonment of functional tonality through his invention of the “Prometheus” chord, was a step closer to the mystical task Scriabin set himself in his Mystery, which was to be a final expression of universal ecstasy that would literally bring about the end of the world. As Scriabin’s conception of his Mystery took firmer shape in his mind, it took on a vision more immediately akin to theosophy than to Nietzschean ideals.85 Far from an abandonment of Nietzschean themes, however, Scriabin’s continued creative evolution parallels broader Russian reception of Nietzsche’s ideas. In contrast to Nietzsche’s movement from the collectivist ecstatic interpretation of Dionysus to the vision of the Overhuman in Zarathustra, Scriabin, like his Russian contemporaries, followed a reverse path towards a melding of Nietzschean individualism with collectivist impulses. According to Ellen von Tideböhl, when Scriabin praised The Birth of Tragedy in 1910, he spoke of it alongside Viacheslav Ivanov’s

82

D. Arakchiev, Muzyka i zhizn no. 3 (March 12, 1910): 12. A. Koptiaev, “Pevets ekstaza,” 196. 84 Ibid. 85 On the contemporary reception of Scriabin’s Prometheus, see “Muzykal’naia kritika o ‘Prometee’,” Muzyka no. 23 (May 7, 1911): 496-508; Gunst, Skriabin, 3538; Mitchell, Nietzsche’s Orphans, 85-103. On Scriabin’s unfinished “Mystery” and its theosophical inspiration, see Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement 2nd edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), 143-151. 83

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According to the Stars, which he claimed “had an equal influence on him.”86 Scriabin had made Ivanov’s personal acquaintance in 1909 and seems to have imbibed Nietzsche’s image of Dionysian ecstasy alongside (or through the lens of) the Russian poet’s messianic and collectivist reading of Nietzsche. Indeed, according to Tideböhl, Scriabin “intended to resuscitate [Greek] tragedy in form and plan, and spoke of the “mystery” on which he was working.”87 Scriabin’s envisioned Mystery, while rooted in his reading of theosophy, took on the same hue of artistic theurgy offered by Ivanov, who critiqued Wagner’s failure to transcend the division between audience and stage in his music dramas. “As in antiquity, in the era of The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music,” opined Ivanov, “the crowd must dance and sing, move rhythmically and praise god with words.”88 This vision holds distinct parallels to the description Schloezer offered of Scriabin’s Mystery in 1908, which, according to the composer was to “take place in a church built for this goal” and transcend the audience/performer divide, with all present taking “active part.”89 While acknowledging Scriabin’s selfdeclared indebtedness to theosophy, Koptiaev noted this vision of the end of one race of humans and emergence of “another, better” one was “reminiscent of the Nietzschean ‘great noon’, which presumes the change of humanity to the mighty ‘Overhuman’.”90 In this way, concluded Koptiaev, “Nietzsche and Scriabin were entirely alike in their hatred for contemporary ‘culture’ and desire for better, stronger people.”91 He concluded “the genius of [Scriabin and Nietzsche] demanded some sort of different creatures, more perfect in the sense of beauty of life… their wonderful activity is a reproach to all our ‘inartistic’, bookish-Alexandrian culture, to all of our daily life, from which come the flames of politics and mercantilism.”92 Both Scriabin and Nietzsche had prophesied the

86

Ellen von Tideböhl, “Memories of Scriabin’s Volga Tour (1910),” The Monthly Musical Record (May-June, 1926): 137-138; 168-169, here 168. 87 Ibid. 88 Ivanov, “Vagner i dionisovo deistvo,” in Po zvezdam: stat’i i aforizmy (St. Petersburg: Ory, 1909), 65-69, here 67. 89 B. Shletser, “A.N. Skriabin”, RMG no. 7 (February 17, 1908), p.177-187, here 187. 90 Koptiaev, Skriabin, 47. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote of “the great noon when man stands in the middle of his way between beast and overman and celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning.” See Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” 190. 91 Koptiaev, Skriabin, 47. 92 Koptiaev, Skriabin, 87.

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Overhuman, and both had been fated not to see the arrival of this next stage of human development.

Concluding thoughts Scriabin’s creative evolution partook in a broader Russian translation of Nietzschean thought taking shape in the years after 1900. From an initial exploration of a Zarathustrian hero, struggling to transcend individual suffering and embrace a path forward to a higher level of existence, Scriabin turned greater attention to the role of music in evoking ecstasy, sobornost’, and transfiguration. Scriabin positioned himself as the theurgic artist who would, through composing a new musical word, awaken a shared sense of ecstasy and bring about the end of the existing world. Though his later compositions delved ever deeper into a vision of transcendence inspired by the theosophical doctrines of Helene Blavatsky, these concepts were commingled with a particularly Russian interpretation of Nietzsche. Translating ideas from one context to another is a creative act. Concepts are reinterpreted in reference to the needs of the new cultural context in which they appear.93 The messianic, apocalyptic vision that gripped Russian educated society in the final years of the empire found resonance and expression through grappling with Nietzschean ideas at a time of great cultural ferment. Scriabin, with his evocative music and peculiar re-reading of philosophic trends of the day, served this purpose well. Indeed, whether contemporary Russian critics supported or attacked Scriabin, their commentaries also shared an understanding of culture deeply inscribed with Nietzschean aspirations. Rampant individualism (associated with the pressures of modernity and with German culture writ large) was contrasted with a healthy, unified, spiritual, collective (sobornyi) culture that, it was argued, Russia alone could offer to the contemporary world. Even the composer’s sudden death in 1915 inspired admirers and opponents alike to opine on his significance within conceptual categories shaped by Nietzschean philosophy: he was alternately critiqued, like Nietzsche, for falling victim to extreme individualism or praised as a prophet who, like Nietzsche, had dared to challenge existing musical and social codes and

93 On translation of foreign texts to new contexts see for instance Lawrence Venuti, ed., Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology (London: Routledge, 1992); Anuradha Dingwaney and Carol Maier, eds., Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995).

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offer a vision of a new world.94 Dying two years before the Bolshevik revolution would usher in a new phase of Russian history, Scriabin was arguably the most perfect embodiment of Nietzsche in an imperial Russian key: ending, rather than beginning, with an image of Dionysian ecstasy that sought transcendence through the power of music.

Bibliography Alekseev, A.D., S.S. Ginzburg, Iu.S. Kalashnikov, A.A. Sidorov, G. Iu. Sternin, O.A. Shvidkovskii, eds. Russkaia khudozhestvennaia kul’tura kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka (1908-1917). Kniga tret’ia. Zrelishchnye iskusstva. Muzyka. Moscow: Nauk, 1977. [Anonymous]. “Chetvertaia sonata fis-dur A. Skriabina,” Muzyka no. 3 (December 11, 1910): 66-69. Arakchiev, D. Muzyka i zhizn no. 3 (March 12, 1910): 12. Bartlett, Rosamund. Wagner and Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Belyi, A[ndrei]. “Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie”, Mir iskusstvo no. 4 (1904): 173-196. Belza, Igor, ed. Skriabin: Chelovek. Khudozhnik. Myslitel. Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi memorial’nyi muzei A N. Skriabina, 1994. Braudo, Evgenii. “Muzyka posle Vagnera,” Apollon 1 (October 1909): 5469. —. “Pamiati A.N. Skriabina,” Apollon no. 4-5 (April-May 1915): 54-59 Durylin, Sergei. Rikhard Vagner i Rossiia: O Vagnere i budushchikh putiakh iskusstva. Moscow: Musaget, 1913. Eiges, Konstantin. Stat’i po filosofii muzyki. Moscow: A.I. Mamontova, 1912. Ellis [Lev Kobylinskii], “Parsifal” Rikharda Vagnera, Trudy i dni no. 1-2 (1913): 24-53. Gershenzon, M[ikhail], ed., Russkie propilei: Materialy po istorii russkoi mysli i literatury. Moscow: M. and S. Sabashnikov, 1919. Gol’denveizer, A[leksandr]. Dnevnik: Pervaia tetrad’ (1889-1904). Moscow: Tortuga, 1995. Gunst, Evgenii. A.N. Skriabin i ego tvorchestvo. Moscow: Iurgenson, [1916].

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On responses to Scriabin’s death, see Mitchell, Nietzsche’s Orphans, 180-193; idem., “Scriabin and the Russian Silver Age,” forthcoming in Interpreting Scriabin, ed. Kenneth Fokert-Smyth and Vasilis Kallis (Boydell & Brewer, 2021).

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Higgins, Kathleen. “Nietzsche on Music,” Journal of the History of Ideas (October-December 1986) 47:4, 663-672. Ivanov, V[iacheslav]. Po zvezdam: stat’i i aforizmy. Ory: St. Petersburg, 1909. I-ov, L. “Po povodu stat’i ‘Ob iskusstve vragov’, Russkaia muzykal’naia gazeta no. 44 (1914): 782-85. Kaufmann, Walter, ed. The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Penguin, 1982. Kashperov, A.V., ed. A.N. Skriabin: Pis’ma. Moscow: Muzyka, 2003. Koptiaev, A[leksandr]. Muzyka i kul’tura: sbornik muzykal'noistoricheskikh i muzykal'no-kriticheskikh statei. Moscow, Leipzig: Jurgenson, 1903. —. Evterpe: vtoroi sbornik muzykal’no-kriticheskikh statei. St. Petersburg: Tipografiia glavnogo upravleniia udelov, 1908. —. K muzykal’nomu idealu: tretii sbornik muzykal’no-istoricheskikh i kriticheskikh statie (Petrograd, 1916) —. A.N. Skriabin: Kharakteristika. Moscow: Iurgenson, 1916. Maslov, A. “Noveishee tvorchestvo A.N. Skriabina,” Muzyka i zhizn’ no. 3 (March 7, 1909): 2-4. Mitchell, Rebecca. “How Russian Was Wagner? Russian Campaigns to Defend or Destroy the German Composer during the Great War (19141918),” in Stephen Muir and Anastasia Belina-Johnson, ed., Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. 51-71. —. Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics and the Twilight of the Russian Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. —. “‘Musical Metaphysics’ in late Imperial Russia,” in Caryl Emerson, George Pattison, Randall Poole, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 379-395 —. “Scriabin and the Russian Silver Age,” forthcoming in Interpreting Scriabin, ed. Kenneth Fokert-Smyth and Vasilis Kallis (Boydell & Brewer, 2021). Morrison, Simon. Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement 2nd edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019. Nicholls, Simon and Michael Pushkin, trans., The Notebooks of Alexander Skryabin (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2018) Paperno, Irina. Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Prokof’ev, Gr[igorii]. “Muzyka chistoi emotsii. (Po povodu ‘vechera nastroenii’ iz proizvedenii V. Rebikova),” Russkaia muzykal’naia gazeta no. 5 (January 31, 1910): 136-141

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Rebikov, Vladimir “Muzyka cherez 50 let,” Russkaia muzykal’naia gazeta no. 6 (1911): 149-157; no.7 (1911): 185-188, Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer. “The Spirit of Music in Russian Symbolism,” Russian History 10:1 (1983): 66-76. —, ed. Nietzsche in Russia. Princeton University Press, 1986. Sabaneev, L[eonid]. “‘Bozhestvennaia Poema’ A.N. Skriabina,” Muzyka no. 31 (July 1, 1911): 651-655. —. “List i Skriabin,” Muzyka no. 45 (October 8, 1911): 961-964 —. “Nauka o muzyke,” Muzyka no. 74 (April 28, 1912), 377. —. “Modernizm,” Muzyka no. 72 (April 14, 1912): 334-337. —. “Novye puti muzykal’nogo tvorchestva,” Muzyka no. 54 (December 12, 1911): 1210-1214 Sineokaia, Iuliia. Tri obraza Nitsshe v russkoi kul’ture. Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk, Institut filosofii, 2008. Shletser, B[oris]. “A. N. Skriabin”, Russkaia muzykal’naia gazeta no. 5 (February 3, 1908): 113-120; no. 6 (February 10, 1908), 145-157; no. 7 (February 17, 1908): 177-187 —. “Konsonans i dissonans,” Apollon 1 (January 1911): 54-61 —. A. Skriabin: monografiia o lichnosti i tvorchestve (Berlin: Grani, 1923), Solov’ev, V[ladimir]. Filosofiia iskusstva i literaturnaia kritika (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1991), von Tideböhl, Ellen. “Memories of Scriabin’s Volga Tour (1910),” The Monthly Musical Record (May-June, 1926): 137-138; 168-169. Tolstoy, Lev. What is Art? Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. London: Penguin, 1995. Vol’fing [Emilii Metner]. Modernizm i muzyka: stat’i kriticheskiia i polemicheskiia, 1907-1911. Moscow: Musaget, 1912. Woodruff, Martha Kendal “Nietzsche On Moods, Passions, and Styles: Greek Inspirations,” in The Agonist XIII/I&II (Fall 2019/Spring 2020): 114-131.

CHAPTER 19 DIONYSIAN ROCK DAVID KILPATRICK

To be sure apart from all the hasty hopes and faulty applications to the present with which I spoiled my first book, there still remains the great Dionysian question mark I raised – regarding music as well: what would a music have to be like that would no longer be of romantic origin, like German music – but Dionysian? (Nietzsche 25).

With the benefit of hindsight, Nietzsche concedes in his “Attempt at a SelfCriticism” (added to the third edition of The Birth of Tragedy) that much of the contemporary mythopoeic ambition of his first book can be dismissed as youthful naïveté. Indeed, his subsequent critiques of nationalism, as well as his personal and public repudiations of Wagner, necessitate repositioning or distancing from certain key pleas Nietzsche makes in the later sections of the book. Walter Kaufmann rather apologetically notes “the book might well end” with section 15, before Nietzsche shifts from the birth and death of tragedy in antiquity to his romanticist cum modernist appeal for a rebirth.1 Kaufmann’s efforts to redeem Nietzsche from fascist affiliation renders the defense of Nietzsche’s most overt politically aestheticized hopes burdensome and problematic; embarrassing if not outright indefensible. But Nietzsche’s insistence that this great question mark remains should dismiss such simplistic apologetics. What hopes remained for Nietzsche, filtered out from those later dismissed as hasty and what applications to the present would he still consider in attempting an answer to that great Dionysian question mark?

1

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Ed. and trans. by Walter Kaufmann. New York: The Modern Library, 1968, 98.

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By this point (1886) Nietzsche was deeply disillusioned with Bayreuth. If Wagner had failed him, so too was he now beyond the identification with Germany as a spiritual figure of collective historical destiny (as one finds eerily echoed in Heidegger’s “Rectoral Address”). I don’t want here to focus on this question concerning Germany – not out of any personal avoidance or repression of this question, but instead to move forward with Nietzsche by returning to what was a contemporary urgency by asking what remains as relevant and necessary. If the question of what would constitute an authentically Dionysian music remained unanswered in Nietzsche’s lifetime, does it still? To attempt an answer to this question we must negotiate a further question Nietzsche poses, in section 16 of The Birth of Tragedy: “how is music related to image and concept?” Reducing this relationship to binary opposition analogous to body and soul isn’t Nietzsche’s intent. But for Nietzsche, music is “the immediate language of the will”2 and is therefore pre-mimetic – perhaps one might employ Kristeva’s terms semiotic whereas the mimetic arts are inherently symbolic. This is not to say that Dionysian music would be pure sound without signification, for as Nietzsche explains: music incites to the symbolic intuition of Dionysian universality, and music allows the symbolic image to emerge in its highest significance. From these facts, intelligible in themselves and not inaccessible to a more penetrating examination, I infer the capacity of music to give birth to myth (the most significant example) and particularly the tragic myth: the myth which expresses Dionysian knowledge in symbols.3

So there is an intimate correspondence between the nature and power of a given musical modality and the imagistic states that emerge organically from this sonic condition. Using Heidegger’s terms from “The Origin of the Work of Art,” music is the earth from which certain worlds appear. The Dionysian world view, then, must come from a certain musical sensibility, and a correspondence or synthesis must unite sound and concept. Nietzsche’s meditation, initially optimistic about the mythopoetic ambitions of the Wagnerian project, is nonetheless untimely, a promise or a prospect to be realized in the future. Not yet faintly heard in the distance, Nietzsche’s concept precedes the sound that will provide the ground for the fully realized, if reborn, Dionysian musical-conceptual aesthetic. This must be a music that doesn’t promote otherworldly hopes or celebrate spiritual 2 3

Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, 103. Ibid.

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release from the physical. And Nietzsche is culturally confined to conceive precisely of another musicality that would reject the bifurcation of spirit and flesh as the basis of the onto-theological. Rather than seeking release from the phenomenal into the noumenal, or the individual soul overcoming the sufferings of the flesh, an authentically Dionysian artform would profoundly affirm Being: We are really for a brief moment primordial being itself, feeling its raging desire for existence and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the destruction of phenomena, now appear necessary to us, in view of the excess of countless forms of existence which force and push one another into life, in view of the exuberant fertility of the universal will. We are pierced by the maddening sting of these pains just when we have become, as it were, one with the infinite primordial joy in existence, and when we anticipate, in Dionysian ecstasy, the indestructibility and eternity of this joy. In spite of pity and fear, we are the happy living beings, with whose creative joy we are united.4

Dionysian art offers (opfer) finite transcendence, an exquisite ecstatic affirmation of being that marks loss of self as the fate of selfhood, taking suffering as the condition for joy and daring delight in despair, a tragic wisdom that celebrates existence in saying YES to all that happens. Nietzsche can only imagine such an aesthetic as lost in antiquity to be found in futurity. “Let us imagine a coming generation with such intrepidity of vision, with such a heroic penchant for the tremendous; let us imagine the bold stride of these dragon-slayers, the proud audacity with which they turn their back on all the weaklings’ doctrines of optimism in order to ‘live resolutely in wholeness and fullness,”5 he prophetically projects towards another time, another generation than his own. The madman who proclaims the death of God asks what sacred games and festivals must be invented in the wake of such a world-historical cataclysm. In our post-theological cultural landscape, Nietzsche’s influence is inestimable, as artists have in various media attempted to answer the call for new artforms proclaiming new values. Has such a generation come since Nietzsche’s oracular plea for Dionysian music? I would like to entertain the thought that such music has indeed arrived as a particular strain of rock, that the trinity of Christianity has its 4 5

Ibid., 104-5. Ibid., 112-3.

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contemporary antidote in the Dionysian trinity of sex, drugs and rock-androll. To state this case, I will not attempt an exhaustive or exclusive list of artists, but will simply explore three examples of bands that pursue, if not fulfill, Nietzsche’s vision of Dionysian music. I hope to provoke debate and stimulate reflection in such a way that will conjure other examples, but will focus now on The Doors, Led Zeppelin and Jane’s Addiction as exemplary Dionysian artists whose music both sonically and conceptually aspires to and arguably embodies this Nietzschean aesthetic. Jim Morrison of the Doors is perhaps the most obvious choice, for he is the one rock star most well-known for the profound Nietzschean influence on his lyrics and performance, given his frequent references to Nietzsche, both as allusions in lyric and as aesthetic explanations in interviews. Biographies of Morrison testify to the profound Nietzschean influence on the Doors’ vocalist-lyricist. In No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, we are told Morrison “devoured Friedrich Nietzsche, the poetic German philosopher whose views on aesthetics, morality, and the Apollinian-Dionysian duality would appear again and again in Jim’s conversation, poetry, songs and life.”6 In Break on Through, James Riordan notes that Morrison began reading Nietzsche “when he was about sixteen.”7 Doors co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek is quoted in Stephen Davis’s Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend as saying, “Friedrich Nietzsche killed Jim Morrison” (ch.1, ebook). And in drummer John Densmore’s autobiography, Riders on the Storm, he makes it clear how coming to terms with the legacy of his deceased bandmate, whom he calls at times “Dionysus,” requires coming to terms with Nietzsche. “I’m glad I didn’t understand Jim’s mentor Friedrich Nietzsche when I was twentyone,” Densmore reflects, “Nietzsche was destroyed by the dark side because he went deeper into it than anyone until then. Explorers pay a price because they go farther than their mentors into unexplored territory. Nietzsche held the flame up into one of the corners of darkness and then the flame went out.”8 If Densmore blames Morrison’s demise on Nietzsche, he still nonetheless recognizes both their deaths as Dionysian sacrifices. Morrison’s obsession with Nietzsche as a figure of tragic myth is evident in a backstage improvisation on 1 September 1968 at SPAC (Saratoga Springs, NY), captured on film for the documentary Feast of Friends (directed by Paul Ferrara, 1968). He bangs away at a piano, mimicking 6

Ibid., 17. Ibid., 38. 8 Ibid., 315-6. 7

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Nietzsche’s own playing after succumbing to madness in the market square of Turin, embracing a horse as it was being beaten:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RlrPV3cHag He threw his arms around the horse's neck and kissed him everywhere/ I love my horse/ A crowd gathered, his landlord appeared and took Frederick back up to his room on the second floor/ where he began to play the piano madly and sing madly like/ ooooooh.....I'm crucified and inspected and resurrected and if you don't believe that i'll give you my latest philanthropic sonata/ and the landlord's family was amazed so they sent for his friend Overbeck/ and he got there in three days by coach/ and they took Frederick to the asylum/ and his mother joined him/ and for the next fifteen years, they cried and cried and laughed and looked at the Sun. (qtd. Feast of Friends)

While this simultaneously conveys how deeply an impression Nietzsche’s biography had on Morrison while educating and humoring his bandmates (and surely with an eye to the film’s audience), one may be tempted to say that with his non-verbal vocalizations and piano pounding that he is attempting a purely Dionysian musicality. I would instead suggest that the Doors music offers plentiful examples of attempts at a conscious synthesis of Dionysian and Appolonian elements. Just as Morrison and the Doors might be the most obvious example of rock’s Nietzschean influence, “The End” from their self- titled first album might well be the most obvious instance of an attempt to revive tragic art, with its revision of the Oedipal myth: “The killer awake before dawn/He put his

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boots on/He took a face from the ancient gallery/And he walked on down the hall.” While rock had already dared to celebrate hedonism and liberation of all kinds, with “The End” the doors tapped into darker terrain, uncharted since the ancients, mining the tragic to provoke a modernist mythopoetics. With the title-track from The Soft Parade, we are taken on a wild jungle ride into the heart of the carnivalesque. The track opens with Morrison impersonating a preacher, who rejects the theological proposition “you can petition the Lord with prayer.” The song proceeds as the lyrics conjure disparate images, the pulsing rhythm of the band propelling the listener towards a trance-like state as Morrison’s vocal overdubs overlap one another at the song’s crescendo: We need someone or something new/ Something else to get us through, yeah, c'mon /Callin' on the dogs/ Callin' on the dogs/ Oh, it's gettin' harder/ Callin' on the dogs/ Callin' in the dogs/Callin' all the dogs/Callin' on the gods/You gotta meet me/Too late, baby/Slay a few animals/At the crossroads/Too late/All in the yard/But it's gettin' harder/By the crossroads/You gotta meet me /Oh, we're goin', we're goin great [/Greek?]

Here is a form of music entirely alien to Nietzsche’s cultural context, not a full century prior. The Doors stare into the abyss with a sonic ode to savage reverie as an antidote to the modern condition. What’s important to note is how frequently the lead singer is likened to a god, by his bandmates and by the band’s audience and critics. Morrison, though the power of the music, is transformed and, in Nietzsche’s words, “in this magic transformation the Dionysian reveler sees himself as a satyr, and as a satyr, in turn, he sees the god.”9 And just as Nietzsche attempts to resolve the “problem” of the lyrist,10 we see that Morrison isn’t engaging in solipsistic ego- gratification but instead, “as a Dionysian artist he has identified himself with the primal unity.”11 The rock concert becomes a sacred ritual that triggers transformation. Another rock star often compared to a god in performance is Robert Plant, the vocalist- lyricist of Led Zeppelin, once famously (with perhaps a tragic sense of hubris) proclaiming “I’M A GOLDEN GOD” (Davis LZ-’75 147). While the band was at its creative peak, on tour in 1975 in New York, 9

Ibid., 64. Ibid., 48. 11 Ibid., 49. 10

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Plant confessed in a Rolling Stone interview with Cameron Crowe that despite their reputations for touring debauchery, “Nowadays we’re more into staying in our rooms and reading Nietzsche” (qtd. Crowe). This acknowledgement should be understood as every bit as genuine as Morrison’s claims to the Nietzschean legacy. As with the Doors, numerous Zeppelin songs communicate and/or trigger an ecstatic state of consciousness, while powerfully exploring and deeply exploring the nature of suffering. The opening strains of “The Immigrant Song” with their vague references to Nordic myth may be viewed as a sonic pre-linguistic engagement with a tragic power. Likewise, “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” opens with voice and synthesized guitar mimicking one another, the lyric emerging out of the sonic setting. With both songs, we hear how rock vocalization at its finest functions in a semiotic pre-symbolic manner, exposing the wound of anguish and paradoxically celebrating such despair. Both the Doors and Led Zeppelin, along with their classic rock peers, were eventually dismissed by the punk movement as dinosaurs, boring old farts with pretentious aesthetic ambitions. Did their generation truly embody and realize the aesthetic project envisioned by Nietzsche and, if so, had it exhausted itself? Jane’s Addiction emerged in the late-80s Los Angeles scene as the descendants of the Doors-Zep legacy. The frenzy of “Mountain Song,” the first track released from their debut studio album, Nothing’s Shocking, is like a Bacchic hymn to excess and transgression. “Had a Dad” tells of a struggle for new values and direction now that “my daddy has gone away,” revealing during the bridge that “God is dead…he’s not there at all, oh yeah.” And on their second album, Ritual de lo Habitual, on “Ain’t No Right,” the lyrics move beyond good and evil for “there ain’t no wrong now/ain’t no right/there’s only pleasure and pain.” As with the Doors and Led Zeppelin, the voice often conjures sound without words, and the words themselves out of the primal chaos generated from the music, leading the musicians and audience alike into a frenzied state of vital engagement with existence affirmed without discretion. Like Morrison and Plant before him, Perry Farrell is often described as god-like in performance, an androgynous and dangerous sexuality that threatens contagion among the audience. Along with lyrical allusions, the connection to Nietzschean themes and concerns is perhaps most overt in a

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poetry reading at the Probe in Hollywood in August of 1988 where he distributed tampons with “God is dead” written on them with red ink (Mullen 182). With Jane’s Addiction and other projects, such as the Lollapalooza Festival, Farrell has consistently pushed the boundaries of social norms and mores to provoke and promote a radically transformative sociopolitical movement. On tour now, Jane’s Addiction continue the legacy of Dionysian rock. I offer these samples of rock stars as transgressive gods for their sonic and conceptual emphases, but also for their behavioral rejection of conventional morality, daring to experiment wildly with consciousness and morality, embodying a Nietzschean-Dionysian spirit of ecstatic liberation. Whether or not the question of Dionysian music has indeed been answered, whether or not the generation of tragic artists envision by Nietzsche has indeed arrived, remains present, or is now confined to an immediate past, are questions I hope to leave you with. “Rock is dead they say. Long live rock!”

Bibliography Crowe, Cameron. “The Durable Led Zeppelin” Rolling Stone Magazine 182: 32-37, 13 March 1975) Davis, Stephen. Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend. New York: Gotham, 2005. —. LZ-’75. New York: Gotham, 2010. Densmore, John. Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors. New York: Delacorte, 1990. The Doors. “The End.” The Doors. Elektra, 1967. —. “The Soft Parade.” The Soft Parade. Elektra, 1969. Feast of Friends. Dir. Paul Ferrara. Crystal Production, 1968. YouTube. Web. 12 April 2012.

Hopkins, Jerry and Danny Sugerman. No One Here Gets Out Alive. New York: Warner, 1980. Jane’s Addiction. “Mountain Song.” Nothing’s Shocking. Warner, 1988. —. “Ain’t No Right.” Ritual de lo habitual. Warner, 1990. Led Zeppelin. “The Immigrant Song.” Led Zeppelin III. Atlantic, 1970. —. “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” Presence. Atlantic, 1976. Mullen, Brendan. Whores: An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell and Jane’s Addiction. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo P, 2005.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: The Modern Library, 1968. Riordan, James and Jerry Prochnicky.. Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison. New York: Quill, 1991.

CHAPTER 20 THE HEAVIEST WEIGHT: FINDING NIETZSCHE IN METAL BEN ABELSON

It is difficult to overstate Nietzsche’s impact on 20th and now 21st century popular culture. Music, film, television, and even video games abound with references to Nietzsche’s writings. However, perhaps nowhere else is Nietzsche’s shadow most broadly cast than over the musico-cultural phenomenon of heavy metal, or simply “metal” as it is most often referred to nowadays. Numerous heavy metal songs and albums have names derived from his works.1 The connection between Nietzsche’s ideas and metal is palpable for many musicians and listeners. Kilpatrick2 makes a compelling case for rock music in general as a candidate for the Dionysian music of the future sought by Nietzsche. However, it appears to me that metal (or at least some metal – there is much diversity among ostensive examples of it3), has 1

Marilyn Manson’s 1996 Antichrist Superstar album is perhaps the most wellknown example. “Beyond Good and Evil” is a song by At the Gates (1993) and an album by The Cult (2001). British sludge metal band Orange Goblin has a song called “Übermensch” (2014). Norwegian black metal troupe Gorgoroth broke Nietzsche’s Twilight of The Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer into the titles for two separate albums: Twilight of the Idols (In Conspiracy with Satan) (2003) and Destroyer, or About How to Philosophize with the Hammer (1998), and titled a track on a different album “Will to Power” (2000). Swedish metal artist Ihsahn, best known as the frontman of black metal band Emperor, used an upside down photo of Nietzsche for the cover of his Eremita (2012) record. Other bands, such as Cradle of Filth and Death have used quotes from Nietzsche as epigraphs in their album liner notes. 2 David Kilpatrick, “Dionysian Rock: Nietzsche & Music,” The Agonist 5, Issue 1 (2012). 3 I will not here engage with the complicated web of considerations surrounding defining metal. See Theodore Gracyk, “Heavy metal: Genre? Style? Subculture?,” Philosophy Compass, 11 (2016):

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characteristics that reflect Nietzschean ideas more so than other genres derived from rock. Here I will make the case for that claim, with some major caveats, by investigating the affinity between Nietzsche and metal along three interrelated dimensions. The first concerns Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity and the apparent anti-Christian stance of most metal acts. The second, spiraling out of the first, is psycho-social, concerning Nietzsche’s encounter with and desire to overcome nihilism and the degree to which that attitude is reflected in metal. The third concerns Nietzsche’s musical aesthetics more directly, the way it is informed by his conception of the Apollonian and Dionysian artistic forces in The Birth of Tragedy4, and how Nietzsche’s preferences in regard to the music of his time might be applied to metal.

Antichrist superstars Perhaps the most popularly recognized aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy is his antipathy toward Christianity and traditional theism. Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, expressed throughout his works, but most directly and forcefully, in The Antichrist5, largely concerns its stifling of creative drives through emotions of guilt and shame, its cultivation of hatred and debasement of the body through institutional imposition of the ascetic ideal, its fundamental basis in ressentiment, its dogmatic entrenchment, insulating itself against any possible contrary ideas or values, and, in general, its ideal of “opposition to the preservative instincts of strong life…” which has “depraved the reason even of the intellectually strongest natures by teaching men to feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful, as temptations.”6 Similarly, at least in a superficial way, heavy metal, since what is generally agreed to be its genesis, in the band Black Sabbath’s 1970 eponymous album and song, has been presented as being in tension with traditional Christian beliefs and values.7 The opening riff of Black Sabbath includes an inversion of the tritone, an interval of three whole tones between

775–785. for an extensive discussion of those issues. I will here simply consider examples that I believe most “metalheads” would accept as metal. 4 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann. (Toronto: Random House, 1967). 5 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, trans. R.J. Hollingdale. (London: Penguin Books, 1968). 6 AC 5. 7 Leaving aside the subgenre of Christian metal.

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notes (in this case G to C#)8, which was reportedly known in the middle ages as the diabolus in musica, and largely avoided until the Baroque and later classical periods of music.9 “Black Sabbath” is undeniably spooky and associations with the devil are made explicit in its lyrics, which refer to a figure in black appearing to the singer that is revealed to be “Satan sitting there, he’s smiling.” The attitude of the members of Black Sabbath toward Satan and Christianity appears to be complex and ambivalent. The aforementioned song was composed after vocalist Ozzy Osbourne lent bassist (and main lyricist) Geezer Butler a book on the occult and, after a nightmare, the latter found that the book had vanished. This experience caused him to retreat in fright from his burgeoning fascination with the occult, back to the Catholicism of his upbringing. However, after viewing the 1963 Boris Karloff film Black Sabbath, the band discovered in the Satanic a new marketing ploy. As people pay to see scary movies, perhaps they would also pay for scary music.10 And it worked. As Osbourne put it in a 2017 interview: “When we started gigging way back when, as soon as we started playing this song’s opening chords, young girls in the audience would fucking freak out. They thought we were Satan’s fucking friends or something.”11 However, despite Sabbath actually being more of a Christian band than a Satanist one, they, and subsequent metal acts came to be associated with anti-Christian symbolism and attitudes. Metal often represents an affirmation of sexuality, creative freedom, and intellectual dissent that its creators and listeners feel is impeded by the religiosity of the Christian people and institutions surrounding them, the most infamous outcome of this being the burning of several Norwegian churches by members of the bands Mayhem and Burzum in the early 1990s.12 Varg Vikernes, a member of both bands at different points, who served a 15 year prison sentence for the arson as

8

Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” (1967), back to which the history could alternatively be traced, also features such an interval in the opening guitar bend. 9 Denis Arnold, “Tritone” in The New Oxford Companion to Music, Volume 1: A–J, ed. Denis Arnold. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). 10 William Irwin, “Black Sabbath and the Secret of Scary Music,” Psychology Today, posted October 31, 2012 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/platopop/201210/black-sabbath-and-the-secret-scary-music 11 Scott Munro, “Ozzy: Black Sabbath is the scariest song ever written,” Louder, posted in 2017 https://www.loudersound.com/news/ozzy-black-sabbath-is-thescariest-song-ever-written 12 As reported in Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, Lords of Chaos (Port Townsend: Feral House, 1998).

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well as for fatally stabbing Mayhem guitarist Euronymous, invoked Nietzsche’s term “Übermensch” as an ideal but made the sadly still too common error of conflating Nietzsche’s views with those of Nazism and white supremacy, defining the übermensch as “weiß-arische [sic]Mensch mit Stäarke [sic] und Stolz.”13 One extended example of Nietzsche’s direct influence on metal is Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar.14 On the track “1996” from that record, Manson intones “Anti people now you’ve gone too far/Here’s your Antichrist Superstar.” “Anti people” refers to those elements of society, including, but not limited to Christianity, that constantly say “no” to things—who are deniers of life in various ways. The “Antichrist Superstar,” then is someone who has internalized those reactive values and turned them back violently on the society that engendered them. The album tells the story of Manson’s transformation from a “worm” through his sexual and creative awakening into the Antichrist Superstar. However, this “Antichrist” clearly falls short of Nietzsche’s ideal, for he is still motivated by the nihilistic values of ressentiment, only now directed back at the institutions who cultivate them. Manson never succeeded in presenting an active, positive creative vision in place of what he sought to destroy, continually stuck in a cycle of diminishingly transgressive attacks on the conventional, now punctuated by multiple accusations by former girlfriends that he was abusive to them. To use the language of Thus Spoke Zarathustra15, Manson never developed from the stage of the lion into that of the child.16 Or following On The Genealogy of Morals17, his music presented no genuine revaluation or creation of new values, but only a reaction to the old ones. Nietzsche and metal both appear as attractive refuges from Christian cultural hegemony for disaffected youth frustrated with their religious parents and communities. Nietzsche would likely find the preoccupation with Satan a comical reification of Christian mythology rather than a 13

Werner “Nyar” Linke, “Interview with Varg Vikernes from C.O.T.I.M. Magazine, 1994,” Burzum.org https://www.burzum.org/eng/library/1994_interview_cotim.shtml 14 I read Nietzsche for the first time in high school after becoming aware of the influence of his ideas on Manson. 15 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Cotton (aubibilio, 2020). 16 Z I, 1. 17 Friedrich Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann. (New York: Random House, 1989).

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rejection of it. The irony that members of some of the most explicitly blasphemous metal acts, such as Slayer’s Tom Araya, are devout Christians, attests to the idea that all the talk of devil worship betrays a deep internalization of Christian values that is only superficially rebelled against, like an adolescent who decries their parents’ values only to grow to embrace them in adulthood. Araya, similarly to the members of Black Sabbath, chalks up his band’s satanic lyrics to a desire to create a compellingly subversive image for the band. “I’m not one that’s going to go, ‘This sucks because it’s contrary to my beliefs.’ To me it’s more like ‘this is really good stuff. You’re going to piss people off with this.’”18 For Nietzsche, it is not sufficient to be anti-Christ or anti-anything in a purely reactive sense. He is anti-Christian in the sense that he is against the life-denying spirit of Christianity, but that requires being affirmational about life, having positive values of one’s own. As he puts it in The Gay Science19: I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.20

So the question becomes: Is there such yes-saying in metal? Is metal only a music and culture of hatred, revenge, and rejection of the conventional, or does it have the resources within it for the type of affirmation Nietzsche sees as essential to engendering healthy, powerful, and “higher” future human beings? Is metal merely a continually slavish posturing as “evil” in the face of Christianity’s already slavish “good,” or is there some new noble “good” of its own that metal is capable of embodying?

Masters of reality A tentatively positive answer to the above questions can be found by first considering a fundamental misunderstanding of Nietzsche perpetuated in 18 Loudwire, “Slayer’s Tom Araya: Wikipedia Fact or Fiction,” 15:29, March 9, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0QlzMlO_M 19 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974). 20 GS §276.

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popular media when discussing his relation to metal, in regard to his position on “nihilism.” Articles and blog posts such as “11 Nihilistic Songs Inspired By German Philosopher Nietzsche”21 and “Metal and Nietzscheism,” construe Nietzsche as “nihilistic,” the latter claiming that “Nietzsche’s Nihilism greatly influenced a lot of bands such as Beherit, Burzum, Emperor and Limbonic Art which emphasized in their lyrics’ many nihilistic themes.”22 However, any careful reader of Nietzsche understands that far from being a nihilist or advocating nihilism, Nietzsche sees much of his philosophical project as attempting to develop an antidote to nihilism. Nietzsche writes in the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals: What was especially at stake [in Human, All Too Human] was the value of the ‘unegoistic,’ the instincts of pity, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had gilded, deified, and projected into a beyond for so long that at last they became for him ‘value-in-itself,’ on the basis of which he said No to life and to himself. But it was against precisely these instincts that there spoke from me an ever more fundamental mistrust, an ever more corrosive skepticism! It was precisely here that I saw the great danger to mankind, its sublimest enticement and seduction – but to what? to nothingness? – it was precisely here that I saw the beginning of the end, the dead stop, a retrospective weariness, the will turning against life, the tender and sorrowful signs of the ultimate illness: I understood the ever spreading morality of pity that had seized even on philosophers and made them ill, as the most sinister symptom of a European culture that had itself become sinister, perhaps as its bypass to a new Buddhism? to a Buddhism for Europeans? to – nihilism?23

Here Nietzsche clearly positions himself in opposition to nihilism, which he sees as a consequence of Schopenhaurean pessimism and the morality of pity here identified with Buddhism, but elsewhere Christianity. Later in On the Genealogy of Morals, he expresses his longing for “[t]his man of the future, who will redeem us from… the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism... this Antichrist and anti-nihilist; this victor over God and nothingness – he must come one day.”24 Here God and nothingness are presented as two equally nihilistic options. God represents the flight from

21 Brian Ives, “11 Nihilistic Songs Inspired By German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,” Loudwire, published August 1, 2018 https://loudwire.com/songsinspired-by-german-philosopher-nietzsche/ 22 “Metal and Nietzscheanism,” Lebmetal, last modified March 17, 2010 https://lebmetal.com/2010/03/metal-and-nietzscheism/ 23 GM, Preface §5. 24 GM II, §24.

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reality into the supernatural realm of the perfect, eternal, and unchanging, first envisioned by Plato. This is nihilistic because it denies the living world of imperfect, changing, material things, instead seeking meaning, value, and moreover, redemption, in a supra-sensible fantasy. However, the death of God, heralded by Nietzsche’s “madman” in The Gay Science25 portends a different path to nihilism, one that sees in the death of God a betrayal, a loss of the last hope and consolation for the misfortunate, and so rejects the possibility of meaning and value altogether. Both paths to nihilism are motivated by ressentiment, by the desire for revenge against life from illconstituted people who have contempt for their own sickliness and weakness: men of ressentiment, physiologically unfortunate and worm-eaten, a whole tremulous realm of subterranean revenge… poisoning the consciences of the fortunate with their own misery.. so that one day the fortunate began to be ashamed of their good fortune and perhaps said to one another: “it is disgraceful to be fortunate: there is too much misery!26

There are many examples of metal bands who evidence a nihilistic point of view. Marilyn Manson, as described above, is one. Another is Slipknot, who, oddly, is Hawley’s paradigmatic example of a Nietzschean metal band.27 Slipknot is generally classified as part of the late 90s/early 2000s “nü-metal” movement, which adopted elements from hip-hop music, including, as in Slipknot’s case, the use of turntables. However, Slipknot is distinct from other nü-metal acts in their heavy influence from death metal, particularly its machine-gun fire double bass drums. As Hawley correctly points out “Slipknot stands out for the truly shocking intensity of the rage that fuels its music. It simply defies easy understanding how a group of people can sustain such extraordinary levels of anger over so many years while also maintaining the energy necessary to give it artistic expression.”28 He sees this discharge of emotion as something that is, in the end, lifeaffirming. “In the struggle against the extreme forms of musical and psychic dissonance in Slipknot’s music, the will simultaneously discharges its

25

GS §125. GM III, §14. 27 Thomas M. Hawley, “Dionysus in the Mosh Pit: Nietzschean Reflections on the Role of Music in Recovering the Tragic Disposition” (2010), Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, April 1-3, 2010 https://ssrn.com/abstract=1580791 28 Hawley, “Dionysus in the Mosh Pit,” 30. 26

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strength and experiences that discharge as a restorative.”29 However, both on the level of lyrical content and vocal inflection, as well as the savage paroxysm of the music, I hear Slipknot expressing a kind of nihilism in their discontent and hatred toward the world, perhaps best encapsulated in the song “People = Shit,” the name of which adorns many of their early t-shirts. I find something more akin to what Nietzsche envisions as an antidote toward nihilism in, for instance, the middle period albums of the band Metallica, particularly their 1986 Master of Puppets record. The songs on that record concern some of the saddest, most shameful, cruel, and brutal aspects of human existence, such as political corruption, drug addiction, mental illness, and the trauma inflicted by war. However, singer James Hetfield’s voice betrays no appreciable pity, anger, or vengefulness. It is forceful, but with an air of detached observation, if not triumph in having witnessed the worst aspects of reality in its gory details without being subdued or withered by them. In contrast to the morality of pity, Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil,30 prescribes a “pathos of distance,” for the healthy society that will produce great individuals. He writes: Without that pathos of distance which grows out of the ingrained difference between strata—when the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks down on subjects and instruments and just as constantly practices obedience and command, keeping down and keeping at a distance—that other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown up either—the craving for an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself, the developing of ever higher, rarer, more remote, further-stretching, more comprehensive states— in brief, simply the enhancement of the type ‘man,’ the continual ‘selfovercoming of man,’ to use a moral formula in a supra-moral sense.”31

Slipknot’s contemptuous desire for destruction feels rather plebeian compared to Metallica’s quasi-aristocratic comportment. Hetfield’s vocals take the posture of a Roman Emperor looking down at the bedlam of the bloody Coliseum, and that, for better or worse, seems to more attuned to the attitude Nietzsche idealizes. It’s not that the spectator in this case finds enjoyment in others’ suffering, but instead recognizes it as a somehow necessary element of the spectacle of existence. Rather than being consumed by rage at the sight of the horrific reality one confronts, once God

29

Hawley, “Dionysus in the Mosh Pit,” 33. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966). 31 BGE §257. 30

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and the otherworldly ceases to be a tenable intellectual option as a reaction to the suffering inimical to life, Nietzsche imagines individuals who can look upon the spectacle of harsh reality and affirm the entirety of it: Whoever has endeavored with some enigmatic longing, as I have, to think pessimism though to its depths… whoever has really… looked into, down into the most world-denying of all possible ways of thinking—beyond good and evil and no longer… under the spell and delusion of morality—may just thereby… have opened his eyes to the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most high-spirited, alive, and world affirming human being who has not only come to terms and learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity, shouting insatiably da capo—not only to himself but to the whole play and spectacle… who makes it necessary because again and again he needs himself—and makes himself necessary…32

This exuberant, affirmational attitude towards the most twisted and macabre aspects of existence, as if willing them to eternally recur, is on display whether Hetfield is taking the perspective of the forcibly institutionalized, as in “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” or of the drugs that hold the addict in their thrall, as in the song “Master of Puppets”. Metallica inherited this lofty tone from the so-called “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” of the early 1980s, which included bands such as Iron Maiden, Diamond Head, and Motörhead (though it is also present in much of Black Sabbath’s early work) who evince a kind indomitable stoicism, if not levity (brought to a cartoonish extreme in the music of power metal troupe Manowar) when addressing metal’s usual grim subject matter. It can also be found in more recent metal acts as diverse as stoner doom band Electric Wizard, with frontman Jus Oborn’s sardonic musings on witch burnings and Satanic ritual sacrifices and in the black metal outfit of The Ruins of Beverast, with Alexander von Meilenwald’s baritone chanting about the original “twilight of the idols”—the death of the Norse gods. I would not be surprised if such metal practitioners would read themselves into Nietzsche’s speculation in Daybreak33 that “[f]or music, too, there may perhaps again come a better time (it will certainly be a more evil one!) when artists have to make it appeal to men strong in themselves, severe, dominated by the dark seriousness of their own passion.”34 Or in the section on “The music of the best future” in The Gay Science, where Nietzsche identifies the “foremost” 32

BGE §56. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 34 D §172. 33

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musician as “one who knew only the sadness of the most profound happiness, and no other sadness at all.”35 The metal exemplars mentioned above eschew sentimentality, romantic melancholy, and expressions of fear and pity, more commonly found in other genres of rock and pop, for a kind of severity that is not devoid of emotion, but strives for a more refined, noble kind of affect, one that might motivate individuals to more elevated states of being, rather than mere rebellious hatred, decadent wallowing, and resentment.

Symphonies of destruction A complete examination of the presence of Nietzsche’s ideas in metal requires consideration of his musical aesthetics more directly. What did Nietzsche value in music and how might his preferences be reflected in metal? One approach that immediately suggests itself is, as Hawley (and Kilpatrick with rock more generally) does, to look for the Dionysian in metal, where it can be found in abundance. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche explains the artistic phenomenon of Attic tragedy as arising out of the dynamic interplay of two artistic forces, the Apollonian and Dionysian. The latter is identified with music, as well as intoxication, destruction of boundaries and conventions, orgiastic explosions of passion, de-individuation, and return to a “primordial unity.”36 Anyone who has been to a metal concert, felt visceral excitement in the thunder of amplified, distorted guitars, the pummeling intensity of drums, and the somatic melee of the mosh pit, in which audience members shove and jostle one another in a seething mass of corporeal activity, can recognize in it the Dionysian spirit. The metal vocalist, who has channeled the forces of the instruments into a primal scream may see their own ecstatic condition reflected in Nietzsche’s analysis of the effect of the tragic spectacle. Hawley is right to cite Slipknot in this regard, but he might as well have chosen ferocious death metal juggernauts such as Deicide, Morbid Angel or Cannibal Corpse, if not Napalm Death or Anal Cunt, who are exemplars of the most frenetically turbulent metal genre, grindcore. He might instead have chosen Electric Wizard, Sleep, Goatsnake, or other sludge/doom metal ensembles, who pummel the listener with glacially slow, hulking, colossal riffs. Other options would be the scorching wrath of Lingua Ignota, the unbridled violent urgency of Pantera, the environmentalist fury of Gojira, the relentless stampede of High on Fire, feral ardor of Husbandry, the cacophonous 35 36

GS, §183. BT §1.

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pandemonium of Cleric, or the resignation in the agony of despair expressed by The Body. Metal embodies the Dionysian perhaps more than any other genre of music (though a strong case could be made for punk rock as well). However, as Bourgault argues,37 Nietzsche’s written statements of musical preference betray a less than wholehearted identification with the Dionysian. Particularly after his break with Richard Wagner, but even evidenced in his writings beforehand, Nietzsche takes the side of musical formalism38, an aesthetic philosophy that emphasizes what might be regarded as more Apollonian aspects of music. Nietzsche describes the Apollonian as “that measured restraint, that freedom from the wilder emotions, that calm of the sculptor god… even when it is angry and distempered it is still hallowed by beautiful illusion.”39 Nietzsche’s attitude concerning Apollonian and Dionysian elements of the music of his time can be understood by considering his comportment towards Wagner, on the one hand, and on the other, Wagner’s musical rival Johannes Brahms. Even while heralding Wagner as the greatest hope for the future of art, Nietzsche expressed views in tension with that appraisal. For instance, in Nietzsche’s early essay, “On Music and Words,” he writes: music never can become a means, however one may push, thumbscrew, or torture it: as sound, as a drum roll, in its crudest and simplest stages it still overcomes poetry and reduces it to its reflection. Opera as a genre in accordance with this concept is thus less a perversion of music than it is an erroneous representation in aesthetics.40

In opposition to Wagner who thought that music should be governed by words and drama, Nietzsche, as Bourgault puts it, “insisted that, when hearing the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (in which the composer uses Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy”), the audience cannot make out the words—in fact, the listener is indifferent to them.”41 Nietzsche asks 37

Sophie Bourgault, “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Musical Aesthetics: A Reassessment,” Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 17, no. 1 (2013), 171-193. 38 The most prominent proponent of which was Eduard Hanslick, whose On the Musically Beautiful (1854), Nietzsche read. 39 BT §1. 40 Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Music and Words,” in Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. M. Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 41 Bourgault, “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Musical Aesthetics,” 176.

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condescendingly: “What? the listener makes demands? The words are to be understood?”42 On this score, Nietzsche may have been well disposed towards metal. Given the volume of the instruments as well as the often distorted tone of the vocalist, whether yelling, growling, or screaming, untrained listeners often have trouble making out the lyrics to metal songs, and while lyrics may have some importance to the musicians and listeners, they quite clearly play second fiddle to the music, and are not emphasized to anywhere near the degree they are in rock, pop, and punk. Understanding metal lyrics is to some degree an esoteric discipline, a second stage of discovery after one has been initiated into the music. This aspect of metal further coheres with Nietzsche’s attitude towards intelligibility in music, that it should be something the listener works for by engaging their cognitive capacities. As Bourgault puts it: Nietzsche saw in “aesthetic Socratism” a revolting supreme law: that “to be beautiful everything must be intelligible.”43 What bothered Nietzsche about such an aesthetic principle is that it fails to see the listener as an intelligent being—it yields to the listener’s inability to discover artistic meaning in subtlety and makes art mediocre. The beautiful and the good do not have “gross obviousness”44 as their prerequisite.45

Wagner’s inclination towards “gross obviousness” is maligned by Nietzsche in his later works, as is his penchant for mimetic techniques. Wagner is known for his use of “tone-painting,” in which music imitates items from nature. Nietzsche criticizes this as a deplorably decadent approach to music, abandoning music’s intrinsic primal meaningfulness in favor of an insipid pantomime. In The Case of Wagner Nietzsche writes: Wagner was not a musician by instinct. He showed this by abandoning all lawfulness and, more precisely, all style in music in order to turn it into what he required, theatrical rhetoric, a means of expression, of underscoring gestures, of suggestion, of the psychologically picturesque. Here we may consider Wagner an inventor and innovator of the first rank—he has increased music’s capacity for language to the point of making it immeasurable: he is the Victor Hugo of music as language. Always presupposing that one first allows that under certain circumstances music may not be music but language, instrument, ancilla dramaturgica.46

42

Bourgault, “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Musical Aesthetics,” 187. BT §12. 44 GS §329. 45 Ibid. 46 CW §8. 43

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So Nietzsche’s criticism of Wagner with regard to the relationship between music and words is twofold. Wagner subordinates music to words and also tries to turn music into language itself, something more immediately intelligible. In this way, he does to music what Euripides, under the influence of Socrates, did to tragedy. In general, metal artists do not seem overly preoccupied with lyrical sophistication, which may be one reason some untutored audiences have trouble engaging with the genre. On the contrary, what seems to matter more when it comes to metal vocals is how they sound, how the tone and inflection of the vocalist conveys their attitude, which is intended to be felt more so than cognized. This brings to mind Nietzsche’s discussion of the lyrist in The Birth of Tragedy who produces the copy of [the] primal unity as music. Now, however, under the Apollonian dream inspiration, this music reveals itself to him again as the symbolic dream image. The inchoate, intangible reflection of the primordial pain in music, with its redemption in mere appearance, now produces a second mirroring as a specific symbol or example.47

In the tragic lyrist, rather than music attempting to imitate language, the opposite happens. The Apollonian symbolism of language becomes a medium for attempting to further reproduce the Dionysian wisdom conveyed by music that is beyond conceptualization. Nietzsche understands the Dionysian as present foremost in the folk song, which he takes to be the musical mirror of the world, as the original melody, now seeking for itself a parallel dream phenomenon and expressing it in poetry…. [I]n the poetry of the folk song, language is strained to its utmost that it may imitate music… And in saying this we have indicated the only possible relation between poetry and music, between word and tone: the word, the image, the concept here seeks an expression analogous to music and now feels in itself the power of music.48

Metal, as the (both literal and figurative) amplification of American folk music, specifically the Blues, often follows this line of thought by making the lyrics a representation and mirroring of the music and not vice-versa. The vocalist more often than not writes the words after the music has already been composed. For example, Maynard James Keenan, frontman of the band Tool explains

47 48

BT §5. Ibid.

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What I’m writing to is the music that I’m hearing from those people. I write to the music… Whenever… I had some poetry… I tried to force it onto a song… it doesn’t work. It doesn’t seem to fit. I need to hear the… almost finished thing, and then put lyrics to it. Get the melodies in the place, get the rhythm as if I’m an instrument.49

However, while metal may fall on the right side of Nietzsche’s disagreement with Wagner over words and music, it is vulnerable to Nietzsche’s criticism of Wagner’s use of audial tricks to intentionally invoke specific moods and emotions in the listener, such as Wagner’s tuning two tympanies to each part of the tritone interval at the beginning of his 1876 Siegfried to impart an atmosphere of foreboding, anticipating Black Sabbath by just under a century. Nietzsche is also critical of Wagner for relying on intensity of volume to excite audiences, a technique of which metal musicians proudly avail themselves, the band Motörhead even boastfully titling one live album Everything Louder Than Everyone Else (published 1999). Nietzsche chides the composers of his time (with Wagner likely in mind) for resorting to cheap gimmicks in order to move their hearers. …only now does the composer venture to put the listener through storm and tumult, and out of breath, so as afterwards to offer him, through a moment of repose, a feeling of happiness which has a favourable influence on his judgment of the music as a whole. Composers have discovered contrast: only now are the most powerful effects possible—and cheap: no one asks for good music anymore.50

Contrast is used to dramatic effect by even (and perhaps especially) the most sophisticated metal bands, such as Opeth, who vacillate between blistering black metal blast beats and gentle passages of minstrel-like melody. Perhaps for this reason Nietzsche would see their music as for “‘the enormous majority,’ who can barely comprehend the musical meaning in the ‘sensually ugly and gigantic,’ and for whom “Wagner adopted the leitmotiv (to ensure comprehension via repetition) and increased music’s volume to extreme levels.”51

49

Joe Rogan, “Interview with Maynard James Keenan,” The Joe Rogan Experience, podcast audio, July 11th, 2017, https://www.mixcloud.com/TheJoeRoganExperience/986-maynard-james-keenan/ 50 D §239. 51 Bourgault, “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Musical Aesthetics,” 189.

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Nevertheless, in general, metal, as opposed to most hard rock, punk, or pop has one major characteristic that puts it in contrast with Wagner, and much more in line with the musical preferences expressed by Nietzsche throughout his life. This characteristic is to be found in its formal musical features, i.e. its more Apollonian ones, inherited largely from Baroque and later classical music. Wagner’s Zukunftsmusik eschewed the musical rules of harmony and counterpoint developed in the Baroque period, primarily by Johann Sebastian Bach, and refined by Ludwig van Beethoven. By contrast, Brahms’ compositions were the final encapsulation of those rules. Metal has in many instances appropriated these conventions from classical music, as well as techniques of rhythm, melody to a greater extent than other related genres.52 As Walser writes: in the case of heavy metal, the relationship to classical modes of thought and music-making is not merely in the eye of the beholder. To compare it with culturally more prestigious music is entirely appropriate, for the musicians who compose, perform and teach this music have tapped the classical canon for musical techniques and procedures which they have then fused with their blues-based rock sensibility. Their instrumental virtuosity, theoretical selfconsciousness and studious devotion to the works of the classical canon means that their work could be valorised in the more ‘legitimate’ terms of classical excellence.53

Bach and Vivaldi loom large in early metal guitar playing, as evidenced, for example, in Eddie Van Halen’s 1978 “Eruption” solo.54 Black Sabbath found the tritone in Gustav Holst’s 1916 The Planets.55 Beyond appropriation of classical techniques, metal musicians have appropriated classical 52

With jazz, perhaps, being a major exception. Robert Walser, “Eruptions: Heavy Metal Appropriations of Classical Virtuosity,” Popular Music 11, no. 3 (1992): 264 54 Later “progressive” metal bands, such as Tool, Meshuggah, Leprous, and VOLA adopted non-traditional time-signatures and scales found in 20th century classical works by composers such as Stravinsky, Bartok, and Shostakovich. This was largely by way of progressive rock bands such as King Crimson who had an enormous influence on metal, despite not usually being classified as metal themselves. And it should be noted that those classical composers were likely original inspired by nonwestern sources. In any case, it is difficult to speculate on how Nietzsche would have received these musical innovations. They, like Wagner, spurned the compositional conventions of someone like Brahms, but don’t fall afoul of the principles espoused by formalists such as Hanslick, in quite the way Wagner did. 55 Irwin, “Black Sabbath and the Secret of Scary Music” 53

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discipline and reverence for the virtuoso. For this reason, metal compositions tend to be extremely technical, precise and complex in comparison with those of rock, pop, and punk, and tend to be structured in ways akin to classical ones. Master of Puppets might almost be better described in terms of movements than verses and choruses.56 The affinity between Metallica’s music and the classical tradition is so apparent, that Metallica has produced two records featuring a full symphony orchestra playing alongside the band. These formal characteristics adopted from classical music reflect, as Bourgault sees it, Apollonian features of music. For instance, Nietzsche praises Chopin who “admitted the validity of… traditions because he was born under the sway of etiquette. But in these fetters he plays and dances as the freest and daintiest of spirits, and, be it observed, he does not spurn the chain.”57 For Nietzsche, musical greatness does not come from a simple Dionysian annihilation of boundaries, but when the Dionysian is expressed somehow within the constraints of rigid structural rules. He writes in Beyond Good and Evil: Every artist knows how far from any feeling of letting himself go his “most natural” state is—the free ordering, placing, disposing giving form in the moment of “inspiration”—and how strictly and subtly he obeys thousandfold laws precisely then, laws that precisely on account of their hardness and determination defy all formulation through concepts.58

Beyond even the explicit rules of composition, the musician themselves in improvising is following myriad unconscious psychological rules, ingrained in them through practice. According to Thatcher59 Nietzsche sought music with the Dionysian passion and immediacy of Wagner’s early work, but presented through the Apollonian formal regimentation of Brahms. This is why he tried to impress upon Wagner the virtues of Brahms’ 1872 Triumphlied, which had disastrous results, perhaps being the initial event leading to the gradual dissolution of Nietzsche and Wagner’s friendship. Thatcher writes:

56

Some metal bands even ape symphonic conventions directly. For instance, the albums of progressive power metal band Symphony X each begin with an “Overture”, though this is perhaps a more superficial appropriation of the classical. 57 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow,” part 3 of Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 159. 58 BGE §188. 59 David S. Thatcher, “Nietzsche and Brahms: A Forgotten Relationship,” Music & Letters 54, no. 3 (1973) 261-280.

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Chapter 20 The Birth of Tragedy of 1872 had already proclaimed Wagner as the champion of a new Dionysian music; Brahms’s ‘Song of Triumph’ suggested he was capable of providing the complementary Apollonian element; if only the two greatest composers of the age could settle their differences and unite their gifts in a common artistic aim German music might be on the threshold of emulating the rich and lasting achievement of Greek tragedy.60

I am suggesting that metal at its best, in the work of bands such as Metallica, Opeth, Emperor, Dysrhythmia, and Liturgy (who I will have more to say about below) comes close to embodying this dynamic interplay of the Dionysian and Apollonian that Nietzsche sought in music: the immediate expression of primal annihilation of subject and concept reflected through the mathematical precision of strict metrical and harmonic rules, so that such annihilation is experienced as a gloriously beautiful and enchanting contemplative dreamscape. Working within the rules governing chord progressions allows for musical pieces to unfold with an apparent necessity. Even when developing in somewhat surprising ways, in such music each part feels as if it is the only or most natural thing that could happen at every particular moment. One metal band that deserves some sustained attention in relation to Nietzsche, is transcendental black metal band Liturgy. Their principle composer, singer and guitarist Hunter Hunt-Hendrix has a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Columbia University and has published a treatise entitled “Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism” about the philosophical significance of her music. Describing her philosophical background as “Nietzsche-Deleuze”61 she explicitly presents her music as an attempt to overcome nihilism: Transcendental Black Metal represents a new relationship to the Haptic Void [the hypothetical maximal level of musical intensity] and the selfovercoming of Hyperborean Black Metal. It is a sublimation of Hyperborean Black Metal [the culmination of the history of extreme metal (which is itself the culmination of the history of the Death of God)] in both its spiritual aspect and its technical aspect. Spiritually, it transforms Nihilism into Affirmation. Technically, it transforms the Blast Beat into the Burst Beat. Spiritually we acknowledge Nihilism, and we refuse to sink into it,

60

Thatcher, “Nietzsche and Brahms,” 267. Adam Rothbarth, “Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (Liturgy, Kel Valhaal),” Tiny Mix Tapes, August 3, 2016 https://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/hunter-hunt-hendrixliturgy-kel-valhaal

61

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impossible as the task may be. Transcendental Black Metal is a Renihilation, a “No” to the entire array of Negations, which turns to an affirmation of the continuity of all things.62

Hendrix sees her music as a way of imagining and hopefully inaugurating some kind of non-nihilistic future state of the world, which seems at least somewhat in line with Nietzsche’s hopes for philosophers of the future and “overhumanity.” She writes: “The idea for Transcendental Black Metal was that it, as a genre, would hold the same relationship to the (retroactively defined) Hyperborean Black Metal that the Nietzschean-Deleuzean philosophy of affirmation holds to the Western tradition of Christianitynihilism.”63 Appropriately, her music draws on classical sources, particularly the modulations and chord changes of Brahms64, which Hendrix thinks effect “a very powerful awakening, just some kind of hope and courage and tenderness.”65 Towards the end of his productive life, Nietzsche disavowed both Wagner and Brahms, finding repose in the music of Bizet, which he found cohered with “the first principle of [Nietzsche’s] aesthetics”: “‘What is good is light; whatever is divine moves on tender feet.”66 Would Nietzsche have seen anything belonging to the genre of metal as obeying this principle? In the same passage he describes Carmen as “evil, subtly fatalistic… its subtlety belongs to a race, not to an individual. It is rich. It is precise. It builds, organizes, finishes… the opposite of the polyp in music, the ‘infinite melody’ [of Wagner].” Listeners of Iron Maiden or Opeth, for example, would likely not find such a description as out of place in a review of the 1982 Number of the Beast or the 2005 Ghost Reveries. Whether or not Nietzsche would have been able to recognize such features in metal is another question. It might just be too loud and abrasive for his sensibilities, but I hope to have made an intriguing if not persuasive case here for the idea 62

Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, “Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism,” Handmade Birds, 2010. 58. https://liturgy.bandcamp.com/merch/transcendental-black-metal-a-vision-ofapocalyptic-humanism 63 Rothbarth, “Hunter Hunt-Hendrix.” 64 Though Liturgy’s most recent album, The Origin of the Alimonies (2020) is somewhat of a departure, as it is a kind of metal-opera with elements that could reasonably be identified as Wagnerian. 65 Thomas Britt, “Music, Drama, and Philosophy with Liturgy’s Hunter HuntHendrix,” Pop Matters, January 22, 2020 https://www.popmatters.com/liturgyhunter-hunt-hendrix-interview-2644859479.html 66 CW §1.

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that musicians such as Hendrix are not fooling themselves in seeking ends similar to Nietzsche’s own through shredded guitar solos, ear-splitting shrieks, and thunderous burst beats.

Bibliography Arnold, Denis. “Tritone” in The New Oxford Companion to Music, Volume 1: A–J, edited by Denis Arnold. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Britt, Thomas. “Music, Drama, and Philosophy with Liturgy’s Hunter HuntHendrix,” Pop Matters, January 22, 2020 https://www.popmatters.com/liturgy-hunter-hunt-hendrix-interview2644859479.html accessed July 19th, 2021. Bourgault, Sophie. “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Musical Aesthetics: A Reassessment,” Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 17, no. 1 (2013) 171-193. Gracyk, Theodore. “Heavy metal: Genre? Style? Subculture?,” Philosophy Compass, 11 (2016): 775–785. Hawley, Thomas M. “Dionysus in the Mosh Pit: Nietzschean Reflections on the Role of Music in Recovering the Tragic Disposition” (2010), Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, April 1-3, 2010 https://ssrn.com/abstract=1580791 accessed July 19th, 2021. Hunt-Hendrix, Hunter. “Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism,” Handmade Birds, 2010. 58. https://liturgy.bandcamp.com/merch/transcendental-black-metal-avision-of-apocalyptic-humanism accessed July 19th, 2021. Irwin, William. “Black Sabbath and the Secret of Scary Music,” Psychology Today. Posted October 31, 2012 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/plato-pop/201210/blacksabbath-and-the-secret-scary-music accessed July 19th, 2021. Ives, Brian. “11 Nihilistic Songs Inspired By German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,” Loudwire, published August 1, 2018 https://loudwire.com/songs-inspired-by-german-philosopher-nietzsche/ accessed July 19th, 2021. Kilpatrick, David. “Dionysian Rock: Nietzsche & Music,” The Agonist 5, Issue 1 (2012). Linke, Werner “Nyar”. “Interview with Varg Vikernes from C.O.T.I.M. Magazine, 1994,” Burzum.org https://www.burzum.org/eng/library/1994_interview_cotim.shtml accessed July 19th, 2021.

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Lebmetal. “Metal and Nietzscheanism,” Lebmetal, last modified March 17, 2010 https://lebmetal.com/2010/03/metal-and-nietzscheism/ accessed July 19th, 2021. Loudwire. “Slayer’s Tom Araya: Wikipedia Fact or Fiction,” 15:29, March 9, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0QlzMlO_M accessed July 19th, 2021. Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Søderlind. Lords of Chaos Port Townsend: Feral House, 1998. Munro, Scott. “Ozzy: Black Sabbath is the scariest song ever written,” Louder. Posted in 2017 https://www.loudersound.com/news/ozzyblack-sabbath-is-the-scariest-song-ever-written accessed July 19th, 2021. Rogan, Joe. “Interview with Maynard James Keenan,” The Joe Rogan Experience, podcast audio, July 11th, 2017, https://www.mixcloud.com/TheJoeRoganExperience/986-maynardjames-keenan/ accessed July 19th, 2021. Rothbarth, Adam. “Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (Liturgy, Kel Valhaal),” Tiny Mix Tapes, August 3, 2016 https://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/hunterhunt-hendrix-liturgy-kel-valhaal accessed July 19th, 2021. Thatcher, David S. “Nietzsche and Brahms: A Forgotten Relationship,” Music & Letters 54, no. 3 (1973) 261-280. Walser, Robert. “Eruptions: Heavy Metal Appropriations of Classical Virtuosity,” Popular Music 11, no. 3 (1992) 263-308.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Nietzsche’s Works in German KGB

Friedrich Nietzsche. Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, established by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1975-.

KGW

Friedrich Nietzsche. Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, established by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1967-.

KSA

Friedrich Nietzsche. Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. München, Berlin/New York: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967-77; 2nd, revised edition 1988.

KSB

Friedrich Nietzsche. Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe in 8 Bänden, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. München, Berlin/New York: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1975-1984.

WB

Friedrich Nietzsche. Werke und Briefe, HistorischeKritische Gesamtausgabe, established by Hans Joachim Mette and Karl Schlechta. München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1933-.

W

Friedrich Nietzsche. Werke in Drei Bänden, edited by Karl Schlechta. München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1954.

II. Nietzsche’s Works in English Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Compiled by Robert Guppy. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964. Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: The Modern Library, 1968 (abbreviation BW).

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 463

Philosophy and Truth. Selections of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s.Translated by Daniel Breazeale. New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1979 (abbreviation PT). “On Music and Word.” Translated by Walter Kaufman, in Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, 103-119. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited and translated by Charles Middleton. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Reprint, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996. The Portable Nietzsche. Edited by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1982. Writings from the Late Notebooks. Edited by Rüdiger Bittner, translated by Kate Sturge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 (abbreviation WLN). “On the Theory of Quantifying Rhythm,” New Nietzsche Studies 10, 1/2 (2016): 69-78.

III. Nietzsche’s Works in English with Abbreviations AC

The Antichrist, in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books, 1968. The Antichrist, in Walter Kaufmann (ed. and trans.), The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking Penguin, 1982.

AOM

Assorted Opinions and Maxims (part of HAH, listed below).

BGE

Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Vintage Books, 1966. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books, 1971.

BT

The Birth of Tragedy. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Edited by Raymond Geuss and Ronald Spiers, translated by Ronald

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Spiers. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. CW

The Case of Wagner, in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Edited by Raymond Geuss and Ronald Spiers, translated by Ronald Spiers. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1911. The Case of Wagner. Translated by Walter Kauffman. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

D

Daybreak. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

DVW

Dionysian Vision of the World. Translated by Ira J. Allen. Minneapolis: Univocal, 2013.

EH

Ecce Homo, in On the Genealogy of Morals, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, and Ecce Homo, translated by W. Kaufmann. New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1989.

FEI

On the Future of Our Educational Institutions. Translated by Michael W. Grenke. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2004.

FNRL

Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language. Translated and edited by S. L. Gilman, C. Blair and D. J. Parent. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

GM

On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by W. Kaufmann, New York: Vintage Books, 1969. On the Genealogy of Morals, in On the Genealogy of Morals, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, and Ecce Homo, translated by W. Kaufmann. New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1989.

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 465

GS

The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Vintage Books, 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Josefine Nauckhoff. Cambrigde University Press, 2001.

HAH

Human, All Too Human Translated. by R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

PATG

Philosophy in the Age of the Tragic Greeks. Translated. by M. Cowan. Washington DC: Gateway, 1962.

PP

The Pre-Platonic Philosophers. Translated by Greg Whitlock. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.

TI

Twilight of the Idols, in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books, 1968. Twilight of the Idols, in Walter Kaufmann (ed. and trans.), The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Viking Penguin, 1982.

TSZ

Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: The Viking Press, 1954-. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Translated by Thomas Cotton. New York: Dover, 1999. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Graham Parkes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. Edited by Adrian Del Caro and Robert B. Pippin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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UM

Untimely Meditations Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. UM I: DSCW UM II: UDHL UM III: SE UM IV: RWB

David Strauss: the Confessor & the Writer On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life Schopenhauer as Educator Richard Wagner in Bayreuth

On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale and edited by Daniel Breazeale. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. WP

The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.

WS

Wanderer and his Shadow (part of HAH, listed above).

IV. Secondary Literature Acampora, Christa Davis, and Ansell Pearson, Keith. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: A Reader’s Guide. London: Continuum, 2011. Aeschylus. Oresteia, trans. David Grene and Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989. Adorno, Theodor. Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. London: Polity, 1998. Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. London: Verso, 2020. [1951] Adorno, Theodor. Philosophy of New Music. Robert Hullot-Kentnor, trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Adorno, Theodor. Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction: Notes a Draft, and Two Schemata. London: Polity, 2006. Agawu, Kofi. “Perspectives on Schubert’s Songs”. In Music Analysis 16, no. 1 (March 1997), 107-122. Albrecht, Martin and Bernd Kulawik. “Nietzsches Jugendkompositionen der Pfortenser Zeit.” Nietzscheforschung 1 (1994): 313-334. Albrecht, Otto. “Mitteilungen aus Briefen von H. E. Schmieder und K. F. Göschel.” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Kirchengeschichte der Provinz Sachsen 16 (1919): 27–61, 69–117.

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Albrechtsberger, G. Gründliche Anweisung zur Komposition; mit deutlichen und ausführlichen Exempeln, zum Selbustunterrichte, erläutert: und mit einem Anhange: von der Beschaffenheit und Anwendung aller jetzt üblichen musikalischen Instrumente. Leipzig, 1972 (reprint) [1790]. Alekseev, A.D., S.S. Ginzburg, Iu.S. Kalashnikov, A.A. Sidorov, G. Iu. Sternin, O.A. Shvidkovskii, eds. Russkaia khudozhestvennaia kul’tura kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka (1908-1917). Kniga tret’ia. Zrelishchnye iskusstva. Muzyka. Moscow: Nauk, 1977. Allison, David Blair. “On Nietzsche’s ‘Music and Word’.” New Nietzsche Studies: Companion to The Birth of Tragedy I, Vol 10, Nos. 1 and 2 (2016): 141-167. Allison, David Blair. Reading the New Nietzsche. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Anderson, R. Lainer. “Nietzsche on Redemption and Transfiguration.” In The Re-Enchantment of the World. Secular Magic in a Rational Age, edited by Joshua Landy and Michael Saler, 225–258. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Andreas-Salomé, Lou. Looking Back: Memoirs. Edited by Ernst Pfeiffer, translated by Breon Mitchell. New York, NY: Marlowe & Company, 1995. Anonymous. “Chetvertaia sonata fis-dur A. Skriabina,” Muzyka no. 3 (December 11, 1910): 66-69. Anonymous. “Correspondenz.” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 53, no. 20 (1860): 170-172. Anonymous. “Leipzig.” The Musical World 33, no. 40 (1855): 647. Anonymous. “Nachrichten.” Berliner musikalische Zeitung 4, no. 24 (1847): no pagination [3]. Anonymous. “Nachrichten.” Euterpe – Eine Musik-Zeitschrift für Deutschlands Volksschullehrer sowie für Cantoren, Organisten, Musiklehrer und Freunde der Tonkunst überhaupt 18, no. 2 (1859): 4648. Arakchiev, D. Muzyka i zhizn no. 3 (March 12, 1910): 12. Aristotle. The “Art” of Rhetoric. Tr. by J. H. Freese. London: Heinemann, 1926. Arnold, Denis. “Tritone” in The New Oxford Companion to Music, Volume 1: A–J, edited by Denis Arnold. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Auner, Joseph. A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Ben Abelson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Mercy College. He received his Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2015. His published works include “Beyond Face and Heel: Nietzsche and the Pro-wrestling Spectacle” (The Agonist, Fall 2020); “Shifting Coalitions, Free Will, and the Responsibility of Persons” (Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will, Routledge, 2017); and “Won’t the Real Wade Wilson Please Stand Up?” (Deadpool and Philosophy, Open Court, 2017). He is also co-host of the Contesting Wrestling podcast, and has been a vocalist in various NYC-based hard rock and heavy metal bands over the past twenty years, including God Ox and Scribes of Fire. Babette Babich is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University in New York City and Visiting Professor of Theology, Religion and Philosophy at the University of Winchester, England. In addition to teaching at the Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen she has also taught at the Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of California at San Diego, Stony Brook University, the Juilliard School, among others. Authored books include Günther Anders’ Philosophy of Technology (Bloomsbury, 2022); Nietzsches Plastik (Peter Lang, 2021); Nietzsches Antike (Academia/Nomos, 2020); The Hallelujah Effect (Routledge, 2016 [2013]); Words in Blood, Like Flowers (SUNY Press, 2006) and edited collections include Reading David Hume’s Of the Standard of Taste (de Gruyter, 2019) and Hermeneutic Philosophies of Social Science (de Gruyter, 2017). She is executive editor of New Nietzsche Studies. Daniel Conway is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Affiliate Professor of Religious Studies and Film Studies, and Courtesy Professor in the School of Law and the Bush School of Government and Public Service, at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game (Cambridge UP, 1997), Nietzsche and the Political (Routledge, 1997), and the Reader’s Guide to Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals (Continuum, 2008). His current Nietzsche-related project, a Critical Guide to Beyond Good and Evil, is scheduled to appear at Edinburgh UP, in a series he edits with Keith AnsellPearson. Conway is also the editor of the four-volume series Nietzsche: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers (Routledge, 1998) and co-

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editor of Nietzsche und die antike Philosophie (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1992), Nietzsche, Philosophy, and the Arts (Cambridge UP, 1998), and The History of Continental Philosophy, Volume II (Acumen, 2010). Aysegul Durakoglu is Professor of Music at Stevens Institute of Technology and has concertized as a pianist and chamber musician nationally and internationally. She pursued her graduate studies at the Juilliard School and received a Ph.D. degree with notable distinction at New York University where she taught music theory and piano classes. She presented lecturerecitals on the piano music of Friedrich Nietzsche in international conferences in Canada, Serbia, Turkey, and at Nietzsche Circle events in New York City. Durakoglu is the founder and artistic director of the chamber music society, Musica Mundana, and has been the representative of ASA-USA Society to the United Nations in addition to her career in music. Venessa Ercole is an academic researcher in the Department of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, where she teaches political philosophy and leadership. Her doctoral research focused on the Dionysian in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Her current research interests include political philosophy, continental philosophy and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Daniel H. Foster is Associate Professor and Chair of the Liberal Arts Department at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute. A comparatist with interests in the intersection of high and low, old and new music, literature, and drama, Foster teaches and publishes on such subjects as opera and blackface, Greek lyric and Welsh song, new media and Old Time Radio. He authored Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks (Cambridge UP, 2010) and is currently at work on From Bards to Blackface, or How the Minstrel Changed His Tune. His articles have been published in both academic and crossover journals ranging from The Journal of American Drama and Theatre to Smithsonian Magazine, Times Higher Education, and The Paris Review. David Kilpatrick David Kilpatrick is Professor of English Literature and Sport Management and Director of the Sport Management Program at Mercy College in New York. He earned his PhD in comparative literature and MA in philosophy at Binghamton University, MS in sport management at the State University of New York at Cortland, and BA in English and philosophy at Slippery Rock University. The author of Writing with Blood and Obrigado: A Futebol Epic, his research interests range from sacred

496

Contributors

poetics and the history of drama to the aesthetics of sport. As a vocalist and lyricist, he has performed and recorded with the progressive rock group, Influx, and as a solo artist. Tali Makell served as principal conductor of The New York City Housing Authority Orchestra from 1981 to 1995, an ensemble which provided classical music to those with limited exposure to it. He also served as music director of The Henry Street Settlement Opera Ensemble, co-founded the Brooklyn Heights Promenade Orchestra, and was a frequent guest conductor of The Washington Square Chamber Orchestra. As Executive Director of The Nietzsche Music Project, Makell produced two critically acclaimed CD’s on the Newport Classic label. In 2003, he oversaw a second set of recordings of the music of Nietzsche. Makell and members of the NMP have appeared in numerous lecture/concerts. A native of Baltimore, Makell began his musical studies at The Peabody Conservatory. He is a graduate of The Oberlin College Conservatory, where he majored in conducting, composition, and voice. He continued his conducting studies in New York under maestros Laszlo Halasz and Semyon Vechshtein. James Melo, musicologist, conducted doctoral studies at New York University, from which he holds his M.A. He is a Senior Supervising Editor at RILM Abstracts of Music Literature at the City University of New York. He is musicologist and scriptwriter for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century, an innovative chamber music group in New York that merges theater and music into a hybrid genre of theatrical concerts. Among his theatrical concerts for ERC is a theatrical concert on the life of Friedrich Nietzsche, featuring works by German Romantic composers. Melo is the correspondent for the magazine Sinfónica in Uruguay, and has been musicological consultant and program notes writer for the National Philharmonic Orchestra in Maryland, the Montreal Chamber Music Festival, and for various concert halls in New York. He is also the author of the program notes for the recordings of the complete piano music of VillaLobos and Camargo Guarnieri on Naxos. Rebecca Mitchell is Assistant Professor of History at Middlebury College. She received her Ph.D. in Russian History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011. She also holds a M.A. in Russian/European Studies (Carleton University), as well as a Master of Music (Southern Methodist University) and Bachelor of Music (University of Saskatchewan) in piano performance. Her research explores the cultural and intellectual history of the Russian empire, with particular interest in the intersection

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 497

amongst philosophical views, artistic expression and identity politics within the multi-ethnic context of the Russian lands, as well as the transnational spread of culture and ideas. Her first book, Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics and the Twilight of the Russian Empire (Yale University Press, 2015), was awarded the 2016 W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). Benjamin Moritz serves as Deputy Director and Chief Academic Officer of the Wyoming Community College Commission. His interest in Friedrich Nietzsche’s music began as an undergraduate studying music and philosophy. He received his Master’s degree in Music at Indiana University, and a Doctorate of Music from Northwestern University where his dissertation examined Nietzsche's piano music and its relationship with Nietzsche’s aesthetic theories. In addition to his administrative duties, Dr. Moritz continues to perform both solo and chamber music, as well as continued examinations of aesthetics and theories of the sublime. Gaila G. Pander studied philosophy and history in Amsterdam and Nijmegen. She taught philosophy in several institutions of higher education in the Netherlands. January 2020, she published Een zuivere toon. De beeldtaal van Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra (A Pure Tone. The Metaphorics of Nietsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra). Her current research includes some more detailed essays on form and content of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to be published in a bundle by members of the Nietzsche Research Group Nijmegen (Paul van Tongeren, ed.). Graham Parkes, born and raised in Glasgow, was educated at the Queen’s College Oxford and the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught at UC Santa Cruz, the University of Hawaii, the National University of Ireland, and several other universities in Europe and East Asia. He is currently Professorial Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Among his publications are the edited volume Nietzsche and Asian Thought, the monograph Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology, and his translation with commentary of Also sprach Zarathustra. His work includes some thirty journal articles and book chapters on Nietzsche, mostly from Buddhist, Daoist, and ecological perspectives. His latest book is How to Think about the Climate Crisis: A Philosophical Guide to Saner Ways of Living.

498

Contributors

Jamie Parr is Lecturer in Philosophy in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia. His principal research interest is in nihilism and its overcoming. His current focus is on the intellectual projects of both Friedrich Nietzsche and Blaise Pascal, particularly the influence of Pascal on Nietzsche’s philosophical project. This work shall be encapsulated in Nietzsche and Pascal: Transfiguration, Despair and the Problem of Existence (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). Other publications include “What do I Matter? Nietzsche on Pascal, Self-Obsession, and Good Cheer,” in Joy and Laughter in Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Alternative Liberatory Politics (ed. Kirkland & McNeal; Bloomsbury, forthcoming). He serves on the Executive Committee of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society. Martine Prange is Professor of Philosophy of Humanity, Culture and Society at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. She has published widely on Nietzsche, particularly on his relationship to Wagner and Goethe in the context of his musical aesthetics and philosophy of culture, e.g., Lof der Méditerranée: Nietzsches Vrolijke Wetenschap tussen noord en zuid (Klement, 2005) and Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe (De Gruyter, 2013). She is currently preparing the book Parrhesia, Critique, and Media in an Age of Post-Truth, in which she researches the relationship between democracy, truth and media and the current task of philosophy based on Kant, Foucault, Nietzsche and Zuboff. She further serves on the Executive Committee of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is Chair of the Department of History and Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome, Director and co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, and Visiting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena. He is editor of more than ten essay collections, and author of Metaphysics without Truth (Marquette UP, 2007), Menschenwürde nach Nietzsche (WBG, 2010), Transhumanismus (Herder, 2016), Schöner neuer Mensch (Nicolai, 2018), Übermensch (Schwabe, 2019), On Transhumanism (Penn State University Press, 2020), We have always been Cyborgs (Bristol University Press, 2022). In addition, he is Editor-in-Chief and Founding Editor of the Journal of Posthuman Studies and a regular contact person of national and international journalists and media representatives.

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 499

Michael Steinmann is Professor of Philosophy at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and also Director of the Program in Humanities and Social Sciences. He came to Stevens in 2008 after a year at the Pennsylvania State University. Steinmann received his Ph.D. at the University of Tübingen and his Habilitation at the University of Freiburg. Steinmann specializes in ethics, with a focus on applied ethics, and German continental philosophy of the 19th and 20th century. His books include The Ethics of Friedrich Nietzsche (De Gruyter, 2000), The Openness of Meaning. Logic and Language in Martin Heidegger (Mohr Siebeck, 2008), and Reframing Ethics Through Dialectics. A New Understanding of the Moral Good (Bloomsbury, 2022). Yunus Tuncel is a co-founder of the Nietzsche Circle and the Editor-inChief of its electronic journal, The Agonist, which is published twice a year. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the New School for Social Research and teaches philosophy at New York University. Tuncel is the author of Towards a Genealogy of Spectacle (Eye Corner Press, 2011), Agon in Nietzsche (Marquette University Press, 2013), Emotion in Sports (Routledge, 2019), and Nietzsche on Human Emotions (Schwabe, 2021) and the editor of Nietzsche and Transhumanism (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), the first volume of the Nietzsche Now Series. He has been working on music and philosophy interaction with thinkers and musicians for the last ten years, with an emphasis on Nietzsche and music. In addition to Nietzsche, he currently works on posthumanism, aesthetics, and sport philosophy. He undertakes a peripatetic project called Philomobile. Cornelis Witthoefft studied church music, orchestra and choral conducting, and coaching at the Music Academies of Hamburg and Vienna. In addition to his musical education, he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Stuttgart. Witthoefft served as vocal coach at the Vienna State Opera and as vocal coach and conductor at the State Opera Stuttgart. He worked in opera productions at prestigious opera houses like Opéra de la Bastille Paris, the Flemish Opera Antwerpen, Teatro di San Carlo Napoli, and the Salzburg Festival. Witthoefft performs frequently as a solo and Lied pianist with an extensive repertoire. In 2004 he was appointed Professor for Lied at the State Music Academy of Stuttgart, Germany, teaching singers and pianists, since 2020 also for score-reading. His CD productions include piano music and songs of Friedrich Nietzsche. He writes regularly on various musical and literary subjects and edited and co-authored the monograph Komponisten in Theresienstadt (Hamburg 1999/2001) on Jewish composers incarcerated in the Nazi concentration camp Terezín.

INDEX OF NAMES

Acampora, Christa Davis 393, 400, 408, 466 Aeschylus 14, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 120, 125, 127, 466, 484 Albrechtsberger 132, 375, 467 Ansell Pearson, Keith 22, 36, 393, 400, 408, 466, 472 Araya 446, 461, 492 Ariadne 170, 359, 366, 367, 379 Arndt, Johann 277 Arnold, Denis 444, 460, 467 Astarte 170 Bach, Johann Sebastian 9, 10, 22, 23, 15, 24, 123, 145, 233, 242, 255, 258, 259, 260, 261, 266, 307, 315, 318, 330, 336, 344, 419, 456, 485, 492 Bagge, S. v. 371, 389, 468 Bartok, B. 456 Beethoven, Ludwig van 6, 7, 9, 19, 24, 25, 7, 8, 16, 24, 25, 66, 67, 120, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 185, 186, 195, 209, 233, 242, 243, 302, 313, 315, 349, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 379, 380, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 419, 452, 456, 466, 468, 471, 476, 479, 482, 485, 487, 488 Belyi, A. 416, 430, 469 Berlioz, Hector 22, 239, 240, 242, 253, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 278, 285, 287, 471, 483,

485, 492 Berry, Wallace. 329 Bizet, Georges 13, 34, 39, 50, 52, 64, 122, 123, 124, 151, 152, 242, 366, 459, 474, 475, 478, 479 Black Sabbath 443, 444, 446, 450, 455, 456, 460, 461, 477, 482 Bourgault, Sophie .452, 453, 455, 457, 460, 470 Bowie, Andrew 21, 23, 27, 35, 470 Brahms, Johannes 53, 172, 177, 215, 343, 452, 456, 457, 458, 459, 461, 489 Braudo, Evgenii. 414, 423, 424, 430, 470 Brendel, Franz 266, 281, 282, 285, 470 Britt, Thomas 459, 460, 470 Buddensieg, Robert 229, 230 Bülow, Hans von 10, 11, 38, 72, 149, 165, 171, 172, 179, 204, 313, 316, 348 Bussenius, Arthur F. 273, 274, 275, 285, 471 Butler, Geezer 444 Chopin, Frédéric 9, 134, 293, 294, 310, 457, 476, 492 Clifton, B. 314 Cook, N. 329, 340, 343, 471 Corall, N. 379, 389 Cornelius, P. 261 Cox, Cristoph 22, 28, 36, 472 Crawford, Claudia 38, 53, 472 Dehmel, Richard 21, 201, 211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 218, 220, 223, 472

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 501 Delius, F. 53, 54, 484 Distaso, Leonardo V. 26, 36, 472 Dobbins, Garry 34 Eickhoff, F. H. 247, 248, 253, 254, 473 Eiges, K. 413, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 430, 473 Ernst, Detlev 236 Eschenmayer, Carl A. 276 Euripides 28, 61, 134, 135, 454 Faust 10, 8, 9, 10, 59, 63, 157, 158, 179, 265, 316, 475 Feller, Joachim 246, 247 Ferrara, Lawrence . 23, 314, 315, 343, 436, 440, 473 Feuerbach, Ludwig. 111 Fietz, Rudolf 32, 36, 473 Förster-Nietzche, Elisabeth. 94, 238, 241, 254, 257, 264, 275, 284, 285, 469, 474 Foster, Daniel. 5, 18, 28, 73, 74, 94, 474, 495 Freylinghausen, Johann A. 247, 248 Frisch, Walter. 23, 36, 211, 215, 223, 474 Gersdorff, Carl. 11, 126, 316, 342 Goehr, Lydia 24, 36, 475 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 5, 17, 18, 28, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 79, 80, 84, 126, 127, 131, 135, 146, 153, 157, 179, 211, 226, 227, 243, 257, 296, 470, 474, 475, 484, 486, 498 Gol’denveizer, A. 410, 423, 430, 475 Gooding-Williams, Robert 402, 408, 475 Gracyk, Theodore 38, 54, 442, 460, 475 Grell, August E. 261 Groth, Klaus. 299, 330

Grundlehner, Philip 403, 408, 475 Handel, G. F. 9, 10, 15, 123, 145, 236, 237, 243, 318 Hanslick, Eduard 452, 456 Haydn, Joseph . 9, 123, 124, 236, 313, 315, 347, 351 Hayman, Ronald 393, 408, 476 Hegar, Friedrich. 172 Hegel, Georg W.F 123, 243, 359 Heidegger, Martin. 124, 143, 150, 314, 434, 468, 499 Heidemüller, G. 226 Hendrix, Jimmy 444, 458, 459, 460, 461, 470, 476, 492 Heraclitus 43, 86 Herzen, Olga 177 Hetfield, James 449, 450 Higgins, Kathleen 22, 26, 29, 36, 54, 61, 62, 63, 65, 69, 343, 426, 431, 476 Hoffmann von Fallersleben 273, 285, 476 Hölderlin 135, 136, 138, 143, 146, 150, 152, 273, 274, 287, 468, 481, 490 Holst, Gustav 456 Homer 57, 79, 80, 81, 100, 133 Hong, W.T 380, 386, 389, 476 Hopkins, Nicholas 131, 311, 312, 330, 338, 343, 436, 440, 476, 492, 495 Hough, Sheridan 394, 402, 405, 408, 476 Husserl, E. 314 Iphigenia 84, 88, 89, 90, 91 Ivanov, V. 416, 422, 427, 428, 431, 477 Janz, Curl P. 10, 37, 120, 124, 142, 149, 161, 180, 226, 250, 255, 258, 269, 271, 272, 278, 283, 286, 287, 293, 300, 302, 304, 310, 320, 346, 347, 373, 375, 380, 384, 389, 468, 477, 492

502

Index of Names

Jung, Carl G. 275 Jung-Stilling, Johann H. 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 254, 274, 286, 477 Kant, Immanuel 21, 24, 25, 35, 45, 63, 183, 289, 359, 360, 470, 498 Kaufmann, W. 26, 27, 20, 35, 47, 62, 72, 80, 128, 179, 311, 312, 313, 317, 343, 422, 431, 433, 441, 443, 445, 446, 449, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466 Keferstein, Gustav A. 243, 255, 478 Kjaer, Jørgen 269, 286, 478 Klein, Bernhard 242 Koptiaev, A. 410, 411, 413, 415, 419, 420, 421, 422, 425, 426, 427, 428, 431, 478, 479 Köselitz, Heinrich 18, 61, 131, 149, 202, 204, 283, 348, 349, 350, 351, 356, 366 Krug, Gustav 9, 10, 21, 159, 164, 229, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246, 255, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 270, 277, 286, 300, 301, 316, 347, 478, 479, 483, 486, 491 Kunze, S. 371, 389, 479 Lampert, L 206, 223, 352, 393, 397, 400, 408, 479 Lenzewski, Gustav 258, 259, 271 Levinson, Jerrold 22, 36, 479 Liebert, Georges 13, 38, 312, 343, 480 Liszt, Franz 9, 165, 172, 239, 241, 261, 263, 264, 265 Lobe, Johann C. 240 Loeb, Paul S. 402, 403, 408, 480 Lord Byron 179, 302, 471 Lotoro, Francesco 258, 287, 492 Love, Frederick R. 13, 22 Luckner, Andreas 24, 36, 480 Mahler, Gustav 15, 24, 53, 54, 179, 351, 367, 482, 484

Marx, Groucho 399 Matthew “Monk” Lewis 157 Mendelsohn, Felix. 233 Mephistopheles 157, 374, 379 Meyer, Leonard. 314 Meysenbug, Malwida von 392 Middleton, C. 10, 121, 131, 151, 152, 313, 392, 401, 408, 463, 474, 481 Mozart, Wolfgang A 9, 18, 7, 57, 59, 60, 65, 123, 233, 236, 347, 375, 419 Nehamas, Alexander 290, 310, 401, 408, 482 Neoptolemus 397 Nietzsche 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 93, 94, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 110, 115, 116, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 215, 218,

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 503 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 326, 328, 330, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 356, 357, 358, 359, 362, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 373, 374, 375, 377, 378, 379, 380, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477, 478, 479, 480, 481, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487, 488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 494, 495, 496, 497, 498, 499 Oedipus 91, 95, 489 Oehler, David E. 229, 275, 276, 315 Oshima, T. 370, 389

Ottmann, H. 380, 389, 482 Overbeck, Franz 65, 202, 203, 204, 209, 218, 227, 255, 346, 350, 437, 482 Ovid 205, 223, 482 Paap, W. 371, 374, 376, 389, 482 Pander, G. 7, 24, 25, 369, 370, 373, 375, 376, 377, 379, 389, 483, 497 Parkes, G. 7, 9, 23, 4, 37, 179, 312, 343, 352, 370, 375, 385, 386, 389, 465, 480, 483, 497 Parsifal 22, 51, 99, 104, 110, 116, 283, 350, 405, 417, 420, 430, 473, 487 Pestalozzi, K. 373, 389, 483 Philoctetes 397 Pinder, E. 241, 245 Pinder, W. 10, 241, 246, 257, 270, 316 Pohl, Richard 263, 287, 483 Prange, M. 5, 6, 17, 20, 38, 50, 54, 56, 61, 64, 65, 66, 69, 181, 186, 191, 197, 264, 287, 374, 390, 483, 484, 498 Preobrazhenskii, V, P. 411 Rebikov, V. 418, 432, 484 Rée, Paul 201, 202, 203 Sabaneev, L. 414, 418, 419, 420, 424, 425, 432, 485, 493 Sachs, H. 485 Salomé, Lou von 65, 201, 202, 203, 204, 209, 210, 222, 283, 350, 467 Scheffler, J. 251, 252, 256, 485 Scherr, J. 274, 275, 287, 485 Schiller, F. 28, 58, 66, 73, 79, 80, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 142, 143, 144, 182, 197, 226, 227, 257, 372, 373, 452, 480, 498 Schloezer, B. 413, 418, 422, 423, 424, 425, 428

504

Index of Names

Schoenberg, Arnold 15, 20, 153, 200, 201, 211, 213, 214, 215, 222, 223, 469, 474, 485, 486 Schopenhauer, A. 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 3, 4, 5, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 37, 39, 41, 42, 46, 47, 50, 53, 54, 72, 101, 138, 140, 142, 242, 271, 316, 411, 413, 415, 416, 420, 422, 447, 466, 486 Schubert, F. 5, 9, 16, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 59, 233, 302, 347, 373, 466, 479, 491, 493 Schumann, R. 9, 10, 19, 20, 15, 159, 160, 177, 178, 179, 180, 241, 243, 256, 262, 291, 297, 316, 318, 347, 373, 419, 482, 486, 490, 493 Scriabin, A. 412, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 431, 432, 481, 488 Siegfried 18, 74, 75, 85, 93, 126, 132, 152, 165, 166, 167, 180, 189, 404, 420, 455, 480, 493 Sils Maria 349, 392, 393, 405, 406 Simon, J. 377 Solov'ev, V. 412, 413, 416, 417, 419, 432, 486 Sophocles 14, 91, 92, 94, 487 Spitta, Carl P. 248, 256, 488 Stegmaier, W. 377, 390, 488 Stein, Heinrich von 60, 133, 135, 153, 393, 394, 397, 399, 400, 401, 402, 486 Steinmann, Michael 3, 4, 5, 16, 17, 28, 38, 54, 159, 407, 491, 499 Strauss, R. 15, 53, 54, 74, 121, 155, 186, 419, 466, 484, 491 Tchaikovsky, P. 19, 20, 178, 179, 180, 414, 474, 493 Tholuck, August 230, 267, 287, 489 Tolstoi, L. 412, 418

Tuncel, Y. 3, 4, 5, 17, 54, 318, 407, 489, 499 Wagner, Richard 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 26, 3, 4, 18, 22, 24, 25, 28, 34, 37, 38, 39, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 93, 94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107,110, 111, 114, 115, 116, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 154, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 206, 215, 242, 264, 266, 272, 283, 284, 285, 287, 306, 309, 312, 313, 316, 317, 347, 348, 350, 373, 374, 390, 393, 404, 405, 411, 415, 417, 420, 428, 430, 431, 433, 434, 443, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457, 458, 459, 464, 466, 468, 469, 470, 472, 474, 478, 479, 480, 481, 484, 485, 486, 487, 488, 490, 493, 495, 498 Wagner, Adolf 74 Wagner, Cosima 11, 72, 73, 82, 83, 84, 95, 105, 116, 165, 166, 168, 170, 171, 172, 175, 180, 312, 348, 490 Whittall, A. 14, 15, 19, 452, 491 Wieck, Freidrich 240 Wimmer 245, 246, 256, 491 Wolf, Hugo 12 Young, Julian 3, 4, 393 Zittel, C. 259, 285, 377, 378, 379, 390, 470, 491

INDEX OF TERMS

absolute music, 13, 15, 16, 41, 42, 146 accelerando, 338, 339 aesthetic Socratism, 453 affect affective Affekt, 21, 11, 29, 41, 47, 48, 107, 165, 451 Aftersong Nachgesang, 25, 391, 392, 394, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 405, 406, 407 alchemy akin to transformation, 203, 204, 209 ambiguity ambiguous, 306, 315, 319, 331, 339, 340, 341 anacrusis, 330, 334, 339 analysis analytical, 11, 15, 22, 23, 28, 8, 13, 20, 31, 40, 82, 110, 138, 159, 200, 201, 314, 315, 326, 329, 330, 339, 340, 341, 342, 383, 385, 413, 420, 423, 451 Annulus aeternitatis, 372 Antichrist, 311, 343, 442, 443, 445, 447, 463, 465, 478 Antigone, 91, 92, 94, 487 aphoristic aphorism, 4, 81, 312, 313, 422 Apollonian, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 27, 14, 15, 16, 40, 49, 72, 81, 132, 140, 141, 188, 189, 192, 196, 317, 339, 342, 411, 424, 443, 451, 452, 454, 456, 457, 458 apotheosis, 25, 205, 385, 387, 388 Araya, 446, 461, 492 architectonic build-up, 369

Ariadne, 170, 359, 366, 367, 379 arpeggio, 326, 333, 338 art, 23 articulation, 26, 141, 315, 318, 326, 336, 341, 350 Bayreuth Festival Theater, 373 Beyond Good and Evil, 14, 15, 25, 37, 137, 177, 292, 296, 309, 310, 391, 392, 393, 394, 395, 397, 400, 403, 404, 406, 407, 408, 442, 449, 457, 463, 466, 479, 494 black metal transcendental hyperborean, 442, 450, 455, 458 cella tower ziggurat, 370 chaos chaos sive natura, 149, 209, 210, 222, 371, 374, 439 chord progressions, 318, 458 Christianity and redemption, 6, 21, 22, 27, 110, 111, 113, 199, 205, 221, 227, 247, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 300, 301, 358, 415, 416, 417, 420, 435, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447, 459 chromatic, 165, 172, 318, 321, 322, 323, 327, 329, 336, 341 classical style, 373, 378 coda, 163, 170, 176, 353, 356, 361, 387, 388, 392, 400 composer composition, 9, 15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 27, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13,

506

Index of Terms

14, 15, 17, 53, 56, 60, 61, 67, 72, 73, 75, 99, 100, 104, 121, 122, 141, 149, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 170, 171, 177, 184, 192, 209, 210, 226, 228, 231, 235, 237, 240, 242, 243, 261, 263, 265, 283, 284, 290, 302, 305, 308, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 319, 326, 327, 347, 348, 371, 404, 410, 411, 412, 413, 418, 420, 421, 423, 424, 426, 427, 428, 429, 452, 455, 458 consciousness, 40, 114, 196, 229, 289, 348, 413, 439, 440, 456 convalescence, 402, 404, 405 conventional methods, 314 counterpoint contrapuntal, 148, 159, 307, 308, 327, 456 creating creation, 7, 35, 49, 64, 66, 93, 100, 209, 235, 260, 294, 295, 308, 310, 323, 327, 329, 331, 335, 336, 338, 341, 342, 355, 358, 361, 425 crescendo, 175, 329, 336, 338, 339, 438 dancer, 129, 368 death metal, 448, 451 decadence, 13, 50, 122, 132, 141, 187, 317, 342 desensualization, 43, 44 deterioration, 340, 342 development, 16, 20, 24, 26, 30, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 38, 48, 57, 102, 157, 159, 160, 161, 168, 187, 220, 226, 241, 258, 300, 318, 319, 321, 324, 326, 327, 329, 330, 332, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 352, 354, 355, 369, 373, 374, 375, 376, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 413, 414, 416, 417, 419, 423, 424,

427, 429 diabolus in musica, 444 diatonic, 177, 323 diminuendo, 339, 365 Dionysian, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 25, 26, 27, 14, 15, 16, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 37, 38, 40, 43, 45, 47, 49, 50, 54, 67, 73, 81, 121, 132, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 151, 152, 172, 181, 183, 188, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 210, 223, 226, 275, 284, 317, 339, 342, 388, 402, 408, 411, 412, 413, 415, 416, 419, 420, 421, 422, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 430, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 440, 442, 443, 451, 452, 454, 457, 458, 460, 464, 469, 471, 475, 478, 489, 495 Dionysus, 13, 22, 28, 36, 47, 81, 111, 121, 132, 135, 136, 146, 149, 150, 151, 154, 188, 190, 191, 194, 195, 196, 317, 353, 357, 359, 366, 367, 374, 379, 389, 400, 412, 415, 416, 417, 422, 427, 436, 448, 449, 460, 471, 472, 475, 488 displeasure, 11, 9, 40, 127, 132 dissolution, 12, 25, 26, 30, 31, 107, 110, 115, 340, 357, 457 Dissonance, 30, 28, 30, 121, 134, 136, 146, 147, 152, 153, 154, 476, 483, 488 dithyramb, 31, 359, 363, 370, 379, 400 dominant, 56, 106, 113, 165, 166, 168, 173, 174, 175, 176, 297, 298, 306, 307, 320, 321, 322, 323, 332, 333, 335, 341, 371, 380 drive, 14, 50, 207, 208, 336, 338, 348, 354 dynamics, 25, 10, 40, 315, 318, 329, 338, 339, 370, 373, 388, 404

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 507 Ecce Homo, 14, 18, 19, 72, 122, 160, 290, 370, 378, 391, 445, 464, 482 ecstasy, 12, 4, 27, 31, 41, 207, 371, 415, 420, 421, 422, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 435 Eine Sylvesternacht, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167 Einleitung, 316 emotion, 17, 9, 11, 16, 26, 30, 37, 39, 47, 48, 218, 314, 340, 448, 451 empathy, 45, 47, 157, 178 enharmonic, 298, 318, 321, 323, 327, 329, 336, 337, 341 Entsinnlichung, 43 epode, 400 eternal recoming eternal recurrence, 349, 361, 362 eternal return, 349 eternity, 245, 330, 363, 367, 370, 371, 372, 379, 435, 450 ethos, 86, 138, 341, 342 ewige Wiederkehr, 349, 381 existentialist, 313 exposition development recapitulation, 319, 326, 338, 352, 353, 354, 355, 357, 375, 376, 380, 381, 382, 384, 387 expressive marking, 326 feeling, 7, 11, 12, 23, 26, 39, 41, 42, 45, 46, 48, 50, 137, 143, 145, 148, 209, 219, 315, 318, 326, 329, 336, 337, 412, 435, 455, 457 fermata, 11, 326, 334 finale, 24, 25, 351, 352, 362, 367, 369, 370, 371, 373, 379, 384, 386, 387 fragend, 336 free spirit, 15, 63 friend of noon, 402, 404, 405 friendship, 12, 20, 25, 72, 164, 347,

354, 391, 393, 394, 396, 397, 400, 404, 457 germ cell cellule génératrice, 376, 377, 379 Germania, 10, 158, 257, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 270, 273, 281, 291, 293, 316, 319 Germany, 14, 28, 24, 61, 67, 80, 98, 99, 182, 183, 185, 186, 194, 195, 202, 229, 315, 317, 347, 404, 413, 419, 420, 434, 499 Gesamtkunstwerk, 5, 12, 17, 19, 48, 99, 100, 101, 104, 116, 141, 142, 487 gesture, 14, 39, 40, 42, 231, 321, 339, 340 God, 6, 21, 26, 30, 3, 113, 121, 150, 206, 221, 227, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 236, 241, 246, 247, 252, 260, 268, 269, 271, 272, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 301, 347, 352, 353, 354, 355, 358, 359, 364, 366, 370, 389, 416, 423, 435, 439, 440, 447, 448, 449, 458, 482, 494 gods, 74, 85, 115, 160, 192, 382, 412, 438, 440, 450 great noon, 394, 400, 428 Greek tragedy, 12, 15, 73, 84, 85, 93, 120, 123, 133, 183, 194, 195, 317, 458 grindcore, 451 halcyonic tone, 375, 379 harmony harmonic, 25, 29, 30, 33, 35, 40, 135, 139, 140, 141, 144, 146, 148, 149, 156, 192, 210, 235, 279, 280, 303, 307, 308, 315, 321, 322, 327, 333, 335, 338, 339, 369, 371, 373, 414, 426, 456 Hauptrhythmus, 161, 163, 165, 170, 173, 174, 176

508

Index of Terms

hermeneutic, 121, 129, 148, 314 homophonic, 318, 326

lyricism, 41, 101 lyrist, 12, 438, 454

improvisation improvisatory, 131, 156, 159, 172, 173, 179, 347, 436 incorporation of experiences, 63, 209 intellect, 39, 41, 43, 44, 164 interpretation, 24, 14, 21, 22, 23, 32, 42, 57, 62, 63, 65, 98, 106, 107, 109, 114, 144, 190, 218, 219, 271, 290, 291, 292, 298, 300, 314, 315, 319, 329, 342, 352, 360, 361, 381, 401, 402, 403, 406, 415, 422, 427, 429 intertextual coherence, 383

main form exposition development recapitulation, 375, 376, 377, 380, 381, 382, 385, 387 Manfred-Meditation, 11, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177 meaning, 8, 12, 17, 23, 3, 8, 12, 13, 15, 23, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 42, 44, 45, 48, 60, 74, 81, 82, 83, 86, 97, 98, 110, 114, 130, 139, 143, 181, 189, 205, 212, 241, 272, 291, 314, 315, 319, 327, 339, 349, 367, 368, 370, 377, 378, 383, 387, 388, 413, 448, 453, 455 melody melodic, 17, 5, 6, 9, 11, 52, 67, 103, 129, 141, 170, 173, 174, 244, 245, 249, 251, 297, 308, 315, 338, 340, 342, 347, 369, 371, 375, 376, 380, 382, 454, 455, 456, 459 melos, 41 Mephistopheles, 157, 374, 379 metaphor, 30, 4, 9, 32, 63, 74, 75, 80, 85, 149, 171, 204, 268, 394 metaphysics, 13, 20, 22, 25, 27, 103, 124, 182, 295 minuet and trio, 24, 168, 351, 352, 362 Mit tiefem Gefühl, 326 Mitempfindung, 45, 46 Mitleid, 45, 52 Mittags Midday, 402 modulations, 23, 318, 356, 459 Monodie a Deux, 306 motive, 21, 161, 162, 163, 167, 173, 175, 176, 200, 201, 206, 211, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221

just-in-time friend, 402 key signature, 173, 319, 330 language, 12, 15, 17, 23, 5, 6, 9, 13, 17, 22, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 66, 88, 104, 112, 113, 115, 124, 132, 134, 135, 137, 138, 143, 146, 147, 148, 165, 171, 177, 179, 199, 200, 264, 290, 310, 317, 348, 350, 359, 364, 367, 377, 378, 388, 411, 415, 427, 434, 445, 453, 454 leitmotifs, 77, 78, 79, 81, 93 liberal arts, 70, 98, 236 Lieder, 9, 7, 8, 13, 14, 19, 161, 248, 251, 252, 256, 347, 485, 488, 492 linear, 307, 318, 381, 385 loneliness, 201, 372, 383, 384, 393, 394, 403, 406, 407 love, 9, 17, 29, 49, 50, 51, 52, 64, 70, 84, 85, 111, 157, 165, 170, 171, 207, 208, 212, 214, 221, 222, 226, 252, 279, 283, 289, 301, 355, 356, 358, 359, 364, 366, 367, 370, 372, 381, 382, 394, 396, 437, 446

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 509 moto perpetuo, 9, 10, 11 music as "sign-language of the affects", 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49,50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 94, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 110, 113, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146,147, 148, 150, 156, 157, 159, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 187, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201, 202, 203, 209, 210, 216, 218, 226, 228, 233, 234, 235, 236, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 248, 253, 257, 258, 260, 263, 264, 266, 269, 271, 272, 273, 280, 281, 282, 283, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 297, 299, 301, 302, 306, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 329, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 346, 347, 348, 349, 351, 367, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 380, 385, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 439, 440, 442, 443, 444, 445, 446, 448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 477, 484, 486, 491, 495, 496,

497, 499 musician, 9, 11, 13, 27, 6, 8, 14, 22, 37, 52, 53, 61, 65, 124, 138, 235, 263, 290, 291, 296, 311, 312, 314, 317, 347, 348, 349, 351, 356, 410, 451, 453, 457, 495 Nachbildung, 46 Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht, 11, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 307 nationalism, 26, 61, 181, 433 natural speech in images, 378, 388 nature, 14, 16, 17, 20, 4, 7, 14, 15, 16, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 38, 41, 51, 64, 77, 102, 103, 104, 108, 112, 122, 131, 135, 136, 140, 157, 171, 176, 178, 184, 185, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203, 207, 208, 209, 210,212, 221, 222, 227, 234, 274, 277, 291, 295, 296, 306, 341, 357, 359, 372, 376, 395, 400, 418, 419, 427, 434, 439, 453 New Wave of British Heavy Metal, 450 nihilism, 27, 102, 106, 111, 361, 443, 447, 448, 449, 458, 459, 498 Ninth Symphony, 7, 24, 134, 142, 143, 209, 349, 369, 371, 372, 380, 452 “On Music”, 235 one becoming two, 403 onto-historical world, 23, 311, 314, 315, 339 opera, 17, 18, 24, 4, 6, 13, 14, 15, 16, 28, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 73, 74, 76, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 114, 138, 139, 141, 182, 183, 186, 194, 265, 297, 348, 350, 351, 366, 370, 422, 423, 459, 470, 495, 499

510

Index of Terms

operatic singing, 14 Organic Solidity, 385 over-all tone (“Gesammtton”), 377 overhuman Übermensch, 53, 112, 370 passion, 14, 18, 37, 41, 49, 63, 136, 138, 206, 207, 226, 238, 317, 360, 370, 373, 377, 417, 450, 451, 457 pathos, 34, 41, 50, 131, 138, 141, 231, 268, 338, 342, 373, 449 pedal, 168, 170, 175, 306, 307, 322, 323, 326, 330, 331, 332, 334, 336, 338 performance, 10, 17, 7, 14, 15, 17, 60, 100, 107, 131, 172, 189, 190, 236, 241, 261, 294, 302, 304, 315, 316, 319, 341, 436, 438, 439, 496 phenomenological methods, 314 philology, 10, 20, 80, 172, 290, 301, 316 philosopher, 15, 26, 3, 4, 22, 45, 48, 63, 67, 100, 124, 156, 157, 184, 202, 204, 208, 210, 222, 276, 312, 341, 348, 349, 359, 404, 410, 411, 412, 413, 415, 416, 419, 421, 422, 423, 427, 436, 447, 460, 477 Philosophy, 5, 7, 16, 25, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 35, 36, 38, 54, 100, 105, 116, 124, 128, 133, 134, 138, 143, 149, 150, 208, 222, 224, 243, 273, 285, 314, 343, 350, 411, 442, 452, 458, 459, 460, 463, 465, 466, 468, 470, 472, 473, 475, 479, 487, 488, 489, 494, 495, 497, 498 piano pianissimo, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 23, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 59, 156, 158, 159, 162, 164, 165, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 177, 235, 236, 237, 238, 258, 261, 262, 269, 270, 272, 284, 287, 291,

302, 306, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 326, 329, 330, 336, 342, 347, 348, 349, 361, 423, 426, 436, 437, 492, 495, 496, 497, 499 pity, 51, 52, 132, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 401, 402, 403, 406, 435, 447, 449, 451 pleasure, 12, 13, 9, 29, 30, 32, 40, 42, 44, 132, 140, 141, 171, 182, 188, 235, 275, 410, 439 power feeling of power, 15, 3, 10, 15, 24, 35, 41, 43, 44, 48, 49, 53, 73, 78, 79, 85, 96, 98, 132, 138, 147, 158, 178, 184, 186, 194, 202, 203, 205, 208, 209, 210, 220, 227, 232, 246, 267, 276, 282, 309, 341, 348, 354, 356, 359, 360, 361, 365, 372, 376, 379, 385, 411, 419, 430, 434, 438, 439, 450, 454, 457 primeval sound, 376, 377 prolongation, 11, 320, 322, 324, 327, 330 Prometheus, 6, 19, 120, 125, 126, 127, 135, 146, 150, 152, 153, 155, 371, 372, 374, 379, 427, 469, 479, 484, 487, 491 proportioning, 379 proposition propositional, 7, 23, 438 psycho-somatic, 48 PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL, 70 public scholar, 71 rationality, 43, 134, 411, 418 reason, 20, 26, 43, 44, 45, 61, 64, 99, 105, 110, 113, 143, 171, 172, 183, 229, 247, 264, 275, 301, 313, 354, 356, 420, 443, 454, 455, 457 recapitulation, 319, 326, 329, 333, 352, 354, 355, 375, 380 recitativo, 335

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 511 redemption in Christianity by oneself, 415 referential meaning, 314, 315 repetition, 38, 88, 327, 330, 333, 335, 338, 339, 356, 377, 378, 379, 381, 382, 385, 399, 400, 402, 455 representation, 16, 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 15, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 39, 64, 67, 138, 166, 216, 273, 314, 417, 418, 452, 454 resonance, 33, 330, 411, 429 ressentiment, 443, 445, 448 revision (Nagelprobe, ad unguem), 238, 437 rhythm rhythmic, 17, 21, 25, 9, 22, 24, 26, 29, 33, 35, 40, 47, 48, 124, 129, 130, 131, 132, 209, 301, 302, 304, 305, 309, 315, 340, 341, 370, 371, 373, 388, 438, 455, 456 ritardando, 174, 326 romantic romanticism, 13, 48, 178, 433, 451 rondo, 24, 214, 351, 352, 362 sacrifice, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 371, 447 satisfaction with oneself, 32, 178, 198, 200, 203, 208, 210, 218 Saturnalia, 379 scherzo and trio, 24, 352, 362 Schulpforta, 10, 158, 229, 316 Schumannesque, 319 score score of metaphors, 10, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 9, 10, 128, 133, 200, 201, 214, 215, 216, 237, 245, 260, 263, 271, 316, 318, 341, 369, 377, 378, 380, 388, 389, 453, 499

Siegfried Idyll, 165, 166, 167, 180, 493 simulation, 46 singing, 9, 10, 25, 30, 3, 5, 15, 41, 42, 43, 57, 58, 100, 103, 144, 145, 161, 192, 194, 235, 248, 315, 316, 359, 360, 389 Skizze, 330 sludge metal doom metal, 442 sobornost’, 417, 422, 429 sonata, 24, 319, 346, 352, 362, 374, 375, 388, 423, 424, 430, 437, 467 (-allegro) form, 294, 423, 424, 425, 426 song, 16, 25, 28, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21, 41, 47, 48, 123, 135, 137, 138, 139, 145, 161, 167, 211, 245, 253, 298, 299, 303, 319, 359, 360, 363, 366, 367, 373, 379, 388, 392, 400, 401, 438, 442, 443, 444, 449, 450, 454, 455, 461, 482, 495 song cycle, 7 Soothsayer Magician, 360 sophrosune, 91 sostenuto, 326, 338, 339 sound-in-time sound, 314, 315, 326, 336 speechsong, 370 spirit of heaviness, 67, 353 stepwise motion, 320, 331, 338 suffering, 12, 15, 20, 49, 50, 52, 111, 133, 140, 171, 205, 207, 210, 219, 221, 222, 274, 319, 329, 353, 354, 355, 358, 361, 423, 424, 425, 429, 435, 439, 449, 450 suspension, 11, 303, 337 sverkhchelovek, 422 symbol symbolism, 12, 16, 41, 67, 75, 140, 388, 454

512

Index of Terms

symphony in three movements in four movements, 24, 127, 139, 143, 178, 346, 348, 350, 351, 352, 353, 356, 359, 362, 365, 368, 369, 370, 371, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 380, 383, 385, 387, 388, 457 syncopation, 303, 304, 335, 339 syntax syntactical, 23, 179, 207, 311, 314, 315, 318, 319, 327, 330, 340, 342, 367 tempo, 17, 24, 291, 294, 315, 318, 325, 326, 329, 335, 336, 338, 339, 342, 352, 358, 362, 365, 366, 368 temporal, 16, 130, 209, 301, 305, 315, 326, 336, 337 text setting, 5 texture textural, 10, 77, 219, 307, 318, 326, 327, 329, 338 The Birth of Tragedy, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 26, 27, 4, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, 28, 31, 33, 37, 40, 43, 67, 80, 81, 120, 122, 125, 126, 127, 129, 135, 139, 140, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 152, 171, 181, 182, 184, 187, 190, 196, 197, 316, 317, 342, 374, 390, 391, 410,411, 415, 421, 426, 427, 428, 433, 434, 443, 451, 454, 458, 463, 464, 467, 480, 484 theme and variations, 24, 43, 44, 70, 82, 111, 135, 136, 137, 165, 166, 168, 170, 175, 242, 294, 319, 320, 325, 331, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 360, 362, 364, 366, 376, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 386, 387, 417, 420 theurgy, 416, 419, 422, 428

Thus Spoke Zarathustra Zarathrustra's Prologue, 7, 14, 15, 18, 23, 24, 128, 204, 209, 210, 212, 277, 296, 301, 306, 310, 350, 352, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 410, 421, 422, 428, 445, 465, 483, 497 time signature, 293, 295, 296, 298, 302, 323, 330 tonality tonal, 15, 113, 128, 134, 149, 164, 298, 300, 319, 320, 321, 322, 326, 329, 332, 333, 335, 338, 426, 427 tone, 11, 15, 17, 6, 9, 10, 24, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 130, 137, 144, 147, 172, 178, 265, 280, 283, 289, 294, 306, 307, 316, 352, 354, 364, 365, 367, 371, 373, 375, 376, 377, 379, 380, 381, 394, 396, 450, 453, 454 tragedy tragic, 10, 18, 25, 26, 16, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 73, 76, 81, 82, 83, 84, 90, 91, 92, 99, 100, 101, 102, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 141, 146, 147, 148, 159, 173, 179, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 196, 342, 423, 424, 428, 433, 451, 454, 475 transfiguration of Christ, 17, 20, 21, 132, 136, 140, 199, 200, 201, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 215, 220, 221, 222, 426, 429 transition transitional, 22, 146, 161, 166, 175, 216, 234, 238, 321, 323, 324, 325, 326, 329, 335, 337, 353, 354, 371, 374, 378 Tribschen, 11, 136, 164 Triebe drives, 348, 353

Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments 513 Tristan chord, 171 Tristan und Isolde, 215, 343, 474 Triumphlied, 172, 457 unconscious, 39, 40, 41, 43, 45, 423, 457 unison choir, 373 unity, 12, 17, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 43, 51, 102, 103, 104, 114, 188, 191, 236, 297, 313, 340, 350, 388, 412, 413, 417, 418, 419, 420, 422, 438, 451, 454 Villa Diodati, 157

virtual feeling, 318 vox humana, 376 Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen, 350 way of life, 25, 64, 108, 392 Will to Power, 35, 179, 442, 466 Wizard, 450, 451 word intelligibility, 6 Zeitgeist, 52 zogernd, 336, 338 Zukunftsmusik Zukunftsmusiker, 239, 263, 456