Nietzsche, Friedrich (Wilhelm)

(b Röcken, nr Leipzig, 15 Oct 1844; d Weimar, 25 Aug 1900).

German philosopher. His chief significance for the aesthetics of music is the distinction he drew
between the ‘Romantic’ and the ‘Dionysian’ – a distinction which leads to the repudiation of
Romanticism as an expression and product of sickness. The immediate application – and quite
certainly what Nietzsche had principally in mind – is to the music of Richard Wagner. In 1868,
when he was 24, he was introduced to Wagner, who was more than 30 years his senior, and became,
as he afterwards wrote, ‘one of the corruptest Wagnerians’. He was an intimate of Wagner's
household and one of the most active advocates of Wagner's cause. His first published book, Die
Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872), was regarded by its first readers, and by
Nietzsche himself, as primarily a work of Wagnerian propaganda: to a subsequently very influential
theory of the ritual origin of Greek tragedy, originally framed within the context of his classical
studies and without any thought of Wagner, is appended a much inferior thesis that Wagnerian
music drama represents a modern rebirth of tragedy – the final effect being to make the earlier
sections of the book, in which its value in fact lies, seem only a preparation for the later. Richard
Wagner in Bayreuth, published in 1876 to coincide with the inauguration of the Bayreuther
Festspiele, attempts an analysis of Wagner's character and aims which is vitiated by the disciple's
determined exaggeration of the significance of Wagner's art. But it is clear from the present
knowledge of Nietzsche's biography that by 1876 it required an effort of will for him to continue to
side so completely with the composer; during the festival itself this effort was no longer
forthcoming and Nietzsche left Bayreuth, suffering from severe headaches, and began work on
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, in which Wagner is not mentioned by name but which contains
many critical aphorisms on ‘the artist’ which obviously refer to him. Thereafter Nietzsche
maintained a continuously sceptical attitude towards the pretensions of the Wagnerians and an
increasingly critical evaluation of Wagnerian opera which culminated in Der Fall Wagner (1888),
an extremely brilliant and ferocious attack which, without for a moment diminishing one's sense of
Wagner's artistic importance, undercuts his every claim to greatness. This volte-face with regard to
Wagner was explained by Nietzsche as the consequence of his having come to recognize that in
evaluating Wagner's art so highly he had committed a specific error: the error of mistaking the
Romantic for the Dionysian. ‘With regard to all aesthetic values’, he wrote in Die fröhliche
Wissenschaft (book 5), ‘I now avail myself of this principal distinction: I ask in each individual case
“is it hunger or is it superfluity which has here become creative?”’. He explained this distinction:

Every art, every philosophy may be viewed as an aid and remedy in the service of
growing and striving life: they always presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there
are two kinds of sufferer: firstly he who suffers from superabundance of life, who
desires a Dionysian art and likewise a tragic view of and insight into life – and then
he who suffers from poverty of life, who seeks in art and knowledge either rest,
peace, a smooth sea, delivery from himself, or intoxication, paroxysm, stupefaction,
madness. The twofold requirement of the latter corresponds to all Romanticism in art
and knowledge, it corresponded … to Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, to name
the two most famous and emphatic Romantics which were formerly misunderstood
by me.

Romantic music is neurotic: ‘Wagner's art is sick … Wagner est une névrose’ (Der Fall Wagner).
Against Wagner's music he sets that of Carmen, which seems to him ‘perfect’:

It approaches lightly, lithely, politely. It is amiable, it does not sweat. ‘The good is
easy, everything godlike runs on light feet’: first proposition of my aesthetics. This
 music is wicked, cunning, fatalistic: it remains at the same time popular … It is rich.
It is precise. It constructs, organizes, finishes: it is therewith the antithesis of the
polyp of music, ‘endless melody’.

Carmen dispenses with ‘the lie of the grand style’. He concludes: ‘Il faut méditerraniser la
musique’ and demands a ‘return to nature, health, cheerfulness, youth, virtue’ in music. Finally, in
his autobiography Ecce homo (1888; published in 1908) he sums up: ‘What is it I suffer from when
I suffer from the destiny of music? From this: that music has been deprived of its world-
transfiguring affirmative character, that it is décadence – music and no longer the flute of
Dionysus’. This contrast between neurotic, decadent, perspiring Romantic music and healthy, light-
footed, unburdened Dionysian music is sufficiently close to that drawn by the anti-Romantic
reaction of the 1920s and later to make of Nietzsche a strikingly direct precursor of that reaction,
and of the 20th century's repudiation in general of all that is over-burdened, over-decorated and
heavy in the art of the 19th.

It should be remarked that Nietzsche was an excellent pianist, and during his youth – roughly 1854–
74 – an amateur composer: he published one later composition, Hymnus an das Leben (Leipzig,
1887), a setting for chorus and orchestra of a poem by Lou von Salomé. Some of his songs appeared
in a critical edition (Leipzig, 1924), but until Janz's critical edition of all Nietzsche's surviving
works, most of his compositions, including sacred and secular choral works and many piano pieces,
were available only in manuscript (in D-WRgs). Late 20th-century recordings of some of his
compositions have served only to make more clearly apparent their lack of individuality. A number
of musical works have been based on or inspired by Nietzsche's writings, particularly by Also
sprach Zarathustra; the most important of these are the fourth movement of Mahler's Third
Symphony, Delius's A Mass of Life and Requiem, Diepenbrock's Im grossen Schweigen for baritone
and orchestra, Rezniček's Ruhm und Ewigkeit for tenor and orchestra; songs by Delius, Medtner,
Peterson-Berger, Ludomir Różycki, Schoenberg and S.I. Taneyev; and programmatic works by
Campo (the string quartet Las horas de Nietzsche), Ingenhoven (Symphonische Fantasie über
Zarathustras Nachtlied) and Richard Strauss (the symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra).

R.J. HOLLINGDALE

WRITINGS

only those relating to music

Editions: Friedrich Nietzsche: Werke, ed. K. Schlechta (Munich, 1954–6, 8/1977); index (Munich,
1965, 2/1967)
Friedrich Nietzsche: Werke, ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari (Berlin, 1967–80) [critical edn]
Friedrich Nietzsche: Der musikalische Nachlass, ed. C.P. Janz (Kassel, 1976)
Das griechische Musikdrama, 1870
Die dionysische Weltanschauung, 1870
Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (Leipzig, 1872, enlarged 3/1886); Eng. trans. in
Kaufmann, 3–144
Über Musik und Wort, 1871
Vorwort an Richard Wagner, 1871
Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, iv: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (Chemnitz, 1876; Eng. trans., 1910)
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Chemnitz, 1878–80)
Morgenröte (Chemnitz, 1881)
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Chemnitz, 1882)
Also sprach Zarathustra (Chemnitz, 1883–91)
Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Leipzig, 1886); Eng. trans. in Kaufmann, 180–435
Der Fall Wagner (Leipzig, 1888); Eng. trans. in Kaufmann, 603–53
Götzendämmerung (Leipzig, 1889)
Nietzsche contra Wagner (Leipzig, 1889)
Ecce homo (Leipzig, 1908) [written 1888]; Eng. trans. in Kaufmann, 656–791

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. Hildenbrandt: Wagner und Nietzsche (Breslau, 1924)

K. Jaspers: Nietzsche (Berlin and Leipzig, 1936, 2/1947)
E. Newman: The Life of Richard Wagner, iv (London, 1947/R)
E. Heintel: ‘Adrian Leverkühn und Friedrich Nietzsche’, Wissenschaft und Weltbild, iii (1950),
297–303
W.A. Kaufmann: Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton, NJ, 1950, 4/1974)
T.W. Adorno: Versuch über Wagner (Berlin and Frankfurt, 1952, 2/1964); repr. in Gesammelte
Schriften, xiii: Die musikalischen Monographien, ed. G. Adorno and R. Tiedemann (Frankfurt,
1971), 7–148
R.A. Nicholls: Nietzsche in the Early Work of Thomas Mann (Berkeley, 1955)
C. von Westernhagen: Richard Wagner (Zürich, 1956, 2/1978; Eng. trans., 1978)
C. von Westernhagen: ‘Nietzsches Dionysos-Mythos’, NZM, Jg.119 (1958), 419–25
R. Hollinrake: ‘Nietzsche, Wagner and Ernest Newman’, ML, xli (1960), 245–55
J.W. Klein: ‘Nietzsche's Attitude to Bizet’, MR, xxi (1960), 215–25
W. Reichert and K. Schlechta, eds.: International Nietzsche Bibliography (Chapel Hill, NC, 1960,
2/1968)
F.R. Love: Young Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience (Chapel Hill, NC, 1963)
L. Schrade: Tragedy in the Art of Music (Cambridge, MA, 1964)
M. Vogel: ‘Nietzsches Wettkampf mit Wagner’, Beiträge zur Musikanschauung im 19. Jahrhundert,
ed. W. Salmen (Regensburg, 1965), 195–225
I. Frenzel: Friedrich Nietzsche in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek, 1966)
E. Lockspeiser: ‘Schoenberg, Nietzsche, and Debussy’, Essays on Music, ed. F. Aprahamian
(London, 1967), 209–12 [orig. in The Listener (9 March 1961)]
G. Abraham: ‘Nietzsche’s Attitude to Wagner: a Fresh View’, Slavonic and Romantic Music
(London, 1968), 313–22 [orig. in ML, xiii (1932), 64–74]
J. Galecki: ‘Nietzsche und Bizets Carmen’, Wissenschaft und Weltbild, xxi (1968), 12–29
K. Grunder, ed.: Der Streit um Nietzsches ‘Geburt der Tragödie’: die Schriften von E. Rohde, R.
Wagner und U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff (Hildesheim, 1969)
H. Mainzer: ‘Thomas Manns “Doktor Faustus”: ein Nietzsche-Roman?’, Wirkendes Wort, xxi
(1971), 24–38
C.P. Janz: ‘Die Kompositionen Friedrich Nietzsches’, Nietzsche-Studien, i (1972), 173–84
D.S. Thatcher: ‘Nietzsche and Brahms: a Forgotten Relationship’, ML, liv (1973), 261–80
D.S. Thatcher: ‘Musical Settings of Nietzsche Texts: an Annotated Bibliography’, Nietzsche-
Studien, iv (1975), 284–323; v (1976), 355–83
F.R. Love: ‘Nietzsche, Music and Madness’, ML, lx (1979), 186–203
R. Hollinrake: Nietzsche, Wagner and the Philosophy of Pessimism (London, 1982)
M. Eger: ‘Wenn ich Wagnern der Krieg mache …’: der Fall Nietzsche und das menschliche
Allzumenschliche (Vienna, 1988)
J. Köhler: Friedrich Nietzsche und Cosima Wagner: die Schule der Unterwerfung (Berlin, 1996;
Eng. trans., 1998)