Without Music, Life Would Be A Mistake!

Rolling on from the recent excursions into different philosophical views of music. This week brings us to that cheery fellow Nietzsche.

If you’ve ever felt like music touches something deep within you that no words can reach, something wild, raw, and dangerous perhaps... then Friedrich Nietzsche is right up your street. Out of all the major philosophers, Nietzsche didn’t just appreciate music he lived it. He saw it as essential to life, to meaning, to truth. He musicked himself and composed his own works, although I’m sure how successful this was for him.

In his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) he illustrated his deep love affair with music. In it, he talks about two big artistic forces derived from the Greek god tradition: the Apollonian (order, reason, beauty) and the Dionysian (chaos, emotion, ecstasy). A bit like Yin and Yang! He suggests how great art, especially Greek tragedy, comes from a balance of these two. Within this framework, music, according to the man himself is of course the purest example of the Dionysian form. To Nietzsche, music wasn't just one art form among many. It was the deepest, most primal expression of human experience. While painting and sculpture show us the world as it appears, music goes underneath all that and reveals the raw emotional undercurrent of life itself. In his words, “Music is a world that can be explained by no other.”

Early on, Nietzsche was a big fan of the composer Richard Wagner. He thought Wagner’s operas embodied the perfect fusion of music, myth, and emotion, the modern equivalent of an ancient Greek tragedy. He even called Wagner’s music the resurrection of the Dionysian spirit. This didn’t last! As he older and matured, he grew disillusioned with Wagner. He accused him of pandering to the crowd, of using music not to elevate people, but to manipulate them emotionally and politically (especially through German nationalism and Christianity). In The Case of Wagner (1888) Nietzsche changed his tune and unloaded on his former hero, calling his music decadent and corrupting.

For Nietzsche, music wasn’t just about aesthetics or pleasure. It was a force of life, a way to express what couldn’t be spoken, to confront suffering, and to affirm existence. He believed that the best music doesn’t sugar-coat life or escape from pain. Instead, it embraces the chaos, the highs and lows, and turns them into something meaningful through organised sound.

He often connected music with his concept of the Übermensch (or 'Overman') a person who creates their own values, dances with chaos, and says 'yes' to life in all its messy glory. Music, in this sense, wasn’t an escape, it was a mirror of the soul, and sometimes a path to transcend it. Many music allows a little bit of this energy... who knows?

In short, Nietzsche believed music was the heartbeat of existence. Not just a background track, but a revelation. Something that reveals who we really are beneath the masks. Something that can scream, cry, dance, and soar all without saying a single word. For me I’ve always been drawn to Nietzsche’s moodiness, there’s something in his writing that brutally encapsulates the spirit of music being a ‘higher power’, if you’re into that kind of thing.

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Adam Ficek hosts a monthly show 'Tonic Music' on Totally Wired Radio, where he talks to various guests about music and mental health. You can listen again to any of the previous show on the Tonic Music Mixcloud page.