Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star

"The word gets the upper hand and jumps out of the sentence, the sentence stretches too far and obscures the meaning of the page, the page acquires life at the expense of the whole -- the whole is no longer the whole." (The Case of Wagner pp. 25)

The Case for Wagner/Phyllis Hyman

“Is it at all possible to be a better listener? – I bury my ears under this music, I hear the very reason of it. I seem to assist at its production…Has it been noticed that music makes the spirit free? That is gives wings to thought? That one becomes a musician?”

- The Case of Wagner (pg 6-7)





This video is taken from the Broadway musical “Sophisticated Ladies” featuring Phyllis Hyman. I choose this clip because it encapsulates the Nietzche meaning of music setting the spirit free. The opening lines of the song states, “What good melody? What good is music? If it ain’t possessing something sweet. It ain’t the melody. Not it ain’t the music. There’s something that makes the tune complete. If don’t mean it a thing if ain’t got that swing.” It is the swing of the music that frees the spirit and gives wings to thought.

Mars Volta - "Concertina"

"If I am fond of the sea and of all that is of the sea's kind, and fondest when it angrily contradicts me; if that delight in searching which drives the sails toward the undiscovered is in me, if a seafarer's delight is in my delight; if ever my jubilation cried, 'The coast has vanished, no the last chain has fallen from me; the boundless roars around me, far out glisten space and time; be of good cheer, old heart!' Oh, how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?" (Nietzsche, 'Thus Spake Zarathustra, Third Part, Section 5, pp. 342)

Group Post - The Case of Wagner Section 3

"The first thing his art furnishes is a magnifying - glass. We look into it, we don't trust our own eyes -- everything becomes great, even Wagner becomes great... [. . .] Someone always wants to be saved in Wagner's works " (10).



Idioteque creates an illusion of panic, causing the lyrics, the message to appear greater than it is, more immediate. The lyrics command salvation from the doom that the music threatens is approaching. Like Wagnerian music, Idioteque creates a need to be saved from something, not only does it preach salvation, but it has to create an enemy, a threat. The music lures the listener in to believing there is danger to escape and that it is even possible to escape it.

The Smiths-Big Mouth Strikes Again

"Has it been noticed that music makes the spirit free? That it gives wings to thought? That one becomes so much more a philosopher, the more one becomes a musician?...Bizet makes me productive. All that is good makes me productive. I have no other gratitude, nor do I have any other proof of what is good" (Nietzsche: The Case of Wagner, 7).

Marvin Gaye - The Birth of Tragedy

“Something like the voice ofa mystical and almost maenadic soul which stammers in a strange tongue, with great difficulty and capriciously, almost as if undecided whether to communicate or conceal itsel£ It ought to have sung, this 'new soul', and not talked! What a pity it is that I did not dare to say what I had to say at that time as a poet; perhaps I could have done it!

-Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Birth of Tragedy” (pg. 6)





What this song symbolizes is that some messages are best expressed when set to music or in a song. Music often makes a difficult message more palatable. When Nietzsche believe he should have had the courage to sing his message may have meant that he felt it would have been better received.


Miguel Palmer

Krump - The Birth of Tragedy

“In the Dionysiac dithyramb35 man is stimulated to the highest intensification of his symbolic powers; something that he has never felt before urgently demands to be expressed: the destruction of the veil of maya, one-ness as the genius of humankind, indeed of nature itself The essence of nature is bent on expressing itself; a new world of symbols is required, firstly the symbolism of the entire body, not just of the mouth, the face, the word, but the full gesture of dance with its rhythmical movement of every limb. Then there is a sudden, tempestuous growth in music's other symbolic powers, in rhythm, dynamics, and harmony. To comprehend this complete unchaining of all symbolic powers, a man must already have reached that height of self-abandonment which seeks symbolic expression in those powers: thus the dithyrambic servant of Dionysos can only be understood by his own kind!”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Birth of Tragedy” (pg. 21)




This is an example of what Nietzche means to “reach that height of self-abandonment…only to be understood by his own kind”. This style of dancing is called “Krump” and involves the total body that looks violent and as if the individual is possessed to the outside observer but is totally understood those within the “Krumping” community.


Miguel Palmer

BeBe and CeCe - The Genealogy of Morals

“In the last analysis, a denial and cancellation of himself by an artist who all his life had worked for opposite end, to create an art combining the greatest spiritual and sensual power…Feurerbach’s war cry of “healthy sensuality,” sounded during the thirties and forties, seemed to Wagner…to be a new gospel.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Genealogy of Morals”




In contemplating this passage I wondered what Nietzche, Wagner or Feurerbach would think of gospel duo BeBe & CeCe Winans (brother & sister). They found a why to express their earthly love for some one while maintaining gospel integrity. They are living proof that one does not necessarily negate the other.


Miguel Palmer

Simple Things - The Artist and the Sublime

“For at the moment when, torn from the will, we have given ourselves up to pure, will-less knowing, we have stepped into another world, so to speak, where everything that moves our will, and thus violently agitates us, no longer exists. This liberation of knowledge lifts us as wholly and completely above all this as do sleep and dreams.”

-The Essential Schopenhauer, “The Artist and the Sublime”



This passage speaks of the ability of art (music) to almost magically transport us from a place of knowing to a will-less knowing. This particular song, “Simple Things” by Elisabeth Withers has the ability to take my mind from whatever the situation is to a place of evaluation and fond memories of what really matters. All of this is done without my permission or knowledge or “will-less knowing”.

Miguel Palmer

Korn - Twist (Greatest Hits Vol. 1)

"A different spirit rules in the theatre since the spirit of Wagner began to rule there: the most difficult is demanded, there is severe blaming, there is rarely praising,--the good, the excellent, is regarded as the rule. Taste is no longer necessary; not even voice. Wagner is only sung with a ruined voice: that has a "dramatic" effect. Even talent is excluded." (The Case of Wagner, p. 40)

"Twist" by Korn could be an example of Wagner's music wrought and engendered in the theatre, given its atonality, and the way Jonathan Davis' growls scat out dramatic syllables in between beats.

Only Shallow- My Bloody Valentine

"'A spectacle superb! But still, alas! a spectacle. Where seize I thee, O Nature infinite?' This cry is answered in the most positive manner by music. Here, the world outside us speaks to us in terms intelligible beyond compare, since its sounding message to our ear is of the selfsame nature as the cry sent forth to it from the depths of our own inner heart. The object of the tone perceived is brought into immediate rapport with the subject of the tone emitted: without any reasoning go-between we understand the cry for help, the wail, the shout of joy, the straightway answer in its own tongue. If the scream, the moan, the murmured happiness in our own mouth is the most direct utterance of the will's emotion, so when brought to us by our ear we understand it past denial as utterance of the same emotion; no illusion is possible here, as in the daylight show, to make us deem the essence of the world outside us not wholly identical with our own; and thus that gulf which seems to sight is closed forthwith" (183.)- Wagner, The Artwork of the Future

“Has it been noticed that music makes the spirit free? That it gives wings to thought? That one becomes so much more a philosopher, the more one becomes a musician? The grey heaven of abstraction thrilled, as it were, by lightings; the light strong enough for all the filigree of things; the great problems ready to be grasped; the universe surveyed as from a mountain summit... All that is good makes me productive. I have no other gratitude, nor have I any other proof of what is good.” [The Case of Wagner, 7]

The "infinite melody" seeks deliberately to break all evenness of time and force and even scorns it occasionally; the wealth of its invention lies precisely in that which to an older ear sounds like a rythmic paradox and blaphsemy. The rythm or domination of such a tatse would result in a danger to music which cannot be exaggerated: the complete degeneration of rhythmic feeling, chaos in place of rhythm (Nietzsche Contra Wagner 666).

Joy Division - Shadowplay

"I believe that artists often do not know what they can do best: they are too vain . . . What is ultimately good in their own garden and vineyard they esteem lightly, and their love and insight are not equal. There is a musician who, more than any other musician, is a master at finding the tones in the realm of suffering, depressed, and tortured souls, at giving language even to mute misery. None can equal him in the colors of late fall, in the indescribably moving happiness of the last, truly last, truly shortest joy; he knows a sound for those quiet, disquieting midnights of the soul where cause and effect seem to be out of joint and where at any moment something might originate 'out of nothing.'" (663 Nietzsche Contra Wagner)

Enigma - Return To Innocence

"In order to display that content as a purely human one and dictated by the feeling: so also have we to cut away from the verbal expression all that springs from, and answers to, these disfigurements of the purely human and feeling-bidden; and to remove it in such a way that this purely human core shall alone remain" (Wagner on Music 197).
I won't pretend to know what the "purely human core" is that Wagner speaks of, I do however know that unspeakable feeling of being described by sound. When I feel lost in a song it is as though I am without form and connected to a glimmer of that shining thing that hums within us all and reverberates off our chests, to be answered by the great call of the universe. I see the failings of language everyday and experience my shortcomings in conveying what it is I 'truly' mean. This song is mostly music and chanting with very few sung words. I have always felt that this song did an excellent job of depicting the fleeting nature of life; the rapidity of age and the ceaseless drive of change that enfolds us all and pushes us beyond our control, to the rhythms of life that ultimately and inevitably end in death. This song is like a memory of what Wagner is talking about; a ghost of that core; for it is unlikely that we can hold onto our meanings any more than we can hold onto a flowing stream or the fickle wind. I think Wagner is right, though, that we have to "cut away from the verbal expression" so that we may summon the voice singing within us of our pure form.

Dancing with Kadafi, Infected Mushroom

Wagner’s infinite melody “seeks deliberately to break all evenness of time and force and even scorns it occasionally; the wealth of its invention lies precisely in that which to an older ear sounds like a rhythmic paradox and blasphemy” (Nietzsche Contra Wagner p. 666).

In Dancing with Kadafi, Infected Mushroom expresses the “complete degeneration of rhythmic feeling, [by putting] chaos in place of rhythm”. Like Wagner, Infected Mushroom wanted a different sort of movement, overthrowing the “physiological presupposition of previous music,” in order to make one feel like swimming and floating, not walking and dancing. Before Infected Mushroom, the Trance music scene was about the catchy and simple melodies one would hear on a club’s dance floor (e.g. La Primavera by Sash!). Infected Mushroom, on the other hand, requires the listener to clear his mind of any presuppositions so that he may discover the complex, melodic trance Infected has to offer. A suspension of disbelief makes listening to Dancing with Kadafi like diving into the world of a long fairy tale. The song builds up from the dark and quiet, to something far more driving and exciting, making the music both beautiful and threatening at the same time.

A Musical Story by Sergei Prokofiev

In The Case of Wagner Nietzsche says, "Wagner begins from a hallucination-not of sounds but of gestures. Then he seeks the sign language of sounds for them...how he separates, how he gains small units, how he animates these, severs them, and makes them visible" (Kaufmann 626). This musical story of Peter and the Wolf, written by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev in 1936, is a perfect example of the format in which Nietzsche describes Wagner to have worked in. The gestures, in this case, are the individual characters of the story, such as Peter, Grandpa, the duck, and the bird. The "sign language of sounds" is so much more than sounds alone but individual instruments that have their own tone, quality, and color. Each character has an instrument (or in the protagonists case, a group of instruments) assigned to them which delineates their place in the narrative. Just as Wagner separates, severs, and animates these small units the characters and instruments are introduced to us one-by-one. Even as the story is told the pieces are individually represented but strung together to show us the progression of the story.



The story is in two parts, and I know it is a bit long but I think it should be listened to it in its entirety. If not to pick out the similarities that it has with Nietzsche's words regarding Wagner then at least to find out what happens to Peter and his friends.

Kaufmann, W. The Basic Writings of Nietzsche . New York: The Modern Library, 2000.

The Beatles on Segration

A contract revealing that the Beatles refused to perform in front of segregated audiences in the United States has sold for $23,033 at an auction in Los Angeles, well over the $3,000 to $5,000 expected by the auction house.
The document, which was signed by the band's manager, Brian Epstein, stipulated that they would "not be required to perform in front of a segregated audience" for their gig at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California on August 31st, 1965. In addition to the desegregation clause, the contract guaranteed the band $40,000 and at least 150 police officers to provide security at the show.

DORIC COLUMNS--FOR NIETZSCHE

http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/27/2723/NIIND00Z/art-print/doug-mckinlay-the-massive-doric-columns-of-the-parthenon-athens-attica-greece.jpg

Moondog - "Ostrich Feathers Played on Drum"

"...Wagner's art is sick. The problem he presents on the stage--all of them problems o fhysterics--the convulsive nature of his affects, his over excited sensibility, his taste that required ever stronger spices, his instability which he dressed up as principles..." (Section 5, 8th paragraph, "The Case of Wagner")

"An instinct is weakened when it realizes itself: for by rationalizing itself it weakens itself." (Postscript, 3rd paragraph, "The Case of Wagner")



If the problem is over excitement, the need for stronger spices in order to be tasteful at all, then let us return to the simpler, to allow our pallet to relax with simple tastes. But our recipe cannot be over thought, it should merely manifest our hungers as they are. 'Ostrich Feathers Played on Drum" is only itself, claiming and thinking it is nothing else than it is.

The Dancing Song (song that dances)

I liked the Zarathustra readings more, perhaps, than I would have otherwise were it not for our discussion last week on the possible futility of trying to sciencify music. To whit, one needs must write a close reading of such as poetry. Which, of course, produces it's own automatic disjunction against "serious" scholarly discourse, for which there are norms. Serious, weighty, norms. Nietzsche is not unaware of this, "God's advocate am I before the devil: but the devil is the spirit of gravity." (219)

The sense of play as anodyne to the dragging weight of seriousness, as the way to pierce the veil that such a mindset casts, was hard for me to think of in song. But then I decided just to have fun with it and my mind alighted on Smooth Criminal. Not for any obvious, clearly delineatable reason, but because it seems to me that the video takes delight in ignoring the content of the song it accompanies. Lyrics, setting, action, none agree with one another. Everything is an excuse, or perhaps a reason, to just dance.

Loss from a Distance- Buckethead

None can equal him in the colors of late fall, in the indescribably moving happiness of the last, truly last, truly shortest joy; he knows a sound for those quiet, disquieting midnights of the soul, where cause and effect seem to be out of joint and where at any moment something might originate “out of nothing”. (Contra Wagner, “Where I Admire”, 663)

Layne Staley

“The spiritual nausea and haughtiness of every human being who has suffered deeply – how deeply one can suffer almost determines the order of rank – his shuddering certainty, which permeates and colors him through and through, that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than the cleverest and wisest could possibly know, and that he knows his way and has once been at home in many distant, terrifying worlds of which “you know nothing” – this spiritual and silent haughtiness, this pride of the elect of cognition, of the “initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all kinds of disguise necessary to protect itself against contact with officious and pitying hands, and against everything that is not a peer in suffering. Suffering makes us noble; it separates”(Contra Wagner, 679).

While I probably could think of a better example of one who suffers and takes on disguise, Layne Staley is my go to guy when I think of how great art can come out of depression. He did not don the cheerful facade that Nietzsche goes on to explain after the provided passage but instead fell into addiction. He is one of those folk that I am upset to see gone for that simply selfish reason that I am confident that had he lived he could have produced a whole lot more that I would have enjoyed. You know... Heath Ledger or the Crocodile Hunter... except better. Staley's last performance with the Alice in Chains was for a 1996 episode of MTV's Unplugged. He stopped working with the band when the depression and addiction got to be too much. At the time of his death, which was due an overdose from a speedball, Staley apparently weighed just 86 pounds and was 6' 1''. Addiction and depression can be pretty awful things but there is no denying that out of it comes some fantastic art.

D'Angelo "Spanish Joint"

"And if so I ask myself: What is it that my whole body really expects of music? For there is no soul. I believe, its own ease: as if all animal functions should be quickened by easy, bold exuberant, self-assured rhythms; as if iron, leaden life should lose its gravity through golden, tender, oil-smooth melodies. My melancholy wants to rest in the hiding-places and abysses of perfections: that is why I need music" (Nietzsche Contra Wagner 664).

Nietzsche argues that Wagner's music makes him sick. When he hears it, every part of him is physiologically disturbed--he "no longer breathe[s] easily...[his] foot feels the need for rhythm, dance, march." He argues that this type of music has no soul. It lacks "its own ease." Whereas, Wagner's music requires of the body a need for rhythm--Nietzsche expects music to already possess a "easy, bold, exuberant, self-assured rhythm." Nietzsche expects music to require nothing external, but rather to be already so complete that it makes us experience our nature more efficiently, "as if all animal functions should be quickened." I chose D'Angelo's, "Spanish Joint," because each element of the music, bongoes, bass line, guitar riff even melody, in this song is rhythmic. Not rhythmic solely in the sense of keeping time--but rather its polyrhythmic layering fits together like a puzzle and for me, it is as if the beat never really falls but in a way supends itself on its own.

The Rolling Stones- Paint it Black

Nietzsche takes numerous and compelling issues with Wagner.  Compelling for it's parallel to the lack felt by our American music audience who constantly search for authenticity in a highly commodified and commercialized music scene.  A main point of interest lie with pinpointing the failings of Wagner.  For Nietzsche, it appears the question of authenticity; along with a lack of taste on the part of the audience; as well as  theatrical dramatism ("The masses want and crave theatre." 41) that I interpreted also includes with it an added rhetorical element (29); and musically - the "immoral" melody (22).

For a rhetor, the most interesting point, however elementary, and one of the only credits given to Wagner is Nietzsche's assertion that, "...he has immeasurably increased the speaking power of music..."  (29)

Performance and rhetoric being central to contemporary popular music, it was difficult to decide on a selection for this week's post:

Pink Floyd : The Great Gig in the Sky

"Let us irritate the nerves, let us strike them dead, let us make use of the lightning and thunder,--that upsets..

Above all, passion upsets.--Let there be no misunderstanding among us in regard to passion. Nothing is less expensive than passion."

-"The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner" p. 21

Paparazzi - Declining Civilization

Nietzsche maintains that Wagner was a "stage-player" in music, a representation of "declining civilations" where "the arbitrating power falls into the hands of the masses, genuineness becomes superfluous, disadvantageous, and a drawback. It is only the stage-player that still awakens great enthusiasm" (The Case of Wagner, 39). This is still very true today, with most "chart-toppers" being solely stage-players (at least on the pop charts). It seems that in the realm of popular music, popularity is not judged on ability, but showman ship, as Nietzsche puts it, the "Wagnerian ideal [. . .] gets along badly with talent" (41). This particular music choice, however, is clearly satirical in its representation of pop culture entertainment. It illustrates that "Nothing, however, can cure music in the main thing, of the main thing, of the fatality of being the expression of a physiological contradiction, - of being modern" (55). This is evident with any celebrity that has been famous for being controversial or revolutionary, they become enveloped in the "main thing" or main stream and cease to be revolutionary. Lady Ga Ga, for example, has become a caricature of herself, pumping out the same music, same gimmicks, minus the satire, she has bought into the fame and the culture she used to make fun of. When I listen to the pop radio, and I see what the top hits and most played/requested/downloaded songs are, I can't help but agree with Nietzsche when he says, "no God can save music" (55).

Dionysiac in Las Vegas

Spell- Patti Smith

“This whole discussion firmly maintains that, whereas lyric poetry depends utterly on the spirit of music, music itself, in its absolute sovereignty, has no need at all of images and concepts but merely tolerates them as accompaniment. Lyric poetry can say nothing that was not already contained, in a condition of the most enormous generality and universal validity, within the music which forced the lyric poet to speak in images. For this reason it is impossible for language to exhaust the meaning of the music’s world-symbolism, because music refers symbolically to the original contradiction and original pain at the heart of the primordial unity, and thus symbolizes a sphere which lies above and beyond all appearance. In relation to that primal being every phenomenon is merely a likeness, which is why language, as the organ and symbol of phenomena, can never, under any circumstances, externalize the innermost depths of music; whenever language attempts to imitate music it only touches the outer surface of music, whereas the deepest meaning of music, for all the eloquence of lyric poetry, can never be brought even one step closer to us” (36.)

I chose this quote because I do not wholeheartedly agree with it. I see this point as a discriminatory attitude towards music and art in general. The instrumentation in this song in very minimal; the lyric poetry is the revelatory element. Patti Smith’s Spell possesses the criteria for Dionysiac music; it is transcendent, enthralling, non-representative, and objective. While I agree that music does not necessarily need lyrics or poetry, it as the potential to do so much more so than to merely tolerate it. Music’s dynamism is not restricted to a particular form, and Nietzsche’s attempt to categorize it in such an exclusive way seems unnecessary and excusatory. Here, the lyrics indicate the lifting of the “veil of maya” to reveal the “most blissful satisfaction of primordial unity” (18).

"No Regrets" by Aesop Rock + Will & Representation

"According to our view, the whole of the visible world is only the objectification, the mirror, of the will, accompanying it to knowledge of itself, and indeed, as we shall soon see, to the possibility of salvation. At the same time, the world as representation, if we consider it in isolation, by tearing ourselves form willing, and letting it alone take possession of our consciousness, is the most delightful, and the only innocent, side of life. We have to regard art as the greater enhancement, the more perfect development, all of this; for essentially it achieves just the same thing as is achieved by the visible world itself..." (Will &Representation, 266)

"No regrets" represents the life of Lucy who completely immerses herself in representing the world she encounters daily. Perhaps withdrawn from will she reaches the same delight and innocent side of life that art enhances through pure, isolated representation. This mode seems to be the same one utilized in the music. The intro leads with sounds of life in an urban neighborhood. This mimetic music continues throughout, in addition to the plot of the main character herself.

Elevation of Musicians

In his work The Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche makes a claim regarding the rise in the popularity of music, “There corresponded to this extraordinary rise in the value of music an equally amazing increase in the prestige of the musician: he now became and oracle, a priest, or more than a priest – a kind of mouthpiece of the absolute, a telephone line of Transcendence”(The Genealogy of Morals, 237). Many musicians today still get this sort of hero worship. I have never really understood it. I love a lot of bands and musicians but the height that some carry their love of certain person or group can become a bit extreme. Though I am in no position to judge any form of fandom, geek that I am, music seems to harbor a sort of religious element that pushes it to another level. The musician I am most familiar with who receives just the sort of priestly attention that Nietzsche describes here is Maynard James Keenan, lead singer of the bands Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer. Again while I am a huge fan I do not go as far as some and take the man himself so terribly seriously based on the music he produces. Others treat his work like religion. I tend to agree with Nietzsche earlier claim, “...let me say one thing at the start; it is always well to divorce an artist from his work, and to take him less seriously than it”(The Genealogy of Morals, 235).

This song gets particular attention for its metaphysical and spiritual content but really more or less just because it is written in numbers of fi. It is ten kinds of fantastic in my opinion, sure, but I wouldn't pray to it.

Thrice : Digging My Own Grave

"Here, in the highest symbolism of art, we see before us that Apolline world of beauty and the ground on which it rests, that terrible wisdom of Silenus, and we grasp, intuitively, the reciprocal necessity of these two things. At the same time, however, we encounter Apollo as the deification of the principium individuationis in which alone the eternally attained goal of the primordial unity, its release and redemption through semblance, comes about; with sublime gestures he shows us that the whole world of agony is needed in order to compel the individual to generate the releasing and redemptive vision and then, lost in contemplation of that vision, to sit calmly in his rocking boat in the midst of the sea." p. 26

ATB, Ecstasy

“But, at this juncture, when the will is most imperiled, art approaches, as a redeeming and healing enchantress; she alone may transform these horrible reflections on the terror and absurdity of existence into representations with which man may live. These are the representation of the sublime as the artistic conquest of the awful, and of the comic as the artistic release from the nausea of the absurd. The satyric chorus of the dithyramb is the saving device of Greek art."



Throughout his essay, Nietzsche constantly creates problems for Greek culture and art that he then solves with either the Apollonian or Dionysian element, or both, depending on the context. ATB’s Ecstasy portrays Nietzsche’s conviction that the Dionysian revelation cannot stand alone. Here, the Apollonian element helps reveal the essence of Dionysus by transforming the song’s enigmatic instrumental into an artistic phenomenon in the form of its accompanying lyrics. The upbeat tone, crisp layering, and memorable intro allow the listener to rise beyond consciousness and experience a connection to the primordial unity. However, the lyrics add a description of the feelings the song evokes and provides a sort of guideline for us to follow when listening to this song.

Al Jarreau- Take Five

Nietzsche's assertion about dithyrambic music as a, "miserable copy of a phenomenon and thus infinitely poorer than the phenomenon" (BT, 83)- because of its lack of myth as such- tells the reader that mimetic music fails to evoke or mirror world- Will as Dionysian music does. Just as Schopenhauer wrote in "On the Inner Nature of Art," Nietzsche points to the nothing-left-to-the-imagination aspect of mimetic music; Dithyrambic music is Schopenhauer's wax figure, a cheap representation. "Tone-painting is thus the antithesis of the myth-creating energy of true music... whereas Dionysiac music enriches and expands the original phenomena, making it into an image of the world" (BT 83). I believe Nietzsche is contradicting himself in this comparison. Al Jarreau's "Take Five" is, to me, an example of how Apollonian "form" (within a lingusic framework) entwines with Dionysian "frenzy" (manipulating language to express musical phrases, meaningful noise) to create a conversational piece of music that appeals to the world- Will because in "copying" phenomena (I hear stomach gurgles and crashing noises in Jarreau's trampled speech), he is also appealing to what-is-familiar, or doxa, evoking primal unity while reinforcing a kind of detachment thorough the irregularities in the beat. My main concern with Nietzsche is whether or not dithyrambic music is really exclusive from the Dionysian?

Murder City Devils - Boom Swagger Boom

"The essence of nature is bent on expressing itself; a new world of symbols is required, firstly the symbolism of the entire body, not just of the mouth, the face, the word, but the full gesture of dance with its rhythmical movement of every limb" (Birth of Tragedy 21). The symbolism of a hot girl is represented in this song by the onomatopoeia "Boom, swagger swagger" which works well to convey the raw carnality of desire without being overly explicit. Nature must express itself and we as animals ourselves know precisely what Spencer means when he says he saw the girl "walking like a cat." This line immediately conjures the image of a feline with its tail raised for all to view its inner workings; in other words an animal is always ready, open for the opportunity to perpetuate its existence. The Apolline work of civilizing the body through the mind's ability to reason  is circumvented by a song that forces one's body into motion. The denial of this innate knowledge seems to be the object of every project towards civilizing humankind as though by exhuming our sexuality we will somehow elevate ourselves from the animal world for good. I think this song does well in producing a visceral bodily reaction through words used merely as sounds and musical instruments used to convey seductive movements.

"The power of its sound to shake us to our very foundation, the unified stream of melody and the quite incomparable world of harmony. In the Dionysiac dithryamb man is simulated to the highest intensification of his symbolic powers; some-thing that he has never felt before urgently demands to be expressed: the destruction of the veil of maya, one-ness as the genius of humankind, indeed of nature itself."--The Birth of Tragedy, p. 21.

The video is the piece entitled "Cry" from Alvin Ailey's ballet, Revelations. The dance is set to a suite of three gospel songs: Alice Coltrane's "Something about John Coltrane," Laura Nyro's "Been on a Train," and The Voices of East Harlem "Right on. Be Free." Although Schopenhauer and maybe Nietzche would probably look down on the depictive/imitative qualities of these songs lyrically and perhaps melodically--I chose this particular video because to me it demonstrates the process of shedding of barriers and the slow taking over of the Dionysiac. The music seems to be working both within her and external to her--in moments she looks as if the music pulls her up off of her knees, thrusts her forward, and pulls at her limbs even as she tries to resist--like she is possessed by the music. The woman goes reluctantly but diligently through the motions forced by slavery/oppression (barriers created by man) and bursts of free, what looks like almost uncontrolled movement. To me this is the "destruction of the veil of maya," the forgetting of one's self and giving over to one's most primal urges--what Nietzche calls the nature of humankind. The self becomes utterly physical as the barriers (between man and man and man and nature itself) that are created by the mind melt away. Without these barriers, Nietzche notes that music compels us to express our true nature, and more so--to feel it and perceive it in the first place.

And just for kicks...if this isn't Dionysiac, I don't know what is...

Janis Joplin Live Woodstock

Brief Video on Woodstock 1969

Hendrix Guitar Sacrifice Monterey Pop Festival June 1969

Jimi Hendrix--Woodstock Star Spangled Banner

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Hendrix Directly on Star Spangled Banner, Woodstock 1969

Hendrix on Music, Ego, Meaning and the Star Spangled Banner. Dick Cavett

A Question Concerning tech. . . science.

"What can the knowledge-lusting Socratism of today hope to do with this daemon as it emerges from unfathomable depths?"

Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy p. 94

Knowledge-lusting is a nice play on wisdom loving (philosopher) and he's asking, reiterating in an interesting way, the problem our metaphysics has with the aesthetic. With music. Are we beasts, that music might move us so? Excite us to passion? Enthrall us in love? Music seems to directly link to a more emotional set of responses and is unfathomable, cannot be measured or known, by way of pure reason. It is an experience to undergo, not a fact to vivisect. To vivisect is to cut while alive (viv - life, sect - to cut. Interestingly secret and science share the same root) but to do such a thing is to kill it. To make it no longer what it was. And lo, we can proclaim we now know what beautiful music is, and hold proudly up to the light the individual pieces which were never meant to be so exposed. It would be like displaying the manifold parts of an elephant in an order of our cultural preference and saying "Behold, the mighty elephant in all it's explicable glory!"

Not everything is knowable in the way science knows things. Loathe though I may be to admit to having listened to Coldplay (long story) witness Coldplay's The Scientist. Somehow the song combines melody with today's logocentrism to produce what feels like a lament. Yet the question is, if no one said that it was easy, from whence that starting assumption we must disabuse ourselves.

Scene by Envy- Dionysus v Apollo

“Only the spirit of music allows us to understand why we feel joy at the destruction of the individual. For individual instances of such destruction merely illustrate the eternal phenomenon of Dionysiac art, which expresses the omnipotent Will behind the principium individuationis, as if it were, life going on eternally beyond all appearance and despite all destruction” (BOT 16)

‘Scene’ by the group Envy, is a song that seems, to me, to capture the struggle of the Apollinian forces and the Dionysiac Will. The song starts by keeping the individual within a state of principium individuationis- the beginning reveals the world of images and a the dream-like state of Apollo. In fact, the introduction seems as if it were a lullaby- allowing us to trust the stability of its calm melody. However, this stability is easily shattered as the tragic hero- the lead singer- soon screams with such an abrupt, deep pain and suffering. It as if the tragic hero is dying from a great suffering or sadness. This rips one (the listener) from the comfortable state of images and semblance and pulls one into the suffering of the Will- the Dionysiac state. The suffering within this melody is infused with the intoxication of the Dionysiac Will. It seems as if it will remain an eternal suffering- nothing could be greater than or overcome this state of chaotic passion.We, no longer as individuals, are caught in the struggle and suffering of the Will itself.

One can feel the utter desperation and destruction of the self within the singer’s cries, yet, at the same time a feeling of joy arises- at least a joy for the intensity of passions. “We take pleasure in the negation of the hero, the supreme appearance of the Will” (BOT 16).. His cries are beautiful (not in the sense of the beauty of appearance) and truly tragic.

And yet again, the calmness of Apollo reemerges as the Dionysus recedes behind the Apollinian semblance. Throughout the song, these too parts- between the calmness and the height of passions within the tragic cries of the lead singer- there is a constant struggle between the structure of Apollo and the intoxication of Dionysus: “Apolline and Dionysiac.. co-exist in a state of perpetual conflict interrupted only occasionally by periods of reconciliation (Birth of Tragedy 1).

Hans Zimmer - This Land

"Apollo embodies the transcendent genius of the principium individuationis; through him alone is it possible to achieve redemption in illusion. The mystical jubilation of Dionysos, on the other hand, breaks the spell of individuation and opens a path the maternal womb of being." (The Birth of Tragedy, p. 97)



Although I don't think that Neitzsche would consider The Lion King as a tragic myth, and no doubt it would fall under the category of optimistic, I think the raw emotion of this score transcends the limits of the cartoon. The piece overwhelms me alternately with sorrow and hope, I forget its intentions as a background, and the music itself invades my mind. When I think of it in terms of the context of the movie, I can understand the theme of moods, the characters as illusions. The end of the piece, however, is what disqualifies it, and the The Lion King, as a true tragedy. The chanting and jubilation of the chorus implies hope and redemption, that the protagonist will find a way to prevail his circumstance, and Simba does.

Ours - Fallen Souls

"Music and tragic myth [. . .] Both have their origin in a realm of art which lies beyond the Apollonian; both shed their transfiguring light on a region in whose rapt harmony dissonance and the horror of existence fade away in enchantment. Confident of their supreme powers, they both toy with the sting of displeasure, and by their toying they both justify the existence of even the 'worst possible world.' " (The Birth of Tragedy p. 145)



Nietzshe's description of the Dionysiac as primordial reminds me of the driving drum beat throughout the song, while the intensity and urgency of the vocals evoke discomfort. The whole tone of the piece if foreboding, as if something terrible is about to happen. When the singer, Jimmy Gnecco, breaks into a scream, I do imagine the "worst possible world." Despite the tones of sorrow and pain, the song is undeniably beautiful, the vocals astounding. The Dionysiac drum beats prompt me to hear beyond the sounds, while the pain in the vocals ground me in familiar. I think here is illustrated the dual existence and reliance of Dionysiac/Apollonian elements in tragedy. See Comments for lyrics

Blcokhead - The Music Scene

"Singing and dancing, man expresses his sense of belonging to a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and talk and is on the brink of flying and dancing, up and away into the air above. His gestures speak of his enchantment. Just as the animals now talk and the earth gives milk and honey, there now sounds out from within man some-thing supernatural: he feels himself to be a god, he himself now moves in such ecstasy and sublimity as once he saw the gods move in his dreams. Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: all nature's artistic power reveals itself here, amidst shivers of intoxication, to the highest, most blissful satisfaction of the primordial unity. Here man, the noblest clay, the most precious marble, is kneaded and carved and, to the accompaniment of the chisel-blows of the Dionysiac world-artist, the call of the Eleusinian Mysteries rings out: 'Fall ye to the ground, ye millions? Feelst thou thy Creator, world?" (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy pp. 18)




I mostly associated Nietzsche's words with the animation to this song more so than the content of the song itself, but I certainly think that there's something sublime in the track and something dionysiac in the rhythm. The opening sample, the titular "music scene" seems ironic given the dreamy, upbeat quality of the song and so appears even more apt to me given Nietzsche's contrasting dualities of pessimism and optimism. It's music that has movement, but none that might be frantic. There's also a pretty direct reference to drugs that connects the music to intoxication of one form or another. In any case, I think the music in conjunction with the visuals captures the above quote pretty well.

Schopenhauer's take on Memory

“Finally, it is also that blessedness of will-less perception which spreads so wonderful a charm over the past and the distant, and by a self-deception presents them to us in so flattering a light. For by our conjuring up in our minds days long past spent in a distant place, it is the only objects recalled by our imagination, not the subject of will that carried around its incurable sorrows with it just as much then as it does now”(138).

This excerpt from Schopenhauer's "The Artist and the Sublime" struck me as a fairly peculiar take on the subject of memory and its relation to beauty and truth. While often we see a negative critique of the persistence of memory and the polishing effects nostalgia imposes on our experiences Schopenhauer seems take an opposite stance on the process of memory. Though memory adorns past experiences with falsehood and self-deception Schopenhauer claims that at the same time has a stripping effect on the subject of our recollection and only the Idea remains. We all have had the experience of connecting certain songs with moments time and events in our life. One song which I think may be subject to this stripping effect for me is Blind Melon's "No Rain". This was my first favorite song. I can remember how my brother and I would go across the street to our neighbor's, Tim and John, house and play co-op "Diddy Kong" on Super Nintendo and listen it on repeat for hours. Looking back I cannot remember conversations I had with them or my brother at the time or very many other activities we did together besides play "Mortal Kombat", "Independence Day", or whatever action movie had come out that week in our yards(both back and front), but listening to this song seems to capture and embody the truth of those moments without the adornment of details. The song simply feels like the joy of being 5 or 6 or 7 to me. It evokes in me that special knowledge and perspective that only kids have though I can no longer hope to articulate it merely experience, it reflect on it.

Jay Z - Big Pimpin'

"There are those who, whether from lack of experience or from dullness of spirit, turn away in scorn or pity from [Dionysiac] phenomena, regarding them as 'popular diseases' while believing in their own good health; of course, these poor creatures have not the slightest inkling of how spectral and deathly pale their 'health' seems when the glowing life of Dionysiac enthusiasts storms past them."

"Dionysic art, too, wants to convince us of the eternal lust and delight of the existence; but we are to seek this delight, not in appearances, but behind them. We are to recognize that everything which comes into being must be prepared for painful destruction; we are forced to gaze into the terrors of individual existence -- and yet we are not to freeze in horror: its metaphysical solace tears us momentarily out of the turmoil of changing figures. For brief moments we are truly the primordial being itself and we feel its unbounded greed and lust for being ; the struggle, the agony, the destruction of appearances, all this now given the exuberant fertility of the world-Will; we are pierced by the furious sting of these pains at the very moment when, as it were, we become one with the immeasurable, primordial delight in existence and receive an intimation, in Dionysiac ecstasy, that this delight is indestructible and eternal. Despite fear and pity, we are happily alive, not as individuals, but as the one living being, with whose procreative lust we have become one" (pp. 80-81, 'The Birth of Tragedy').



Indeed, the first movement, having come into being, is threatened by a "painful destruction" (1:48) and "we are forced to gaze into the terrors of individual existence," we become aware of two individual forces at odds with one another. But once our senses settle and the violence brought on by kick drums pounding 32nd notes, the rage and distorted cry of guitar and voice, we notice the original melody is still there "behind them." We notice this song is "the struggle, the agony, the destruction of appearances," appearances which we took to be the original melody on its own. Then listening on, we notice more, that the song is the interplay between forces, and "uncountable excess of forms" that thrust and push at one another. The purely musical fights to be heard from behind the brutality of guitar and drum and voice. We listen on and realize there is more to be heard, that we realize the two forces are one, that the guitars are indeed playing the original melody, that they are not two "individuals" but "the one living being," that are we.

La Vida Es Un Carnaval - Celia Cruz

"No, you should first learn the art of comfort of this world, you should learn to laugh, my young friends, if you are really determined to remain pessimists" (Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy, 12).
Arguably one of Celia Cruz's seminal pieces, this song describes laughter being being the key to the enjoyment of life, much like Nietzsche expresses to his pessimistic readers.  The song is, in my opinion, incredibly uplifting and cheerful.

here is yet another example of the dionysiac from my days of being a gothic club kid in the 90's.

Miss Kittin & The Hacker - Frank Sinatra (Full Version no bullshit)

Here is a preemptive dionysiac post, more insanity yet to come...

Schopenhauer and TV on the radio

How do the lyrics speak to the individual willing subject?

There Is No There- The Books

"We lose ourselves entirely... we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the object, so that it is as though the object alone existed without anyone to perceive it, and thus we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, since the entire consciousness is filled and occupied by a single image of perception... Thus at the same time, the person who is involved in this perception is no longer an individual, for in such perception the individual has lost himself; he is pure will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge" (80.)

Diamanda Galas--"Double Barrel Prayer"

"Knowledge of the second kind [as opposed to the intellect, which is originally designed to serve the will and is based on the principle of sufficient reason]...is an abnormal activity, unnatural to the intellect; accordingly, it is conditioned by a decidedly abnormal and thus very rare excess of intellect and of its objective phenomenon, the brain, over the rest of the organism and beyond the measure required by the aims of the will. Just because this excess of the intellect is abnormal, the phenomena springing therefrom sometimes remind one of madness." (Metaphysics of the Beautiful and Aesthetics 108)

Classically trained as an opera singer, Galas' voice has an abnormally large range and is very powerful. She uses this voice, however, in a manner that exceeds the bounds of her training. The source of her music and her art is a response to the AIDS related death of her gay poet brother in the early 80's. Her style can definitely be considered abnormal and devoid of what Schopenhauer would characterize as sufficient reason. Her voice becomes an instrument to convey her outrage and pain. She shrieks, quotes the bible and speaks in tongues to symbo0llically convey the holiness and majesty of her mourning. Schopenhauer sees music as a means to spiritually distract one from the pain of the will. Galas seeks to strangle the will with her suffering.

On Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D Minor: To Read with Paige Posting

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D Minor

Dmitri Shostakovich, 1906-1975. Symphony No. 5 in d, Op. 47. Completed 1937, first performance November 21, 1937, in Leningrad. Scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, E flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, 2 harps, piano, celesta, tympani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, xylophone, glockenspiel, triangle, and strings.
The late 1930's were not a good time for Dmitri Shostakovich. His successful opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, was banned after Stalin saw it in 1936 and was offended by its veiled criticism of the Communist regime. This was no small matter; most who drew the dictator's wrath soon died in a labor camp. Shostakovich was luckier, perhaps because the young composer had already achieved some international recognition, but the attacks in Pravda turned him into a pariah who began keeping a packed suitcase beside his bed in case he were arrested in the night.
Shostakovich's next misstep came with the Fourth Symphony, which he had been composing in his mind for some time. Despite the risk of associating with an ``enemy of the people,'' the Leningrad Philharmonic agreed to premiere it, but the rehearsals went badly, and it became clear to Shostakovich that a performance of such a forward-looking work would be dangerous to his life. In December of 1936, he announced that it was a failure and withdrew it, ostensibly to work on the finale. The Fourth was lost during the war, and it was only in 1961 that it was reconstructed and premiered exactly as written.
Meanwhile, Russia was undergoing what would later be called the ``Great Terror.'' For his own reasons, Stalin had concocted an assassination and then responded to it with a level of repression rarely seen in human history. After he declared that five percent of the population was ``unreliable,'' orders went out that the number of arrests must match this figure. Guilt was irrelevant; it was sufficient to round up ten or fifteen thousand people from a given town and send them off to Siberia. Historians disagree on the exact number of Russian citizens murdered during this time (partly because many of the deaths were later blamed on World War II), but it was certainly in the millions.
In such an atmosphere, and with a wife and two young children to worry about, it was only natural that Shostakovich would pull his head back into his shell and try to please the authorities. And so he did, at least on the surface: the Fifth Symphony's subtitle is ``A Soviet Artist's Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism.''
But throughout history, artists have thumbed their noses at authorities who were too dense to see through their parody and satire, and Shostakovich was no different. One does not need to look far beneath the surface of the Fifth to discover just what this ``practical'' reply actually contains. The first movement begins with a cry of despair, a tragic lament that goes on for some time before suddenly being interrupted by a goose-stepping march led by a two-note tympani theme, a motive that musicologist Ian MacDonald calls the ``Stalin theme.'' The third movement is one of the most despairing pieces of music ever written, a memorial for Mother Russia and all those sent to the labor camps. And of the finale, Shostakovich wrote in his memoirs (smuggled out of Russia after the composer's death):

What exultation could there be? I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat... It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying ``Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,'' and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, ``Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.'' What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.

The Fifth was hugely successful. The government was pleased that the rebel had knuckled under, while the Russian in the street saw the truth behind the facade. Western listeners, generally unaware of what was going on behind Stalin's mask, took the work at face value, yet were still overwhelmed by its grandeur and beauty. The symphony has become Shostakovich's most popular work, and the relatively recent revelation of its true meaning can only enhance our enjoyment of this testament to one man's struggle to express his people's anguish under a brutal tyrant.
© 1997, Geoff Kuenning

A horse with no name. . .

From the reading:

Let us transport ourselves to a very lonely region of boundless horizons, under a perfectly cloudless sky, trees and plants in the perfectly motionless air, no animals, no human beings, no moving masses of water, the profoundest silence. Such surroundings are as it were a summons to seriousness, to contemplation, with complete emancipation from all willing and its cravings. . . a touch of the sublime.

- Schopenhauer "The Artist and the Sublime" (144-145)

And since he speaks of the American plains as such an experience, and in the next paragraph tells us to imagine a desert, well. . . what other song could I think of? It's thematically appropriate as well seeing as the song interprets the landscape as a text and celebrates the isolation from will that being alone in stark nature provides us.

"Original" Oasis Wonderwall--Listen with Cover and Schopenhauer Quote

Brian Eno. The Big Ship

I want to refer back to Schopenhauer on the language of music and it's precedence over words, like we discussed over Rossini in class last Thursday. Schopenhauer writes that music speaks its own language with no words at all, but for whom (what entity or faculty) is this language? In Metaphysics, he explains that free subject of knowing is an attribute of our will, it is, "a pure intelligence without aims and intentions" (104). I like to think of it like a metaphysical radar, kind of just picking up or feeling concepts in the meta- realm. And because we experience this, we are in pain. [On a side note: I think the pain stems from not really understanding or knowing truth, per se. We are immersed in abstraction, and this is unsettling to our conscious self.] So this is where beauty comes in, to ease the pain (which is not necessarily good, since this leads us to a flattening of experience, because ending pain simply for that sake also means the abolishment of pleasure). The point is that when we experience pleasure, it is because we slough off the pain at the root of will- the listener is transformed for the duration of the experience, or aesthetic event, into a pure subject of knowing. Schopenhauer explains that, "To become a pure subject of knowing means to be quit of oneself; the pure subject of knowing occurs in our forgetting ourselves in order to be absorbed entirely in the intuitively perceived objects, so that they alone are left in consciousness" (105, emphasis mine). I believe this is the state in which our will becomes vulnerable or receptive to the language of music. Brian Eno's, "The Big Ship," illustrates this point beautifully. If you listen closely (turn it up, lie on your back and close your eyes) the intro starts to lightly tap into your consciousness and wedges its harmonies into it to allow for the melodies to pick you up and take you awaaaaaaaaay into the state of a pure subject of knowing. I hear potential in every count as it builds or unfurls into a kind of slowly escalating crescendo, and I am moved and reminded of the vastness of human potential, and my own. The gentle fade-out slowly returns my conscious, pained will-subjectivity, like a gift. What do you hear?

FInally Moving, Pretty Lights

Schopenhauer says, "the best in art…must be born in the beholder's imagination, though it must be begotten by the work of art" (On The Inner Nature of Art, 99). The music from Pretty Lights is amazing because the DJ leaves something over for the listener to think and feel for himself. This song offers a combination of ridiculous beats produced by a wide array of instruments and vocals which creates an ethereal quality, resembling a schizophrenic, hallucinogenic trip that anyone, either alone or with friends, can enjoy: "it is then all the same whether we see the setting sun from a prison or from a palace” (Artist and Sublime, 136). This was especially true when I saw Pretty Lights perform his set live for a sold out crowd in which every listener was absorbed into the sensory performance provided by the DJ's music and its complementary light show.

Schopenhauer quotes Voltaire saying, "The secret of being dull and tedious consists in our saying everything" (99). I think this is a great point applied to music whose message is felt without the abstraction of words to define our inner landscape. Adams' slows this song way down, prolonging the impact of each note with his voice as well as the use of space between lyrics. In this rendition of Oasis' song, the lyrics seem to disintegrate into the music, leaving only that intuitive perception, "Adapted to what the tones say in their universal language of the heart, a language that is without picture or image"(123).