Friedrich Nietzsche Music Quotes & Sayings

In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Without music, life would be a mistake. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Life without music is no life at all. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I shall say another word for the most select ears: what I really want from music. That it be cheerful and profound like an afternoon in October. That it be individual, frolicsome, tender, a sweet small woman full of beastliness and charm. I — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Real dancers are the ones who can hear the music in their soul. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Without music, life would be an error. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In music the passions enjoy themselves. — Friedrich Nietzsche

God has given us music so that firstly we are lead towards higher things. Music combines all characteristics in it. It can elevate, it can tease, it can cheer us up, yes, it can even break the most brazen temperament with its tender and yearning sounds. However, its main aim is to direct our thinking towards higher things, to elevate and even deeply disturb us ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

How good music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody goodness won't chime. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There is no beast without cruelty — Friedrich Nietzsche

Life without music is a mistake. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A: But why this solitude? - B: I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them; and when I loved and appreciated music the most, I lived far from it. It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming. — Friedrich Nietzsche

To say it once more: today I find it an impossible book: I consider it badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore disdainful of proof, mistrustful even of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates, "music" for those dedicated to music, those who are closely related to begin with on the basis of common and rare aesthetic experiences, "music" meant as a sign of recognition for close relatives in artibus - an arrogant and rhapsodic book that sought to exclude right from the beginning the profanum vulgus of "the educated" even more than "the mass" or "folk. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The universe without music would be madness. — Friedrich Nietzsche

By means of music the very passions, enjoy themselves. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What I really want from Music: That it be cheerful and profound like an afternoon in October ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

When I seek another word for 'music', I never find any other word than 'Venice' — Friedrich Nietzsche

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Besides this I place another equally obvious confirmation of my view that opera is based on the same principles as our Alexandrian culture. Opera is the birth of the theoretical man, the critical layman, not of the artist: one of the most surprising facts in the history of all the arts. It was the demand of throughly unmusical hearers that before everything else the words must be understood, so that according to them a rebirth of music is to be expected only when some mode of singing has been discovered in which textword lords it over counterpoint like master over servant: For the words, it is argued, are as much nobler than the accompanying harmonic system as the soul is nobler than the body. — Friedrich Nietzsche

At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Life without music is only error, exhaustion, exile ... Indeed, there is nothing that concerns me more than the fate of music. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche commenting on the music of Georges Bizet: His music has the tang of sunny climates, their bracing air, their clearness. It voices a sensibility hitherto unknown to us. — Georges Bizet

Only sick music makes money today. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But an essentially mechanical world would be an essentially meaningless world! Suppose that one assessed the value of a piece of music according to how much of it could be counted, calculated, put into formulas; how absurd such a 'scientific' assessment of music would be! What would one have comprehended, understood, known about it? Nothing, absolutely nothing of what is really 'music' in it! — Friedrich Nietzsche

A life without music is an error. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Beethoven's music is music about music. — Friedrich Nietzsche

My melancholy wants to rest in the hiding places and abysses of perfection: that is why I need music. — Friedrich Nietzsche

To produce music is also in a sense to produce children. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If I continued to harbour any hope for music it lay in the expectation that a musician might come who was sufficiently bold, subtle, malicious, southerly, superhealthy to confront that music and in an immortal fashion take revenge on it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I am not angry with anybody. But when I am alone it seems to me that I can see my friends in a clearer and rosier light than when I am with them; and when I loved and felt music best I lived far from it. It would seem that I must have distant perspectives in order that I may think well of things. — Friedrich Nietzsche

God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble ... The musical art speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart ... Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I do not know how to make a distinction between tears and music — Friedrich Nietzsche