THE ECHOES OF NIETZCHE’S THINKING IN MUSIC OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AVANT-GARDE

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to show how the main Nietzche’s ideas gottheir expression in the 20th century avant-garde music. In the first and introductive part of thepaper, after the short comment on Nietzche’s »adventure« with music composing, we deal withthe artist’s metaphysics of The Birth of Tragedy, which sets the music into a very high positionas an expression of will (worldly primal One), more authentic than any verbal communication,which reveals the Dionysian nature of being in constant becoming. In the next chapter we tried tointerpret the meaning of Nietzche’s deliberations on his contemporary music situation, referringto the criticism of late Wagner and the statements that testify about the philosopher’s ambiguousrelationship with romanticism in general. With exhaustive use of concrete examples, the centraltwo parts of the article prove that after the Nietzche’s death his subversive ideas echoed throughoutthe avant-garde music, starting from the compositional activities of Arnold Schönberg andhis co-workers. Nietzche’s conception of destruction and re-evaluation of all values becomesthe permanent part of the avant-garde programs even when that was not explicitly stated, so weindicated in baselines which musical values, since the establishment of Second Viennese School,have gradually disappeared and were replaced by others. In the microtonal music of GyörgyLigeti we came to recognize Nietzche’s idea of becoming, and in the minimalism of Reileyand Reich the related idea of eternal recurrence. In the final and conclusive part, just after theresponse on possible objections that can be addressed to this paper, we emphasize that music isnot only able to carry ready metaphysical conceptions, but it can also prepare us for asking thefundamental philosophical questions.