Would Nietzsche be a musicologist?
Contributions of Nietzschean philosophy to musicology in The Case of Wagner. A musician's problem.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5965/Keywords:
Nietzsche, Wagner, Adorno, Musicology, Philosophy of musicAbstract
This article, situated in the fields of Philosophy of Music and Historical Musicology, aims to analyze the contributions of Friedrich Nietzsche's thought to Musicology, taking The Case of Wagner. A musician's problem (1888) as its central object. Through a hermeneutic-interpretive analysis articulated in dialogue with the theoretical frameworks of Carl Dahlhaus (music history and aesthetics) and Jean-Jacques Nattiez (musical semiology), as well as the critiques of Wagner by Theodor Adorno as discussed by Nicholas Baragwanath and Richard Klein, the article establishes a musicologically grounded reading. The results indicate that Nietzsche, by treating music as a cultural and physiological symptom of modern décadence and by uncovering ideologies underlying Wagnerian narratives, shows points of contact with central concerns of critical musicology and musical semiology. We conclude that, although distant from traditional technical methodology, Nietzsche offers an interdisciplinary model that integrates aesthetics and cultural criticism, demonstrating that music operates as a system of signs that reflects historical conditions and the vital values of an era
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