Review Summary: An attempt, although noble, that falls terribly flat.
Disasterpiece Series No. 4
Whether you love him or hate him, Nietzsche was one of the most influential of people to have ever lived. Although various men of the 19th century had explored in depth a like range of subjects, along with his characteristic wit, Nietzsche infused the world of philosophy, if not the world at large, with a plethora of innovative yet controversial ideas, least among them the idea that “God is dead”. Equipped with a Lamborghini for a mind, Nietzsche’s intellect allowed him to investigate rigorously a variety of subjects not limited to but including: classical philology, art, history, religion, science, and philosophy. This is not to even mention the fact that Nietzsche was a cultural critic, poet, and
composer.
That Nietzsche wrote music is not a well-known fact, and there’s two pretty darn good reasons for that. Towering high above his compositions are his seminal treatises, to only name a tiny few,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Beyond Good and Evil, and
The Anti-Christ, which extoll the potent ideas of anti-idealism, meta-morality, and will to power. The second reason, though, that Nietzsche’s music is clouded in obscurity is equally strong; it’s just not very good.
But before we begin it is of paramount importance to underscore that any interpretation of Nietzsche’s music should take into account that he was not at all a trained musician, but a largely self-taught one who though his own chutzpah sought out a late 18th century text from Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, one of Beethoven’s teachers, and taught himself the theories of harmony, melody, counterpoint, and composition. The autodidactic Nietzsche, moreover, learned the piano on his own.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s musical ideas do not share the same brilliance as his philosophical ones. They are at best painfully average. I choose the word painfully here with care, for Nietzsche’s music is so mediocre it hurts. Take
Einleitung for example. Abandoned to romanticism
Einleitung, or Introduction, presents us with a microcosm for all of Nietzsche’s piano music. To be more specific, Nietzsche takes all the tropes of romanticism and doubles, if not triples and quadruples, down, with the result that he turns music that is supposed to be evocative of high art into a cliché. Ironic, if you think about it. Unfortunately,
Einleitung, and indeed all of Nietzsche’s piano music, suffers from the worst that romanticism has to offer: excessive melancholia, the absence of dramatism, the absence of narrative, and stationary movement.
With all this in mind it’s hard not to see Nietzsche’s music as derivative. From its opening dreamlike eights to the forceful major sonorities they contrast with,
Einleitung is decidedly nocturnesque.
Sturmmarsch, “Storm March”, opens with fortissimo octaves in a march-like manner, albeit in a slowish tempo, followed by the lush chromaticism, dark harmonies, and wide dynamic and octavic range typical of the age. It’s rhythms, moreover, are quintessentially Chopinic. You only get more of the same in
Edes titok,
Klavierskizze,
Albumblatt, and
Skizze zu Byron's, "Foscari". While the sonorities are moving, they quickly begin to try your patience. Each piece suffers from the same excessively improvisational atmosphere, and coupled with each of the aforementioned aliments have no discernable personality or distinguishability from the last.
Even the names Nietzsche gives his pieces express romanticism in a way that is banal. There’s the fascination with nature in
Im Mondschein auf der Puszta, Moonlight on the Desert, the preoccupation with the mythic in
Ermanarich, the name of a 4th century Gothic King, and the obsession over melancholia in
So lach doch mal, unpleasant laugh.
Nietzsche’s musicianship, however, is not a total failure as he has one redeeming quality, an ability to compose in tandem with a rhythm, for when Nietzsche sets a piece to a discernable rhythm his compositions shine much brighter. Two pieces stand out, his work set to the Polish Mazurka and his Sonata in G Major. In the former Nietzsche succeeds at tackling the dance’s offbeat rhythm, and doing so without aping Chopin. In the latter, inasmuch as his romantic inclinations will allow, Nietzsche demonstrates a capability in balancing motivic material both in self-contained movements and across the sonata. The first movement is particularly strong; the thematic material is both fully developed and displays a lightness of affect absent virtually everywhere in the rest of his corpus.
To conclude, all that is wrong with Nietzsche’s piano music—he had composed for other genres as well—can be boiled down to one point, that he was an amateur. Personally, I suspect that Nietzsche’s lack of virtuosity at the keyboard was a major culprit. His figurations scream a lack of pianistic prowess, and unfortunately for him technical excellence was a major hallmark of the romantic era. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean any of this this pejoratively. There’s something noble about the amateur classical musician, s/he is both an ultra-rarity, exponentially so in today’s world, and typically devoid of the air of grandiosity that surrounds the professional composer, and is, therefore, granted an opportunity to compose freely and without fear of popular reprisal. In Nietzsche’s case, I have no doubt that he took his compositional “career” with a grain of salt, he knew what he was good at and it wasn’t music. Nor do I doubt that Nietzsche cherished his compositions. As bad as it is, it’s hard for me to call Nietzsche’s music generic. You can tell that his imprint is there, even if it is severely hampered by a lack of training.
