Hear Classical Music Composed by Friedrich Nietzsche

A philoso­pher per­haps more wide­ly known for his prodi­gious mus­tache than for the vari­eties of his thought, Friedrich Niet­zsche often seems to be mis­read more than read. Even some­one like Michel Fou­cault could gloss over a cru­cial fact about Nietzsche’s body of work: Fou­cault remarked in an unpub­lished inter­view that Nietzsche’s “won­der­ful ideas” were “used by the Nazi Par­ty.” But that use, he neglect­ed to men­tion, came about through a scheme hatched by Nietzsche’s sis­ter, after his men­tal col­lapse and death, to edit, change, and oth­er­wise manip­u­late the thinker’s work in a way The Tele­graph deemed “crim­i­nal.” Fou­cault may not have known the full con­text, but Niet­zsche had about as much sym­pa­thy for fas­cism as he did for Christianity—both rea­sons for his break with com­pos­er Richard Wag­n­er.

What Niet­zsche loved most was music. Even in the wake of this scan­dal, with Niet­zsche ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed at the schol­ar­ly lev­el at least, the philoso­pher is gen­er­al­ly read piece­meal, used to prop up some ide­ol­o­gy or crit­i­cal the­o­ry or anoth­er, a ten­den­cy his anti-sys­tem­at­ic, apho­ris­tic work inspires.

A more holis­tic approach yields two impor­tant gen­er­al obser­va­tions: Niet­zsche found the mun­dane work of pol­i­tics and nation­al­ist con­quest, with its trib­al­ism and moral pre­ten­sions, thor­ough­ly dis­taste­ful. Instead, he con­sid­ered the cre­ative work of artists, writ­ers, and musi­cians, as well as sci­en­tists, of para­mount impor­tance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist

Niet­zsche almost entered med­i­cine and was him­self an artist: “before he engaged him­self ful­ly as a philoso­pher, he had already cre­at­ed a sub­stan­tial out­put as poet and com­pos­er,” writes Albany Records. In an 1887 let­ter writ­ten three years before his death, Niet­zsche claimed, “There has nev­er been a philoso­pher who has been in essence a musi­cian to such an extent as I am,” though he also admit­ted he “might be a thor­ough­ly unsuc­cess­ful musi­cian.” In any case, he hoped that at least some of his com­po­si­tions would become known and heard as com­ple­men­tary to his philo­soph­i­cal project.

Now seri­ous read­ers of Niet­zsche, or those sim­ply curi­ous about his musi­cian­ship, can hear some of his com­po­si­tions online. The music ranges from spright­ly to pen­sive, roman­tic to mourn­ful, and some of it seems to come right out of the Protes­tant hym­nals he grew up with as the son of a Luther­an min­is­ter. Niet­zsche com­posed music through­out his life—a com­plete chronol­o­gy spans the years 1854, when he was only ten, to 1887. See The Niet­zsche Chan­nel for a thor­ough list of pub­lished Niet­zsche record­ings and sheet music.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ancient Philo­soph­i­cal Song Recon­struct­ed and Played for the First Time in 1,000 Years

Lis­ten to Music Playlists to Help You Study Like Niet­zsche, Socrates, Kant & Oth­er Great Thinkers

Hear Friedrich Nietzsche’s Clas­si­cal Piano Com­po­si­tions: They’re Apho­ris­tic Like His Phi­los­o­phy

Nietzsche’s 10 Rules for Writ­ing with Style

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Life & Thought

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.