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What is Music?


             I have come to notice that when asked "what sort of things are you interested in?- music is always in one's response. It has come to make me contemplate whether there exists any single person that is not interested in music or does not enjoy it. This mystery of music that engulfs an entire species has compelled me to investigate this matter. In Aristotle's Politics, he states that "it is not easy to determine the nature of music, or why anyone should have knowledge of it."" This question of "What is music?- has plagued philosophers since before ancient times. Thousands of theories have been developed to explain the phenomena of music: where did it come from, how it originated, and why it affects us the way that it does. I will attempt to briefly address a few of these theories proposed by philosophical giants such as Aristotle, Plato, and Confucius, while examining the role that music plays in Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. .
             Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy is divided into two sections. The first fifteen chapters address the birth of Greek Tragedy which he believes took place upon the meeting of the Apollonian and the Dionysian world views. The following ten chapters discuss the current declining state of modern culture and its potential resurrection through the musical works of Richard Wagner. .
             The preface of The Birth of Tragedy is written to Wagner but is also speaking to the reader. Nietzsche anticipates criticism toward his work but ensures both Wagner and the reader that the subject of art is of great importance. Written during the height of the Franco-Prussian War, Nietzsche fears that "readers will find it offensive that an aesthetic problem should be taken so seriously "assuming they are unable to consider art more than a pleasant sideline, a readily dispensable tinkling of bells that accompanies the seriousness of life.- He warns against believing that such a subject of art is simple and irrelevant but to realize "what a seriously German problem is faced here and placed right in the center of German hopes.


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