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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

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