Nietzsche, Tristan und Isolde, and the Analysis of Wagnerian Rhythm

Abstract

In his first publication, Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872), Friedrich Nietzsche famously interprets Wagner's Tristan und Isolde as an ideal union of “Dionysiac” music and “Apolline” myth—a union that revives the spirit of Greek musical tragedy.1 According to the Romantic ideology of early Nietzsche, Wagner's music stands at the culmination of a gradual reawakening in modern German culture of an authentic Dionysiac artistic drive. Nietzsche argues that the music of Tristan—when reconciled with the Apolline element of words and action—represents an antithesis to the modern rationalism and decadence exemplified above all in the conventions of Italian opera. Of course, Nietzsche's early critique of the decadence of modern operatic culture—together with his utopian conviction in the Gesamtkunstwerk ideal as a force for cultural renewal—derived from Wagner's theoretical writings, especially Oper und Drama (Opera and Drama, 1851) and “Beethoven” (1870).2 As is well known, however, Nietzsche's attitude toward Wagner and his operas would become increasingly critical over the course of his subsequent writings, culminating in the anti-Wagnerian polemics published at the very end of his career. In one of his last publications, Der Fall Wagner (The Case of Wagner, 1888), Nietzsche presented a starkly contrasting view to the one articulated in his first book: a portrait of Wagner and his music as the embodiment of modern decadence.3