r/continentaltheory

So if you were around recently, you may have heard my Nietzsche Song: The Rebirth of Tragedy. Now here we have the remix, the Dionysian cut — the eruptive shadow of my original Nietzsche Song. A rawer transmutation. A philosophical remix that tears the veil from the rational mask and invokes the primal truth of music as becoming. For Nietzsche, for Dionysus, for the tragic soul of art.

The Nietzsche Remix: Dionysian Cut is intense, experimental, and avant-garde, mixing Siberian vocal techniques with harp and guitar (acoustic and electric) alongside Nietzschean lyrics that proclaim the Rebirth of Tragedy and elucidate Nietzschean philosophy.

If you missed the original, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Alie N. Clock II — musician-scholar and PhD student — transforming philosophy and esotericism into song.

For Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, music is the in-itself, the unmediated will, and the metaphysical truth of the corporeal world. Nietzsche’s project of the Birth of Tragedy claims rediscovery of the lost music of the ancient mysteries through philology. Nietzsche’s philosophy is deeply entwined with music, essentially musical. Nietzsche himself is famously a musician, and whilst The Birth of Tragedy champions Wagner as the musical hero who redeems mythic tragedy, he later repudiated Wagner and sought the musical redemption of myth himself in Thus Spake Zarathustra, which he conceived of as his symphony. This is part of my own rebirth of tragedy, by returning philosophy back to its mythical homeland.

Let me know what you think, and hope you enjoy!

Hi there, I am a PhD student writing about the Western philosophical tradition; I am also an experimental musician, and I have taken on the challenge to render philosophy into music. This is my Nietzschean musical rebirth of tragedy, a musical adaptation of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy.

What if philosophy had never forgotten its origin in music?
How can tragedy be reborn — not as theatre, but as song?

In this work, I undertake a Nietzschean act: a musical-philosophical mythopoiesis. A Rebirth of Tragedy. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche writes: “Without music, life would be an error.” For Nietzsche, music is not merely a metaphor for life. In 1872’s The Birth of Tragedy, music is understood as will itself: the unmediated, Dionysian force underpinning the phenomenal world, as metaphysics of the physical world, and the in-itself.

The Birth of Tragedy interprets Greek culture as engendered from the interaction of the conflicting forces of Apollo and Dionysus.  Apollonian power is illusion, coherence, the appearance of orderliness of the phenomenal realm. Its Dionysian counterforce exists as formlessness, music, the suffering underpinning the illusions of the phenomenal realm; it is also the originary and eternal artistic power which renders the phenomenal world into existence. Their strife is relentless, with only periodic reconciliation.

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche claims that philology had enabled him to rediscover the lost music of ancient tragic drama, understanding tragedy as the rebirth of myth that renders music to its apotheosis, its mystery most clearly elucidated in the Eleusinian mysteries. Envisaging music as the suprarational register of wisdom, his late work sought to rectify philosophy with poetry to become “Socrates who practices music.”  

In the Birth of Tragedy, myth and philosophy exist as dynamic, cyclical unity; though he saw Socrates and Euripides as having killed myth, Nietzsche envisioned myth as reborn through Wagner, whose music he initially conceived of as the overcoming of philosophy. After having predicted myth’s rebirth in The Birth of Tragedy, he sought to precipitate the rebirth of myth himself in Thus Spake Zarathustra, a revivification of myth explicitly envisioned as musical.

Such provides the context for understanding my philosophical-musical work, Nietzsche Song: The Rebirth of Tragedy, and this philosophical exposition has been adapted from material from my PhD thesis.

If we understand, as Nietzsche does, the wisdom of philosophy as suprarational, and as musical, philosophy must be rendered music, must be practiced, and must be lived. Akin to Nietzsche, I understand music as the golden thread, the subterranean metaphysical truth of the phenomenal world, the living pulse underlying the striations of rationality, the affirmation of life that supersedes the purview of rationality. Music dances and sings, alchemizing the suffering of tragedy into affirmative and redemptive power. The philosopher-musician is the one with the audacity to explore the most abyssal depths of the world, transmuting that abyss into musicality.

This song is my renewed invocation of that spirit.
A musical thinking, a musical philosophizing, a praxis both musical and metaphysical. My own affirmation of tragedy. Philosophy that sings.
A myth reborn and reimagined for the 21st century.

This is my own rebirth of tragedy: transposing philosophy back to its musical homeland, origin, and essence. An experimental artifact with aesthetic, philosophical, and musical value, Nietzsche Song: The Rebirth of Tragedy is a philosophical event. A harbinger, heralding a reimagined philosophical culture. A sonic offering to Nietzsche*, Dionysus, and the Dionysian unbridled original and eternal wisdom that supersedes reason.* Hope you enjoy!