pro and contra wagner 253ideology: one can ‘feela thought asmore trueif it has a metrical form’
(ibid.: 95 ), a view which gives support to his claims that equate truth
and power. In contrast to his earlier conception, in which music made
possible an ‘agreement of feeling’, feeling in music is now more likely
to be a form of deception. This kind of evaluation turns him against
‘Romanticism in music’ (which includes Wagner) after 1876 , because
it ‘deprives the mind of its rigour and joviality and makes every kind
of unclear longing, of spongy covetousness proliferate’ (ibid.: 1 , 740 ).
However, musical rhythm is not inherently suspicious: he more than
once contrasts the ‘dancing’ of earlier music that is based on regular
rhythmic patterns with the ‘swimming’ of Wagner’s ‘endless melody’
(e.g. ibid.: 789 ) which uses great variation of patterns, regarding the
former as preferable.^9 On what basis, though, is this evaluation made?
Adistinction should be made here between the idea that certain
kinds of music are asignof a cultural deficiency, and the idea that they
have acausalrole in bringing about that deficiency. Nietzsche too often
fails to make this distinction, regarding Wagner’s expression of cul-
tural problems in modernity as being equivalent to his contributing to
such problems. Wagner’s music might be both a symbolic manifestation
of problems and a contributor to them, but one must then differentiate
which aspects of his work are to be understood as signs, and which as
causes. The question is whether Nietzsche just projects his philosophi-
cal or anti-philosophical concerns onto Wagner’s music, and so fails to
do justice to the diversity of its cultural impact.
In Section 10 ofThe Case of WagnerNietzsche sums up a central strand
of his contentions: ‘In fact he repeatedonesentence throughout his
life: that his music should not just mean music. But more! But infinitely
more!...“Not onlymusic” – no musician talks like that’ (ibid.: 2 , 924 ).
In the same vein, he says a bit later: ‘It isnotmusic with which Wagner
conquered the young men for himself, it is the “Idea”... exactly the
same as what Hegel seduced and tempted them with in his time!’ (ibid.:
925 ). The complaint is that Wagner wants to use music as metaphysics,
which Nietzsche sees as both damaging to music and as damaging to
those who are tempted by such music. This temptation can be explained
by his remark inHuman All Too Humanthat ‘the highest effects of art
easily produce a resonance of the long-silent, indeed broken, meta-
physical string’ (ibid.: 1 , 548 ), where he refers to the moment in the
9 Nietzsche’s own extended musical compositions, such as the ‘Manfred Meditation’ of
1872 , are notable for their lack of rhythmic and formal coherence, as well as for their
melodic inventiveness.