With “Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, Sections 1-2,” we continue our multi-episode exploration of the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche and its application to music. In this episode, we broach the generative antagonism Nietzsche believes is embodied in the interactions between what he terms the Apollinian and the Dionysian. These are not concepts; they are drives or instincts. They are as caught up in nature and the body as they are in philosophy and the mind. Indeed, for Nietzsche there is no easy distinction between mind and body. The Apollinian deals with beauty, clarity, individuation, bounded knowledge, and representation. The Dionysian addresses the sublime, ambiguity, self-forgetting, boundless feeling, and the Schopenhauerian Will. I conclude the episode by examining meter/rhythm and pitch/tone as manifestations of the relationship between the Apollinian and the Dionysian.
Here is the Table I refer to in the episode.
| “Level” of Comparison | Apollo | Dionysus |
| Artistic Production | Plastic Arts (Sculpture) | Music (nonimagistic) |
| Corporeal | Dreams | Intoxication |
| Metaphysical/ Philosophical (role of philosopher) | Phenomena (Kant/Schopenhauer) | Noumena (Kant/Schopenhauer) |
| Characteristics associated with knowledge | Calm, Sun-like (Light), Bounded | Stormy, Watery (Dark), Unbound |
| The Self | Principium individuationis (Individual) | Self-Forgetting (Immersion in the group and nature) |
| Aesthetics | Beautiful | Sublime |
| Clarity | The veil (of maya) | Rending of the veil |
| Ontology | Being (Distance from work) | Becoming (Becoming the Work of Art) |
| Life/Death | Freudian Eros | Freudian Thanatos |