And Also

“Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional,” Oliver Sacks wrote in contemplating music’s singular power over the human spirit—a power that humbled some of humanity’s most brilliant minds. Among them was Friedrich Nietzsche. He who proclaimed that ‘God is dead’ and believed that nothing worthwhile is easy found in music life’s sole unmerited grace. In an autobiographical fragment quoted in Julian Young’s Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Public Library), the German intellectual goliath writes: “God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble.... If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation, it is sinful and harmful.”