Friedrich Nietzsche - Altera commentarii pars lyrics

While the Germanic drama has developed out of the epos, out of the epic tale of religious content, the ancient Greek drama had its origin in lyricism, combined with musical elements. These beginnings explain a great deal with respect to the history and peculiarity of both. However, in the older tragedies of Aeschyulus, the chorus takes a by far predominant role; often, the interjections only serve to introduce motives which change the moods of the chorus and keep emotions moving on. With time, however, the chorus moved into the background, namely then, when the action was moved out of it more and more and transferred into the parts in-between the choruses; it only retained its importance because it kept the musical elements together that necessarily belonged to tragedy if it wanted to make any really tragic impression, at all. About this tragic impression, the ancient Greeks thought differently than we do; with them, it was particularly intorduced by the great pathos scenes, broadly conceptualized expressions of emotion, for the greater part musical, in which the action played only a minor role, the lyrical feeling, however, was everything; ... The chorus and these pathos scenes, therefore, comprised one of the most important and, for the success of the drama, decisive aspects, music in tragedy. It is certainly with reason when I a**ume that, at the height of tragedy, also the musical elements were devised according to a unified plan, that order and balance of the musical elements prevailed both in the entire tragedy as well as in each choral song. That the latter is the case, shows a look at the Sophoclean choral song. What (else) is strophe and antistrophe then musical symmetry, what is executed balance of the rhymes other than melodic balance? Here, from the "Choephoras", I only mention the artfully organized arrangement of single strophes and antistrophes, which bears witness to an eminent sense of form and of the eurythmic sense of Aeschylus. However, since every melody was the equivalent of certain feelings it expressed, the basic mood of the antistrophe had to be the same as in the strophe; otherwise, we would have to a**ume that the sensitive ancient Greeks had digressed to the nonsense in which our opera, up to these days,--not considering the ingenious reform plans of R. Wagner--finds itself, namely to the incredible discrepancy between music and text, between sound and emotion. ... In all of these comments, one can notice something that is peculiar in all writers to tragedy: they were not only poets, they were also composers and still more, they were both in such a manner that one went hand-in-hand with the other, and if we still consider that they, in their arrangements and in their sequence displayed a great mastery, nay, that they were event actors, themselves, and important ones, at that who, as Goethe says, understood their metier and their stage like anyone: then we would have, in their works of art, what the latest musical school is proposing as the ideal of the "art work of the future", works, in which the noblest art forms harmoniously unite, in which one art form serves to allow the other one to appear in the right light, and in which all work together in order to leave behind a uniform enjoyment of art, thus we would have, in them, such fortunately and divinely organized people that the rays of all art forms meet in the prisms of their minds. As far as the above-mentioned unity of all musical elements in the entire tragedy is concerned, we have to imagine it somewhat like this: all lyrical feelings that are awakened in tragedy, that are, therefore, connected to each other in the emotional progress of the whole, are expressed in the choruses and in the pathos scenes; if, thus, the sequence of feelings and emotions in tragedy is a natural one, then the musical sequence is also a natural one; and a great deal would appear unnatural to us there which is, indeed, deeply embedded in human nature, so that often, out of tragedy, a serene dance song emerges that forms the most peculiar contrast to the feelings that follow tragedy. It is the same as if, often in the greatest symphonies, prior to the most moving and pa**ionate outpourings, a scherzo is rendered in a happy mood; or when Shakespeare emphasizes the terrible by contrasting it with the ridiculous, the trivial, all the more. Generally, it can be a**umed as a rule that never, two musical pieces of the same emotional content follow each other; in many tragedies it is the case that the power and pa**ion of the choruses is increasing with the progress of the action; in some, we also find a counterpart, in which the blinded chorus, out of initial restlessness and fright, moves towards ever greater calmness and serenity, so that the tragedy subsequentLy sets in with all the greater moving effect. ... let us finally turn to looking at our choral song: thus, its three main parts first express a frightened flight, in search of help, then deep suffering and pain, and finally a lively and increasing damnation of the plague and a yearning for the arrival of the merciful Gods, well, the finale even reaches a dithyrambic fire, at the end of the third strophe and antistrophe. Of these three parts, the first one is most intricately sequenced and comprised of the most varying metres, the second one maintains the most uniformity in its sad rhythms, the third one accelerates to greatest liveliness of emotion, something that is peculiar to the final parts of the first choruses in tragedy. Often, Bacchus is mentioned in them, and here, allusions of Bacchian dithyrambs have been preserved.