CDOTD 4/21/2023

 Friedrich Nietzsche: Volume 1 Compositions of his Youth 1857-63 (Albany)

Purchased at the Jerry's Records dollar sale

I returned to graduate school at Duquesne University in 2008, after having been out of school since 1987. I enjoyed the opportunity to be on the other side of the lectern, so to speak.

One of the final courses I took was a philosophy course offered by the music department, which had to do with topics by philosophers of interest to musicians. The first and longest topic was time, for example. 

I enjoyed being able to look over Duquesne's library materials. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for some of us) many of those materials have been sold off, specifically their vinyl and CD collections. Foolish on their part, in my opinion.

I came across a collection there of minimalist piano music, and curiously the final track was Friedrich Nietzsche. This was the first I knew anything of him being a composer. He wouldn't have been a minimalist by the post-war 20th century definition, but perhaps similar to that of Satie. I ripped a copy. At her request I sent my professor a copy, who then shared it on the course web page. She was a good teacher (and I think my only instructor who was younger than me) but she did wholesale scanning and copying materials for class, so sharing that rip was nothing new. One of the texts for class was by Nietzsche.

If I remember correctly, I couldn't have disagreed with him more.

Forward to today, plundering through the Jerry's dollar sale in the lower floor. Mostly vinyl, but boxes of CDs too. This was unusually enough to warrant paying $1 for it. Apparently, someone previously tried to sell it for $19.97. Oh, the days when CDs were worth something!

What's on here? Mostly short individual piano works, some choral music, a few art songs. Some selections are so short (a "Presto" lasting half a minute) that I thought they sound fragmentary, or at least like they should have been pieces in a collection of works. 

Mid-19th century Romanticism is not generally what interests me, if you couldn't already tell that. Not being anything near an expert on that period, Nietzsche's piano music seems a bit Schumann-like, more introspective than boisterous, such as Liszt. Some of it maybe even recalls the piano sonatas of Haydn. 

With as many short works as there are here, I wonder what his ability might have been to start to tackle longer-form works had he stuck with being a composer exclusively. It's hard enough being a musician. Want a tough career path? Declare that you want to be a philosopher. But then, my old friend John MacFarlane did all right for himself in that field, but I'd say you have to be singularly amazing to support yourself on philosophy.

I guess he was a reasonably good composer, though I don't hear anything that really separates him from the pack, so to speak. Plus given my taste, I would have been fine with a collection of piano music only.

This release is conspicuously missing from discogs.com! That's been my source for cover images here. I don't know that I want to make the effort to post this CD release.