Why is Music Tragic?
On Nietzsche and Audio-Visual Culture
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argues that tragedy is an experience that enters our consciousness through hearing rather than vision.
Vision stuns us with order and beauty. But tragedy—whose heart is the chorus—enables us to feel that beauty is an illusion. The plastic arts dissemble as much as they reveal; tragedy makes us aware of the dissemblance…
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