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The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms by Friedrich  Wilhelm Nietzsche is a collection of two essays and a selection of aphorisms on the Nietzsche's views on the music of Wagner in particular and the problem of degeneracy and the dangers of accepting it as the main culture. I read this e-book only because I wanted to read something by Nietzsche not because I truly understand high-culture or Classical Music, to which Wagner's music belongs. Though I enjoy this music genre. Yet, I do agree with Nietzsche on the need to guard against the tendency of misconstruing degeneracy for the norm at any epoch. As has happened today. Reading this essay, I shivered to think of what the author's response would have been to today's compositions, if there are any. Especially since Wagner, whom he critiqued caustically, is considered a virtuoso today by all standards and for whom a whole festival was organised to mark his two hundredth year last year. How...

The greatest event of my life took the form of a recovery . Wagner belongs only to my diseases.  All that is good is easy, everything divine runs with light feet. For, as a rule, artists are no better than the rest of the world, they are even worse - they misunderstand  love. Even Wagner misunderstood it. They imagine that they are selfless in it because they appear to be seeking the advantage of another creature often to their own disadvantage. But in return they want to possess  the other creature... Even God is no exception to this rule, he is very far from thinking "What does it matter to thee whether I love thee or not?" - He becomes terrible if he is not loved in return... [N]othing so easily makes a painful impression as when a great mind despoils itself of its wings and strives for virtuosity in something greatly inferior, while it renounces more lofty aims. People can actually kiss that which plunges them more quickly into the abyss. [T]he mu...