Nietzsche’s philosophy has long been associated with far-right ideologies. Yet Gustav Mahler’s musical engagement with Nietzsche offers a radically different vision. Drawing on Nietzsche’s perspectivism, Übermensch, and Eternal Recurrence, Mahler’s symphonies reinterpret Nietzsche’s ideas through a pluralistic and progressive lens. In this piece, musicologist, composer, and philosopher Leah Batstone details Mahler’s engagement with Nietzsche, arguing that music has the potential not only to mirror political and philosophical debates, but also offer original insight into the defining ideas of an epoch.

The inherent embeddedness of politics and philosophy in music is not always readily apparent or accepted. Indeed, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the consequent decision by some institutions to cut ties with artists supporting and supported by Putin, for example, has led to outraged claims that art is beyond politics and artists are apolitical. Yet music is necessary to how we view the world politically—and to understanding how others have seen it. 

The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche offer an example. The philosopher’s bold ideas exercised significant influence over a variety of 20^th century political thinkers—most notoriously, members of the Third Reich—and remain apropos to ongoing political discussions. In particular, the self-actualizing drive of the Will to Power and the philosopher’s critique of morality can both be handily pressed into serving certain far-right ideologies looking for justifications for oppression and the denial of facts. Over the past century, the philosopher’s poetic prose has also garnered significant attention from composers. Aside from the tumultuous personal relationship between the philosopher and Richard Wagner, composers including Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, Frederick Delius, Alexander Scriabin, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Pierre Boulez all showed an interest in Nietzsche. One composer whose music goes further, encapsulating a particular understanding of the philosopher’s ideas, is Gustav Mahler. Contrary to tendencies to associate Nietzsche with supremacist ideologies approaching fascism, Mahler’s musical interpretations of Nietzschean ideas offer a wholly different set of values. Reflecting the reception of Nietzsche among his university peers, Mahler’s music represents Nietzsche through evocations of compassion, perspectivism, and the power of joy. Mahler’s engagement with Nietzsche helps us understand music’s ability to mirror contemporary interpretations of philosophical and political ideas, and how artworks and the histories contained within them can endure even as our political readings of philosophy change.

SUGGESTED READING Music is the key to understanding life By Denis Noble In 1896, Mahler completed his Third Symphony, a work overtly engaged with Nietzschean texts. The fourth movement features a vocal setting of poetry from Thus Spoke Zarathustra; the composer famously described the final movement as “God! Or if you like the Übermensch”; and he once considered giving the whole piece the title “My Gay Science.” While Nietzsche was popular among fin de siècle Viennese intellectuals, Mahler’s treatment of his ideas was not merely the dilettantism of a trend-observing artiste. Receiving his introduction to Nietzsche from peers who would become social theorists and politicians, Mahler’s musical encounters with Nietzsche sound a thoughtfully honed reading of the philosopher that shaped Austrian politics in the early 20^th century.

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Contrary to tendencies to associate Nietzsche with supremacist ideologies approaching fascism, Mahler’s musical interpretations of Nietzschean ideas offer a wholly different set of values.

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Mahler’s most obvious deployment of Nietzsche is his setting of Zarathustra’s “Midnight Song” in the fourth movement of the Third Symphony.