The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
837.
_Concerning our modern music._--The decay of melody, like the decay of "ideas," and of the freedom of intellectual activity, is a piece of clumsiness and obtuseness, which is developing itself into new feats of daring and even into principles;--in the end man has only the principles of his gifts, or of his lack of gifts. "Dramatic music"--nonsense! It is simply bad music.... "Feeling" and "passion" are merely substitutes when lofty intellectuality and the joy of it (_e.g._ Voltaire's) can no longer be attained. Expressed technically, feeling and "passion" are easier; they presuppose a much poorer kind of artist. The recourse to drama betrays that an artist is much more a master in tricky means than in genuine ones. To-day we have both dramatic painting and dramatic poetry, etc.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.