Alan Sheehy

Noise and Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy: A Contemporary View

This thesis is aimed at an aesthetic analysis of noise, both in music and as music. Using the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy presented by Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy as an aesthetic starting point, it undertakes a critical analysis of noise music in the twentieth, and turn of the twenty first century. This is supported by contemporary analysis and references to this subject by Jacques Attali, Paul Hegarty and others, so that an aesthetic can be deduced to frame the analysis of “noise in music, noise as music and music as noise”. In order to approach this topic, a definition of noise is given to assess its use in music (or as music) and compare and contrast different approaches to incorporating noise into compositions and performances. Analyses of three pieces have been conducted that explore Nietzsche’s ideas and how these contemporary, experimental approaches can be situated in the dichotomy of Apollo and Dionysos. Accompanying the written thesis is a composition that highlights the influence of these opposing artistic forces in a combination of approaches to noise.