Without Music Life Would Be A

From the "Maxims and Arrows" chapter of Twilight of the Idols (1889), aphorism 33. The full aphorism reads: "How little is needed for happiness! The note of a bagpipe. — Without music, life would be a mistake. The German even thinks of God as singing songs." Nietzsche was himself a trained pianist and composer, and his relationship with music was deeply personal — he had an early, intense friendship with Richard Wagner, whose music he initially championed before famously breaking with him in the late 1870s. Twilight of the Idols was written in 1888, just before his mental collapse, and the remark reflects his lifelong view of music as the most life-affirming of the arts.