Nietzsche has been a seminal thinker for the 20th century and remains so in our century, although he is read and interpreted in many different ways. In this course, we will dive into his writings as we do close readings of some of his works. While reading from Nietzsche’s works and studying his core teachings in this course, we will approach Nietzsche as a musical writer and thinker, an often-forgotten aspect of Nietzsche’s life and works. Therefore, we will have two synchronous parts in this class: first, the study of Nietzsche’s books from the earliest such as The Birth of Tragedy to those from his latest period, such as Twilight of the Idols. In this part, we will focus on Nietzsche’s core teachings including the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the notion of the historical, the eternal return, the overhuman, and the will to power and his ideas on tragedy, music, and morality. As we study these ideas, we will also trace Nietzsche’s development into a mature, independent thinker in his late works, as he distances himself to pessimism and romanticism represented for him by Schopenhauer and Wagner. In the second part of our class, we will explore Nietzsche’s musicality in his writings. Nietzsche was exposed to piano music in his early years and became a piano player in his teens. In his late teens, he made attempts to compose music with no education in music composition, albeit with no success according to his musical contemporaries. Nonetheless, Nietzsche’s passion and knowledge of music guided and inspired him all throughout his life and they are manifest in his writings. While examining the presence of music in his works, it will be important for us to understand the significance of this exchange between sound and thought, music and philosophy, for culture-making.