 The second part of The Birth of Tragedy is wedded to the Wagnerian agenda to such an extent that is has been defined as “by far the most ambitious defence of an individual artist ever mounted by a philosopher” (Ridley 2007: 31). Despite Nietzsche’s early enthusiastic endorsement of Wagner’s work, his infatuation with the composer soon began to fade, and finally turned into outright condemnation (on Nietzsche–Wagner relations, see Ridley 2007: appendix; Young 2014: epilogue; Prange 2013: chapters 1–6). While the reasons for this are complex, it seems clear that Wagner’s failure to embody the values of truly Dionysian music was crucial. This failure depended not only on Wagner’s own stylistic development, but also on Nietzsche’s reconsideration of the composer’s earlier achievement. Nietzsche later contrasts German and Romantic music with Dionysian music, which clashes with Nietzsche’s own earlier characterization of German music, and especially Wagner’s, as truly Dionysian (Nietzsche 1872: §19; about the contrast between Dionysian and Romantic art more generally, see Ridley 2007: 122–128). In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Nietzsche contrasts the decadent music of the North to that of the South, epitomized by Bizet’s work, the chief value of which lies in its life-affirming quality (Nietzsche 1886: §554).