The ear, the organ of fear,
could not have evolved so greatly
as it has only in the night and twilight
of obscure caves and woods,
in accordance with the mode of life
of the age of timidity,
that is to say the longest human age
there has ever been:
in bright daylight the ear is less necessary.

That is how music acquired
the character of
an art
of night and twilight.

Daybreak by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. R. G. Hollingdale, aphorism 250

The thinking of Nietzsche develops along a vector taken by evolutionary biology in our time.  Never mind the term had not yet been coined in the late 19th century.  Psychological development, the earliest to latest strata of the mental capability of homo sapiens mirrors the demand of survival within a surrounding context, an environment.  In the earliest of times, for us, our most certain refuge of safety was within the confines of a hidden cave, in a deep wood. Early detection and evaluation of sound was the key to life and death.  Has our species always sought the location of death on the glowing radar screens of our psyche?  Do we still care that we are stalked by death? Certainly.

Sound, auditory discrimination, connoisseurship, taste in music is derived from untold generations of our ancestors that knew well a way of life in the twilight.

Night Art!  I am fascinated by the concept.

I offer this tune by Journey, Stone In Love.  The lyric has a mythic dimension does it not!? Can you hear echos of our ancestors?  I can.

Stone In Love

By Journey

Those crazy nights, I do remember in my youth
I do recall, those were the best times, most of all
In the heat with a blue jean girl
Burnin’ love comes once in a lifetime
She found me singing by the rail road track
Took me home, we danced by moonlight

Those summer nights are callin’,
Stone in love
Can’t help myself I’m fallin’
Stone in love

Old dusty roads, led to the river
Runnin’ slow
She pulled me down, and in clover
We’d go ’round
In the heat with a blue jean girl
Burnin’ love comes once in a lifetime
Oh the memories never fade away
Golden girl, I’ll keep you forever.

Those summer nights are callin’,
Stone in love
Can’t help myself I’m fallin’
Stone in love