Friedrich Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, was published in 1872. In it the philosopher, in his capacity as a philologist, outlined the history of Greek tragedy, focusing on how the combination of Dionysian and Apollonian elements created the ideal birthing conditions for the ancient genre. According to Nietzsche, the mixture of the intoxication and self-nullification associated with Dionysus and the explanatory and illusory veil of imagery and narrative represented by Apollo, combined to forge a shared, dramatic experience in which ancient audiences could, through observation, effectually undergo essential human struggles, learn from them, and strengthen their bonds with one another. Although he would come to distance himself emphatically from the composer, Nietzsche’s first book also identified the music dramas of Richard Wagner as the main site of promise for a German rebirth of this powerful, ancient genre.

The link between this particular conception of Greek tragedy and the work of Richard Wagner goes beyond the proposal that the reincarnation of the art form lay within the composer's operas. The idea of Dionysian-Apollonian duality as the source for the specific effects of ancient drama first appears in Wagner's own prose writings from 1849. In his essay “Art and Revolution” Wagner himself refers to the coming together of Apollonian and Dionysian forces as the root of ancient tragedy before presenting his own revolutionary theories of contemporary opera. Nietzsche expands and elaborates upon the comments made by Wagner, making the philosopher the leading figure of this characterization of tragedy, but it is the Wagnerian roots of the idea of Apollonian and Dionysian that provide guidance for locating these elements in the music of Mahler, a composer influenced significantly by both men.

Wagner and Nietzsche first met at the end of 1868 and were initially bound by a shared appreciation for the aesthetics of Arthur Schopenhauer.