Nietzsche

Here are a two quotes from The Case of Wagner:

"At present money is only made by morbid music, our great theatres live by Wagner." (19)
"[...] it is easier to be gigantic than to be beautiful; we are aware of that..." (20)

One of the primary reasons Nietzsche seems to dislike Wagner so much is that he sees his music as overpowering, excessive, and reliant on sheer stimuli. This, coupled with Wagner's Christianity and focus on salvation, which Nietzsche already disagrees with, seems to completely kill the enjoyment of Wagner's music. That is, he disagrees with Wagner's message, and sees the music itself as further nonredeemable because it focuses more on quantity rather than quality. Bizet's Carmen in contrast, is seen to convey genuine love with all its tragedy, and uses musical devices that Nietzsche sees as beautiful and not overdone, notably because the music is "southern."

This mentality reminds me a lot of modern (or past, the idea seems to be timeless) cries against popular music because its, for example, "fake," "overproduced," or "lacking in substance." Think of popular opinion regarding excess in both musician ethos and sonic qualities of genres like Hair Metal, Dubstep, Trap, or even just typical Pop music on the radio. As general as those terms are, the main idea I'm trying to express is that certain types of music develop off of excitement with more and more stimuli, moving further in an excessive direction as the audience wants more and more. Songs in pop music around a certain time tend to sound similar to each other because that's what the audience crave - "At present money is only made by morbid music."  Wagner seems to be that for Nietzsche, and Bizet seems to be the counter-culture that expresses something more genuine (notably because the culture surrounding it is different/unfamiliar e.g. "southern").

One example of a genre that is largely a counter-culture is Shoegaze from the 90's, in which the musicians would spend most of the performance looking at the floor to operate guitar pedals, the idea being that their focus was completely towards the unique quality of the music, not the visual flare of the show. This was a reaction to the heavy presence of the visual stage flare and cheesy musical devices that were happening with Rock at the time, especially with costumes and performances within Hair Metal. My Bloody Valentine became very popular for their novel sound, but ironically for this example, they use layering of sounds to create an overpowering "wall of sound" that is key to the genre - something Nietzsche would hate for its brute force. Regardless, it was born out of nearly the same sentiment of getting away from excess that Nietzsche's providing here.