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Around the time Wesley Lowerydescribedin the New York Times a reckoning over objectivity in journalism, I was reading an introduction to W.E.B. Du Bois Black Reconstruction in Americaby Dr. David Levering Lewis.

Lewis mentions an incident I have not heard much discussed: the censorship of Du Bois by a white editor at the Encyclopedia Britannica named Franklin Henry Hooper. This happened in 1929. A century later, the incident and its implications chime with Lowerys observations about editors seeing the work of Black people as hopelessly biased and the views and inclinations of whiteness as the objective neutral. Then, as now, the forms of liberal rationalism were put to reactionary use. The encyclopedia, Lewis writes, had demonstrated how color-coded cognitive dissonance impelled most educated white people, in the name of objective history and social science, to discount the beliefs of most educated colored people as propaganda or fiction.

The affair played out over a series of letters, which have been digitized by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. You can find them all here. They contain other echoes of our present media culturethe debate about capitalizing the n in Negro; Du Bois rallying fellow Black writers to the cause, imploring them in a letter to stand as a unit; Hooper reminding Du Bois that facts dont care about his feelings; Du Bois getting stiffed on his payment. The people who are in charge today are the same sort of people who were in charge 90 years ago. They reach for the same tools to beat back any challenge to the sustaining fictions of the social order, whether theyre defending the prerogatives of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1929 or theNew York Times op-ed page in 2020.

Here is the basic situation: In the mid 1920s, Du Bois was recruited to write for the encyclopedia. He was already a giant of his time, having published The Souls of Black Folk andDarkwater, and having co-founded the NAACP. His project was in many ways a long, twilight battle against the idea of whiteness as neutral. His academic work in the realms of history and economics centered Black lives and Black agency. The Souls of Black Folk discussed how Black self-conception was filtered through a white world, creating a double-consciousness or twoness. Writing for Britannica, that bastion of the objective neutral, Du Bois had a unique chance to reshape consensus narratives from within.

He took it on with zeal. First, he was asked to write an entry on Black literature for the encyclopedia. A few years later, he was tapped for a larger entry on The Negro in the United States generally. Du Bois used the assignment as an opportunity to recruit other Black scholars, among them the famous philosopher Alain Locke. In light of the distortions and even grotesqueries written about people of color in standard reference works of the period, access to the Encyclopedia Britannicawas greeted with an almost pitiable hopefulnessso much was theirs in mainstream America to so little allow, writes Lewis in the second volume of his two-part biography of Du Bois (bothparts of which won separate Pulitzer prizes).

But as Lewis explains, a corporate upheaval at the encyclopedia left Du Bois working with a new editor: Franklin Henry Hooper. Hooper, in the letters, fully inhabits the role of the bad white editor. He is brusque, supercilious, late, and wrong. When he wants to change something in the proof, it is explained as correcting a mistake. (It cannot just be an editorial decision.) Letters are passive-aggressive and condescending. Each is signed: FRANKLIN H. HOOPER. AMERICAN EDITOR.

In May of 1928, Du Bois turns in a draft of a general entry on the American Negro to Hooper. It is long, he admitsabove the 5,000-word mark, nearing 9,000, evenbut hes confident he can cut it down if Hooper could tell him what ground has been covered on the subject by other encyclopedia contributors.

Eight months later, Hoopers editorial assistant, L.P. Dudley, sends back an edited manuscript. Hooper has slashed it. Du Bois responds on the day he receives it.I am very much dissatisfied, he says.

First, Du Bois notes it would be a personal insult not to capitalize the word Negro, a complaint that resonates with todays debate over capitalizingthe b in Black. At least some of Du Bois aggravation is surely due to the fact that Hooper already knows his feelings on the matter. In 1926, when Du Bois first wrote for the encyclopedia about African American literature, hed exchanged letters with Hooper about capitalization, to which Hooper assented despite a general policy of capitalizing as few words as possible.

Du Bois then dives into the factual changes. They are myriad. Du Bois had written that Southern legislation showed a determination to re-establish Negro slavery in everything but name. Hooper has changed it to seemed to show an inclination to re-establish slavery. Du Bois had provided the precise number of lynchings. Hooper has made it vague. (I see no reason why the number of Negroes lynched should not be plainly stated, Du Bois says.) Du Bois had written, Negroes were kept from voting at first by force and intimidation, then by fraud and finally by a series of laws which purported to disfranchise the illiterate, the propertyless, and those who did not pay their poll tax. Hooper has soft-pedaled the description, writing, Negroes were gradually forced from the Ballot Box by one means or another.

Hoping not to appear captious or over-sensitive, Du Bois explains in his response that the article should represent my own thought and conviction and not Hoopers. These edits, he says, are not his beliefs.

That same day, Du Bois writes a letter warning the other Black writers hed recruited for Britannica. Du Bois hopes to push back together. In particular, he wants to stand as a unit on the matter of the capitalization of the word Negro.'

We know that Alain Locke agreed, as well as W.A. Robinson, who had been asked to write an article on the development of education for African Americans. In fact,Robinson was having his own run-ins with Britannicas editorial process at the time. He wound up sending his own letter to editors, saying that multiple changes they made to appease Southern readers were untrue.

Du Bois commiserates and strategizes in a letter to Robinson, also dated February 14 (though he notes that the changes in mine are much more serious).

Evidently, there has been a change in policy among the Editors of the Encyclopedia, Du Bois writes. After conceding that the editors are allowing us to put through a great deal, he says we ought to at least make a fight for morea demonstration of the way even the soft sort of inclusion favored by Americas liberal institutions can bring about real agitation for change.

A few days later, Hooper writes back to Du Bois to explain his edits to the manuscript. He says that he made the changes because certain things were written shall I say in vindication of the colored peoplehe found that quite unnecessary. He adds that, in fact, some of the information contradicted information in other articles of the volume.

Hooper points out that Du Bois claim that Black Americans helped save democracy after the Civil War is a matter of opinion and as such should find no place in an encyclopedia. The editor concedes a few pointsand half-heartedly agrees to capitalize Negro, as if the same conversation had not already happenedbut otherwise brushes off Du Bois, saying his changes are about space while Du Bois proposed changes are inessential. Hooper says he must rush the article to press, even threatening to print the thing if I do not hear from you by return mail.

Du Bois is not satisfied. He sends another letter to Hooper to explain the changes he feels must be made before publication. At the end, he also responds to Hoopers condescension about the necessity of the changes: You say that these other changes do not seem to me to be necessary: but the point is that I am the author of the article and to me some change does seem necessary.

Does this rebuke stop Hooper or give him pause? Of course not. Striking a pose of cool-headed rationalism, he responds with a florid version of what would now be rendered as facts not feelings.

Hooper says he has made his changes and will publish the article with them. But he does not send the new version along.

Du Bois asks to see the actual article and will not allow it to be published until he does.

Du Bois has at this point reached out to a friend, Joel Spingarn,a white writer and fellow leader in the NAACP, for counsel on his interesting experience with Hooper, attaching both his correspondence and that of the other Britannica writers. Spingarn points out that the encyclopedia isnt looking for the fundamental truth so much as a clear picture of accepted wisdom, and thatBritannica is more insular and one-sided than most works of the kind.

Du Bois has also sent a letter to his original editor,Worth Hedden, about the queer experiences of the Black writers hed recruited. The former editor explains that broad editorial changes atBritannica had led to his ousting, and, moreover, that he is not surprised Du Bois recruits were running into trouble.

By the time Hooper finally sends the manuscript alongand tries to finish off the interaction to get final approvalDu Bois has formulated a plan.

Taking a suggestion from Spingarn, Du Bois insists on one last change.

We know from subsequent correspondence with Spingarn that Du Bois had wanted to insert this paragraph:

White historians have ascribed the faults and failures of Reconstruction to Negro ignorance and corruption. But the Negro insists that it was Negro loyalty and the Negro vote alone that restored the South to the Union; established the new Democracy, both for white and black, and instituted the public schools.

Hooper refuses. He kills the article, saying that he cannot pass the article with this new paragraph and I am therefore deleting it altogether.

Let us take a moment with this idea, so objectionable that Hooper kills the entire article. The claim that Black Americans saved democracywouldbecome the bedrock of Black Reconstruction in America, considered Du Bois masterwork. (In 1933, Du Bois would even send his correspondence with Britannicato the publisher of Black Reconstructionthe rejection of the article forBritannica is marked as the genesis of the book, explains a note written by an archivist.)

The bookis foundational on two fronts. Black Reconstruction posited postCivil War lawmaking as a radical, Black-led movement to create a new democracy. It would lead to Eric Foners famous characterization of the time period as a second founding. Black Reconstruction also created a methodological breakthrough. This was a story centered on Black life, Black agency. It upended the prevailing ideas about who were the actors of history and who were the acted-upon. Even in miniature form, in his encyclopedia entry, Du Bois was challenging the very notion of an objective neutral over which the Britannica was created to stand sentry. The question his essay posed implicitly could be asked today of many newspaper editors or for that matter any number of adherents of the new rationalism: What facts, whose truth, are you really defending?

There is one last indignity to be visited on Du Bois. The encyclopedia wont pay him for his work.

A couple months later:

Du Bois got his money in the end: $83.33 (nearly $1,300 todaya decent kill fee). David Levering Lewis says a white sociologist named Edwin Embree wound up writing the encyclopedias entry on Black people in the United States. And Hooper? A few years, he would be promoted to editor-in-chief of Britannica.

You can still read what Du Bois attempted to enter into the historical record, though; multiple drafts exist in Amhersts collections. There is something affecting about reading it now, knowing what hed gone through with Britannica. He ends with an admission that it is difficult to express definitely just what social ostracism of American Negroes has meant in the past and just what it means now. He says the manifestations are subtle and its changes almost imperceptibly gradual.For many years Black leaders felt uncomfortable even admitting they desired equality. Yet now, he writes, under no circumstance, except by compulsion, will they accept a status of social inferiority.

Excerpt from:

The Battle Between WEB Du Bois and His White Editor Was an Early Reckoning Over Objectivity - Mother Jones

What describes a nation, or more importantly who describes a nation? Nations like to tell about heroic, victorious events of their history, it is pleasant; they are proud of their famous compatriots. Moreover, they are flattered to be highly estimated by foreign prominent people for two and a half thousand years and sometimes that words have been even overestimated. But the first-hand sources confirm, consequently, they are real. Accordingly, it is needed to understand why they expressed glorious opinions about Armenians as the authors include famous thinkers of different nations and world greats.

There are many scientific hypotheses known in the history of science, which have been rationally explained for many, even hundreds of years. Great thinkers often come to intuitive conclusions that are incomprehensible to most of their contemporaries, they are even being criticized for their ideas. For decades, I kept viewing an approach by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (16561708), a great French thinker and member of Paris Academy who noted; Armenian nation is the best nation in the world; they are moral, polite, full of chastity and decency.

At first sight, one may take this kind of statement as unreasonable and exaggerated. Armenians are patriotic, proud, but they are very critical to themselves; even a nationalist Armenian will not express such ideas. At the same time, another French thinker, historian, famous geographer Jacques lise Reclus (18301905) claims: The Armenian villager can be attributed to what Turnefor said; Armenians are the best people in the world without much exaggeration, which, in its turn, means that there are still serious grounds for such opinions.

More than a hundred years after Tournefort, the great English poet Lord George Gordon Byron wrote. The virtues of Armenians are their own, and the shortcomings are taken from others. In short, Armenians are decent and perfect and the like.

At first glance, it seems that such opinions require a lot of different knowledge on many nations, which will let us come to a certain conclusion through comparison. In other words, it was necessary to study a certain set of knowledge, which was still quite narrow at the times of the mentioned authors. Accordingly, the conclusions had to have a different starting point.

From our point of view, that starting point could have been based on several notorious historical facts, in particular:

1) Testimonies of ancient Greek and Roman historians about the Armenian people and Armenia,

2) Although several dozen peoples lived in the Armenian Highlands and Mesopotamia in ancient times, but few survived, including the Armenian people,

3) Starting from the ancient Roman and Persian periods and throughout the Middle Ages, Armenia was the scene of savage invasions (Arabs, Mongols, Seljuks, Ottomans, etc.), but Armenians continued to keep their existence in the Armenian Highlands,

4) the last mentioned outstanding peace-loving characteristic of the Armenian people, which was manifested both during the powerful Armenian kingdoms and after the loss of statehood

5) Existence of Armenian colonies in many countries, including European ones, where Armenians, have both preserved their national identity, and, at the same time, having been integrated in the new national environment, have contributed to the prosperity of those countries,

6) The process of preserving and continuously developing the Armenian language, the theological, philosophical, scientific, literary heritage created in Armenian, and the publishing heritage, too,

7) Existence of unique Armenian culture, civilization, and also contribution of Armenians to world civilization.

These basic ideas, of course, are not exhaustive; there are and there will possible be other ideas, too. It is necessary to understand the main thing: who is the Armenian, what are his peculiarities and what it was that ensured his existence for millennia?

I will emphasize the following description of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a great German thinker about Armenians: Hardworking and intelligent people, they have a special origin, all the nations accept Armenians with open arms, they have excellent mettle, it is impossible for us to talk about their preliminary formation.

Till today, modern historiography, linguistics, and ethnography are not able to fully present the preliminary formation of the Armenian nation, but there are certain assumptions. But first, let us consider the special origins of the Armenian people. One thing is certain; the origin, development and formation of the Armenian people are hidden in the thick fog of thousands of years. At all events, according to the modern genetic research, scientists confirm that Armenians have lived in their highlands for more than 7-8 thousand years. The Armenian language and culture also testify to the mentioned facts. It is clear that the perfection of the language, the elaboration, the rich vocabulary, the ability to express thoughts, ideas, knowledge, human emotions could not be created even for centuries, it has, surely, taken millennia. Differently, the development of the language also has required a rich culture, the development of which also took millennia. Language and culture, complementing and enriching each other, as well as creatively assimilating and synthesizing the best values and traditions of neighboring languages and cultures, have become, one may say, a dominant language and culture of regional significance. Thanks to that, the Armenian people have survived in the Armenian Highlands for millennia.

When talking about the special origin of the Armenian people, one cant help drawing attention to the Armenian Highlands. Generally, living in the mountains is viewed to be one of the best ways of protections from outside attacks, but limiting yourself to it does not yet give answers to many questions. The inhabitants of the mountainous regions have to constantly struggle and adapt to the harsh climatic conditions, and in order to achieve the result they need the joint efforts of the people, which, in its turn, forces them to develop special and stricter forms of coexistence as compared with the conditions in the valleys. On the contrary, mountains devote people certain advantages, such as working tools, raw materials for housing (obsidian, copper, tin, iron, various non-metallic building materials, and the like), easier means of self-protection, and all the rest. And finally, the mountains give people spiritual charge, spirituality, and also form a uniqueway of thinkingand a way of life which corresponds to it. The One for all, all for one thinking is typical, first of all, to the mountaineers. The evidence of the last mentioned is not only the way of life, behavior and manners of Armenians, but also of all mountain peoples.

There is not any coincidence that the civilizations formed in Mesopotamia, more specifically in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, have constantly been changed, and the Armenian civilization having been formed in the Armenian Highlands has kept maintaining its existence and developing steadily.

The mountaineer, whether he wants it or not, must be honest, decedent, hospitable, hardworking and inquisitive, physically and mentally healthy, conservative, apologist of public and individual order, initiative and courageous, and so on and so forth. Just as he receives guests with open arms, so he will be received with open arms, too. The mountaineer is in need of accepting guests just because he is isolated from the world and needs to be informed about what is going on in the world around him. This is how the excellent mettle, mentioned by Kant, has been formed. It is obvious that the bearer of all this is first of all the villager, to whom Reclu rightly attributes Turnefors words about Armenians.

The open-arms feature is also hardened in the cold. Armenians have also been involved in trade for centuries, which comes to say that they have not cheated in doing business, no matter how much they pursued personal interests, on the contrary, they have been able to attract customers, including members of royal families, great princes and feudal lords, nobles, local big merchants, and also to prove their honesty, kindness, without which they would have never been welcomed with open arms. Armenian merchants often also acted as royal translators, diplomats, achieved high positions in some countries, and became foreign ministers.

It is obvious that during the long contacts the Armenian merchants have not been engaged only in trade, but, simultaneously, have introduced Armenian culture, art, crafts to foreigners, participated in various events of the given country and the like. With their involvement, the Armenians have built churches, schools, established printing houses in the colonies, and came up with charitable initiatives. They have even had a special costume-suit worthy of the time and it is not accidental that Rousseau wore the clothes of an Armenian merchant to avoid political persecution. And, of course, the establishment of that country was well aware of all that.

Another characteristic Armenians have, is their peace-loving nature. Turnefor writes that Armenians consider themselves to be happy when not dealing with weapons, in contrast with other nations, they take up arms only to defend themselves against any attacks. Another thing that is worth mentioning is the assurance of the Russian historian Sergei Glinka (1775 / 6-1847). I am not writing praise, and how far are all stories(about Armenians) from praise? Armenians were not carried away by violent outbursts of conquest by the moral features of their national spirit as all that have been transitory.

Defending the homeland, preserving their own independence, withstanding external violence attempts-these are the main goals for them to get armed. Here is why Mihr, one of their pagan Gods, was a spiritual fire that preserved and would not harm the nature and man. Lets apply to J. Byron again. It is difficult to find a chronology of a nation that is free from vicious crimes than that of the Armenians, whose virtues are the product of peace and whose vices are the result of repression. An English politician, statesman William Ewart Gladstone (1805-1898) is also needed to be mentioned as a known person having written about Armenians; According to him, Armenians are one of the oldest peoples of the Christian civilization and one of the most peaceful, entrepreneurial and sensible one in the world, he also mentions that diligence, striving for peace, common sense are the main reasons why slavery was not formed in Armenia as a society.

We may continue the series of glorifying Armenians may be continued remembering the German orientalist V. Belkin member of the French Academy, Russian military historian Viktor Abaza (1831-1898) and others. Just let me mention that the biggest proof of the Armenians love of/ towards peace is their history, full of episodes of their struggle for independence and liberation, also known in the East for its arrogance, pages about great generals, war heroes and, finally, the best evidence is the epic poem Sasna Tsrer. An example of peace-loving feature of the Armenian people is the King Artashes I of the mighty empire of Greater Armenia, who marked the borders of the Armenian kingdom not through force of arms, but through the presence of an Armenian-speaking population. Generally, peace-loving is conditioned with diligence and the ability to acquire wealth on ones own. For thousands years having lived in the strict conditions of the highlands, Armenians have learned to earn their own living, to work hard, to know the laws of nature, and also to realize that by robbing someone elses property, you impoverish yourself. Having always been constant victim of the surrounding robbers, Armenians have forever realized that robbery is not the right way to live well. Robbery, theft, taking someone elses property always causes resistance and as a result of robbery one should be ready not only to gain, but also to lose; one loses his children, his peace of mind, and often becomes a victim of robbery. There have existed many powerful empires, which have disappeared with their peoples before the eyes of Armenians. Every war, even a victorious one, gives birth to a new war and, predominantly, the winner becomes the loser. This is how the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Roman and Parthian empires disappeared from the face of the earth.

Since the ancient times, plunder has been an important part of the way of life of the peoples having in the European continent, but having adopted the ancient Greek philosophical rationalism, the Europeans did manage to greatly promote education, science, technology, develop the arts, and inherit the cruel, malevolent and arrogant path concentrating on urgent political and economic interests and due to that, they succeeded in ensuring a prosperous life for the golden billion of their citizens and subjects.

The thinkers of the European Enlightenment, who advocated the ideas of human rights, freedom, equality, fraternity proclaimed by the French Revolution, in fact did not have worthy followers and did not guarantee the embodiment of the idea of fraternity. It was all this that led archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann (1822-90) to come to the conclusion according to which the tragedy of Europe is that its civilization is stood on the Greek rather than the Armenian culture.

Today, the West is reaping the fruits of its sins; international terrorism and international migration. They are just germs and still Europe has a lot to pay for the atrocities, looting, wars, and damage to hundreds of peoples.

Above we mentioned about the Armenian colonies, which have a history of thousands of years, and not only multilingual literature, references-studies exist but also significant traces of material culture have been preserved. Some Armenian colonies have been created by the migration of Armenians, when for various reasons the Armenians were forced to leave their homeland, others by the forced resettlement or deportation of savage states. The forcible deportation had several goals: first, to evict the Armenian territories in order to appropriate them once and for all, on the other hand, to make those territories unattractive or unsuitable for the enemy neighboring countries. Our immediate neighbors, Byzantium, Persia, Rech Pospolita, Transylvania, Russia, India, have forcibly or peacefully populated villages, towns, and regions with Armenians. By deporting, sometimes taking advantage of, providing land, economic privileges, national educational, cultural, religious freedoms, granting internal autonomy, Armenians settled their uninhabited or occupied territories, using their commercial and craft potential for their own security and development. What was the reason for this kind of friendly attitude towards Armenians? The answer is obvious. Armenians are hardworking, progressive and, also, peace-loving/peaceful.

On this subject, I would love to remind a part from the history of the Crimea. When Russian Empress Catherine II (1762-96) instructed Prince Potemkin to seize the Crimea, he took the following step: invited the Greeks and Christian Armenians, granted tax and property privileges to his country. The caravans of Christian Armenians and Greeks moved to Christian Russia, as a result of which the short-lived worker collapsed economically and lost his resistance on the eve of the Russian invasion.

Byzantium once weakened the Armenian kingdoms, evicted Armenians, paved the way for the Turkish troops to the depths of the country, to Constantinople and perished, so the Turks did not shy/keep away from any means, even resorting to genocide and statelessness, depriving themselves of a viable Christian element.

The West will also greatly contribute to this, as soon as it gets rid of Britains We have no fixed allies, we have no eternal enemies. Only our interests are immutable and eternal(Henry Temple, Lord Palmerson, 1848) destructive philosophy. It is necessary to have permanent friends, which can be achieved only through mutually beneficial cooperation.

Although, at first sight, the words of praise from many famous foreigners about the Armenian people may seem to have been exaggerated, they are really justified. However, this does not still mean that Armenians are the best people of the world, at least because there are many good nations, who have greatly contributed to the development of human civilization. For centuries, Armenians, having been under the brutal rule of foreigners, have taken many of their flaws and now they have left the national-moral image of their ancestors out having lost many values. Accordingly, I am sending a message to Armenians not only to be proud of the glory and praise of the past, but also to make efforts to restore the special majesty and virtue of the Armenian nation, and to get rid of foreign flaws. Only with that self-purification and exaltation you will be able to consider yourself a virtuous people, which is more important than the praise of others.

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In The Bends And Labyrinths Of Civilizations - Modern Diplomacy

In the opinion of many the greatest of all composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) began his career as a child prodigy, and went on to achieve pre-eminence in every genre to which he turned his hand. His music combines melodic beauty, with innovative formal perfection and a remarkable ability to capture and explore deep ambiguities of emotion and feeling.

Many of his works are immediately familiar, among them Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K525; Symphony No 40 in G Minor, K550; and the slow movement of Piano Concerto No 21 in C, K467, popularised in the 1960s by Bo Widerbergs film Elvira Madigan, and heard since in countless adverts. (The letter K, appended to Mozarts music, refers to Ludwig von Kchels 1862 catalogue of his output). Ingmar Bergman and Kenneth Branagh filmed Die Zauberflte (The Magic Flute), and countless directors have used his music in their films, including Luis Buuel in LAge dOr and Elem Klimov in Come and See. Peter Shaffers 1979 play Amadeus, filmed in 1984, is a well-known, if inaccurate, dramatisation of Mozarts years in Vienna, coloured by the much voiced, if hugely disputed idea, particularly prevalent in the 19th century, that his music was divine in origin and represents the voice of God embodied in sound.

He was born in Salzburg, the son of a composer-violinist at the citys archiepiscopal court. Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) was determined to exploit Wolfgangs talent, which was apparent by the time he was five, when he composed his first pieces. From the age of six, Leopold took his miracle son on extended tours of Europe, exhibiting him at courts and academies, where his precocity as both composer and pianist was much admired. Wolfgang absorbed and assimilated the music he heard during their travels, composing his first symphony when he was eight, in London, where the Mozarts encountered Johann Christian Bach (Johann Sebastians youngest son), whose own symphonies influenced the boys work.

Mozart wrote his first opera, the Latin intermezzo Apollo et Hyacinthus, when he was 11, following it a year later with Bastien und Bastienne, a singspiel (a work in German with spoken dialogue) and the Italian comedy La Finta Semplice. When he was 17, he entered the service of the new Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus von Colloredo, though he was later permitted to make forays elsewhere, to Paris and Mannheim in 1777-78, finally without Leopold, and Munich in 1780-81.

He came to detest Salzburg as restrictive, though his years in the city saw the gradual consolidation of his style. Many of his symphonies date from this period, as does his first important piano concerto, No 9 in E Flat K271, commonly known as the Jeunehomme. His five violin concertos were composed between 1773 and 1775: the adagio of the Third is an exquisite example of his bittersweet melodic style. The Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola among the first works to use the viola as a solo instrument dates from 1779.

Mozart lived during the closing years of the Enlightenment, when the philosophical rationalism of the early 18th century was challenged by cults of feeling that pre-empted Romanticism. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, also a composer, encouraged ideas of sensibility and subjectivity, and Bastien und Bastienne parodies Rousseaus 1752 opera Le Devin du Village. Mozart also lived at a time when an emerging bourgeoisie began to challenge aristocratic assumptions about privilege and libertinage, which strongly colours the emphasis on class conflict and differing codes of sexual behaviour in his later operas. His librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte was a friend of Casanova, while the games of erotic manipulation of Cos Fan Tutte echo those of Lacloss 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Idomeneo, Mozarts first mature opera, was premiered in Munich in January 1781. Later that year, Mozart broke decisively if acrimoniously with Colloredos court, settling in Vienna as a freelance composer, performer and teacher, though in 1787, he secured a part-time position at the imperial court, primarily composing dance music. In 1782 he married the soprano Constanze Weber. Though the idea that Mozart lived in poverty has been much exaggerated, the couple were frequently short of money. Mozart became a Freemason in 1784: his later correspondence with his fellow Mason Michael von Puchberg contains repeated requests for financial assistance.

In the last decade of his life, he produced a sequence of extraordinary masterpieces on which his reputation primarily rests. For his own subscription concerts, he composed 15 remarkable piano concertos, Nos 11 to 25, for himself and his pupils to play, giving the form new prominence, depth and seriousness. Discovery of the works of Bach and Handel strongly influenced his use of counterpoint in both symphonic development and operatic ensembles. He also became friends with Haydn, drawing upon the latters pioneering innovations in symphonic and chamber music. His chamber works from the period also include two major string quintets and the E Flat Divertimento, K563, the first important work for string trio in musical history.

His most familiar symphonies also date from the 1780s, including the concise Haffner No 35 in D, K385, from 1782, and the more expansive Prague No 38, also in D, K504, premiered during his first visit to the city in 1787. His last three symphonies were written in rapid succession during the summer of 1788. Mozarts use of counterpoint is little short of dazzling in No 41 in C, K551, the Jupiter, above all in the final movement, which weaves five themes together in one of the most jubilant passages in the entire symphonic repertoire.

In 1782, meanwhile, the singspiel Die Entfhrung aus dem Serail, an imperial commission, proved popular at its premiere, though its virtuoso vocal writing provoked the Emperor Joseph IIs infamous comment that the opera had too many notes. The late 1780s were dominated, however, by his collaboration with Da Ponte on Le Nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Cos Fan Tutte (1790). Figaro and Cos are both described as opera buffas (comic operas), while Don Giovanni, with its metaphysical narrative of desire and damnation, is a dramma giocoso, altogether darker in mood. All three are works of tremendous humanity, driven by an astonishing succession of arias and extended ensembles, which reveal Mozarts ability to empathise fully with each of his characters in turn, even in moments of violence, moral uncertainty or existential crisis, resulting in a sense of profound emotional ambiguity that far transcends any conventional notion of comedy and tragedy.

Die Zauberflte was written as a popular entertainment, not unlike pantomime

In 1791, the last year of his life, Mozart composed a further pair of string quintets, his only Clarinet Concerto, and his last two, very different operas. La Clemenza di Tito is an opera seria examining the moral responsibilities of absolute power. The singspiel Die Zauberflte was written as a popular entertainment, not unlike pantomime, for a suburban Viennese theatre, overlaying a sprawling fairytale with esoteric Masonic imagery.

At his death, he left unfinished his Requiem, commissioned by an aristocratic patron, who probably intended to pass it off as his own. We owe the legend that Mozart came to believe he was writing it for his own funeral to Constanze, whose veracity has frequently been questioned. Its first posthumous completion, by his pupil Franz Xaver Sssmayr, is nowadays most frequently heard, though others have prepared performing editions of the score.

Mozarts music has never been out of the repertory, though the reputation of individual works fluctuated after his death: the 19th century, for instance, found Cos Fan Tutte trivial, and it was only in the 20th that its subtlety and sadness became widely appreciated. The depth and range of Mozarts symphonies and concertos, however, have long represented the pinnacle of classical form, and his operas are performed in every opera house in the world. In Mozarts own lifetime, Haydn acknowledged him as a genius superior to himself, and the many composers who later considered him the greatest of all include Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss.

Mozarts music has been extensively recorded, using both conventional forces and period instruments. Interpreters as far apart as Karl Bhm and Charles Mackerras have tackled the complete symphonies, though few have quite captured the exaltation of the Jupiter more powerfully than Otto Klemperer, and Nikolaus Harnoncourts intense way with the late symphonies is immensely appealing. There are complete cycles of the piano concertos by Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia and Christian Zacharias, while significant interpreters of the violin works include Isabelle Faust and Giuliano Carmignola. Karl Bhms recordings of the major operas have been much admired over the years, with John Eliot Gardiner and Harnoncourt providing superb alternatives. Klemperers authoritative way with Don Giovanni, though, remains uniquely compelling: his Zauberflte is similarly still considered a classic, as is Erich Kleibers 1955 recording of Le Nozze di Figaro.

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Mozart: where to start with his music - The Guardian

What describes a nation, or more importantly who describes a nation? Nations like to tell about heroic, victorious events of their history, it is pleasant; they are proud of their famous compatriots. Moreover, they are flattered to be highly estimated by foreign prominent people for two and a half thousand years and sometimes that words have been even overestimated. But the first-hand sources confirm, consequently, they are real. Accordingly, it is needed to understand why they expressed glorious opinions about Armenians as the authors include famous thinkers of different nations and world greats.

There are many scientific hypotheses known in the history of science, which have been rationally explained for many, even hundreds of years. Great thinkers often come to intuitive conclusions that are incomprehensible to most of their contemporaries, they are even being criticized for their ideas. For decades, I kept viewing an approach by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (16561708), a great French thinker and member of Paris Academy who noted; Armenian nation is the best nation in the world; they are moral, polite, full of chastity and decency.

At first sight, one may take this kind of statement as unreasonable and exaggerated. Armenians are patriotic, proud, but they are very critical to themselves; even a nationalist Armenian will not express such ideas. At the same time, another French thinker, historian, famous geographer Jacques lise Reclus (18301905) claims: The Armenian villager can be attributed to what Turnefor said; Armenians are the best people in the world without much exaggeration, which, in its turn, means that there are still serious grounds for such opinions.

More than a hundred years after Tournefort, the great English poet Lord George Gordon Byron wrote. The virtues of Armenians are their own, and the shortcomings are taken from others. In short, Armenians are decent and perfect and the like.

At first glance, it seems that such opinions require a lot of different knowledge on many nations, which will let us come to a certain conclusion through comparison. In other words, it was necessary to study a certain set of knowledge, which was still quite narrow at the times of the mentioned authors. Accordingly, the conclusions had to have a different starting point.

From our point of view, that starting point could have been based on several notorious historical facts, in particular:

1) Testimonies of ancient Greek and Roman historians about the Armenian people and Armenia,

2) Although several dozen peoples lived in the Armenian Highlands and Mesopotamia in ancient times, but few survived, including the Armenian people,

3) Starting from the ancient Roman and Persian periods and throughout the Middle Ages, Armenia was the scene of savage invasions (Arabs, Mongols, Seljuks, Ottomans, etc.), but Armenians continued to keep their existence in the Armenian Highlands,

4) the last mentioned outstanding peace-loving characteristic of the Armenian people, which was manifested both during the powerful Armenian kingdoms and after the loss of statehood

5) Existence of Armenian colonies in many countries, including European ones, where Armenians, have both preserved their national identity, and, at the same time, having been integrated in the new national environment, have contributed to the prosperity of those countries,

6) The process of preserving and continuously developing the Armenian language, the theological, philosophical, scientific, literary heritage created in Armenian, and the publishing heritage, too,

7) Existence of unique Armenian culture, civilization, and also contribution of Armenians to world civilization.

These basic ideas, of course, are not exhaustive; there are and there will possible be other ideas, too. It is necessary to understand the main thing: who is the Armenian, what are his peculiarities and what it was that ensured his existence for millennia?

I will emphasize the following description of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a great German thinker about Armenians: Hardworking and intelligent people, they have a special origin, all the nations accept Armenians with open arms, they have excellent mettle, it is impossible for us to talk about their preliminary formation.

Till today, modern historiography, linguistics, and ethnography are not able to fully present the preliminary formation of the Armenian nation, but there are certain assumptions. But first, let us consider the special origins of the Armenian people. One thing is certain; the origin, development and formation of the Armenian people are hidden in the thick fog of thousands of years. At all events, according to the modern genetic research, scientists confirm that Armenians have lived in their highlands for more than 7-8 thousand years. The Armenian language and culture also testify to the mentioned facts. It is clear that the perfection of the language, the elaboration, the rich vocabulary, the ability to express thoughts, ideas, knowledge, human emotions could not be created even for centuries, it has, surely, taken millennia. Differently, the development of the language also has required a rich culture, the development of which also took millennia. Language and culture, complementing and enriching each other, as well as creatively assimilating and synthesizing the best values and traditions of neighboring languages and cultures, have become, one may say, a dominant language and culture of regional significance. Thanks to that, the Armenian people have survived in the Armenian Highlands for millennia.

When talking about the special origin of the Armenian people, one cant help drawing attention to the Armenian Highlands. Generally, living in the mountains is viewed to be one of the best ways of protections from outside attacks, but limiting yourself to it does not yet give answers to many questions. The inhabitants of the mountainous regions have to constantly struggle and adapt to the harsh climatic conditions, and in order to achieve the result they need the joint efforts of the people, which, in its turn, forces them to develop special and stricter forms of coexistence as compared with the conditions in the valleys. On the contrary, mountains devote people certain advantages, such as working tools, raw materials for housing (obsidian, copper, tin, iron, various non-metallic building materials, and the like), easier means of self-protection, and all the rest. And finally, the mountains give people spiritual charge, spirituality, and also form a uniqueway of thinkingand a way of life which corresponds to it. The One for all, all for one thinking is typical, first of all, to the mountaineers. The evidence of the last mentioned is not only the way of life, behavior and manners of Armenians, but also of all mountain peoples.

There is not any coincidence that the civilizations formed in Mesopotamia, more specifically in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, have constantly been changed, and the Armenian civilization having been formed in the Armenian Highlands has kept maintaining its existence and developing steadily.

The mountaineer, whether he wants it or not, must be honest, decedent, hospitable, hardworking and inquisitive, physically and mentally healthy, conservative, apologist of public and individual order, initiative and courageous, and so on and so forth. Just as he receives guests with open arms, so he will be received with open arms, too. The mountaineer is in need of accepting guests just because he is isolated from the world and needs to be informed about what is going on in the world around him. This is how the excellent mettle, mentioned by Kant, has been formed. It is obvious that the bearer of all this is first of all the villager, to whom Reclu rightly attributes Turnefors words about Armenians.

The open-arms feature is also hardened in the cold. Armenians have also been involved in trade for centuries, which comes to say that they have not cheated in doing business, no matter how much they pursued personal interests, on the contrary, they have been able to attract customers, including members of royal families, great princes and feudal lords, nobles, local big merchants, and also to prove their honesty, kindness, without which they would have never been welcomed with open arms. Armenian merchants often also acted as royal translators, diplomats, achieved high positions in some countries, and became foreign ministers.

It is obvious that during the long contacts the Armenian merchants have not been engaged only in trade, but, simultaneously, have introduced Armenian culture, art, crafts to foreigners, participated in various events of the given country and the like. With their involvement, the Armenians have built churches, schools, established printing houses in the colonies, and came up with charitable initiatives. They have even had a special costume-suit worthy of the time and it is not accidental that Rousseau wore the clothes of an Armenian merchant to avoid political persecution. And, of course, the establishment of that country was well aware of all that.

Another characteristic Armenians have, is their peace-loving nature. Turnefor writes that Armenians consider themselves to be happy when not dealing with weapons, in contrast with other nations, they take up arms only to defend themselves against any attacks. Another thing that is worth mentioning is the assurance of the Russian historian Sergei Glinka (1775 / 6-1847). I am not writing praise, and how far are all stories(about Armenians) from praise? Armenians were not carried away by violent outbursts of conquest by the moral features of their national spirit as all that have been transitory.

Defending the homeland, preserving their own independence, withstanding external violence attempts-these are the main goals for them to get armed. Here is why Mihr, one of their pagan Gods, was a spiritual fire that preserved and would not harm the nature and man. Lets apply to J. Byron again. It is difficult to find a chronology of a nation that is free from vicious crimes than that of the Armenians, whose virtues are the product of peace and whose vices are the result of repression. An English politician, statesman William Ewart Gladstone (1805-1898) is also needed to be mentioned as a known person having written about Armenians; According to him, Armenians are one of the oldest peoples of the Christian civilization and one of the most peaceful, entrepreneurial and sensible one in the world, he also mentions that diligence, striving for peace, common sense are the main reasons why slavery was not formed in Armenia as a society.

We may continue the series of glorifying Armenians may be continued remembering the German orientalist V. Belkin member of the French Academy, Russian military historian Viktor Abaza (1831-1898) and others. Just let me mention that the biggest proof of the Armenians love of/ towards peace is their history, full of episodes of their struggle for independence and liberation, also known in the East for its arrogance, pages about great generals, war heroes and, finally, the best evidence is the epic poem Sasna Tsrer. An example of peace-loving feature of the Armenian people is the King Artashes I of the mighty empire of Greater Armenia, who marked the borders of the Armenian kingdom not through force of arms, but through the presence of an Armenian-speaking population. Generally, peace-loving is conditioned with diligence and the ability to acquire wealth on ones own. For thousands years having lived in the strict conditions of the highlands, Armenians have learned to earn their own living, to work hard, to know the laws of nature, and also to realize that by robbing someone elses property, you impoverish yourself. Having always been constant victim of the surrounding robbers, Armenians have forever realized that robbery is not the right way to live well. Robbery, theft, taking someone elses property always causes resistance and as a result of robbery one should be ready not only to gain, but also to lose; one loses his children, his peace of mind, and often becomes a victim of robbery. There have existed many powerful empires, which have disappeared with their peoples before the eyes of Armenians. Every war, even a victorious one, gives birth to a new war and, predominantly, the winner becomes the loser. This is how the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Roman and Parthian empires disappeared from the face of the earth.

Since the ancient times, plunder has been an important part of the way of life of the peoples having in the European continent, but having adopted the ancient Greek philosophical rationalism, the Europeans did manage to greatly promote education, science, technology, develop the arts, and inherit the cruel, malevolent and arrogant path concentrating on urgent political and economic interests and due to that, they succeeded in ensuring a prosperous life for the golden billion of their citizens and subjects.

The thinkers of the European Enlightenment, who advocated the ideas of human rights, freedom, equality, fraternity proclaimed by the French Revolution, in fact did not have worthy followers and did not guarantee the embodiment of the idea of fraternity. It was all this that led archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann (1822-90) to come to the conclusion according to which the tragedy of Europe is that its civilization is stood on the Greek rather than the Armenian culture.

Today, the West is reaping the fruits of its sins; international terrorism and international migration. They are just germs and still Europe has a lot to pay for the atrocities, looting, wars, and damage to hundreds of peoples.

Above we mentioned about the Armenian colonies, which have a history of thousands of years, and not only multilingual literature, references-studies exist but also significant traces of material culture have been preserved. Some Armenian colonies have been created by the migration of Armenians, when for various reasons the Armenians were forced to leave their homeland, others by the forced resettlement or deportation of savage states. The forcible deportation had several goals: first, to evict the Armenian territories in order to appropriate them once and for all, on the other hand, to make those territories unattractive or unsuitable for the enemy neighboring countries. Our immediate neighbors, Byzantium, Persia, Rech Pospolita, Transylvania, Russia, India, have forcibly or peacefully populated villages, towns, and regions with Armenians. By deporting, sometimes taking advantage of, providing land, economic privileges, national educational, cultural, religious freedoms, granting internal autonomy, Armenians settled their uninhabited or occupied territories, using their commercial and craft potential for their own security and development. What was the reason for this kind of friendly attitude towards Armenians? The answer is obvious. Armenians are hardworking, progressive and, also, peace-loving/peaceful.

On this subject, I would love to remind a part from the history of the Crimea. When Russian Empress Catherine II (1762-96) instructed Prince Potemkin to seize the Crimea, he took the following step: invited the Greeks and Christian Armenians, granted tax and property privileges to his country. The caravans of Christian Armenians and Greeks moved to Christian Russia, as a result of which the short-lived worker collapsed economically and lost his resistance on the eve of the Russian invasion.

Byzantium once weakened the Armenian kingdoms, evicted Armenians, paved the way for the Turkish troops to the depths of the country, to Constantinople and perished, so the Turks did not shy/keep away from any means, even resorting to genocide and statelessness, depriving themselves of a viable Christian element.

The West will also greatly contribute to this, as soon as it gets rid of Britains We have no fixed allies, we have no eternal enemies. Only our interests are immutable and eternal(Henry Temple, Lord Palmerson, 1848) destructive philosophy. It is necessary to have permanent friends, which can be achieved only through mutually beneficial cooperation.

Although, at first sight, the words of praise from many famous foreigners about the Armenian people may seem to have been exaggerated, they are really justified. However, this does not still mean that Armenians are the best people of the world, at least because there are many good nations, who have greatly contributed to the development of human civilization. For centuries, Armenians, having been under the brutal rule of foreigners, have taken many of their flaws and now they have left the national-moral image of their ancestors out having lost many values. Accordingly, I am sending a message to Armenians not only to be proud of the glory and praise of the past, but also to make efforts to restore the special majesty and virtue of the Armenian nation, and to get rid of foreign flaws. Only with that self-purification and exaltation you will be able to consider yourself a virtuous people, which is more important than the praise of others.

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Excerpt from:

What stands behind escalation of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan? - Modern Diplomacy

What is it, the Austro-Hungarian novelist Joseph Roth asked rhetorically in 1927, in a preface to his book The Wandering Jews, that allows European states to go spreading civilisation and ethics in foreign parts but not at home? Forty years later, as American cities burned while American bombs rained down on Vietnam, James Baldwin made a similar point, though reversing Roths formulation. A racist society, he wrote, cant but fight a racist war this is the bitter truth. The assumptions acted on at home are also acted on abroad.

The relationship between the internal and the external policies of western liberal democracies lies also at the heart of Pankaj Mishras work. The Indian-born novelist and essayist has, over the past decade, become an important and illuminating critic of liberalism and globalisation.

Bland Fanatics is a collection of essays published over that time that range from excoriations of Niall Ferguson and Salman Rushdie, to a study of US president Woodrow Wilsons hypocrisy over his support for national self-determination, to an unpacking of the irrationality of western attitudes to Islam.

Two themes link the essays. The first is the hollowness and bad faith of liberalism. In the early 1960s, the Irish academic and politician Conor Cruise OBrien observed that those in former colonies in Africa and Asia were sickened by the word liberalism, seeing it as an ingratiating moral mask which a toughly acquisitive society wears before the world it robs. Had more western intellectuals paid attention to such hostility, Mishra suggests, had they recognised liberalisms complicity in western imperialism, they might have been better prepared for the current challenges facing the liberal tradition.

Mishras writings have been important in exposing the narrow parochialism of western intellectuals

This leads to the second theme in Bland Fanatics the significance of the non-western world in shaping history and blindness of western liberals to that world. Mishra takes aim at prettified histories of the rise of the democratic west in which centuries of civil war, imperial conquest, brutal exploitation and genocide are glossed over in accounts of how westerners made the modern world and became with their liberal democracies the superior people everyone else ought to catch up with.

Mishras writings have been important in exposing the narrow parochialism of western intellectuals and in bringing the history of the rest of the world into discussions of European and American history and politics. There is, though, a narrowness to his own approach, which raises as many questions about Mishras critique as he does about liberalism.

It is striking, for instance, that there is barely a mention of class in Bland Fanatics, except for the odd line deriding the Brexit pretensions of the British ruling class. To write 16 essays on the problems of liberalism, and the character of its current crisis, without discussing its impact on the working class or the role of the working class in the contemporary anti-liberal tumult, not only in Europe and America, but globally, seems extraordinary.

In an essay on the African-American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, Mishra chides him for viewing the rise of Donald Trump as an expression of a whitelash from those who feared the black man in the White House, pointing out that Trump also benefited from the disappointment of white voters who had voted, often twice, for Obama, and of black voters who failed to turn out for Hillary Clinton.

Yet Mishras own account of the rise of Trump, and of populism more broadly, seems implausible and contradictory, too. In his previous book The Age of Anger, Mishra linked the fury that had brought populist leaders to power to that which underlies Islamist terror and sectarian violence, seeing them all as expressions of what Kierkegaard and Nietzsche called ressentiment, the existential resentment of other peoples being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness. The roots of such resentment Mishra traced back to the backlash against Enlightenment rationalism and the refusal of liberals to acknowledge the importance of community, identity and authenticity.

It was a provocative thesis, exhilarating in parts but infuriating, too, in its flattening of historical nuance. It is, for instance, one thing to recognise the importance of community and identity and the anger created by the atomisation of societies. It is quite another, though, to view the desire for community as an expression of what Mishra calls the persistent power of unreason or to see all forms of inchoate and half-articulated rage as drawing upon the same historical source.

In any case, in Bland Fanatics the argument has shifted. Mishra argues here (in an essay written the year after The Age of Anger was published) that the election of Trump represents the last and most desperate phase of a journey that moves through colonialism, slavery, segregation, ghettoisation, militarised border controls and mass incarceration. This is a very different historical lineage to that in The Age of Anger and one shaped by the actions of the elite, not by the feelings of those who resent their exclusion from the world created by that elite.

What is missing in Bland Fanatics is any attempt to analyse liberalism in the round. Were there any historical gains from the emergence of liberalism? What, if anything, is worth saving from the liberal tradition? How should we assess the tension between Enlightenment ideals, from which many anti-colonial movements drew inspiration, and the practice of European colonialism that denied those ideals to the majority of people in the world? Such questions are ignored by Mishra.

There is much that is valuable in Mishras writings, opening up as they do new perspectives in the debate about liberalism and about the relationship between the west and the global south. Its a pity that there is also much that obscures even as it illuminates.

Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race and Empire by Pankaj Mishra is published by Verso (16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over 15

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Bland Fanatics by Pankaj Mishra review both obscures and illuminates - The Guardian