Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

A preter­nat­u­ral­ly tal­ent­ed, pre­co­cious child, bare­ly out of tod­dler­hood, in pow­dered wig and knee-breech­es, caper­ing around the great hous­es of 18th cen­tu­ry Europe between vir­tu­oso per­for­mances on the harp­si­chord. A young boy who can play any piece any­one puts in front of him, and com­pose sym­phonies extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly with ease…. Few scenes bet­ter cap­ture the mythos of the child prodi­gy than those report­ed from the child­hood of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart.

If Milos Forman’s Amadeus is any reli­able guide to his char­ac­ter, if not his his­to­ry, Mozart may nev­er have lost his boy­ish charm and exu­ber­ance, but his musi­cal abil­i­ty seemed to mature expo­nen­tial­ly as he com­posed hun­dreds of sonatas, quar­tets, con­cer­tos, and operas, end­ing with the Requiem, an aston­ish­ing piece of work by any mea­sure, despite remain­ing unfin­ished in the year of his death, 1791, at the age of 35.

While those fever­ish scenes of Requiem’s com­po­si­tion in Forman’s film may be ten­u­ous­ly attached to the truth, the sto­ries of Mozart the preschool and boy­hood genius are well attest­ed. Not only did he play with unbe­liev­able skill for “emper­ors and empress­es in the courts of Europe,” but “by the time he was six he had com­posed dozens of remark­able pieces for the key­board as well as for oth­er instru­ments,” notes Willard Palmer in an intro­duc­tion to Mozart’s most pop­u­lar works. “His first efforts at com­po­si­tion began when he was only four years old.”

He com­posed sev­er­al short pieces the fol­low­ing year, and you can hear them all per­formed above. At the Mor­gan Library’s site you can also see a scanned man­u­script image of four of those com­po­si­tions, writ­ten in Mozart’s father’s hand. Leopold Mozart—the dri­ving stage-parental force, as we know, behind Wolfgang’s child­hood career as a tour­ing marvel—notated these first attempts, cred­it­ing them to “Wolf­gangerl,” in what is known as the Nan­nerl Note­book, from the nick­name of Mozart’s old­er sis­ter, Maria Anna.

Leopold, Kapellmeis­ter of the Salzburg court orches­tra, rec­og­nized not only Wolfgang’s musi­cal tal­ents, but also those of Nan­nerl, and he devot­ed his time to over­see­ing both his children’s train­ing. For sad­ly obvi­ous rea­sons, the elder Mozart did not con­tin­ue to per­form, and the note­book named for her does not con­tain any of her com­po­si­tions, only Leopold’s exer­cis­es for the chil­dren and her broth­er’s first orig­i­nal work. In addi­tion to Mozart’s ear­li­est pieces, it may also con­tain music com­posed by him at 7 or 8 years old—more exten­sive works that might, says Mozar­teum researcher Ulrich Leisinger, bridge the short, sim­ple first pieces and his first major com­po­si­tions.

Nonethe­less, we have dozens of Mozart’s com­po­si­tions through­out his child­hood and teenage years. Sev­er­al of those ear­li­er pieces come from the so-called Lon­don Note­book, a sketch­book kept dur­ing Mozart’s time in Eng­land between 1764–65. Here, writes Ele­na Abend, we find him “extend­ing his musi­cal themes com­pared to his ear­li­er com­po­si­tions.” And yet the music “almost always has a play­ful­ness about it.” It’s a qual­i­ty that nev­er left Mozart’s work, exclud­ing the awe­some Requiem, of course, but then this final mas­ter­work was com­plet­ed by oth­er com­posers, none of them with Mozart’s light­ness of spir­it, which we can trace all the way back to that first piece, “a court­ly lit­tle com­po­si­tion.” Writes Abend, “grace­ful­ness is essen­tial in per­form­ing the piece.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Per­for­mance of a Mozart Com­po­si­tion That Had Been Lost for Cen­turies

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of Mozart’s Music, Com­posed from Ages 5 to 35

Mozart’s Diary Where He Com­posed His Final Mas­ter­pieces Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look Like Fun

The Rea­gan pres­i­den­cy was prob­a­bly the gold­en age of anti-drug mes­sag­ing. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a fry­ing pan. The First Lady told America’s school kids sim­ply to “Just Say No.” The mes­sage was stu­pe­fy­ing­ly sim­ple. Drugs, like Com­mu­nism and tax­es, are bad.

Dur­ing the ear­ly 1970s, how­ev­er, that anti-drug mes­sage was much more con­fused. Take for exam­ple Curi­ous Alice, a visu­al­ly stun­ning, deeply odd movie about the per­ils of drug abuse that makes the stuff look like a lot of fun. Cre­at­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health in 1971, the film shows young Alice read­ing Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won­der­land in a sun­ny dap­pled mead­ow before nod­ding off.

She soon finds her­self plung­ing down the rab­bit hole and in a won­der­land … of drugs. The King of Hearts is hawk­ing hero­in. The Mad Hat­ter is trip­ping on LSD. The hookah-smok­ing Cater­pil­lar is stoned out of his gourd. The Dor­mouse is in a bar­bi­tu­rate-induced stu­por and the March Hare, who looks like the Trix Bunny’s ne’er-do-well broth­er, is a fid­get­ing tweak­er. “You ough­ta have some pep pills! Uppers!” he exclaims. “Amphet­a­mines! Speed! You feel super good.”

The movie was report­ed­ly intend­ed for eight-year-olds. While it’s unlike­ly that your aver­age third grad­er is going to absorb Alice’s mor­al­iz­ing about acid, they will almost cer­tain­ly respond to the film’s trip­py, Mon­ty Pythonesque ani­ma­tion. The ani­ma­tors clear­ly had a blast mak­ing this movie, but their efforts didn’t exact­ly trans­late into an effec­tive mes­sage. After the movie came out, the Nation­al Coor­di­nat­ing Coun­cil on Drug Edu­ca­tion slammed the movie, call­ing it con­fus­ing and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. As an adult, how­ev­er, the movie is a lot of fun. So check it out above.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Reefer Mad­ness, 1936′s Most Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Hilar­i­ous “Anti-Drug” Exploita­tion Film, Free Online

The First-Ever Film Ver­sion of Lewis Carroll’s Tale, Alice in Won­der­land (1903)

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human Body as a Modern Factory

In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a Ger­man gyne­col­o­gist and anato­my text­book author, pro­duced a lith­o­graph called Der Men­sch als Indus­triepalast (Man as Indus­tri­al Palace) that depict­ed the human body as a fac­to­ry, a chem­i­cal plant of sorts. Kah­n’s body came com­plete with mechan­i­cal lungs, a rock-sort­ing stom­ach, gears for a throat, and a switch­board for a brain, and it illus­trat­ed rather metaphor­i­cal­ly the degree to which indus­tri­al­iza­tion had tak­en over West­ern life, cre­at­ing deep anx­i­ety for some and curios­i­ty for oth­ers.

More than 80 years lat­er, Hen­ning Led­er­er, a Ger­man artist, brought Kah­n’s mechan­i­cal body to life with some gift­ed ani­ma­tion. To learn more about Led­er­er’s project, you will want to spend more time on IndustriePalast.com and par­tic­u­lar­ly with this help­ful PDF. Oth­er ani­ma­tions by Led­er­er can be found on Vimeo.

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2011.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Hun­dreds of Issues of Jugend, Germany’s Pio­neer­ing Art Nou­veau Mag­a­zine (1896–1940)

Down­load Influ­en­tial Avant-Garde Mag­a­zines from the Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry: Dadaism, Sur­re­al­ism, Futur­ism & More

Down­load 36 Dadaist Mag­a­zines from the The Dig­i­tal Dada Archive (Plus Oth­er Avant-Garde Books, Leaflets & Ephemera)

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist

“Do what thou wilt”: as the cen­tral prin­ci­ple of a world­view, it may not sound like much, but at least there are always a great many peo­ple ready and will­ing to hear it. So dis­cov­ered Aleis­ter Crow­ley, the ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Occultist now remem­bered not just for his uncon­ven­tion­al reli­gious prac­tices, but also for his knack for gath­er­ing cults around him­self. It was in Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law, the cen­tral text of his reli­gion Thele­ma, that he instruct­ed his fol­low­ers to act direct­ly on their own desires, ide­al­ly with the aid of some rit­u­al­is­tic black mag­ick.

You can learn more about the life and pur­suits that even­tu­al­ly got Crow­ley dubbed “the wickedest man in the world” from the Hochela­ga video above. After liv­ing most of his child­hood under a Bib­li­cal-fun­da­men­tal­ist preach­er father, who died when Crow­ley was eleven, he was sent away to var­i­ous board­ing schools, then turned trou­ble­mak­er. At Cam­bridge, where he went to study Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, he fell for the Roman­tics, then for the occult. After leav­ing with­out his degree, but with a con­sid­er­able inher­i­tance, he enjoyed the free­dom to trav­el the world, climb­ing moun­tains and attempt­ing to mas­ter the dark arts — not to men­tion tak­ing drugs and hav­ing affairs.

As he went from coun­try to coun­try, Crow­ley nev­er met an ancient reli­gion he could­n’t adapt to his own ends. But no gods made as much of an impact on him as those of ancient Egypt, specif­i­cal­ly Hoor-paar-kraat, or Har­pocrates in the Greek; Crow­ley claimed to have been con­tact­ed by the voice of Hoor-paar-kraat’s mes­sen­ger Aiwass, from whom he took the dic­ta­tion that became Liber AL vel Legis. Styling him­self as an Egypt­ian prophet, he preached one way for human­i­ty to push through to a post-Chris­t­ian age: “What­ev­er you feel like doing, go and do it, regard­less of pop­u­lar opin­ion or con­ven­tion­al moral­i­ty.” After all, it seemed to work for Crow­ley him­self, though the work of a noto­ri­ous occultist cer­tain­ly isn’t for every­body.

Nor could even the world’s wickedest man keep it up for­ev­er: “Even­tu­al­ly all the trav­el­ing, drug-tak­ing, and lib­er­tin­ism had caught up with Crow­ley.” His inher­i­tance dried up, and his addic­tions wors­ened. But he did­n’t give up on Thele­ma, even going so far as to estab­lish a com­mune in Sici­ly. Alas, the “respon­si­bil­i­ty-free lifestyle” advo­cat­ed by the reli­gion soon drove its head­quar­ters to chaot­ic dilap­i­da­tion. But just a cou­ple of decades after his death in Eng­land in 1947, Crow­ley’s glow­er­ing vis­age popped up again, on the cov­er of Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. He became the sub­ject of pop-music ref­er­ence not just by the Bea­t­les, but also David Bowie, Iron Maid­en, and the late Ozzy Osbourne. “Genius? Insane? Vision­ary? Fraud? Free­thinker? Cult leader?” We might grant Aleis­ter Crow­ley all these titles, and that of pro­to-rock star besides.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Aleis­ter Crow­ley Reads Occult Poet­ry in the Only Known Record­ings of His Voice (1920)

The Thoth Tarot Deck Designed by Famed Occultist Aleis­ter Crow­ley

The Sur­re­al Paint­ings of the Occult Magi­cian, Writer & Moun­taineer, Aleis­ter Crow­ley

How Aleis­ter Crow­ley, the Infa­mous Occultist, Led the First Attempt to Reach the Sum­mit of K2 (1902)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014

Image by Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When New York City host­ed The World’s Fair in 1964, Isaac Asi­mov, the pro­lif­ic sci-fi author and pro­fes­sor of bio­chem­istry at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to won­der what the world would look like 50 years hence — assum­ing the world sur­vived the nuclear threats of the Cold War. Writ­ing in The New York Times, Asi­mov imag­ined a world that you might part­ly rec­og­nize today, a world where:

  • “Gad­getry will con­tin­ue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will pre­pare ‘automeals,’ heat­ing water and con­vert­ing it to cof­fee; toast­ing bread; fry­ing, poach­ing or scram­bling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Break­fasts will be ‘ordered’ the night before to be ready by a spec­i­fied hour the next morn­ing.”
  • “Com­mu­ni­ca­tions will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the per­son you tele­phone. The screen can be used not only to see the peo­ple you call but also for study­ing doc­u­ments and pho­tographs and read­ing pas­sages from books. Syn­chro­nous satel­lites, hov­er­ing in space will make it pos­si­ble for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, includ­ing the weath­er sta­tions in Antarc­ti­ca.”
  • “[M]en will con­tin­ue to with­draw from nature in order to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that will suit them bet­ter. By 2014, elec­tro­lu­mi­nes­cent pan­els will be in com­mon use. Ceil­ings and walls will glow soft­ly, and in a vari­ety of col­ors that will change at the touch of a push but­ton.”
  • “Robots will nei­ther be com­mon nor very good in 2014, but they will be in exis­tence.”
  • “The appli­ances of 2014 will have no elec­tric cords, of course, for they will be pow­ered by long-lived bat­ter­ies run­ning on radioiso­topes.”
  • “[H]ighways … in the more advanced sec­tions of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increas­ing empha­sis on trans­porta­tion that makes the least pos­si­ble con­tact with the sur­face. There will be air­craft, of course, but even ground trav­el will increas­ing­ly take to the air a foot or two off the ground.”
  • “[V]ehicles with ‘Robot-brains’ … can be set for par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tions … that will then pro­ceed there with­out inter­fer­ence by the slow reflex­es of a human dri­ver.”
  • “[W]all screens will have replaced the ordi­nary set; but trans­par­ent cubes will be mak­ing their appear­ance in which three-dimen­sion­al view­ing will be pos­si­ble.”
  • “[T]he world pop­u­la­tion will be 6,500,000,000 and the pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States will be 350,000,000.” And lat­er he warns that if the pop­u­la­tion growth con­tin­ues unchecked, “All earth will be a sin­gle choked Man­hat­tan by A.D. 2450 and soci­ety will col­lapse long before that!” As a result, “There will, there­fore, be a world­wide pro­pa­gan­da dri­ve in favor of birth con­trol by ratio­nal and humane meth­ods and, by 2014, it will undoubt­ed­ly have tak­en seri­ous effect.” [See our Walt Dis­ney Fam­i­ly Plan­ning car­toon from ear­li­er this week.]
  • “Ordi­nary agri­cul­ture will keep up with great dif­fi­cul­ty and there will be ‘farms’ turn­ing to the more effi­cient micro-organ­isms. Processed yeast and algae prod­ucts will be avail­able in a vari­ety of fla­vors.”
  • “The world of A.D. 2014 will have few rou­tine jobs that can­not be done bet­ter by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will there­fore have become large­ly a race of machine ten­ders. Schools will have to be ori­ent­ed in this direc­tion.… All the high-school stu­dents will be taught the fun­da­men­tals of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy will become pro­fi­cient in bina­ry arith­metic and will be trained to per­fec­tion in the use of the com­put­er lan­guages that will have devel­oped out of those like the con­tem­po­rary “For­tran.”
  • “[M]ankind will suf­fer bad­ly from the dis­ease of bore­dom, a dis­ease spread­ing more wide­ly each year and grow­ing in inten­si­ty. This will have seri­ous men­tal, emo­tion­al and soci­o­log­i­cal con­se­quences, and I dare say that psy­chi­a­try will be far and away the most impor­tant med­ical spe­cial­ty in 2014.”
  •  “[T]he most glo­ri­ous sin­gle word in the vocab­u­lary will have become work!” in our “a soci­ety of enforced leisure.”

Isaac Asi­mov was­n’t the only per­son dur­ing the 60s who peered into the future in a fair­ly pre­scient way. You can find a few more on-the-mark pre­dic­tions from con­tem­po­raries below:

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964

Mar­shall McLuhan Pre­dicts That Elec­tron­ic Media Will Dis­place the Book & Cre­ate Sweep­ing Changes in Our Every­day Lives (1960)

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist

Tom Lehrer died last week­end, more than four decades after rumors of his death had first gone into cir­cu­la­tion. He did­n’t both­er to con­tra­dict them, pub­licly claim­ing that he fig­ured they would “cut down on the junk mail.” That quip proved not just that he was still alive, but that his wit was intact. And it was his wit, com­bined with a facil­i­ty on the piano, that made him famous: mer­ci­less­ly sat­i­riz­ing every­thing from the Boy Scouts to Har­vard, his alma mater, to New Math to Vat­i­can II to World War III, his live­ly show-tune pas­tich­es became defin­ing pieces of Cold War-era com­e­dy — or in any case, defin­ing pieces of ear­ly Cold War-era com­e­dy.

A pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics for most of his career, he per­formed and record­ed music most­ly in the nine­teen-fifties and six­ties, begin­ning with his first con­cert, giv­en as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in 1950, and end­ing with anoth­er in Copen­hagen in 1967.

There was also an ear­ly-sev­en­ties coda in the form of a few songs writ­ten for PBS’ chil­dren’s show The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny and a per­for­mance at a George S. McGov­ern ral­ly. But by then, the frame of Amer­i­can cul­ture had shift­ed. “The Viet­nam War is what changed it,” Lehrer said in 1981. “Every­body got earnest. My pur­pose was to make peo­ple laugh and not applaud. If the audi­ence applauds, they’re just show­ing they agree with me”: an obser­va­tion today’s would-be satirists would do well to bear in mind.

Whether or not you have any aspi­ra­tions of your own in that tra­di­tion, you can lis­ten through the entire­ty of Lehrer’s record­ed work in the YouTube playlist above and under­stand why his com­ic star burned so bright­ly — and, through the near­ly six­ty years that have fol­lowed, nev­er quite burned out. Though clear­ly writ­ten in the spir­it of Eisen­how­er-era lib­er­al­ism, these songs (released by their author into the pub­lic domain a few years ago) don’t shy away from the absur­di­ties of what Lehrer him­self would not, with a straight face, be able to call the human con­di­tion. First test­ed out on cam­pus, they also devel­oped an ear­ly form of what we’ve come to think of as the “col­lege” sen­si­bil­i­ty in pop­u­lar music. In some sense, Lehrer nev­er left that way of see­ing the world behind — nor, like a true stu­dent, did he ever get around to fin­ish­ing his Ph.D.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Lehrer Releas­es His All of Catchy and Sav­age Musi­cal Satire Into the Pub­lic Domain

Tom Lehrer’s Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly and Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Inclined Singing and Song­writ­ing, Ani­mat­ed

Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chem­i­cal Ele­ments to the Tune of Gilbert & Sul­li­van

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune “The Ele­ments”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syllabus Asked Students to Read 32 Great Literary Works, Totaling 6,000 Pages

Whether willed, invol­un­tary, or a mix of both, the declin­ing lit­er­a­cy of col­lege stu­dents is by now so often lament­ed that reports of it should no longer come as a sur­prise. And yet, on some lev­el, they still do: Eng­lish majors in region­al Kansas uni­ver­si­ties find the open­ing to Bleak House vir­tu­al­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble; even stu­dents at “high­ly selec­tive, elite col­leges” strug­gle to read, let alone com­pre­hend, books in their entire­ty. Things were dif­fer­ent in 1941, and very dif­fer­ent indeed if you hap­pened to be tak­ing Eng­lish 135 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, a class titled “Fate and the Indi­vid­ual in Euro­pean Lit­er­a­ture.” The instruc­tor: a cer­tain W. H. Auden.

In his capac­i­ty as an edu­ca­tor, the poet threw down the gaunt­let of an “infa­mous­ly dif­fi­cult” syl­labus, as lit­er­ary aca­d­e­m­ic and YouTu­ber Adam Walk­er explains in his new video above, that “asked under­grad­u­ates to read about 6,000 pages of clas­sic lit­er­a­ture.”

Not that the course was out of touch with cur­rent events: in its his­tor­i­cal moment, “Nazi Ger­many had invad­ed the Sovi­et Union and expand­ed into East­ern Europe. Sys­tem­at­ic exter­mi­na­tion begins with mass shoot­ings, and the machin­ery of geno­cide is accel­er­at­ing. It’s no acci­dent that Auden takes an inter­est in fate and the indi­vid­ual in Euro­pean lit­er­a­ture” — a theme that, as he frames it, begins with Dante. After the entire­ty of The Divine Com­e­dy, Auden’s stu­dents had their free choice between Aeschy­lus’ Agamem­non or Sopho­cles’ Antigone.


From there, the required read­ing plunged into Horace’s Odes and Augustine’s Con­fes­sions, four Shake­speare plays, Pas­cal’s Pen­sées, Goethe’s Faust (but only Part I), and Dos­to­evsky’s The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, to name just a few texts. Not every­one would con­sid­er Dos­to­evsky Euro­pean, of course, but then, nobody would con­sid­er Her­man Melville Euro­pean, which for Auden was hard­ly a rea­son to leave Moby-Dick off the syl­labus. Walk­er describes that nov­el as rel­e­vant to the course’s themes of “obses­sion and cos­mic strug­gle,” evi­dent in all these works and their treat­ments of “pas­sion and his­tor­i­cal forces, and how indi­vid­u­als nav­i­gate those forces”: ideas that tran­scend nation­al and cul­tur­al bound­aries by def­i­n­i­tion. Whether they would come across to the kind of twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry stu­dents who’d balk at being assigned even a full-length Auden poem is anoth­er ques­tion entire­ly.

View the syl­labus in a larg­er for­mat here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

W. H. Auden Recites His 1937 Poem “As I Walked Out One Evening”

Dis­cov­er Han­nah Arendt’s Syl­labus for Her 1974 Course on “Think­ing”

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Don­ald Barthelme’s Syl­labus High­lights 81 Books Essen­tial for a Lit­er­ary Edu­ca­tion

Carl Sagan’s Syl­labus & Final Exam for His Course on Crit­i­cal Think­ing (Cor­nell, 1986)

Mar­shall McLuhan, W.H. Auden & Buck­min­ster Fuller Debate the Virtues of Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy & Media (1971)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live Your Life”

Image by Dosse­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2012, archae­ol­o­gists dis­cov­ered in South­ern Turkey a well-pre­served mosa­ic fea­tur­ing a skele­ton savor­ing a loaf of bread and a pitch­er of wine, sur­round­ed by the Greek words “Be cheer­ful and live your life.” Dat­ing back to the 3rd cen­tu­ry BCE, the mosa­ic like­ly adorned the din­ing room of a wealthy vil­la in the ancient Gre­co-Roman city of Anti­och. It’s a kind of memen­to mori, a reminder that life is short and you should enjoy it while you can. Or so that’s how many have inter­pret­ed the mes­sage of the mosa­ic.

If you would like to delve deep­er, it’s worth read­ing the analy­sis and back­ground infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by The His­to­ry Blog. Mean­while, this sep­a­rate post on Tum­blr high­lights oth­er trans­la­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of the mosaic’s key inscrip­tion.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent 

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

A Rab­bit Rides a Char­i­ot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosa­ic (2nd cen­tu­ry AD)

How a Mosa­ic from Caligula’s Par­ty Boat Became a Cof­fee Table in a New York City Apart­ment 50 Years Ago

How to Make the 2000-Year-Old “Piz­za” Dis­cov­ered on a Pom­peii Fres­co

How Disney Fought Fascism with Propaganda Cartoons During World War II & Averted Financial Collapse

Today, the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny seems like one of those enti­ties that’s “too big to fail” — but dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, fail it near­ly did. Like the big-think­ing enter­tain­er-busi­ness­man he was, Walt Dis­ney him­self had been re-invest­ing the com­pa­ny’s prof­its into ever more ambi­tious ani­mat­ed films. This prac­tice took an unfor­tu­nate turn with Fan­ta­sia, which may now be regard­ed as a clas­sic even by those of us with­out inter­est in Dis­ney movies, but which did­n’t bring in the expect­ed box-office take when it was ini­tial­ly released in 1940. It fol­lowed the also-under­per­form­ing Pinoc­chio, which could­n’t reach audi­ences in war-torn Europe. The fol­low­ing year, Dis­ney found itself at the edge of bank­rupt­cy.

Then came the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor, which result­ed in the U.S. Army’s eight-month-long occu­pa­tion of Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios. The idea was to pro­tect a near­by Lock­heed plant, but Dis­ney, who’d already made inquiries about pro­duc­ing war films, used an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a deal that saved his com­pa­ny.

Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios was con­tract­ed to make not just a vari­ety of train­ing films for mil­i­tary use, but also a series of war-themed car­toons for pub­lic exhi­bi­tion. This was “total war,” after all, which required the mobi­liza­tion of the pub­lic at home, and the mobi­liza­tion of the pub­lic at home required domes­tic pro­pa­gan­da. Who bet­ter to stoke Amer­i­can desire for vic­to­ry over the Axis than Dis­ney’s biggest ani­mat­ed star at the time, Don­ald Duck?

In the most acclaimed of these car­toons, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning Der Fuehrer’s Face from 1943, Don­ald Duck is employed at a muni­tions fac­to­ry in Nutzi­land, some kind of Axis super­state ruled over by Hiro­hi­to, Mus­soli­ni, and espe­cial­ly Hitler. It’s some­thing else to hear the phrase “Heil Hitler!” in Don­ald Duck­’s voice, and through­out his day of humil­i­a­tions and pri­va­tions in Nutzi­land, he has to say it quite a lot. Just when all of this has put him in a tail­spin toward mad­ness, he wakes up in his bed­room back in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, stars-and-stripes cur­tains, minia­ture Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, and all. For Don­ald, the night­mare is over — but in real life, Allied vic­to­ry remained far from a sure thing.

You can watch Der Fuehrer’s Face and sev­en oth­er Dis­ney-pro­duced World War II pro­pa­gan­da car­toons (along with the Looney Tunes short The Duck­ta­tors, from Warn­er Bros.) in the playlist above. To be sure, some of them con­tain ele­ments con­sid­ered crude and even offen­sive here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. But like all pro­pa­gan­da, they’re all of great his­tor­i­cal val­ue, in the realm of both polit­i­cal his­to­ry and the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion. Con­sid­er how they found their way into Europe and Rus­sia, find­ing audi­ences there even as the war raged on; con­sid­er, too, how well-loved Don­ald Duck and his com­pa­tri­ots have been by gen­er­a­tions of Ger­man, Ital­ian, and Japan­ese chil­dren. After this total war, no one enjoyed more total a vic­to­ry than Dis­ney.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi – Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Neu­ro­science and Pro­pa­gan­da Come Togeth­er in Disney’s World War II Film Rea­son and Emo­tion

Before Cre­at­ing the Moomins, Tove Jans­son Drew Satir­i­cal Art Mock­ing Hitler & Stal­in

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel

“Evil Mick­ey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japan­ese Ani­me Pro­pa­gan­da Film

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Nazis’ 10 Control-Freak Rules for Jazz Performers: A Strange List from World War II

Like the rock and roll rev­o­lu­tion of the 1950s, which shocked staid white audi­ences with trans­la­tions of black rhythm and blues, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of jazz caused all kinds of racial pan­ic and social anx­i­ety in the ear­ly part of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Long before the rise of Euro­pean fas­cism, many Amer­i­can groups expressed extreme fear and agi­ta­tion over the rise of minor­i­ty cul­tur­al forms. But by World War II, jazz was intrin­si­cal­ly woven into the fab­ric of Amer­i­can major­i­ty cul­ture, albeit often in ver­sions scrubbed of blues under­tones. This was not, of course, the case in Nazi occu­pied Europe, where jazz was sup­pressed; like most forms of mod­ern art, it bore the stig­ma of impu­ri­ty, inno­va­tion, pas­sion… all qual­i­ties total­i­tar­i­ans frown on (even anti-fas­cist the­o­rist Theodor Adorno had a seri­ous beef with jazz).

And while it’s no great sur­prise that Nazis hat­ed jazz, it seems they expressed their dis­ap­proval in a very odd­ly spe­cif­ic way, at least in the rec­ol­lec­tion of Czech writer and dis­si­dent Josef Skvorecky.

On the occa­sion of Skvorecky’s death, J.J. Gould point­ed out in The Atlantic that the writer was him­self one of the char­ac­ters that so inter­est­ed Kubrick. An aspir­ing tenor sax­o­phone play­er liv­ing in Third Reich-occu­pied Czecho­slo­va­kia, Skvorecky had ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence the Nazis’ “con­trol-freak hatred of jazz.” In the intro to his short nov­el The Bass Sax­o­phone, he recounts from mem­o­ry a set of ten bizarre reg­u­la­tions issued by a Gauleit­er, a region­al Nazi offi­cial, that bound local dance orches­tras dur­ing the Czech occu­pa­tion.

  1. Pieces in fox­trot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the reper­toires of light orches­tras and dance bands;
  2. In this so-called jazz type reper­toire, pref­er­ence is to be giv­en to com­po­si­tions in a major key and to lyrics express­ing joy in life rather than Jew­ish­ly gloomy lyrics;
  3. As to tem­po, pref­er­ence is also to be giv­en to brisk com­po­si­tions over slow ones (so-called blues); how­ev­er, the pace must not exceed a cer­tain degree of alle­gro, com­men­su­rate with the Aryan sense of dis­ci­pline and mod­er­a­tion. On no account will Negroid excess­es in tem­po (so-called hot jazz) or in solo per­for­mances (so-called breaks) be tol­er­at­ed;
  4. So-called jazz com­po­si­tions may con­tain at most 10% syn­co­pa­tion; the remain­der must con­sist of a nat­ur­al lega­to move­ment devoid of the hys­ter­i­cal rhyth­mic revers­es char­ac­ter­is­tic of the bar­bar­ian races and con­ducive to dark instincts alien to the Ger­man peo­ple (so-called riffs);
  5. Strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed is the use of instru­ments alien to the Ger­man spir­it (so-called cow­bells, flex­a­tone, brush­es, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instru­ments into a Jew­ish-Freema­son­ic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.);
  6. Also pro­hib­it­ed are so-called drum breaks longer than half a bar in four-quar­ter beat (except in styl­ized mil­i­tary march­es);
  7. The dou­ble bass must be played sole­ly with the bow in so-called jazz com­po­si­tions;
  8. Pluck­ing of the strings is pro­hib­it­ed, since it is dam­ag­ing to the instru­ment and detri­men­tal to Aryan musi­cal­i­ty; if a so-called pizzi­ca­to effect is absolute­ly desir­able for the char­ac­ter of the com­po­si­tion, strict care must be tak­en lest the string be allowed to pat­ter on the sor­dine, which is hence­forth for­bid­den;
  9. Musi­cians are like­wise for­bid­den to make vocal impro­vi­sa­tions (so-called scat);
  10. All light orches­tras and dance bands are advised to restrict the use of sax­o­phones of all keys and to sub­sti­tute for them the vio­lin-cel­lo, the vio­la or pos­si­bly a suit­able folk instru­ment.

As The Atlantic notes, “being a Nazi, this pub­lic ser­vant obvi­ous­ly did­n’t miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to couch as many of these reg­u­la­tions as he could in racist or anti-Semit­ic terms.” This racial­ized fear and hatred was the source, after all, of the objec­tion. It’s almost impos­si­ble for me to imag­ine what kind of music this set of restric­tions could pos­si­bly pro­duce, but it most cer­tain­ly would not be any­thing peo­ple would want to dance to. And that was prob­a­bly the point.

For more on Josef Skvorecky’s life as a writer under Nazism and his escape from Czecho­slo­va­kia after the Sovi­et inva­sion, read his illu­mi­nat­ing Paris Review inter­view.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 16,000 Art­works the Nazis Cen­sored and Labeled “Degen­er­ate Art”: The Com­plete His­toric Inven­to­ry Is Now Online

Hear the Nazi’s Biz­zaro Pro­pa­gan­da Jazz Band, “Char­lie and His Orches­tra” (1940–1943)

How France Hid the Mona Lisa & Oth­er Lou­vre Mas­ter­pieces Dur­ing World War II

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Plato, Aristotle & Other Greek Philosophers in Raphael’s Renaissance Masterpiece, The School of Athens

Among the won­ders to behold at the Vat­i­can Muse­ums are the larg­er-than-life forms of the titans of Greek phi­los­o­phy. It’s wide­ly known that at the cen­ter of Raphael’s fres­co The School of Athens, which dom­i­nates one wall of the twelve Stanze di Raf­fael­lo in the Apos­tolic Palace, stand Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. In real­i­ty, of course, the two were not con­tem­po­raries: more than three decades sep­a­rat­ed the for­mer’s death from the lat­ter’s birth. But in Raphael’s artis­tic vision, great men (and pos­si­bly a great woman) of all gen­er­a­tions come togeth­er under the ban­ner of learn­ing, from Anax­i­man­der to Aver­roes, Epi­cu­rus to Euclid, and Par­menides to Pythago­ras.

Even in this com­pa­ny, the fig­ure sit­ting at the bot­tom of the steps catch­es one’s eye. There are sev­er­al rea­sons for this, and gal­lerist-YouTu­ber James Payne lays them out in his new Great Art Explained video on The School of Athens above.

It appears to rep­re­sent Her­a­cli­tus, the pre-Socrat­ic philoso­pher asso­ci­at­ed with ideas like change and the uni­ty of oppo­sites, and a nat­ur­al can­di­date for inclu­sion in what amounts to a trans-tem­po­ral class por­trait of phi­los­o­phy. But Raphael seems to have added him lat­er, after that sec­tion of the pic­ture was already com­plete. An astute view­er may also notice Her­a­cli­tus’ hav­ing been ren­dered in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, more mus­cu­lar style than that of the oth­er philoso­phers in the frame — a style more like the one on dis­play over in the Sis­tine Chapel.

In fact, Michelan­ge­lo was at work on his Sis­tine Chapel fres­coes at the very same time Raphael was paint­ing The School of Athens. It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble, as Payne tells it, for Raphael to have stolen a glimpse of Michelan­gelo’s stun­ning work, then gone back and added Michelan­ge­lo-as-Her­a­cli­tus to his own com­po­si­tion in trib­ute. There was prece­dent for this choice: Raphael had already mod­eled Socrates after Leonar­do da Vin­ci (who was, incred­i­bly, also alive and active at the time), and even ren­dered the ancient painter Apelles as a self-por­trait. With The School of Athens, Payne says, Raphael was “posi­tion­ing ancient philoso­phers as pre­cur­sors to Chris­t­ian truth,” in line with the think­ing of the Renais­sance. In sub­tler ways, he was also empha­siz­ing how the genius of the past lives on — or is, rather, reborn — in the present.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Mas­ter­pieces Up Close

Artist Turns Famous Paint­ings, from Raphael to Mon­et to Licht­en­stein, Into Inno­v­a­tive Sound­scapes

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

Ancient Phi­los­o­phy: Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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