Political Enlightenment

How many symphonies did you write by the age of seventeen?

If you are not yet seventeen, how many symphonies, operas, piano concertos, violin sonatas, religious compositions, etc. have you written, particularly ones of amazing quality?

How did you manage to find the time to do so in between your extensive touring schedule and important diplomatic work?

What are your views on Symphony 25, particularly the first movement?

Mozart was seventeen when he wrote that work. 

How do you express political enlightenment through music, and through words and images and possibly even through dancing?

You may be familiar with the first Age of Enlightenment but are you adequately familiar with the second one yet?

Perhaps you believe that political enlightenment in the 21st century should consistently reflect Sturm und Drang, given the scientific facts.

What do you know about the political uses of minor scales of one sort or another?

What do you know about the power of persuasion, whether musical, political, educational or bureaucratic? 

Unenlightened persons view the world as a misty picture of one sort or another. 

Perhaps you have difficulty, at times, distinguishing between mist, fog, smoke, smog, steam, and the gathering of storm clouds, or even fire clouds.

Perhaps you know very little about the technical and political aspects of condensation, condescension, expulsions, explosions and expletives.

Perhaps you do not know how to tell the difference between scatological humour and politically-motivated profanity.

What are your political motivations at present, and how enlightened are they, and how do you know?

How do you attempt to express yourself politically whilst simultaneously attempting to prevent yourself from being impoverished, injured, imprisoned and/or killed for doing so?

How do you attempt to disguise your political messages as art and/or entertainment and/or philanthropy and/or triviality and/or romance to ensure suitably enlightened persons understand your meaning yet ignoramuses remain in the dark?

You may or may not (yet) be persuaded to become a member, and possible candidate, of the Mozarty Party. 

Perhaps you find Mozart's humour offensive.

Perhaps you do not view political corruption and/or political violence as offensive.

You may not (yet) be persuaded to vote for the Mozarty Party, though obviously you will certainly wish to do so if you have that enormous privilege, at least if you are adequately enlightened. 

Perhaps you require more recitatives, more word painting, more campaign jingles, more dark comedy, more insertion arias, more mickey mousing, more word play, and several surreal juxtapositions between particularly pieces of music and particular political stances.

What is your current acquaintance with the relationship between music and politics? 

Perhaps you always regard politics as a dramma per musica.

You may or may not be familiar with Mozart's many operas, including the four he composed in his mid teens. 

Those four mainly reflected classical themes.

Perhaps you are not particularly familiar with the Classical period in music and/or the classical period in history.

 How, if at all, has your career been influenced by the crisis of the Roman Republic and/or the music of the spheres?

You may or may not be particularly familiar with Mozart's first twenty-five symphonies, including number 25, composed in 1773.

You may or may not be competent at expressing sadness and tragedy through music or words or the visual arts.

What are your views on Mozart's use of the key of G minor?

How do you compare Symphony 25 with Symphony number 40, composed in 1788?

How do you compare Mozart's use of G minor with the use of that key by other composers, including Purcell?

What is your preferred approach to addressing the lamentable aspects of world politics and human suffering?

How do you compare Symph 25 with Joe Haydn's Symphony number 39 in G minor, composed in 1765?

You may be familiar with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its activities in relation to the first and second Ages of Enlightenment.

What have been your experiences of organisational and orchestral democracy?

What have been your experiences of enlightened educational practices?

Perhaps you are more familiar with high explosives and/or high living and/or chemical highs than high culture.

Perhaps you are a citizen of the United States of America with a preference for defending a shit additional clause in a long outdated constitution.

Perhaps that clause lulls you into believing you have real freedom by allowing innocent people to be shot by delusional aggressors.

Regardless of your citizenship, or lack of one, perhaps you are more offended by the word shit than the word shot. 

Perhaps you think there is nothing unusual about a national park being entirely surrounded by a missile range.

Perhaps you are unaware that the purpose of real democracy, hence real freedom, is to prevent oppression and aggression of all varieties.

When real democracy is absent, the rule of law must be improved.

Perhaps you are not interested in learning lessons associated with Mithridates, Alba Longa, Scipio Aemilianus, Cicero, and Sulla.

Perhaps you are uninterested in learning about, and resolving, the seemingly endless conflicts between self-styled aristocrats and oppressed peasants, arrogant patricians and confused plebeians, overly privileged lords and underprivileged commoners, authoritarian optimates and populist populares, antagonistic conservatives and anachronistic activists.

Perhaps you usually associate politics with decadence rather than democracy.

What do you know about Mozart's compositional method?

What do you know about the Mozarty Party's compositional method?

You may be aware that the Classical period in Western music was informed by the establishment of scientific standards of assessment.  Those standards are continuing today, even for such topics as romantic love and the unconscious mind.

Yet much stupidity continues, as does the authoritarian silencing of reasonable critics of overly powerful persons, corrupted organisations and non-scientific opinions.

If you are reasonably enlightened, you will be able to distinguish clearly between democratically-appropriate orderliness, despotic impunity, excessive control, administrative incompetence, necessary entertainment and rebellious chaos.

You may be aware that classism is often mistaken for Classicism.

The former is associated with injustice.  

The latter is associated with restraint.

Perhaps you have sometimes, or often, been prevented from expressing a reasonable point of view, whether through unfair clauses in contracts and/or constitutions, or through blatant bullying of any other variety.

All over the world, given the prevalence of scandalous actions, and scandalous inaction, deluded male politicians, deluded female ones, and deluded members of the public, regardless of their ideological stances, religious pretensions, and socioeconomic status, continue to require regular reminders of the ending of Don Giovanni.

You may, for example be acquainted with the Parliament of Australia.

Whenever and wherever there is an absence of necessary restraint, necessary protest must be expressed.

Perhaps you do not usually regard Mozart as a protester.

Don Giovanni begins and ends in D minor.

The same key begins Mozart's Requiem and continues through the "Dies irae".

The angry aria, Hell's vengeance, from The Magic Flute is also in D minor, of course. 

Yet the solemnity of Oh, I feel it is in G minor.

How have you been acquiring musical and political enlightenment in world lockdown? 

Perhaps you have been examining politics and the arts in various ways, even when asleep.

How do you compare one image of or from the past with another and another?

How have you been interpreting Very Necessary News recently?

How have you been interpreting Trickery Today?

How have you been attempting to locate enlightened patronage?

How have you been comparing performance qualities?

How do you prefer to invoke assistance, and from whom?

In the 18th century, a noticeable trend towards instrumental music was encouraged by relatively well-informed aristocrats, and even by well-educated members of the affluent gentry and middle-class.

At the same time, relatively ordinary persons acquired a preference towards light comedies.

In the 21st century, the second Age of Enlightenment is reflected in the combination of elegant instrumental music with egalitarian necessities, particularly through the satirical provision of essential information.

What are you contributing to political enlightenment through political philanthropy and political satire? 

How do you assess the swing seats of politics?

How do you support public interest journalism and suitable political pleasantness?

Perhaps you have been painting a capriccio of Canberra.

Perhaps you think Canberra is a capriccio of a capital.

Perhaps you have composed a musical capriccio for a campaign advertisement on behalf of the Australian/Australien government.

You may be aware that The Juice Media has been contributing relatively appropriately towards political enlightenment for some time now, particularly at the federal level in Australia.

That ensemble has been provided with a little assistance from Mozart and Symph 25.  It has had no assistance whatsoever from News Crap, the LobbyRule Party, LayBore, or even from the Naturals.

The Civility Party of Australia is unsure whether to acknowledge the assistance it indirectly receives from Juice Media and other satirical sources.  The party is very serious indeed, as is the Australian Political Reform Club.

Yet the Mozarty Party, as a global entity, mostly works internationally, hence its association with the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee and various wonderful witches.

Political enlightenment is required everywhere.

There is much work to do to improve politics, privacy and public life, all over the world.

What are you doing to support political enlightenment?