Khosrau I
Shahanshah of the Sassanian (Persian) Empire
Hunting scene showing Shah Khosrau I
Reign	531 CE to 579 CE (48 years)
Titles	Anushirvan (of the immortal soul)
Died	579 CE
Place of death	Ctesiphon
Predecessor	Kavadh I
Successor	Hormizd IV
Father	Kavadh I
Religious beliefs	Zoroastrianism

Khosrau I (also called Chosroes I in classical sources, most commonly known in Persian as Anushirvan or Anushirwan, Persian: انوشيروان meaning the immortal soul), also known as Anushiravan the Just or Anushirawan the Just (انوشیروان عادل, Anushiravān-e-ādel or انوشيروان دادگر, Anushiravān-e-dādgar) (r. 531–579), was the favourite son and successor of Kavadh I (488–531), twentieth Sassanid Emperor (Persian: Shahanshah, Great King) of Persia, and the most famous and celebrated of the Sassanid Emperors.

He laid the foundations of many cities and opulent palaces, and oversaw the repair of trade roads as well as the building of numerous bridges and dams. During Khosrau I's ambitious reign, art and science flourished in Persia and the Sassanid Empire reached its peak of glory and prosperity. His rule was preceded by his father's and succeeded by Hormizd IV. "Khosrau of the immortal soul" is one of the most popular emperors in Iranian culture and literature and, outside of Iran, his name became, like that of Caesar in the history of Rome, a designation of the Sasanian kings.^[1]

Early life[link]

Khosrau I's father, Kavadh I, was involved with a group of Zoroastrians called the Mazdakites. The Mazdakites believed in an egalitarian society and many lower class peasants supported the Mazdakite revolution.^[2] Kavadh, wanting to centralize power by taking power away from the great noble families, supported this movement. Upon Kavadh's death in 531, the Mazdakites gave their loyalty to Kavadh's eldest son, Kawus, while the noble families and the Zoroastrian Magi gave their support to Khosrau I. Khosrau presented himself as an anti-Mazdakite supporter.^[3] He, much like his father, believed in a strong centralized government. Khosrau met his brother Kawus in war and defeated him as well as his Mazdakite followers. Subsequently Mazdak, as well as a majority of his followers, were executed for his heretical beliefs and Khosrau took the Sassanian throne.^[4] At Khosrau's succession, Byzantine and Sassanian Persia were in open conflict with each other. Neither empire was able to get an advantage of the other, causing Emperor Justinian and King Khosrau to agree on a peace treaty in 531.^[5]

Khosrau I was married to the daughter of a Turkish khaqan named in Armenian sources as Kayen^[6] and in the Persian sources as Qaqim-khaqan^[7]

Shahanshah[link]

Summary[link]

Khosrau I represents the epitome of the philosopher king in the Sassanian Empire. Upon his ascension to the throne, Khosrau did not restore power to the feudal nobility or the magi, but centralized his government.^[8] Khosrau's reign is considered to be one of the most successful within the Sassanian Empire. The peace agreement between Rome and Persia in 531 gave Khosrau the chance to consolidate power and focus his attention on interior improvement.^[9] His reforms and military campaigns marked a renaissance of the Sassanian Empire, which spread philosophic beliefs as well as trade goods from the far east to the far west.

Reforms[link]

The internal reforms under Khosrau were much more important than those on the exterior frontier. The subsequent reforms resulted in the rise of a bureaucratic state at the expense of the great noble families, strengthening the central government and the power of the Shahanshah. The army too was reorganized and tied to the central government rather than local nobility allowing greater organization, faster mobilization and a far greater cavalry corps. Reforms in taxation provided the empire with stability and a much stronger economy, allowing prolonged military campaigns as well as greater revenues for the bureaucracy.^[10]

Tax Reforms[link]

Khosrau's tax reforms have been praised by several scholars, the most notable of which is F. Altheim.^[11] The tax reforms, which were started under Kavadh I and completely implemented by Khosrau, strengthened the royal court by a great deal.^[12] Prior to Khosrau and Kavadh's reigns, a majority of the land was owned by seven great noble families: Suren, Waraz, Karen, Aspahbadh, Spandiyadh, Mihran, and Zik.^[13] These great landowners enjoyed tax exemptions from the Sassanian empire, and were tax collectors within their local provincial areas.^[14]

Minted Coin of Khosrau I.

With the outbreak of the Mazdakite revolution, there was a great uprising of peasants and lower class citizens who grabbed large portions of land under egalitarian values. As a result of this there was great confusion on land possession and ownership. Khosrau surveyed all the land within the empire indiscriminately and began to tax all land under a single program. Tax revenues that previously went to the local noble family now went to the central government treasury.^[14] The fixed tax that Khosrau implemented created a more stable form of income for the treasury.

Because the tax did not vary, the treasury could estimate fairly well how much they were going to make in revenue for the year.^[15] Prior to Khosrau's tax reforms, taxes were collected based on the yield that the land had produced. This system was changed to one which calculated and averaged taxation based on the water rights for each piece of property. Lands which grew date palms and olive trees used a slightly different method of taxation based on the amount of producing trees that the land contained.^[14] These tax reforms of Khosrau were the stepping stone which enabled subsequent reforms in the bureaucracy and the military to take place.

Bureaucracy Reforms[link]

Khosrau I seated on a throne

The hallmark of Khosrau's bureaucratic reform was the creation of a new social class. Before, the Sassanian Empire consisted of only three social classes, magi, nobles, and peasants/commoners. Khosrau added a fourth class to this hierarchy between the nobles and the peasants, called the deghans. The deghans were small land owning citizens of the Sassanian Empire and were considered lower nobility.

Khosrau promoted honest government officials based on trust and honesty, rather than corrupt nobles and magi.^[16] The small landowning deghans were favored over the high nobles because they tended to be more trustworthy and owned their loyalty to the Shah for their position in the bureaucracy.^[8] The rise of deghans became the backbone of the empire because they were now held the majority of land and positions in local and provincial administration.^[17]

The reduction of power of the great families helped to improve the empire. This was because previously, each great family ruled a large chunk of land and each had their own king. The name Shahanshah, meaning King of Kings, derived from the fact that there were many feudal kings in Sassanian Persia with the Shahanshah as the ruler of them all. Their fall from power meant their control was redirected to the central government and all taxes now came to the central government rather than to the local nobility.

Military Reforms[link]

Major reforms to the military made the Persian army capable of fighting sustained wars and on multiple fronts as well deploy armies faster.^[18] Prior to Khosrau's reign, much like other aspects of the empire, the military was dependent on the feudal lords of the great families to provide soldiers and cavalry. Each family would provide their own army and equipment when called by the Shahanshah. This system was replaced with the emergence of the lower deghan nobility class, who was paid and provided by the central government.^[14]

The main force of the Sassanian army was the Savaran cavalry. Previously only nobles could enlist into the Savaran cavalry which was very limited and created shortages in well trained soldiers. Now that the deghan class was considered nobility, they were able to join the cavalry force and boosted the number of cavalry force significantly.^[18]

The military reform focused more on organization and training of troops. The cavalry was still the most important aspect of the Persian military, with foot archers being less important, and mass peasant forces being on the bottom of the spectrum.

Khosrau discarded the old satrap system and replaced it with four military districts with a spahbad, or general, in charge of each district.^[14] Before the reforms of Khusrau, the General of the Iranians (Eran-spahbed) controlled the military of the entire empire.^[19] The four zones consisted of Mesopotamia in the west, the Caucasus region in the north, the Persian gulf in the central and southwest region, and Central Asia in the east. This new “quatro” system not only created a more efficient military system but also “[administration] of a vast, multiregional, multicultural, and multiracial empire.”^[18]

Military[link]

Equipment[link]

During Khosrau's reign, a "list" for equipment for the cavalry was written. The list comprised a helmet, a gorget, a chain mail shirt, a lamellar coat or cuirass, leg armour, gauntlets, sword, shield, two bows with spare strings, 30 arrows, axe or mace, and horse armour.^[20]

Sassanian bullae showing the four spahbods show that horses were still fully armoured during this period and heavy cavalry tactics were still used by the Sassanian cavalry. It is highly likely that the stirrup had been introduced to the Sassanian cavalry two centuries before Khusrau's reforms ^[21] (and are mentioned in Bivar (1972) ^[20]), and a "stirrupped" foot position can be seen on the Sassanian bullae and at Taq-e-Bostan.

The image of Khosrau I at Taq-e-Bostan shows a different style of armour and equipment. Khosrau is shown wearing a helmet with a chain mail veil, and a chain mail shirt. His horse is shown only wearing armour from the front. This style of armour shows some parallels with Soghdian armour of the 6th - 8th Centuries, as depicted at Afrasiab and Panjikent, and may be related to a Soghdian or Turkic style of armour.

War With Justinian[link]

In 532, Khosrau and Justinian, emperor of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire concluded Pax Perpetuum, or the Eternal Peace in hopes of settling all land disputes between the Romans and Sassanians.^[22][23] In 540, Khosrau broke the Pax Perpetuum and struck Mesopotamia and Syria. He then moved out to Antioch, taking a path that was south of the usual military route in order to extract tributes from towns along the way to Antioch.^[14] The walls of Antioch had been greatly damaged during an earthquake in 525-526, and the Romans had not since repaired them because of western military campaigns, which made it much easier to conquer.^[23] Khosrau sacked and burned the city at which point Justinian sued for peace, giving Khosrau a large amount of money. While traveling back to Persia, Khosrau took ransoms from multiple Byzantine towns at which point Justinian called off his truce and prepared to send his great commander Belisarius to move against the Sassanians.^[14]

Map of Sassanian military campaigns.

There were many motives behind Khosrau's strike against the Byzantines during their Eternal Peace. Emissaries from the Ostrogoth kingdom in the west appealed to Khosrau to put pressure on the eastern front of East Rome.^[14] Gothic envoys spoke to Khosrau's court and spoke of Justinian's goal to unite the world under Roman rule. The Gothic envoys persuasively informed Khosrau that if Persia did not act soon, they would soon become victims of Byzantine aggression.^[24] It was the Persian military's fear that once the Roman army had conquered the west, they would turn east and strike down Persia. In order to prevent this, Khosrau preemptively struck Antioch.^[25] There were also pressure and unrest in both Arabia and Armenian who were both eager for war.^[14]

A year after his sack of Antioch, Khosrau brought his army north to Lazica on request of the Lazic King to fend off Byzantine raids into his territory. At the same time, Belisarius arrived in Mesopotamia and began attacking the city of Nisbis. Although Belisarius had greatly outnumbered the city garrison, the city was too well fortified and he was forced to ravage the country around the Nisbis subsequently getting recalled back west.^[14]

After successful campaigns in Armenia, Khosrau was encouraged once again to attack Syria. Khosrau turned south towards Edessa and besieged the city. Edessa was now a much more important city than Antioch was, but the garrison which occupied the city was able to resist the siege. The Persians were forced to retreat from Edessa, but were able to forge a five year truce with the Byzantine Empire. Four years into the five year truce, rebellion against Sassanian control broke out in Lazica. In response, a Byzantine army was sent to support the people of Lazica, effectively ending the established truce and thus continuing the Lazic Wars.^[14]

Lazic Wars[link]

The Lazic wars are intertwined with Khosrau's war with Justinian insomuch as there were many battles which overlapped each other, yet they are generally considered different wars. Whereas Khosrau's wars with Justinian were fought at the sake of fighting Romans, the Lazic wars were often fought on behalf of Lazic and Armenian citizens, or in defense of Sassanian outposts in Lazica.

The Caucasus region, especially northern Armenia, has always been a major area of Romano-Sassanian rivalry.^[26] The Lazic wars began when the Sassanians intervened on Byzantine encroachments on behalf of the King of Lazica. Khosrau was able to penetrate deep into Lazica and secure the fortress city of Petra, located on the coast of the Black Sea, which provided Persia with a strategic port.^[14]

Khosrau was forced to pull out of Lazica, leaving only a 1,500 man garrison in Petra to defend the territory while he went to deal with Belisarius in Mesopotamia.^[27] In 542, Justinian attempted to make a truce with Khosrau, but rather than sending peace delegates, Justinian sent a massive 30,000 man army into Armenia. Sassanian general Nabed's army of 4,000 was severely outnumbered and was forced to retreat to the town of Anglon in Armenia.^[27] The Byzantine army pursued the Sassanians into the town but to Byzantines' dismay, they walked into an ambush and were completely routed. This massive defeat in 543 gave Sassanians the offensive in the Lazic war as well as in the war against Justinian.^[22]

Justinian and Khosrau declared a five year truce in 545 but war continued to ravage the Caucasus region. An uprising of anti-Sassanian control struck the Lazica region in 547. In response, Justinian sent 8,000 troops in support of Lazic King Gubazes.^[27] A Byzantine-Lazic army besieged the city of Petra, holding a garrison of 1,500 Sassanian troops. As a result, 1,200 of the Sassanian soldiers were killed, but the Byzantine-Lazic coalition was soon forced to retreat when a relief army of 30,000 pro-Sassanian troop arrived.^[27]

In 549 the previous truce between Justinian and Khosrau was disregarded and full war broke out once again between Persians and Romans. The last major decisive battle of the Lazic wars came in 556 when Byzantine general Martin defeated a massive Sassanian force led by a Persian nakhvaegan (field marshal).^[28] Negotiations between Khosrau and Justinian opened in 556, leading to the establishment of a 51 year peace agreement in 561 in which Persians would leave Lazica in return for an annual payment of gold.^[14]

According to ancient historian Meander Protector, a minor official in Justinian's court, there were 12 points to the treaty, stated in the following passage:

War in the East[link]

With a stable peace agreement with the Byzantines in the west, Khosrau was now able to focus his attention on the eastern Hephthalites.^[30] Even with the growth of Persian military power under Khosrau's reforms, the Sassanians were still uneasy at the prospect of attacking the Hephthalite on their own and began to seek allies.^[30] Their answer came in the form of Turkic incursions into Central Asia.^[22] The movement of Turkic people into Central Asia very quickly made them natural enemies and competitors to the Hephthalites.^[30]

The Hephthalites were a strong military power but they lacked the organization to fight on multiple fronts.^[30] The Persians and the Turkic tribes made an alliance and launched a two pronged attack on the Hephthalites, taking advantage of their disorganization and disunity. As a result, the Turkic tribes took the territory north of the Oxus river, while the Persians annexed land to the south.^[14]

Friendly relations between Turks and Persians quickly deteriorated after the conquest of Hephthalite peoples. Both Turks and Persians wanted to dominate the Silk Road and the trade industry between the west and the far east.^[14] In 568 a Turkish embassy was sent to Byzantine to propose an alliance and two pronged attack on the Sassanian Empire. Fortunately for the Persians, nothing ever came from this proposal.^[31]

Campaign in Yemen Against Ethiopia[link]

In 522, before Khosrau's reign, a group of monophysite Ethiopians led an attack on the dominant Himyarites of southern Arabia. The local Arab leader was able to resist the attack, and appealed to the Sassanians for aid, while the Ethiopians subsequently turned towards the Byzantines for help. The Ethiopians sent another force across the Red Sea and this time successfully killed the Arab leader and replaced him with an Ethiopian man to be king of the region.^[14]

In 531, Justinian suggested that the Ethiopians of Yemen should cut out the Persians from Indian trade by maritime trade with the Indians. The Ethiopians never met this request because an Ethiopian general named Abraha took control of the Yemenite throne and created an independent nation.^[14] After Abraha's death one of his sons, Ma'd-Karib, went into exile while his half-brother took the throne. After being denied by Justinian, Ma'd-Karib sought help from Khosrau, who sent a small fleet and army under commander Vahriz to depose the current king of Yemen. After capturing the capital city San'a'l, Ma'd-Karib's son, Saif, was put on the throne.^[14]

Justinian was ultimately responsible for Sassanian maritime presence in Yemen. By not providing the Yemenite Arabs support, Khosrau was able to help Ma'd-Karib and subsequently established Yemen as a principality of the Sassanian Empire.^[32]

War With Justin II[link]

Justinian died in 565 and left Justin II to succeed the throne. In 555, The Sassanian governor of Armenia built a fire temple at Dvin and put to death a popular and influential member of the Mamikonian noble family. This execution created tremendous civil unrest and led to a revolt and massacre of the Governor and his personal guard in 571. Justin II took advantage of this revolt and used it as an excuse to stop paying annual payments to Khosrau, effectively putting an end to the 51 year peace treaty that was established ten years earlier. The Armenians were considered allies to the Byzantine Empire and a Byzantine army was sent into Sassanian territory and besieged Nisbis in 572.^[14]

Justin was succeeded by Tiberius, a high ranking military officer in 578.^[33] Khosrau invaded Armenia once again feeling that he had the upper hand, and was initially successful. Soon after, the tables turned and the Byzantines gained a lot of local support. Another truce was attempted to be made in 578, but was abandoned when the Sassanian's gained a great victory. The war turned again when Byzantine commander Maurice entered the field and captured many Sassanian settlements.^[14] The revolt came to an end when Khosrau gave amnesty to Armenia and brought them back into the Sassanian empire. Peace negotiations were once again brought back up, but abruptly ended with the death of Khosrau in 579.^[34]

Building Projects[link]

Khosrau's reign marked an expansion in building. Khosrau constructed a number of walls on his frontiers to protect from nomadic incursions as well as other enemies. On the southeast frontier he built a wall called the Wall of the Arabs in order to prevent Arab nomads from raiding his empire. In the northeast he built a wall to protect the interior of his empire from the Hephthalite and Turkish threat that was growing on his boarder.^[22] His wall building campaign was also extended into the Caucasus region where he built massive walls at Derbent.^[35]

After the conquest of Antioch in 541, Khosrau built a new city near Ctesiphon for the inhabitants he captured. He called this new city Weh Antiok Khusrau or literally, “better than Antioch Khosrau built this.”^[36] Local inhabitants of the area called the new city Rumagan, meaning “town of the Greeks” and Arabs called the city al-Rumiyya. Along with Weh Antiok, Khosrau built a number of fortified cities.^[17]

Khosrau I greatly improved the road system within the Sassanian empire. These roads greatly improved the quickness that the armies were able to move, increasing the efficiency of the military. This led to greater defense of the empire as well as much quicker transportation of military intelligence. Chains of stations were also built along the roads. This allowed couriers to travel much more quickly and have safe resting stops as well as provide travelers with shelter.^[14]

Philosopher King[link]

Khosrau I was known to be a great patron of philosophy and knowledge. An entry in the Chronicle of Séert reads:

Khosrau was very learned in philosophy, which he had studied, it is said, under Mar Bar Samma, bishop of Qardu, and under Paul the Persian Philosopher.^[37]

Khosrau I accepted refugees coming from the Eastern Roman Empire when Justinian closed the neo-Platonist schools in Athens in 529.^[22] He was greatly interested in Indian philosophy, science, math, and medicine. He sent multiple embassies and gifts to the Indian court and requested them to send back philosophers to teach in his court in return.^[38] Khosrau made many translations of texts from Greek, Sanskrit, and Syriac into Middle Persian.^[14] He received the title of “Plato's Philosopher King” by the Greek refugees that he allowed into his empire because of his great interest in Platonic philosophy.^[22]

Sassanian Plate depicting Khosrau I.

A synthesis of Greek, Persian, Indian, and Armenian learning traditions took place within the Sassanian Empire. One outcome of this synthesis created what is known as bimaristan, the first hospital that introduced a concept of segregating wards according to pathology. Greek pharmacology fused with Iranian and Indian traditions resulted in significant advances in medicine.^[38] According to historian Richard Frye, this great influx of knowledge created a renaissance during, and proceeding Khosrau's reign.^[39]

Intellectual games such as chess and backgammon demonstrated and celebrated the diplomatic relationship between Khosrau and a “great king of India.” The vizier of the Indian king invented chess as a cheerful, playful challenge to King Khosrau. When the game was sent to Iran it came with a letter which read: “As your name is the King of Kings, all your emperorship over us connotes that your wise men should be wiser than ours. Either you send us an explanation of this game of chess or send revenue and tribute us.”^[40] Khosrau's grand vizier successfully solved the riddle and figured out how to play chess. In response the wise vizier created the game backgammon and sent it to the Indian court with the same message. The King was not able to solve the riddle and was forced to pay tribute.^[40]

Academy of Gondishapur[link]

Khosrau I is known to have either founded or greatly expanded the Academy of Gondishapur, located in the city of Gundeshapur.^[41] As to the development of non-religious knowledge and research in Persia and apart from historical evidence given on such traditions in the preceding Persian Empires, there are reports on systematic activities initiated by the Sasanian court as early as in the first decades of Sasanian rule. The Middle Persian encyclopaedia Denkard states that during the reign of Shapur I writings of this kind were collected and added to the Avesta. And an atmosphere of vivid reflection and discussion at the early Sasanian court in the third century AD is reflected in such accounts.^[42] The foundation of the Academy of Gondishapur introduced the studies of philosophy, medicine, physics, poetry, rhetoric, and astronomy into the Sasanian court.^[43] According to some historical accounts, this famous learning center was built in order to provide a place for incoming Greek refugees to study and share their knowledge.^[38] Gundeshapur became the focal point of the combination of Greek and Indian sciences along with Persian and Aramaic traditions. The cosmopolitan which was introduced by the institution of Gondishapur became a catalyst for modern studies.

Legacy[link]

Although Khosrau's achievements were highly successful and helped centralize the empire, they did not last long after his death. The local officials and great noble families resented the fact that their power had been stripped away from them and began to regain power quickly after his death.^[14] Khosrau's reign had a major impact on Islamic culture and political life. Many of his policies and reforms were brought into the Islamic nation in their transformation from a decentralized oligarchical into an imperial empire.^[14]

There are a considerable amount of Islamic work that was inspired by the reign of Khosrau I, for example the Kitab al-Taj of Jahiz.^[17] There are a considerable amount of Islamic texts that refer to Khosrau's reign that it is sometimes hard to tell what is fact and what is fallacy.^[14]

His reign signifies the promotion and possibly even the creation of the Silk Road between ancient China, India, and the western world.^[38] Richard Frye makes the argument that Khosrau's rationale behind his numerous wars with the Byzantine empire as well as the eastern Hephthalites was to establish the Sassanian dominance on this trade route.^[14]

References[link]

• Addai Scher, ed., Histoire Nestorienne (Chronique de Séert), Patrologia Orientalis 7. 1910.
• Frye, Richard N. The Heritage of Persia. The World Publishing Company, 1963.
• Frye, Richard N. The Heritage of Persia. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 1993. 240-269.
• Howard-Johnston, James. “State and Society in Late Antique Iran,” in The Sassanian Era. Edited by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart. London: I.B. Tauris & Co 2008, 118-129.
• Dignas, Beate and Winter, Engelbert. Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity : Neighbours and Rivals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007
• Canepa, Matthew P. The Twos Eyes of Earth. Berkley: University of California 2009.
• Daryaee, Touraj. Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. 2009.
• Farrokh, Dr. Kaveh. Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War. Oxford: Osprey Publishing 2007.
• Frye, Richard R. “THE REFORMS OF CHOSROES ANUSHIRVAN ('OF THE IMMORTAL SOUL').” The History of Ancient Iran. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/fryehst.html
• Taylor, Gail Marlow. “The Physicians of Jundishapur.” e-Sasanika. 2010. http://www.humanities.uci.edu/sasanika/pdf/e-sasanika11-Taylor.pdf
• Meander Protector. Fragments 6.1-6.3. Translated by R.C. Blockey, edited by Khodadad Rezakhani. http://www.humanities.uci.edu/sasanika/pdf/Menander6-1.pdf

External links[link]

• Khosrau In Iran Science Island(In Persian)
• The Reforms of Khosrow Anushirvan
• Meander Protector Fragments 6.1-6.3
• The Physicians of Jundishapur

Notes[link]

Ahmad Wali (Pashto/Persian: احمد ولی‎) is a popular Ghazal singer from Afghanistan. He began his career in the 1970s, becoming popular in his native country before he was forced to flee by political upheaval in Afghanistan. He continued his work after resettling in Germany, performing throughout Europe and the United States.

Background[link]

The son of a Police Commander, Wali was born in Kabul.^[1] He began exploring music as a Tabla player at the age of 12, gradually expanding into singing. While a student at Habibia High School, he recorded a demo tape. This came to the attention of Radio Kabul director Ustad Zaland, who wrote the song "Chashman -e -Abee" for Wali. This and the Wali-penned tune "Mah-ruye-tu" brought him to the public eye. Wali performed live in Afghanistan until after his high school graduation, when he joined an international performance in Iran.

Career[link]

At that early stage in his career, Wali had not yet committed to life as a professional musician, and he enrolled in the Kabul Police Academy.^[1] He continued performing, however, and soon committed to music, being taken as a student by classical musician Ustad Sarahang. He developed a following in Afghanistan, with frequent appearances on television and radio as well as live performances.

After the Saur Revolution of 1978, life in Afghanistan became difficult, and in 1980, shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, Wali—then a well-known musician in his homeland—fled the country with a forged passport.^[1][2] Wali's forged passport got him as far as India, where he obtained a Visa to Germany by faking an illness.^[2]

In Germany, Wali continued his career, performing there and throughout Europe and the United States.^[1]

References[link]

Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer, born in New York City.

A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown. Feldman's works are characterized by notational innovations that he developed to create his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating; pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused; a generally quiet and slowly evolving music; recurring asymmetric patterns. His later works, after 1977, also begin to explore extremes of duration.

Biography[link]

Feldman was born in Brooklyn, New York City into a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants from Kiev. His father was a manufacturer of children's coats.^[1][2] As a child he studied piano with Vera Maurina Press, who, according to the composer himself, instilled in him a "vibrant musicality rather than musicianship."^[3] Feldman's first composition teachers were Wallingford Riegger, one of the first American followers of Arnold Schoenberg, and Stefan Wolpe, a German-born Jewish composer who studied under Franz Schreker and Anton Webern. Feldman and Wolpe spent most of their time simply talking about music and art.^[4]

In early 1950 Feldman went to hear the New York Philharmonic give a performance of Anton Webern's Symphony, op. 21. After this work, the orchestra was going to perform a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Feldman left immediately before that, disturbed by the audience's disrespectful reaction to Webern's work.^[5] In the lobby he met John Cage, who was at the concert and had also decided to step out.^[6] The two composers quickly became good friends, with Feldman moving into the apartment on the second floor of the building Cage lived in. Through Cage, he met painters Richard Lippold (who had a studio next door), Sonia Sekula, Robert Rauschenberg, and others, and composers such as Henry Cowell, Virgil Thomson, and George Antheil.^[7]

With encouragement from Cage, Feldman began to write pieces that had no relation to compositional systems of the past, such as the constraints of traditional harmony or the serial technique. He experimented with non-standard systems of musical notation, often using grids in his scores, and specifying how many notes should be played at a certain time, but not which ones. Feldman's experiments with the use of chance in his composition in turn inspired John Cage to write pieces like the Music of Changes, where the notes to be played are determined by consulting the I Ching.

Feldman was commissioned to compose the score for Jack Garfein's 1961 film, Something Wild. However, after hearing the music for the opening scene, in which a character (played by Carroll Baker, incidentally also Garfein's wife) is raped, the director promptly withdrew his commission, opting to enlist Aaron Copland instead. The reaction of the startled director was said to be, "My wife is being raped and you write celesta music?"^[8]

Through Cage, Feldman met many other prominent figures in the New York arts scene, among them Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Frank O'Hara. He found inspiration in the paintings of the abstract expressionists,^[9] and throughout the 1970s wrote a number of pieces around twenty-minutes in length, including Rothko Chapel (1971, written for the building of the same name, which houses paintings by Mark Rothko) and For Frank O'Hara (1973). In 1977, he wrote the opera Neither with words by Samuel Beckett.

In 1973, at the age of 47, Feldman became the Edgard Varèse Professor (a title of his own devising) at the University at Buffalo. Prior to that time, Feldman had earned his living as a full-time employee at the family textile business in New York's garment district.

Later, he began to produce his very long works, often in one continuous movement, rarely shorter than half an hour in length and often much longer. These works include Violin and String Quartet (1985, around 2 hours), For Philip Guston (1984, around four hours) and, most extreme, the String Quartet II (1983, which is over six hours long without a break.) Typically, these pieces maintain a very slow developmental pace (if not static) and tend to be made up of mostly very quiet sounds. Feldman said himself that quiet sounds had begun to be the only ones that interested him. In a 1982 lecture, Feldman noted: "Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away?"

Feldman married the Canadian composer Barbara Monk shortly before his death. He died from pancreatic cancer in 1987 at his home in Buffalo, New York, after fighting for his life for three months.

Works[link]

See: List of compositions by Morton Feldman

Notable students[link]

References[link]

• Feldman, Morton. 1968. Give My Regards to Eighth Street, Artnews Annual. Included in Give my regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman (2000), The Music of Morton Feldman, and elsewhere.
• Gagne, Cole, and Caras, Tracey. 1982. Interview with Morton Feldman. In: Soundpieces: Interviews with American Composers, 164–177. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press Inc, 1982. Available online.
• Hirata, Catherin. 2002. Morton Feldman. In: Sitsky, Larry, ed. 2002. Music of the Twentieth-century Avant-garde. Greenwood Publishing Group.
• Revill, David. 1993. The Roaring Silence: John Cage – a Life. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-220-6, ISBN 978-1-55970-220-1.
• Ross, Alex. 2006. American Sublime. The New Yorker, June 19, 2006. Available online.
• Zimmerman, Walter, ed. 1985. Morton Feldman Essays. Kerpen: Beginner.

Further reading[link]

• Eldred, Michael The Quivering of Propriation: A Parallel Way to Music, Section II.4.4 A musical subversion of harmonically logical time (Feldman) www.arte-fact.org 2010
• Feldman, Morton. Morton Feldman Says. Chris Villars, ed. London: Hyphen Press, 2006.
• Feldman, Morton. Morton Feldman in Middelburg. Lectures and Conversations. R. Mörchen, ed. Cologne: MusikTexte, 2008.
• Feldman, Morton. Give my regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman. B.H. Friedman, ed. Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 2000.
• Gareau, Philip. La musique de Morton Feldman ou le temps en liberté. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006.
• Hirata, Catherin (Winter 1996). "The Sounds of the Sounds Themselves: Analyzing the Early Music of Morton Feldman", Perspectives of New Music 34, no.1, 6-27.
• Herzfeld, Gregor. "Historisches Bewusstsein in Morton Feldmans Unterrichtsskizzen", Archiv für Musikwissenschaft Vol. 66, no. 3, (Summer 2009), 218-233.
• Lunberry, Clark. “Departing Landscapes: Morton Feldman's String Quartet II and Triadic Memories.” SubStance 110: Vol. 35, Number 2 (Summer 2006): 17-50. (Available at http://www.cnvill.net/mftexts.htm [#105 on the list])

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Morton Feldman

• Morton Feldman Page
• Morton Feldman Photographs, 1939-1987 from UBdigit - Digital Collections - University at Buffalo Libraries
• Jan Williams Photos of Morton Feldman, 1974-1979 from UBdigit - Digital Collections - University at Buffalo Libraries
• Morton Feldman in conversation with Thomas Moore
• Morton Feldman: Structures for String Quartet (1951) by Lejaren Hiller
• GregSandow.com: Feldman Draws Blood Village Voice, June 16, 1980
• Morton Feldman profile at New Albion Records
• The New Yorker: The Critics at Large
• Morton Feldman at Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
• (French) A biography of Morton Feldman, from IRCAM's website.

Listening[link]

• Art of the States: Morton Feldman three works by the composer
• UbuWeb: Morton Feldman featuring The King of Denmark
• Epitonic.com: Morton Feldman featuring tracks from Only – Works for Voice and Instruments
• In Conversation with John Cage, 1966, Part 1
• In Conversation with John Cage, 1966, Part 2
• In Conversation with John Cage, 1966, Part 3
• In Conversation with John Cage, 1966, Part 4
• In Conversation with John Cage, 1966, Part 5