Together with the hitherto unpublished letter of 6 September 1831, Tomášek sent the score of his Requiem op. 70 to the Zurich publisher, music writer and composer Hans Georg Nägeli. The author of the letter expressed his firm belief that due to the “prosperity of music practice in Switzerland” and the influence of the reputable Nägeli, it should not be a problem to find opportunity and funding to put on the enclosed work in that country. With gratitude, Tomášek puts Nägeli in mind of the fact that he had published some of his piano works between 1803 and 1805, calling him “the one to determine the spirit in the music world”. He briefly mentions several of his earlier compositions and, with a great deal of sarcasm, criticizes the contemporary “swamp of bad taste”, in which the audience has recently fallen, misguided by the “mendacious” Rossini and his followers. Tomá‰ek draws Nägeli’s attention to an enclosed article of his called “On Criticism in Relation to Music”, in which he appealed to “all respectable priests of art” to cultivate sensible criticism. He encourages Nägeli not to let his “whip” (meaning his feared sharp pen) “rest until things have changed”.
The article deals with the regulation of the use of Czech, German and classical languages in the administrative, school and Church spheres as it appears in the decrees published during Joseph II’s reign for the lands of the Bohemian crown. The author attempts to reconstruct the emperor’s vision of the usage of the different languages in the Czech lands, find the reasoning behind it, and identify the methods of this regulation. He also asks whether, in Joseph II’s case, one can speak about a "language policy" as a deliberate strategy to change the language situation in the Czech lands., Dmitrij Timofejev., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy