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January 19, 2025
The Gaggle Music Club

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Richard Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, WWV 91--song cycle consisting of five songs for voice and piano (later orchestrated by others, including Wagner himself, for two of the songs).

Composed in 1857-1858, the song cycle is based on poetry by Mathilde Wesendonck, a woman with whom Wagner had a close personal and emotional connection, and whose relationship with him significantly influenced his artistic output during this period.

Mathilde Wesendonck was the wife of Otto Wesendonck, a wealthy silk merchant who became a patron of Wagner's during his exile in Switzerland. The Wesendoncks provided Wagner with financial and emotional support.
Wagner and Mathilde developed an intense relationship—believed to be platonic but certainly deeply romantic. This relationship inspired the creation of the Wesendonck Lieder and parts of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde.

Mathilde's poems reflect themes of love, longing and transcendence, issues that of course preoccupied Wagner throughout his life, and inspired much of his creative musical output.

Wagner wrote these songs while working on Tristan und Isolde. The harmonic language and emotional intensity of the Wesendonck Lieder reflect Wagner’s experiments with the chromaticism and leitmotifs that he later employed in the opera. Wagner explicitly referred to the third and fifth songs (“Im Treibhaus” and “Träume”) as "studies" for Tristan.

Although initially composed for piano and voice, the cycle has been orchestrated by several composers, including Felix Mottl and Hans Werner Henze. Wagner himself orchestrated “Träume” for a chamber ensemble to celebrate Mathilde's birthday.

The first song, "Der Engel" (The Angel), describes the solace and salvation offered by an angel, symbolizing spiritual purity and transcendence. The second song, "Stehe still!" (Stand Still!), contemplates the idea of stopping time and space to grasp the infinite moment and the deeper truths of existence.

The third song, "Im Treibhaus" (In the Greenhouse), evokes the imagery of a greenhouse’s artificial, stifling atmosphere to explore feelings of isolation, longing and existential despair. The fourth song, "Schmerzen" (Sorrows), reflects on the interplay between suffering and renewal, using the natural cycle of the sun setting and rising as a metaphor for human resilience and transformation. The fifth song, "Träume" (Dreams), captures the ephemeral beauty of love and the transcendence of human desire, framing dreams as a doorway to the eternal.

The Wesendonck Lieder constitute Wagner’s most personal vocal music, providing insight into his emotional world during his relationship with Mathilde. They serve as a bridge between Wagner’s earlier Romantic operas and his later revolutionary music dramas.

While initially overshadowed by Wagner’s magisterial operatic works, the Wesendonck Lieder have become a staple of the art song repertoire, frequently performed in both its original and orchestrated forms.

Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano, performs, and Marc Minkowski conducts the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse.

00:35:58
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TG 1934: U.K. (Half-Heartedly) Threatens To Recognize Palestinian State

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's threat to recognize a Palestinian state --but only under certain conditions--and wonder what, if any, difference a British recognition would make.

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The Gaggle Music Club: Ottorino Respighi’s "Ancient Airs and Dances"

This week's selection of The Gaggle Music Club is Ottorino Respighi’s "Ancient Airs and Dances." The composition consists of a set of three orchestral suites composed between 1917 and 1932, based on lute pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936) was an Italian composer, musicologist, conductor and orchestrator. He studied composition in Bologna and later trained in orchestration under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia. The Russian master-orchestrator strongly influenced Respighi's approach to tone color. Respighi went on to become one of the most important figures in Italian music in the early 20th century. A significant part of Respighi’s output was devoted to reviving and reinterpreting early music. He created orchestral versions of lute pieces, Gregorian chant and harpsichord works. Unlike his contemporaries in Italy, he had little time for atonality and serialism.

For "Ancient Airs and Dances," Respighi, a skilled musicologist, drew on transcriptions of...

00:44:59

BREAKING: President Trump delays Tariffs until Aug 7.
(except Canada Aug 1)

Canada: 35%
EU: 15%
China: 55% with prior tariffs
Vietnam: 20% baseline
Indonesia: 19%
Philippines: 19%
Japan: 15%
South Korea: 15%
India: 25%
Brazil: 50%
Cambodia: 36%
Bangladesh: 35%
Laos, Myanmar: 40%

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/responses/what-kind-great-power-will-india-be

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Read more: https://www.disclose.tv/id/s90cg7cb5m/

@disclosetv

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@disclosetv

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Fuck NO! I will never comply nor participate in this crap. I own my data and you have no rights to my personal property. Everyone should refuse this. Keep your own medical records, on paper, and only share with trusted health providers if strictly necessary.
Citat
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My friend is in the business of buying wholesale steel rebar, steel beams, steel sheets, etc. from inexpensive overseas producers and then selling it downstream to American homebuilders who build budget homes.

He got an email from his customs broker this afternoon that their order from Hanoi, Vietnam will be subject to either 50%, 70%, 110%, or 135% tariff tomorrow.

50% penalty for foreign steel.

Another 20% penalty for Vietnam.

Another 40% transshipment ...

January 21, 2023
More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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