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The Gaggle Music Club: Alexander Scriabin’s "Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Op. 60"

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Alexander Scriabin’s Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Op. 60. This piece of music is undoubtedly one of the composer's most ambitious and mystically charged works, embodying his late-period exploration of synesthesia, theosophy and musical-symbolic transcendence.

Scriabin was deeply influenced by theosophy, a spiritual movement that sought to unify Eastern and Western religious traditions. By the time he composed Prometheus in 1910, he had become convinced that music could serve as a vehicle for spiritual enlightenment—a way to elevate human consciousness and bring about mystical transformation.

In theosophy, Prometheus (the mythological figure who gave fire to humanity) symbolized divine wisdom, illumination and transcendence. Scriabin saw him as an archetype of artistic and spiritual liberation, mirroring his own aspirations for his music.

Scriabin had long envisioned creating an ultimate artistic experience—something all-encompassing that would combine music, color, movement, and ritual to trigger a cosmic awakening. Prometheus serves as a precursor to this larger vision, experimenting with the integration of light and sound.

Scriabin is said to have had a condition known as synesthesia—a condition whereby the brain associates one sensation with another. In his case, sounds would evoke colors. He developed a "color-music" system, in which each key became associated with a specific hue. In Prometheus, he introduced a part for "luce" (light keyboard)—an instrument meant to project colored light in accordance with the harmonies played. This system was meant to enhance the mystical effect of the music by uniting sound and visual sensation.

Prometheus is a symphonic poem with piano soloist, though it is neither a conventional concerto nor a traditional symphony. It follows a tripartite form resembling a tone poem.

The first performance of the work in Moscow in 1911, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky, bewildered audiences. Many listeners struggled with its harmonic language and lack of traditional structure. However, others recognized it as a visionary step forward in modern music.

Some critics dismissed it as "mystical gibberish" and "unintelligible chromatic madness." Others praised the work for its audacity. Rachmaninoff, though a traditionalist, admired the piece. Stravinsky, however, dismissed it as the product of mystical self-indulgence.

Subsequently, Prometheus gained recognition as a groundbreaking work in orchestration and coloristic harmony. Notable conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez and Vladimir Ashkenazy have championed the work.

Prometheus serves as a bridge in Scriabin's oeuvre between his earlier, Chopin-influenced period and his late-period transcendental vision that culminated in his unfinished magnum opus, Mysterium, a mystical work that the composer believed would trigger the apocalypse and human transformation.

Scriabin died in 1915, before realizing his full vision, but Prometheus remains his most complete synthesis of music, mysticism, and synesthetic ambition. The work has come to be regarded as one of the great experimental masterpieces of early 20th-century music.

00:26:39
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The Gaggle Music Club: Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain"

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881), one of the most distinctive voices in 19th-century Russian music, was a member of the “Mighty Handful” that also included Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The Five’s mission was to break from Western European models and forge an authentically Russian style, drawing on folk melody, native idioms and Orthodox liturgy. Mussorgsky was perhaps the least conventional of the group, and the one whose music most strongly resisted later academic tidying up. His rejection of Western compositional norms, favoring speech-like vocal lines, abrupt modulations and stark orchestral colors, made him seem unrefined to contemporaries, but visionary to later composers.

The piece that is now called "Night on Bald Mountain" was not a single, straightforward composition. The piece audiences are most familiar with is Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1886 orchestration ...

00:13:36
TG 1948: Ukraine Cuts Off Hungary's Oil Supply; Trump Steps In

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss Ukraine's repeated attacks on the Druzhba oil pipeline that lead to cutoffs in Hungary's oil supply, and wonder what Kiev's motives may be in launching such attacks.

00:32:18
TG 1947: NATO's Deceit Over The Ukraine "Security Guarantees"

George Szamuely discusses NATO's attempt to fool the world over the "robust security guarantees" that President Trump and Russia have supposedly signed on to.

00:53:37
August 20, 2025

https://www.rt.com/news/623339-netanyahu-macron-france-antisemitism/

This guy is pure fucking evil!! If that is antisemitic, then I’m damn proud of it. Netanyahu is a poster child for antisemitism .

Why doesn’t Trump and idiot wife write a letter to this scumbag about the children of Gaza. History will not take kindly to the inaction of the US, Europe or Russia to stop Israel and this cretin

August 20, 2025

Obama's NATO Ambassador Admits to British Lords: Trump Just Ended 80 Years of Global Control

Promethean Updates

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Aug 20, 2025 The Midweek Update

Get our FREE newsletter at https://www.PrometheanAction.com — In this episode, Susan Kokinda from Promethean Action reveals crucial insights into the recent shift in US foreign and economic policy under President Donald Trump. Highlighting the testimony of Ivo Daalder, former NATO ambassador, before the British House of Lords, Kokinda discusses how Trump's administration is challenging the post-war rules-based order that has guided Western policies for decades. The video outlines Trump's success in resolving global conflicts, reestablishing national economic sovereignty, and dismantling the strategies of imperial global elites. Subscribe for a deeper understanding of these monumental developments and their global repercussions.

4 hours ago

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abrego-garcia-released-from-jail-returned-maryland-await

THIS IS A JOKE!! So much for Trumps tough on illegal immigrants. This mother -fucker is released from jail, and is protected by a judges order not to be taken into ICE custody after release from Tenn. custody. This enrages me, he is in the US illegally and is protected by US judges from deportation.

And I have a relative who cannot get a US visa to visit, when they have a home, family and business in their country of origin, and I have provided my financial records to guarantee that they would not over stay their welcome. It makes me sick. I hope this scumbag gets deported to South Sudan.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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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