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The Gaggle Music Club: Debussy’s Douze Études (Twelve Études)

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Debussy’s Douze Études (Twelve Études).

Composed in 1915, after the death of his mother and the diagnosis of his own terminal cancer, Debussy’s Douze Études are some of the most technically challenging and harmonically advanced works in the piano repertoire. They were his final completed piano works and represent a remarkable synthesis of virtuosity, abstraction and innovation.

The Études are dedicated to Chopin (Debussy revered Chopin) and were clearly conceived in the tradition of Chopin and Liszt—but with a modern voice. Debussy wrote in a letter to his publisher Durand: "These Études are a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands."

The twelve études are divided into two books of six and each étude focuses on a specific technical or musical idea, but often in satirical or ambiguous ways. His Études stand apart as his final major piano statement.

While his earlier piano works (Suite Bergamasque, Estampes, Préludes and so on) are more accessible, the Études are more esoteric, abstract and private. They are the culmination of his style: mature, stripped of ornament, and focused on essential ideas.

Composed around the same time as his late sonatas, the Études share their elliptical quality. By 1915, Debussy was no longer experimenting to find his voice. He had already composed:the shimmering Préludes (Book I in 1909–10, Book II in 1912–13), the sensual Images and the lush, evocative Estampes.

Those works are rich with color, allusion and sensory immediacy. But in the Études, we get a Debussy who is paring down. He focuses not on evoking a mood or image but on abstract musical problems. There’s no extramusical inspiration—no titles like "Reflections in the Water" or "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair."

Debussy isn’t trying to charm the listener—he’s writing for the instrument and for his own artistic pleasure. The technical devices are no longer just “decoration”—they are the subject.

Each étude is a thought experiment, a kind of musical philosophy rendered in sound. The études are Debussy’s final piano statement, and perhaps his most intellectually rigorous.

The Études mark a turning point in 20th-century piano composition. They anticipate Messiaen, Ligeti and Boulez. Alongside Bartók’s Mikrokosmos and Stravinsky’s piano works, they helped redefine what piano music could be.

00:50:06
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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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