TheGaggle
Politics • Culture • News
Our community is made up of those who value the freedom of speech, the right to debate and the promise of open, honest conversations.

We don't agree on everything but we never silence our followers and value every opinion on our channel.
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
The Gaggle Music Club: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations (BWV 988). Published in 1741, the Goldberg Variations is a monumental work of the Baroque period, characterized by technical brilliance, expressive range and structural ingenuity.

The work was published as the fourth and final part of Bach’s Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice), a series of works intended to demonstrate various aspects of keyboard technique and composition. It is named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, a young harpsichordist and a student of Bach's, who may also have been the first to perform it.

A famous—though possibly apocryphal—story, recounted by Bach’s early biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, claims that the work was commissioned by Count Hermann Karl von Keyserling, the Russian ambassador to Saxony. Suffering from insomnia, the count allegedly asked Bach to compose music that Goldberg could play to help him fall asleep.

Bach published the work himself under the title: Clavier-Übung bestehend in einer Aria mit verschiedenen Veränderungen vors Clavicimbal mit 2 Manualen (Keyboard Practice consisting of an Aria with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals).

The Goldberg Variations consists of an Aria (theme) at the beginning, 30 variations on the theme and a da capo return to the original Aria at the end. Contrary to common practice in variation forms, the variations here are not based on the melody of the Aria, but on its bass line and harmonic progression. This makes the work a set of bass variations, a form in which the underlying harmonic structure remains constant while the surface material changes dramatically.

The 30 variations are carefully organized. Every third variation is a canon. The other variations include: virtuosic toccata-style variations, dance forms, fugues, aria-like lyrical pieces.

The Aria itself is elegant, melancholy, stately, introspective and lyrical. The harmonic structure laid out in its 32 bars forms the basis for all 30 variations. The return of the Aria after 30 vastly different explorations gives the work a cyclical, almost metaphysical quality.

The combination of technical brilliance and spiritual introspection has led many to see it as not just a musical exercise, but as a journey of identity, transformation and return.

The Goldberg Variations stands at the summit of Bach’s keyboard writing. It represents his most ambitious work in variation form, and showcases the full range of Baroque keyboard techniques. It expresses perfectly the themes that ran throughout Bach’s life: polyphonic mastery, contrapuntal wit, spiritual intensity. It is also one of the last keyboard works that he published during his lifetime.

Bach's extraordinary composition redefined what the variation form could accomplish. While earlier composers had written variations on melodic themes, Bach’s use of a bass line as the invariant element allowed greater contrapuntal flexibility and depth. The intricate symmetry and mathematical rigor foreshadow modern compositional techniques such as those of the 20th-century serialists.

For much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the work was relatively neglected.
The 20th-century revival was driven largely by Glenn Gould, whose 1955 and 1981 recordings revolutionized how the piece was understood and performed, turning the piece into one of the most popular classical keyboard works.

The Goldberg Variations is a towering achievement in keyboard literature, blending intellectual rigor, emotional range and formal inventiveness. It remains one of the most studied, performed and beloved compositions in the classical canon.

Evgeni Koroliov is at the piano.

01:25:50
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
Articles
The Gaggle Music Club: Debussy’s La Mer

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is La Mer by Claude Debussy (The Sea: Three Symphonic Sketches for Orchestra). Completed in 1905, the work is an orchestral masterpiece, and Debussy's greatest large-scale instrumental work.

Debussy had long been fascinated by the sea and water imagery in poetry, painting and Japanese art. Debussy himself grew up in Paris, not by the sea — in fact, he admitted: “I was destined for the seashore only in my imagination.” Debussy took inspiration from the paintings of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet, as well as Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (he kept a print in his study, and it was used on the cover of the first edition of La Mer). Debussy was also an admirer of the Symbolist poetry by Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire, both of whom often used water as metaphor.

Debussy began composing La Mer around 1903, working on it intensively through 1904–1905. It should come as no surprise that he was nowhere ...

00:27:30
Live Chat
Monday Night At The Movies: "Memento" (2000)

Join Gagglers for "Memento"!
The screening starts at 3 p.m. ET sharp.
Share all of your thoughts, comments and criticisms on the Live Chat.

01:53:26
TG 1973: Trump's Strange Fixation On Taking Back Bagram Air Base

George Szamuely discusses President Trump's recent demands, backed by threats, that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan return Bagram air base to the United States, and wonders what may be behind them.

00:28:10
September 21, 2025
The Gaggle Book Club: "Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism And The Rise Of The Jews" By Albert S. Lindemann

Each week, The Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.

Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection is Albert S. Lindemann's "Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews." Published in 1997, "Esau’s Tears" is a fascinating account of the rise of modern antisemitism that focuses not merely on the hatreds of antisemites but also on the social tensions created by rapid Jewish advancements in the fields of finance, the professions, academia and politics. Lindemann argued that there was no point in writing yet another book presenting Jews as passive victims of hate-filled antisemites. Instead, he sought to show that some antisemitic perceptions had a “kernel of truth”...

Lindemann,_Albert_S._-_Esau’s_tears___modern_anti-semitism_and_the_rise_of_the_Jews,_1870-1933-Cambridge_University_Press_(1997).pdf
September 21, 2025
Monday Night At The Movies: "Memento" (2000)

Dear Gagglers:

Monday is, and has always been, a profoundly depressing day. That's why we have decided to add a little bit of fun to it.

On Monday, Sept. 22, we are holding another film screening. Gagglers can watch a movie and, as they do so, offer comments, random thoughts, aesthetic observations and critical insights in the Live Chat.

We will be screening the winner of The Gaggle's "films featuring an upended whodunit" poll: Christopher Nolan's haunting "Memento," starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Ann Moss.

The film will starts at 3 p.m. ET sharp. Please join us.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_in_0_q_memento

See you at the movies.

11 hours ago

zerohedge
@zerohedge
·
57 m
Disney says 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' will return to ABC on Tuesday

Shannon Joy
@ShannonJoyRadio
·
46 m
It’s time to bail on Trump.
He’s detonating an economic bomb on the middle class and at this point it’s completely obvious.
Citat
zerohedge
@zerohedge
·
4 h
Congratulations: after your electricity bills doubled in the past year, they are about to double again. Because someone has to pay for the chatbot writing all those college essays x.com/zerohedge/stat…

Disclose.tv
@disclosetv
NOW - Press Secretary Leavitt says TikTok's algorithm will be "secured" and "retrained;" Trump will sign the deal later this week.

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?

 

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals