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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
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TG 1988: Nobel Committee, Trump Join Forces To Oust Maduro

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss the well-developed plans to overthrow the government of Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro--plans that include the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Corina Machado--and wonder whether anything can save Venezuela from the U.S.-instigated coup.

00:54:24
TG 1987: Trump Prepares To Address Knesset, Chair Peace Conference In Egypt

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss President Trump's upcoming speech in the Knesset as well as his co-chairmanship of a Middle East peace conference in Egypt, and wonder as to how well-founded the hopes for lasting peace are.

00:51:48
October 10, 2025
TG 1986: Polish PM Donald Tusk Endorses Terrorism

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's announcement that Poland has no intention of extraditing to Germany a Ukrainian suspected of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines on the ground that what the man did was wholly commendable.

00:32:31
October 11, 2025
The Gaggle Book Club: "Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History Of The Second World War And Its Aftermath."

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 "Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath." Published posthumously in 2011, and edited by historian George H. Nash, the work encapsulates the former president's critique of U.S. foreign policy from the 1930s through the early years of the Cold War.

Often referred to as Hoover’s magnum opus, the book offers extensive historical, ideological and personal reflections. The book is informed by a distinct antipathy toward foreign interventionism and what today would be called “globalism.”

Hoover began what eventually became "Freedom ...

HOOVER_-_Freedom_Betrayed_(2011)_(1).pdf
Monday Night At The Movies: "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972)

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, Oct. 13, 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 runner-up in The Gaggle's "time, memory and discontinuity" poll: Luis Buñuel's comedic masterpiece from 1972, "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," starring Stephane Audran, Fernando Rey, Delphine Seyrig and Bulle Ogier.

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

See you at the movies.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068361/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_the%2520discreet

October 02, 2025
Monday Night At The Movies

Please choose which one of the following 8 movies you would like to have screened next Monday, Oct. 6.

The theme is "memory, time and discontinuity."

Please continue to vote after Oct. 6, so that we can determine the runner-up. The runner-up will be screened on Oct.13.

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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