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The Gaggle Music Club: Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, commonly known as the “Leningrad” Symphony—one of the most historically and politically significant works of the 20th century.

Shostakovich began work on the symphony before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Initial sketches appear to predate the launch of Operation Barbarossa. However, once the siege of Leningrad began in September 1941, the symphony quickly became identified with the suffering and resistance of that city. Shostakovich, himself a resident of Leningrad, remained in the city during the early days of the siege and famously worked on the score while serving as a fire warden. The work was completed after he was evacuated to Kuibyshev.

The composition is in four movements: The first, Allegretto, begins with a calm, pastoral theme, often interpreted as evoking pre-war life. This is followed by the “invasion theme,” a 22-bar melody repeated and orchestrated in an increasingly militaristic and grotesque manner (12 repetitions).

The second movement, Moderato, is a melancholic scherzo. The mood is haunted, introspective, and evokes the emotional exhaustion of war and suffering.

The third movement, Adagio, is considered to be the emotional core of the symphony. It is lyrical, solemn, and features a sorrowful string theme.

The fourth movement, Allegro non troppo, opens turbulently and gradually builds to a broad, triumphal coda.

The Seventh Symphony stands at a pivotal moment in Shostakovich’s life and career: It is a bridge between his pre-war and post-war symphonic output. Compared to the ironic and avant-garde idiom of his Fourth Symphony or the intimacy of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the Seventh is vast and public. It marks the beginning of his “patriotic” symphonies. The work however contains coded criticism and ambiguity, typical of his mature style.

The symphony premiered on March 5, 1942 in Kuibyshev, and was conducted by Samuil Samosud. On Aug. 9, 1942, it was performed in besieged Leningrad by the surviving musicians of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, under Karl Eliasberg. Loudspeakers broadcast it across the city. The work became a symbol of Soviet resilience, and Stalin approved its heroic tone.

The symphony premiered in the United States in July 1942 under Arturo Toscanini. At the time it was seen as a rallying cry for the Allied cause. Critics such as Virgil Thomson and Theodor Adorno ridiculed the symphony. Thomson called it “vulgar movie music,” resembling the background scores of Hollywood war films. Writing for the New York Herald Tribune during and after World War II, Thomson claimed the work was not high art but sentimental bombast, music that relied on emotional manipulation rather than formal or intellectual depth.

Adorno criticized the Seventh for its banality, repetition and apparent accessibility. He viewed its structure—especially the long, escalating "invasion" theme—as mechanical and manipulative, designed to provoke emotional response rather than intellectual engagement. He saw it as a product of totalitarian culture, equating its mass appeal and nationalistic fervor with both Soviet and fascist propaganda art. According to Adorno, the Seventh pretended to resist fascism, but actually mirrored the authoritarian logic of the system it opposed.

Pierre Boulez and the post-war avant-garde rejected Shostakovich entirely, focused as they were on innovation over populist narrative. Boulez dismissed Shostakovich's compositions as derivative. In a 1999 interview with he Independent, Boulez stated:

"I have to tell you that I have very mixed feelings about this music. It is often said that Shostakovich is the 'more recent' equivalent of Mahler; but I would say that to compare Shostakovich with Mahler is like comparing Meyerbeer with Wagner. The musical substance of his work is trivial. Okay, I can accept that he worked under great pressure, that he was afraid and that he rebelled discreetly. But, for me, that's not enough of an excuse."

Boulez also likened Shostakovich's music to overused clichés, remarking: "Shostakovich plays with clichés most of the time, I find. It's like olive oil, when you have a second and even third pressing, and I think of Shostakovich as the second, or even third, pressing of Mahler."

Within the Soviet Union, during the post-Stalin era, musicologists questioned its formal construction, the repetitive structure of the invasion theme and the symphony's overblown character. By the time the Brezhnev era came around, the Seventh was increasingly viewed as dated and ideologically compromised. It was performed less frequently and sometimes dismissed as propagandistic bombast.

In today's Russia, critics and intellectuals often describe the work as artistically inferior to Shostakovich’s later symphonies such as the Eighth and Tenth. The also claim it to be a transitional work that marks his compromise with Soviet diktats. To be sure, others emphasize its emotional power and historical weight, treating it as a profound statement of artistic resistance and suffering.

However, any fair listening to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 should lead one to the conclusion that it is a magisterial composition, whether it conforms to modern tonal requirements or not.

In this performance from 2019, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony is conducted by Klaus Mäkelä.

01:23:37
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The Gaggle Music Club: Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in D minor

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in D minor. Composed in 1940, the work is one of the major violin concertos of the 20th century and constitutes an important moment within Soviet musical history.

Aram Khachaturian (1903–1978) was a Soviet composer of Armenian ancestry who was one of the leading musical figures of the USSR. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, into an Armenian family, he initially studied science but switched to music in the 1920s when he moved to Moscow. There, he studied at the Gnessin Institute and later at the Moscow Conservatory.

Khachaturian became a central figure in Soviet music, much admired for his colorful orchestration, use of folk rhythms and accessibility. Along with Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, he was part of the Soviet "big three," though his style was generally more tuneful and extroverted than that of the other two.

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The Gaggle Book Club: "The Psychoanalytic Movement: Or the Cunning of Unreason" By Ernest Gellner

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 Ernest Gellner's "The Psychoanalytic Movement: Or the Cunning of Unreason." Published in 1985, Gellner's essay is one of the most incisive and controversial critiques of Freudian psychoanalysis ever published.

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) was a Czech-born British philosopher, anthropologist and historian of ideas. He taught at the London School of Economics, Cambridge, and later at the Central European University in Prague. His work spanned a wide array of fields: the philosophy of social science, nationalism, Islam, modernity and epistemology. He shot to fame during the 1950s with ...

The_Psychoanalytic_Movement_(Paladin_Movements_and_Ideas_--_Gellner,_Ernest_--_Paladin_movements_and_ideas,_London,_United_Kingdom,_1985_--_9780586084366_--_89dc8c02c9e9f5a866844d3e45fcddeb_--_Anna’s_Archive.pdf

It's been a pleasure! Thanks for all the great shows. :)

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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