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: 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
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
Articles
September 22, 2025
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
September 24, 2025
TG 1974: Trump Makes About-Turn On Ukraine. What's Going On?

George Szamuely discusses President Trump's apparent 180-degree turn in his stance on the war in Ukraine, and wonders what might be behind it, and where it might lead.

00:45:27
September 22, 2025
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
21 hours ago

How convenient.
The Epstein files release vote gets delayed AGAIN, and the government gets to hide Trump's Great Depression. Wins all around for the elite psychos.
Citat
zerohedge
@zerohedge
·
17 h
US Jobs Data Could Be Delayed If Government Shuts Down: Evercore https://x.com/ShannonJoyRadio/status/1970850189763367183

For the Trump sycophants that refused to see it, your boy is just as much Big Pharma as anybody else in the government including former presidents.

Diversions like Tylenol and Froot Loops are nothing more than stall tactics. They are never going to remove the mRNA bioweapons because they would've done it by now. It's not about giving them more time, they've had more than enough time

And don't forget, the entire childhood immunization schedule is an active crime scene https://x.com/RealDrJaneRuby/status/1970884780095877545

18 minutes ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3e7d32epk3o

Are you kidding and on top of that he says “a Gaza deal is pretty close.” I really think he is clueless

3 hours ago
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