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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 1941: NATO Worthies Set Out To Sabotage Alaska Summit

George Szamuely discusses the enormous energy NATO leaders are expending to ensure that the upcoming summit between presidents Trump and Putin ends in failure or, better still, doesn't take place at all.

01:28:41
TG 1940: Armenia, Azerbaijan Sign Peace Deal In D.C.

George Szamuely discusses today's surprise signing in Washington, D.C. of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and explains the geopolitical significance of the event.

00:42:51
The Gaggle Book Club: “The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 By Antony Beevor

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 “The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 by Antony Beevor. Published in 2006, Beevor's book is a lively recounting of the key events that led from the political crisis triggered by the collapse of the Spanish monarchy to the brutal civil war and finally to the nearly-four decade dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. Readability and accessibility is what you would expect from Beevor's books, and this one does not disappoint.

As Beevor tells it, Spain at the turn of the 20th century was still a very poor, undeveloped country. While industrialization had started to transform cities such as ...

The_battle_for_Spain___the_Spanish_Civil_War,_1936-1939_--_Antony_Beevor_--_Penguin_Random_House_LLC,_New_York,_2006_--_Penguin_(Non-Classics).pdf
Monday Night At The Movies: "A History Of Violence" (2005)

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, Aug. 11, 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 "people living under a fake identity" poll: David Cronenberg's disturbing "A History of Violence," starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello and Ed Harris.

The film will starts at 3 p.m. ET sharp.

See you at the movies.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399146/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_a%2520history%2520of%2520viol

Alaska!

Maybe that's part of the deal?

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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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