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: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Op. 84, one of the great man's most political and dramatic compositions.

Composed in 1809–1810, the overture was part of incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1787 play "Egmont," which recounted the story of Count Egmont, a 16th-century Dutch nobleman who was executed by the Spanish for opposing the Inquisition and tyranny of the Duke of Alba. Goethe’s Egmont was a tragedy of political martyrdom and individual resistance against tyranny.

In 1809, Beethoven was living in Vienna, which was under siege by Napoleon’s troops. The Imperial Court Theatre in Vienna commissioned Beethoven to write music for a revival of Goethe’s play. The complete incidental music includes the Overture and nine numbers. However, it is only the Overture that has endured as a concert staple.

The Overture is in sonata form, a musical drama in miniature, encapsulating the play’s arc: oppression, resistance, martyrdom and posthumous triumph. Egmont was one of several works, in which Beethoven explored political themes, the best-known examples being the Eroica Symphony and Fidelio.

The work encapsulates Beethoven's ideals of heroism, freedom and moral courage. The addition of the victory coda demonstrates Beethoven’s belief in artistic and moral redemption beyond tragedy.

Dramatic dynamic contrasts, intense orchestral color and thematic transformation show Beethoven at his most theatrical and emotionally potent. The use of a "narrative" overture (telling the arc of a story within a single piece) would influence later composers like Berlioz and Wagner.

The Egmont Overture has been performed for political commemorations, especially in contexts of resistance or liberation. It was used in World War II broadcasts by the BBC into Nazi-occupied Europe. It was also used in radio broadcasts during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

Beethoven’s Egmont Overture is more than a prelude—it is a musical manifesto. It transforms Goethe’s story into an allegory of oppression, struggle and ultimate liberation. It is a masterwork of form and expression that stands as a cornerstone in Beethoven’s middle period and a bridge between classical structure and romantic subjectivity.

In this performance Kurt Masur conducts the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

00:09:35
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
Articles
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 1948: Ukraine Cuts Off Hungary's Oil Supply; Trump Steps In

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss Ukraine's repeated attacks on the Druzhba oil pipeline that lead to cutoffs in Hungary's oil supply, and wonder what Kiev's motives may be in launching such attacks.

00:32:18
TG 1947: NATO's Deceit Over The Ukraine "Security Guarantees"

George Szamuely discusses NATO's attempt to fool the world over the "robust security guarantees" that President Trump and Russia have supposedly signed on to.

00:53:37
August 20, 2025

https://www.rt.com/news/623339-netanyahu-macron-france-antisemitism/

This guy is pure fucking evil!! If that is antisemitic, then I’m damn proud of it. Netanyahu is a poster child for antisemitism .

Why doesn’t Trump and idiot wife write a letter to this scumbag about the children of Gaza. History will not take kindly to the inaction of the US, Europe or Russia to stop Israel and this cretin

August 20, 2025

Obama's NATO Ambassador Admits to British Lords: Trump Just Ended 80 Years of Global Control

Promethean Updates

196K subscribers

Subscribed

Aug 20, 2025 The Midweek Update

Get our FREE newsletter at https://www.PrometheanAction.com — In this episode, Susan Kokinda from Promethean Action reveals crucial insights into the recent shift in US foreign and economic policy under President Donald Trump. Highlighting the testimony of Ivo Daalder, former NATO ambassador, before the British House of Lords, Kokinda discusses how Trump's administration is challenging the post-war rules-based order that has guided Western policies for decades. The video outlines Trump's success in resolving global conflicts, reestablishing national economic sovereignty, and dismantling the strategies of imperial global elites. Subscribe for a deeper understanding of these monumental developments and their global repercussions.

4 hours ago

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abrego-garcia-released-from-jail-returned-maryland-await

THIS IS A JOKE!! So much for Trumps tough on illegal immigrants. This mother -fucker is released from jail, and is protected by a judges order not to be taken into ICE custody after release from Tenn. custody. This enrages me, he is in the US illegally and is protected by US judges from deportation.

And I have a relative who cannot get a US visa to visit, when they have a home, family and business in their country of origin, and I have provided my financial records to guarantee that they would not over stay their welcome. It makes me sick. I hope this scumbag gets deported to South Sudan.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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