ReJoyce: Bloomsday Meanders Dublin 2015

  'Stephen's boots crush crackling wrack and razor shells, squeaking pebbles, wood sieved log by the sandworm, lost Armada. Open your eyes, a stride at a atime. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand? 

Early Morning:  A profusion of  suitably straw hatted ladies and bow tied gentlemen gathered in the morning at the Iris Charles Centre, Sandymount to feast on devilled kidneys and bucks fizz. Despite the eary hour,  the annual Bloomsday Breakfast  had an element of an Edwardian parlour soirée. Under the stewardship of  Rodney Devitt,  scholar and entertainer, our Joycean repast was accompanied by readings and  musical turns.  How lovely to hear a sung version of the Coolin and we enjoyed readings and poems from Eleanor, Pyllis and Glynis, I enjoyed a musical setting of Joyce's poem , Chamber Music. I was delighted to contribute a couple of airs on violin  Amply fortified, we sallied forth to visit locations  from Hades, Proteus and Nausicaa, the three episodes of Ulysses set in Sandymount accompanied  by Rodney Devitt's  insights and  reading of related passages. You can hear Rodney read a snatch of Ulysses in the audioboo below.

https://audioboom.com/users/102528/boos

Lady Mayors of Ringsend and Sandymount Colide 

Bloomsday Breakfast

Joyce stayed here on 'Ulysses' night

Bloomsday Group Rodney Devitt Paddy Dignam's House 

https://audioboom.com/users/102528/boos Audioboo from Bloomsday Breakfast

Mid Morning

Bloomsday Gathering Sandymount Green

David Norris reads Nausicaa

Mid Morning:  The sun came out as toddlers, tennis players, and Joycean enthusiasts converged on the  green triangle of Sandymount  Green.  The Great White Shark of Joycean scholars, David Norris gave a coulourful reading from the Nausicaa episode of Ulysses . Charles Lysaght read passages associated with cricket while Anthony Jordan picked up a political thrread. James Conway and Mary Guckian from the R&R Writers' Group  read from their own anthologies inspired by Joyce.  A bowler hatted Paddy O Dwyer brought us back to Hades MC, Joe McCarthy of the Sandymount Tidy Towns Committee looked splendidly Joycean in roundy specs and appropriate moustache. Mezzo soprano Bríd Ní Ghruagáin had the assembly in raptures at her rendition of Balfe and Moore (Believe Me if All Those and Marble Halls) Looking every inch the grand Edwardian dame in  black velvet and cream, thespian Glynis Casson added words and song from The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. The event concluded with a genteel singalong of 'Finnegan's Wake'

Mushrooms and devilled kidneys

 James Joe McCarthy

Evening: It was returns only at the NCH for Nora Barnacle, a brand new song cycle by Shaun Davey. Similar to Granuaile in that it that it features a song set for a solo soprano, but  simpler in style and featuring a pared down ensemble of piano, clarinet, concertian/accordion, extended percussion and guitar.  Nora's story is told in Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's terse repetitive text as a series of postcards home (18 in total) from the various staging posts. A brief biographical  programme note was projected at the start of each song.  It is not often you hear a clarinet and concertina together,  and the two reeds made an appealing blend. After a sustained applause and a standing ovation, the ensemble reprised, Nora in Paris. The limitations of just one voice stretched the relatively plain material a bit too thin to sustain my interest over a whole evening.

Bloomsday was fun. Sandymount was the place to be.  Root out your copy of Ulysses and make a date for next year. If  you can't catch one of Rodney Devitt's  Joycean walks, you can pick up his guide book, Walking into Eternity at Books and Things on Sandymount Green.
Watch out for the gorgeous voice of  Bríd Ni Ghruagáin.  She will be appearing in  Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon at the NCH on Saturday June 20th. 3pm and 8pm

Ulysses Quartet on Newbridge Ave

Rodney Devitt

The mood  of Bloomsday frivolity was caught nicely I thought by Marty Whelan's regular  correspondant, Hugo Listen to the extract from Marty in the Morning on LyricFM  here 
http://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/rteradiowebpage.html#!type=radio&rii=16%3A20798267%3A5345%3A17%2D06%2D2015%3A

'Listen to This' author and more at Galway Arts Festival

Familiar look to headliners

Alex Ross 'Pale Vampire' Aula Max NUIG
Galway Sinfonietta at Bailey Allen Hall
Tara Connaghan and Derek McGinley at Monroe's
An Aural Visual Affair by the T'ang Quartet St Nicholas Church 

On swift sail flaming From storm and south He comes, pale vampire Mouth to my mouth.

from Ulysses Joyce 

Wedged in between the departure of the yachting  crews and the arrival of the horsey set, Galwegians  play host to an annual arts festival and I paid my first visit  on Saturday.

Alex Ross of The New Yorker

It was quite a coup for GAF to secure prestigious writer and trail blazing  music blogger, Alex Ross on his first visit to Ireland. At NUIG, I wondered whether I had the right venue for a celebrity lecture as the largest group in evidence was a wedding party taking advantage of the photogenic  quadrangle and the festival signs were unassuming to say the least . I pressed on in hope of finding a buzzing literary hive and plumping for one of a selection of doors to the Aula Max, I entered to find myself in a lobby space with not so much a feel of a lively mix zone as a vaguely disconcerting sense of a staff common room before I was directed back outside  to the 'students entrance' of the upstairs lecture hall.

Tiernan Henry, lecturer in Geology at NUIG, gave a warm introduction to, Alex Ross,  author of Listen to This and The Rest is Noise  and music critic of the New Yorker, brandishing   a  copy of the 1999 magazine containing his essay ,  The  Wanderer on Bob Dylan. Anticipating his next book, Ross delivered a  paper, outlining some resonances in James Joyces' work with Wagnerian operas with particular reference to Ulysses and the |Flying Dutchman.   Ross's  passion  for the language  of literature shone through particularly in this live experience as he effortlessly peppered his talk with quotations  from a diverse range of sources including poetry by Douglas Hyde,  and the English translations of Wagnerian operas from the Carla Rosa Opera Co archives, regular visitors to the Gaiety in Dublin.  A fellow attendee remarked to me that the scale and diversity of cross  references in Ross's work are reminiscent of  the Wagnerian tome, Ulysses itself.  Despite Ross's efforts, the event felt a bit flat, with an air of a specialist post grad seminar rather than a buzzy mainstream literary event.  The venue with its huge elegant windows at each end  was rather large for the assembly and we could have done with  firmer anchoring to steer the event to a fitting close. Where is David Norris when you need him.

Nearby in the Bailey Allen Hall, the community orchestra, The Galway Sinfonietta,   performed a free concert under the umbrella of the Galway Fringe Festival. Opening  with a saxophone concerto by Glazunov  featuring Bertrand Fougeres and including works by Finzi, Romberg and Dvorak, there was a good attendance to support  the group conducted by John Roe. Anxious not to miss the first part of the  T'ang Quartet's presentation, I arrived just in time at  the packed St. Nicholas's  church and found a seat near the front all the better to appreciate the cinematic effects of the entertainment. However, maybe suspecting that less resilient  audience members might  slope off to the pub after the Buster Keaton segment, the order of the programme had been reversed to that advertised  and we had an hour of 20th century string quartet repertoire before the heralded cinematic element.

T'ang Quartet

 The cellist, Leslie Tan of the Singapore based ensemble gave cheerful introductions to  the items setting the context of the works drawing on less than cheerful  themes of funerals and  the Chinese Cultural Revolution. While quartets by Sallinen and Bright Sheng were well received as you might expect in  a city that boasts its own resident quartet and there was some thrilling string playing and a sense of joyful  communion within the ensemble,  it was rather too rich   for my palate . The score accompaniment by French composer, Baudine -Jam to the 1921silent classic, Haunted House was delightful and indeed there were peals of laughter in the aisles of St Nicholas. However for an event titled An Aural Visual Affair, the item  was all too brief with a running time of 15 minutes or so and one would have thought with the projector in place, we might enjoyed  another in the same vein. It was a bit like advertising a three course meal by leading with the promise of pudding.



I caught some of Tara Connaghan's and Derek McGinley's lunchtime session in Monroe's. Tara is well known in Clare as a former county Arts Officer. The duo, exponents of a Donegal style of fiddle playing, mixed jigs and reels, slow airs mazurkas and waltzes adding some personal anecdotes  for an appreciative audience. Both of them speak here  of their route in to fiddle playing and the role of family members in developing their skills.


Related posts


Movies at the Christchurch Cathedral Morgan Cooke and Faust


Wagner/ Joyce from Alex Ross' blog The Rest is Noise

Pilgrms and Priests: Bloomsday at IEC2012

 

Irish Times photo Alan Betson Sr Gwen of the Discalced Carmelites

The last trip I made to the RDS  in 2010 was a pilgrimage of sorts to see an icon of the pop music world,  Paul McCartney, celebrating his 70 th birthday this week . I was propelled to make the expedition as  it seemed likely to be the last chance  to see the veteran Beatle (although given the proliferation of aging rock stars leaping around on a stage near you, I wouldn't be so sure about that.) At the time I vowed  it would be the last outdoor stadium event I would attend but much in the same spirit and given that thousands of overseas visitors had thought the event worth a trip to our rainy and windswept isle end, I travelled to the last day of the International Eucharistic Congress at the RDS in Dublin. The event held every four years was last held in Ireland in 1932, still in living memory for some.

 A  pricey €35  admitted one to the  days programme of talks, religious  services and exhibitions. First,  the stations of the display stands - nearly all with some sort of ecclesiastical bent. You could thumb through a rack of brightly coloured vestments, plan a pilgrimage holiday,  try out a church organ  and gen up on family planning (the Billings method, naturally!).  Dana and Liam Lawton were pedalling their records and potential postulants could check out the sandal shod Discalced Carmelites among the many stands extolling  religious life.

Abbot Mark  Hederman

Queue was the  key letter of the day. There was no central notice board of the events  but I was advised that whichever event I chose, queuing would be an essential part of the pilgrimage experience. Hall 2B was packed for Mark Hederman’s  Bloomsday talk on Ulysses.   Among the faces in the audience were Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times,  politician Pat Cox and musician Micheal O Suilleabháin.  I met Sr Sarah O Connor recently returned to Kerry from teaching in Peru and Noel Tierney of the Parnell Summer School. The Abbot of Glenstal Abbey gave quite a drole paper outlining liturgical resonances in  Ulysses with references to the tridentine language of the Mass in the iconic novel.  Joyce, we learned, drew parallels between the writing process and the liturgical Eucharist, 'converting the bread of life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its' own'.  Hederman had some interesting insights on word origins and  it seems even erudite monastic types like to use the odd willy joke. In answer to a query about the description of liturgical music in the novel, he had an amusing anecdote of his encounter  with the road rage prone New York cabbie de-stressing with Gregorian chant on the mean streets of the Big Apple. Unfortunately, the speaker had competition from the next hall and the audio overlap was disconcerting for audience but must have been doubly so for him.

Ennis Gospel Choir 

In the  Main Arena the  twin domed choirs with leaders in billowing white robes  were working hard at rousing a rather sodden congregation, Saturday's pilgrims having been unceremoniously baptised in a heavy shower. Although the stewards made an effort to consolidate the attendees in the central area, the dissipation  to the stands was inevitable. The music for the liturgy was a  good mix of chant, old and new settings of psalms, hymns  and featured much contemporary  Irish work.   Although the reluctance of Irish congregations to sing is often commented on , a  fair attempt was made by the crowd at singing the Congress anthem ‘Though We Are  Many’ but we were just too physically dispersed a congregation to create a satisfying sense of communal choral endeavour.  There was a strong sense of communal musical endeavour  however in the RDS Main Hall when Bernard Sexton's specially commissioned  hymn was reprised at the close of the St Agnes’ Community Orchestra  concert in the RDS Hall. The ensemble now after 5 years is  a 130 strong intergenerational ensemble .  School Principal Sr Bernadette Sweeney stated  her simple philosopy of equality of musical opportunity for all regardless of means and 'process being more important than product' . The Ode to Joy from Beethoven 9th symphony never sounded so powerful. Celebrating his 9th opus was singer, James Kilbane . The  Mayo based gospel singer had set up with his guitar outside the Veritas Book Stand and sang some tracks from his recently released album, Gravel and Grace which he tells me is getting a lot of airplay on local radio stations around the country.  

Back in the exhibition hall, I spoke  Sr Magdalena Fitzgibbon and Joe McKenna  about  plans to develope a cultural retreat centre at the magnificent Kylemore Abbey after  a long tradition of post primary education.  Finally, I  viewed an interesting exhibition of memorabilia on the 1932 congress in the RDS Library where I met Joseph Patrick Prunty  born in the year of 1932 .The Archbishop's archivist, (what a  poetic title) Noelle Dowling was busy greeting and signing a special commemorative programme of the 1932 event. 

St Agnes Community Orchestra 

Generally my impression was that Irish parish groups had not arrived by the bus load but in small parties. Call me a cheapskate but in principle, I was somewhat reluctant to pay an entrance fee when the main event is a religious service and I wonder to what extent this aspect influenced the many empty seats plain for all to see at the opening and evident too on the last day. I had sympathy with the sentiments expressed by Theo Hobson in a  Guardian article on the subject  of visiting St Paul's . '..: paying an entrance fee changes the nature of the visit. To pay is to make a tacit statement: that this is primarily a tourist-attraction, that its sacred function is secondary to this'  (In a related precedent, Kilkenny Arts Week in 2010 programmed a Mozart Mass performed in context and resolved this thorny matter  by suggesting a suitable  donation)

 My specific  interest was in the music chosen for the liturgies and I was impressed with the range and quality of the music chosen  over the week. Pat ODonoghue and Tomás Kenny made trojan efforts to marshall a congregational element and it would be good to see this policy carried on in to the parishes
While I can't say it was the most spiritually uplifting experience I've ever had, it was  an  interesting afternoon and while the men were sporting all the best frocks, there was a spirit of bonhomie in the  cross section  of national and international visitors to the capital.

Mr and Mrs Prunty in the Library

Musical Memorabilia