Monday, April 11, 2011

Day #82: Dublin

Today we had to begin our trek home to Vienna. But first we spent the day in Dublin! We had breakfast in Galway and trained back to Dublin. I threatened to jump out the window and force my travel companions to tell the world I fell off the Cliffs of Moher and they never found me, while I spent the rest of my years in the Irish countryside around Galway, practicing on the organ at the cathedral and living off of my talent and Irish hospitality. I did get to hear the organ at the Galway cathedral, by the way - we visited it yesterday and  there was an organ concert going on. So I got to hear the organ - the organist was very talented! He played a piece that was based on Psalm 33, which I plan to research a little more when I have more free time. It was one of those modern, dissonant but cool dissonant pieces. 
When we first arrived in Dublin we dropped our bags off at our hostel, then we attempted to find the tomb of the venerable Matt Talbot, a holy man who was a reformed alcoholic. But the church his tomb was supposedly in was locked, so we couldn't go inside. Our next stop was the Irish Writers Museum, where we learned about James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and other Irish writers. They also had the chair that Handel sat in when they first performed his Messiah, which was first performed in Dublin at Christ Church. The museum also had an exhibit of several paintings by the artist Jonathan Barry, who has done several illustrations for some very famous books from The Chronicles of Narnia to The Lord of the Rings to the Sherlock Holmes novels. They were excellent. I loved his illustrations for Sherlock Holmes. 
We wanted to see if we could go to a vigil Mass at the cathedral rather than rushing back for Mass the next day, so we set out to find St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral. As we approached the cathedral we noted an advertisement for a concert of St. John's Passion by J.S. Bach being performed the next day - naturally, the day we were gone! :-P BUT, when we asked about Mass, which was at 6 pm, the gentleman told us that they were rehearsing the Passion in the cathedral right then. So we snuck into the church, took a back pew, and I got to listen to about an hour and a half of the rehearsal, which was fabulous! The musicians and the singers were very talented! I really hope I can see the St. John's Passion performed some day! Perhaps in Vienna... The music for the Vigil Mass was interesting. I've heard that that the Catholic Church in Ireland is going through a situation similar to that in the U.S. right now, which was noticeable. They did the Kyrie in Gaelic, though, which was interesting. And then some of their hymns I could have sworn I was listening to Celtic Women - hopefully not... But it was neat to have had the opportunity to go to Mass there, and at the end of Mass the organist played Bach's Prelude and Fugue in a minor, which was AWESOME!!!! 

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