1961 the goose was ready for the roasting – an t- ´Ard ( ! )
Teistiméireacht. Rote-learning and a centralistic system ( ten short
years later, I would begin serving the Irish Civil Service´s dopy,
dullard Dept. of Education, – a Cigire come to his castration ) had given me
no kind of hoult on literature in 4 ( Greek, Latin, Irish and English )
languages; my Mathematics was shaky ; History agus Geography
feather-lite.
About my Maynooth years, 1961 to 64, I deluded myself.
´Twas bliss for the starving young, Aristotelian Logic and Homer
and Lucretius´s “De Rerum Natura” and
John Henry Newman´s “Idea Of A University” and Palestrinian / Bach
Counterpoint, a heady brew. I thought I was pursuing God.
Perhaps I was .
1964 I departed this life for Rome´s Vatical Council,
theological journalists and international periti and three Popes and
all. I was ashamed of “my” Irish Church´s hierarchy, of our
shoddy theological past, ignorant anti-intellectualism, our pretended “Romanità” .
1967 I fled back to Dubh Linn, Dark Shitpool, soul shattered and
youthful optimism in tatters. Yet I held fast onto my tiny creative vision,
– compose a musical thing, some thing, anything, an eight bar
Lied, a quintet for accordeon and strings
; I submitted an inchoate monstrosity to Ráidio ´Eireann. In
its wisdom, it whistled, it whispered : “No. Hould back!
You´re all over the place, no control of dem tones! You´re pen doesn´t know
what it wants to write, nor how.”
Sectarian U.C.D., post – Jack Larchet, wanted ( desperately) to show
Archbishop McQuaid´s Catholic Dublin AND all the Protestants of T.C.D.
that Bach and Beethoven could yet be absorbed by Post-Famine
Catholicism. Our Professor was a Fascist boor, bully
plus baby. As I was taking my B.Mus. Finals, he assured me that if I´d even make an attempt at “his” D.Mus.
( even then old English vintage, fifteen-part counterpoint
and the lot ) , he´d attend personally to my shafting. His shoddy Department
didn´t even pretend to teach composition; it did pretend to,
but didn´t in fact, teach any orchestration. For that
I traipsed every Wednesday over to Westland Row where in
the Royal Irish Academy of Music great Dr. Archie Potter did
teach composition and instrumentation. Together we opened the score of
Schubert´s “Great” C Major Symphony. It was bliss trombones.
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