Five Days in Ireland - a Belated Travelogue

Recently, I began writing my annual “year in review” post, which is going to have a rather different tone from previous posts owing to an unpleasant personal event that took place over the past year. As I was writing, however, I realized I never posted about the trip to Ireland that Daniel and I undertook in late March and early April. This presented a challenge, as the memories of the trip are now more than six months old. Then I remembered that I had composed an email for close friends and family as the trip progressed. I’ve adapted that account for the bulk of this post, along with a link to the video from our trip.

As with Cancún in February, we selected Dublin because it’s reachable from Cleveland via a nonstop flight. I was able to score a great deal on Business Class tickets on Aer Lingus. The only issue was that we had to walk between various security checkpoints at Cleveland Hopkins Airport because our TSA PreCheck passes weren’t accepted. Fortunately, CLE doesn't have the hours-long TSA lines you've seen on the news at larger airports. We had enough time to relax in the United Club lounge, thanks to its partnership with Aer Lingus.

The plane itself was an Airbus A321neoLR. Our seats reclined fully flat and even had a massage option, a retractable table, and plenty of storage space. Very welcome amenities for an overnight flight, although I was so excited about the trip that I slept little. The flight included a hot meal not long after takeoff and breakfast just before landing, but I’d be lying if I told you I remembered what we ate.

Our flight landed early Saturday morning, and despite the long lines at immigration, we were through quickly enough that we left the airport around the time our flight was originally scheduled to land. We took the Dublin Express to the city center and walked to our hotel to drop off our luggage. We stayed at the Holiday Inn on O’Connell Street. Even though we weren't checking in until that afternoon, the staff invited us to take advantage of the breakfast buffet. But we were still sated from the food on our flight, so we just grabbed some coffee to go.

From there, we walked around the area, taking in the sights and acquainting ourselves with the layout of the city. Two highlights were St. Stephen’s Green and Merrion Square, with its famous statue of Oscar Wilde. By the time we returned to the hotel to check in and head to our room, we were exhausted, so we took a brief nap.

No account of a trip to Ireland would be complete without discussing one of its most distinctive exports: Guinness stout. We both enjoyed our share (especially Daniel), but I found myself preferring Orchard Thieves cider. We visited so many pubs that I can't recall them all, but Pennylane became our semi-regular evening haunt—we went there at least three times.

Sunday started off poorly. We had planned to visit the Guinness brewery, but when we arrived, we learned that tours were already sold out for the day. We had taken the tram there, but on the return trip it became so crowded that we decided to get off and walk. Now I know what it feels like to be packed in like sardines.

We did some free associating on Sunday, going wherever our whims took us. By evening, we were tired of walking, so we stopped at a local cinema and saw Project Hail Mary. Jet lag must have caught up with us because we both dozed off at the beginning of the film. We awakened after a while, however, and the plot held our attention once things got going.

The movie, in which Ryan Gosling plays the sole survivor of an interstellar crew assigned to investigate a threat to Earth, finds his character encountering a counterpart from a world in the Eridani star system—also the sole survivor of a similar mission. Despite belonging to vastly different species—the counterpart comes from a race of living rocks—a strong friendship develops, with each character risking his life to help the other. A heartwarming story, and one sorely needed in our times. I must give a shout-out to Ryan Gosling, whose performance is the emotional center of the film.

Monday was a fully planned-out day. We took the train to Belfast to visit Titanic Belfast, about a two-hour ride during which we spoke with an older Irish gentleman. Since we were crossing into Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, we brought our passports, but we didn't need them.

Today, Belfast is known to many foreigners for two things: “the Troubles”—the religious, ethnic, and nationalist conflict that lasted roughly 30 years beginning in the late 1960s—and as the city where the White Star Line's great ships were built, most (in)famously Titanic. Once in Belfast, we took the Glider bus to the Titanic Quarter, where you can stand on the slipway down which Titanic entered the water for the first time.

King of the World

Belfast is the furthest north Danny and I have ever been, and the weather proved it. Yet there were people jogging in shorts, and on the train back to Dublin, we saw young people playing soccer in shorts and light shirts.

We slept in Tuesday. Instead of the hotel's buffet breakfast, we went to Flanagan's, a nearby restaurant, for a proper full Irish breakfast. That was enough to hold us until dinner.

Tuesday was also the day of our rescheduled tour of the Guinness brewery. Unfortunately, whilst waiting for the tram, our heads were anointed by a bird flying overhead. For future reference, always wear a hat while outside in Ireland, regardless of the weather.

Despite the incident, we made it to Guinness at the appointed hour and learned about the exacting process by which the legendary stout is made. Then we enjoyed some of the beverage at the top-floor bar. My enjoyment was tempered by the cold I'd felt coming on over the previous few hours. I seldom get sick, but when I do, it nearly always coincides with travel. To make matters worse, I learned that the “Cicada” strain of COVID was making its way through Ireland.

After we returned from Guinness, I bought some medication, and we continued our day, including dinner, where I had fish and chips and Danny had pork belly—which tasted like chicharrón.

Neither of us slept well Tuesday night—a combination of not feeling well and the usual trip anxiety. But we managed to make it to the airport on time.

Dublin Airport is run like a well-oiled machine. It's one of the few airports with a U.S. customs preclearance facility, so the process is completed in Ireland. When we arrived in Cleveland, we simply walked off the plane, collected our luggage, and went home.

We spent some of our remaining euros at the duty-free shop, scoring some good deals on Irish whiskey and other sundries. I watched a hilarious British film on the flight back: Fackham Hall. We were safely home by 8:00 p.m. local time.

I'm aware of Ireland's history, particularly with regard to Northern Ireland. But I'm also cognizant that Ireland never had an empire, nor did it ever have designs on creating one, unlike Rome, Britain, Russia, or—arguably—the United States. Consequently, there's next to no hostility directed toward Ireland from other nations or peoples.

What struck me as we walked the streets of Dublin and Belfast was that the people seemed generally content and genuinely happy to see us. Not the professional “happy” required in the service industries, but a welcoming spirit that seemed to come from within.

And I also noticed that when people realized we were from the United States—which is easy to determine by listening to me, but not so much Daniel, with his distinctly Puerto Rican accent—we sometimes received a look that suggested sympathy, almost pity, as if they were thinking, “Ah, the U.S. What a nice place that used to be.”

 

Which Musical Repeats are Genuinely “Musical?”

One of the most familiar indications in musical notation is the repeat sign:

When the sign appears, the performer(s) may play the section in question again.  Sometimes, as in the opening movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata in C minor, Op. 13, there is some controversy as to whether the performer should return all the way to the introduction, marked Grave, or to the beginning of the main movement, marked Allegro di molto e con brio.  There is a similar controversy in the opening movement of Chopin’s Sonata in B-flat minor, Op. 35.  I’ll return to these specific examples later.

Unpopular opinion: I believe slavish adherence to musical repeats often betrays a lack of musical imagination—and, sometimes, laziness on the part of the interpreter.  After all, if a performer, particularly an instrumentalist, takes all the repeats, he can essentially master less material because much of what he learns will be repeated: learn it once, play it twice.

This is not to say that one should never take repeats.  Several questions come into play. How long is the work, and how does it fit within the entire program?  What about the balance between movements? Does the repeat involve first and second endings which are substantially different?  Does it include unique material that would otherwise not be heard?  

Then there is the question of how the repeated material is played.  This is where a performer’s imagination comes into play.  Is it simply a carbon copy of the first traversal—the same tempos, rubato, voicing, dynamics?  Or should some variety be introduced the second time around?  With certain composers, particularly Baroque composers like Scarlatti, there's also the question of introducing embellishments in repeated passages.  You can bet that if I hear a recording exemplifying the former approach, I won’t listen to it more than a few times.

I’ve admired Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony since I was 13 years old, and I looked forward to hearing the work under music director Franz Welser-Möst in 2020—a performance that was canceled because of COVID.  The orchestra recorded it instead and, while the result was technically immaculate, with sensible tempos and phrasing, Welser-Möst’s literalist approach to the repeats ultimately drained the life from the music.  Hearing the work in concert once COVID restrictions were lifted proved no more satisfying.

On the other hand, the same composer’s B-flat major Piano Sonata, D. 960, includes a repeat in the opening movement that contains a dramatic nine-bar passage heard nowhere else in the movement.  If the repeat is omitted, that outburst disappears with it, fundamentally altering the movement’s character and, to my ears, overly taming the music.

Thus it seems to me that the repeat here is not optional.  But there are well-known pianists who have disagreed with me.

At the other end of the spectrum is the repeat in the March to the Scaffold movement from Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. This is a programmatic work depicting an illusory event—the condemned man being led to the guillotine for his execution. The repeat is placed just at the point where the condemned man has reached the guillotine. What happened? Why is he going back to his prison cell? Did he forget his final cigarette, or did the guard forget the blindfold? Narratively, structurally, and musically, it makes no sense and, in my strong opinion, should not be observed.

The piano sonatas mentioned at the beginning of this article illustrate why I believe cut-and-dried rules can drain the life from artistic pursuits. 

In the opening movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata, I feel it is best to observe the exposition repeat but return only to the beginning of the main Allegro di molto e con brio, rather than to the opening Grave.

Observing the repeat in the first movement of Chopin’s B-flat minor Sonata presents a double entanglement. First, there is the question of whether to return to the slow introduction or to the beginning of the movement proper.  But either way, I believe observing the repeat weakens the movement for two reasons.

First, there is the notoriously awkward modulation at the repeat—one that Harold C. Schonberg singled out for particular criticism, and which strikes me as a real aberration in Chopin’s compositional style.  Second, the repeat throws the movement’s proportions off kilter.  The climax, where the primary theme and the short motif from the Grave introduction battle with each other, is both the emotional and temporal core of the movement.  Repeating the exposition shifts that balance and delays the music’s arrival at its natural center of gravity.

For those reasons, I find the movement considerably more convincing when the repeat is omitted altogether.

Then there is the question of internal continuity.  For example, Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13, have repeats for the A and B sections for most of the variations.  It seems to me that logically the repeats must be treated consistently to maintain the continuity of this, one of  Schumann’s most structurally formal piano works.

So which repeats are genuinely “musical?”  Those that serve the architecture, drama, and expressive trajectory of the music.  A repeat sign is an instruction deserving serious consideration, not a substitute for musical judgment.  Sometimes taking the repeat makes the piece whole; sometimes omitting it does.  And sometimes, as Beethoven demonstrates, the most musical answer lies somewhere in between.

And there is one final question: did the composer ever express an opinion about observing a repeat in actual performance, apart from the indication in the score?  On that point, I’m thinking of Antonín Dvořák, who wrote in a copy of the score of his Sixth Symphony—an underrated work, in my opinion—“once and for all, without the repetition” regarding the first movement exposition.

In the final analysis, performing musicians are interpreters, not automatons.  Slavish adherence to a printed score must never be allowed to defeat the role of educated and informed judgement.