Irishman's Diary

On the day that God smoked dope, he invented reggae music

On the day that God smoked dope, he invented reggae music. It was on an autumn twilight as shadows lengthened and the night began to grow cold that he first devised the nocturne. On another day he caused country and western to come into existence, and the din which radio telescopes can detect when they peer out into deep space is his howl of anguish at that, the gravest of his mistakes.

But God did not only invent the universe; he invented indomitability too. So the day after the gross blunder of country and western, he celebrated sexual love between human beings with the serenade. But then he realised that that love must have a musical precursor, which he named the ballad. He permitted the birthday of his first born to be marked with a carol. On the day that he completed creation and was full of grand emotions he invented the symphony.

Gentler form

And when all was done, he knew there was something missing - a gentler form, and a wiser form of music, which spoke of mahogany and friends and the careful celebration of humans gathering for a a social expression of the love of music. All other forms of music excluded friendship. The reggae, performed in the dark to the internal rhythms of cannabis, was almost a refutation of it. The nocturne was solitary, brooding, melancholic. Serenades and ballads were emotionally kinetic, musical sauce to sexual activity which necessarily excluded those outside it. Carols were promiscuous winsomeness, a season's vapid and witless wittering which could leave no lasting impact on the human soul. And symphonies were grandiloquent statements of bombast: the heavy artillery of the composing arts engulfing friend and foe in a barrage of musical effects.

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So when all the various forms of music had been invented, God thought carefully how to make good the gulf in his repertoire; and that day he invented the disinterested love of music which is best expressed in the company of friends, with subtlety, thought and care. It is the music in which the audience, in a metaphysical, mute way, is part of the performance, and in which all present are bonded by affection. This thing which he made on the last day of creation he called "chamber music"; and that day was his finest.

Chamber music groups anywhere in the world are drawn from the most splendid of people, who play music out of simple loyalty and devotion. So many musicians who start off as devotees, who abandon their childhood and their adolescence to the tyranny of musical excellence, can become mercenary drudges, their initial passion for music grown arid through staleness and professional disappointment. But chamber musicians continue to play out of love, for great glory and fame must necessarily elude those who play in small and intimate circumstances.

Kilmainham concerts

That is why the Dublin Chamber Music Group is so exceptional. Its members are not professional musicians at all. Their music is the work of unpaid but enormously skilled devotees, for skilled they must be: Haydn, Bach, Byrd and Boccherini did not write pieces for two saucepans, a gravy tureen and an old tin tray. They composed music in which themes are introduced, followed, explored, inverted and toyed with; music which examines and tests the musicality of those with the skill and courage to embark upon such works. That is why the sheer excellence of the DCMG concerts in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham place them among the highlights of Dublin's musical year.

Twice a year, the DCMG and friends go on sabbatical weekends to An Grianan in Termonfeckin, and the venue alone would justify the journey. Termonfeckin is one of the most beautiful little villages in all of Leinster, and it is one of the oldest too - it has a richly decorated high cross from the ninth century and it was the home of the great James Ussher, the prelate of Meath and later Armagh, whose modest little library once included the Book of Kells and who was once world-famous for his calculations that that the world began at 4004 BC (though even he never had the temerity to declare the date on which God invented chamber music).

Ham salad

The DCMG weekend breaks consist of musical sessions over the two days under the watchful eyes and attentive ears of tutors Constantin Zanidache, Helmut Seeber and Adele O'Dwyer, concluding with a quite lovely afternoon concert in which everyone who wants pitches in. It is very informal, but still serious: it is music played as music should be, out of love. That is followed by an old-fashioned and now sadly unfashionable Sunday evening meal from one's childhood: ham salad, with thinly sliced buttered bread, fruitcake and scalding tea out of great big pots. The tea alone is enough to make you take up the viola and conquer the Everest that is Gluck, or at least, bring back Dev - the kind of tea once served to visitors by convents; it is shiveringly delicious.

This year is the 40th birthday of the Dublin Chamber Music Group weekends in An Grianan, and the next weekend starts on October 30th. All musicians are welcome. I know from personal experience - not as a musician but as a spouse - that they are enormously enjoyable, enormously civilised, enormously rewarding for everybody concerned. Cost of participation, accommodation and meals is just £90: enquiries to Brian McBryan at 01-288 3627.