Sir, – Dmitri Shostakovich would have sympathised with Frank McNally (An Irishman’s Diary, December 6th) in having to choose between listening to his music in Christchurch or watching Celtic on TV in a pub.
The Russian composer wrote the music for the Soviet film The Gadfly, based on the novel by the Irish author Ethel Lilian Voynich, daughter of the eminent Cork mathematician George Boole, whose theories (Boolean Logic) laid the foundations for computing and information technology.
The Gadfly explores the tragic choices of its romantic hero.
In Boolean Logic, Frank McNally’s dilemma can be described as: Shostakovich and music and church or Celtic and football and pub.
Without commenting on Frank’s decision to go to the pub, the bittersweet melancholy of Shostakovich’s Gadfly film score reflects the poor choices of the hero, which lead to his untimely end. – Yours, etc,