Musical allusions in the works of James Joyce: early poetry through Ulysses

766 Pages·1974·2.12 MB·English

by  Zack R. Bowen

Musical Allusions in the Works of James
title:
Joyce : Early Poetry Through Ulysses
author: Bowen, Zack R.
publisher: State University of New York Press
isbn10 | asin: 0873952480
print isbn13: 9780873952484
ebook isbn13: 9780585054605
language: English
Joyce, James,--1882-1941--Knowledge--
subject
Music, Joyce, James,--1882-1941.--Ulysses.
publication date: 1974
lcc: ML80.J75B7 1974eb
ddc: 823/.9/12
Joyce, James,--1882-1941--Knowledge--
subject:
Music, Joyce, James,--1882-1941.--Ulysses.
Page v
Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce
Early Poetry through Ulysses
Zack Bowen
State University of New York Press
Albany 1974
Page vi
For Pat
Published with assistance from the University Awards Committee of
State University of New York
First Edition
First Published in 1974 by
State University of New York Press
99 Washington Avenue, Albany, New York 12210
© 1974 State University of New York.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bowen, Zack R
Musical allusions in the works of James Joyce.
Bibliography: p.
I. Joyce, James, 1882-1941KnowledgeMusic.
2. Joyce, James, 1882-1941. Ulysses. I. Title.
ML80.J75B7 823'.9'12 74-13314
ISBN 0-87395-248-0
ISBN 0-87395-249-9 (microfiche)
Page vii
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
General Introduction 1
Introduction to Poetry 5
Poetry 6
Introduction to Exiles 9
Exiles 9
Introduction to Dubliners 11
Dubliners 13
Introduction to Stephen Hero 24
Stephen Hero 25
Introduction to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 30
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 35
Introduction to Ulysses 46
Ulysses 64
Notes 347
Bibliography 358
General Index 363
Song Index 366

Page ix
Ackowledgements
I am deeply grateful to Mabel Worthington, who first interested me in
the project and whose constant help, suggestions, additional
references, and encouragement have proved to be of invaluable aid,
and to Thomas Connolly, whose counsel in the early stages of this
manuscript helped shape and define it. I am indebted also to the
Research Foundation of the State University of New York and the
Graduate Research Office at the State University of New York at
Binghamton for subsidizing the research on this project, and to the
staffs of the Music Division of the New York Public Library, and the
Philadelphia Public Library for their painstaking efforts on my behalf.
I am especially indebted for their assistance and kindness to the staffs
of the Music Department of the Buffalo and Erie County Public
Library and of the Poetry Collection of the Lockwood Memorial
Library at the State University of New York at Buffalo. My special
thanks go to Joseph Hickerson and especially to Wayne D. Shirley of
the Music Division of the Library of Congress for locating hard to
find songs, particularly "Seaside Girls," on which I had just about
given up hope.
I would like to acknowledge my sincere appreciation to my
colleagues, Sheldon Grebstein, Bernard F. Huppé, and John V.
Hagopian for reading the manuscript and contributing valuable
suggestions. I am also grateful to Maxine Gilgoff for attending to
much of the detail work of proofreading quotations and citations. I am
especially indebted to Marguerite Harkness for her contributions to
this study. Beside providing the initial impetus for some critical ideas
central to this work, her counsel in editing and correcting the
manuscript proved most valuable.

Page 1
Introduction
The importance of music in the works of James Joyce has long been
acknowledged by Joycean scholars, though few systematic attempts
have been made to deal with the problem. Scholarly references to the
music which appears in Joyce's early works are rare, partly because
prior to Ulysses there are relatively few musical allusions in Joyce's
work. Most of the major commentaries on the novel refer to musical
allusions in Ulysses, but these references are at best occasional
mention of specific lines in the narrative and identifications of the
songs from which they come. There have been several general
treatments of the tonal qualities of Ulysses by such musicians as
Terrence White, who sees the "Deshil Holles Eamus" passage of the
Oxen of the Sun episode as a series of wind-instrument effects;
1 Luigi Dallapiccola, who claims various words and sounds in the
Circe episode correspond to a twelve-note scale;2 and Martin Ross,
who envisions all of Ulysses as a musical composition rather than a
literary work.3 These studies, while sometimes graced by aesthetic
flights of fancy, are of little use to scholars in terms of textual
explication. A much more interesting and useful overall musical
schema for Ulysses is Father Robert Boyle's, "Ulysses as Frustrated
Sonata Form,"4 in which he admits that his application of the novel to
the sonata isn't exactly congruent in all details. He does, however,
provide an outline of the book in musical terms, which can be a handy
device for introducing the structure of the novel in the classroom.
From a practical standpoint another good treatment of the musical
techniques of Joyce's prose appears in Frederick Sternfeld's "Poetry
and MusicJoyce's Ulysses.''5 Sternfeld renders the aural dimensions of
the words in a few musical allusions in Ulysses by considering the
actual musical scores to which they refer.
There are many interpretations of the Sirens chapter of Ulysses, some
of which will be discussed in the course of this study. Since the
chapter deals primarily with music and Joyce's musical tech-
Page 2
nique, these commentaries are of special significance in any work
dealing with the topic. In this connection, Lawrence Levin's article,
"The Sirens Episode as Music: Joyce's Experiment in Prose
Polyphony,"
6 is an interesting attempt to deal with the shape and style of the
Sirens chapter with reference to music. The early treatments of the
Sirens chapter which are especially comprehensive appear in Harry
Levin's book, ames Joyce; 7 Stanley Sultan's "The Sirens at the
Ormond Bar: Ulysses" 8 Marian Kaplun's "The Search for 'The Song
the Sirens Sang': Two Notes on the Sirens of Joyce's Ulysses"9 Walton
Litz's The Art of James Joyce: Method and Design in ULYSSES and
FINNEGANS WAKE; 10 and L. A. G. Strong's The Sacred River.11
Much of the present discussion of the music in the Sirens was
originally published in my monograph, "The Bronzegold Sirensong: A
Musical Analysis of the Sirens Episode in Joyce's Ulysses." 12
The burden of identifying actual song references in Ulysses was begun
also by Strong in his essay, "James Joyce and Vocal Music."13
Strong's article was followed in its quest for song titles by Joseph
Prescott's "Local Allusions in Joyce's Ulysses"14 and "Notes on
Joyce's Ulysses"15 and by Vivien Mercier's "James Joyce and an Irish
Tradition,"16 Mabel Worthington's ''Irish Folk Songs in Joyce's
Ulysses,"17 Joseph Duncan's "The Modality of the Audible in Joyce's
Ulysses,"18 and William M. Schutte's Joyce and Shakespeare.19
All these studies identified various song references in the text of
Ulysses. Schutte was, of course, concerned with Elizabethan song
references, while the others confined their activities primarily to Irish
songs. In few cases was there much attempt to go beyond the citing of
the song and the appropriate passage from Ulysses. There was,
however, one very excellent commentary which attempted to link