By Sofia Rabaté
The episode Oxen of the Sun is notorious in its difficulty. Not only does the changing style create a barrier between the reader and the action of the text, but one can only imagine the painstaking process that Joyce must have undertook in order to not only imitate a certain style but a specific author. Joyce worked from an anthology, and so, in translating this episode into music, I had to make my own anthology.
I chose the main eras of musical style, as I learned them in my music history classes, going from the earliest notated music up to Joyce's time -- Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical , Romantic, and Impressionist.
I had to choose my "authors" for each of these eras. Sometimes I quote their music directly, and sometimes I simply composed after listening to their music and trying to focus in on both the tangible and intangible aspects of the style.
Medieval - Gregorian Chant
- I had Hildegard in mind but most Gregorian chant follows similar lines. We decided to sample this one because of the difficulty of notating it: Gregorian chant does not use modern musical notation.
Renaissance - Madrigal
- Palestrina's Gloria was part of the inspiration, perhaps resulting in somewhat of a solemn religious feeling in a piece otherwise inspired by Thomas Weelkes' As Vesta was From Latmos Hill Descending.
Baroque - Violin Concerto
- This form arises in the Baroque era. My two inspirations were pieces that I had played myself, Vivaldi's Winter from the Four Seasons, and Corelli's Christmas Concerto.
Classical - Opera Aria
- Mozart's Marriage of Figaro was my inspiration here, particularly the duet Sull'Aria. From my experience playing Mozart I remembered his fluffy offbeats but I don't pretend to have written anything of his caliber. At best I hope to have captured the light, joyful essence of his work.
Romantic - Lieder
- Another vocal work that epitomizes the era for me, I chose to go with Schubert's Erlking. Though I changed the key and meter, here I quote the piano part extensively. However, I refrained from looking at the score when composing the vocal part so that that would remain my own creation.
Impressionist - Piano
- Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1 was extensively quoted here. I superimposed Hatikva, the Israeli national anthem and a distinctly Jewish melody, on Satie's famous chords. The calm, resonant Satie and the urgent, traditionally tonal Hatikva are incompatible, so I had to make Hatikva major and distort the rhythm. It is virtually unrecognizable, but this lends itself well to the symbolic meaning of the piece.
What unifies a song made up of such disparate pieces? My theme is mysteries. Stemming from the original mystery of the existence of the Arranger (Why is the text being mediated? Does the Arranger have an identity?), I decided to explore a mystery in each of the parts of my song.
U.P: UP -- A Madrigal
U.P. : Up first appears in Lestrygonians. Mrs. Breen reports that her husband has received a mysterious postcard.
"She took a folded postcard from her handbag.
- Read that, she said. He got it this morning.
- What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U. P.?
- U. P.: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It's a great shame for them whoever he is." (150-1)
The meaning of U.P.: up is a mystery. We learn from Mrs. Breen that it is meant to upset her husband, or at least intended as a practical joke. Mr. Bloom, however, does not understand the meaning of the message, which is also a mystery to the readers.
Later, we learn that Mr. Breen has taken this very seriously and wants to sue.
"- Look at him, says he. Breen. He's traipsing all around Dublin with a postcard someone sent him with u.p.: up on it to take a li...
And he doubled up.
- Take a what? says I.
- Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds." (286)
I chose a madrigal because the four different voices in play and frequent use of word painting in the genre makes the words mingle with one another. I wanted U.P.:up to be repeated so many times that it becomes a meaningless cacophony, imitating the way that this phrase swirls around Bloom's mind all day without becoming any clearer. The relative seriousness of the harmony also reflects the seriousness with which Mr. Breen takes what he perceives as a threat.
Little Harry Hughes Concerto
Little Harry Hughes appears in Joyce's own hand in Ithaca (pages 643-4 in my book, pictured above).
The mystery here is the fact that Stephen, knowing that Bloom has at least some Jewish descent or relationship to that group ("He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not" 634), sings this anti-semitic song to Bloom. Not only would this be offensive in a normal situation, but Bloom has just taken Stephen off the streets, fed him, and taken him into his own home. The lyrics of a song tell of a boy who breaks a window in a Jew's home, and in response, his daughter lures him into his home and kills him.
This song is at odds with Stephen's previously tolerant behavior. In response to comments by Mr. Deasy that are disparaging towards Jews, he replies, "A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not?" (34)
I chose to set this in minor instead of the original major, and at a slower tempo to reflect a lugubrious mood. This was my way of mourning the fact that Stephen would sing such a song. The somber mood also reflects the fact that Joyce avoids an emotional reunion between Homeric father and son.
Seaside Girls
Seaside girls first appears in Cyclops, where Bloom reads a letter from his daughter, Milly, explaining that this song was sung by her boyfriend, Alec Bannon, and possibly composed by Blazes Boylan.
"There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells he sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's) song about those seaside girls." (64)
This song is immediately associated to sexuality and women's romantic lives. Not only is Milly's new relationship a source of worry to Bloom, he also thinks about how close she is to Boylan (writing his first name instead of Mr. Boylan is very familiar), who, incidentally, is participating in an adulterous affair with Bloom's own wife.
The song stays in Bloom's mind as he ruminates.
"All dimpled cheeks and curls,
Your head it simply swirls." (64)
"Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls." (65)
I was inspired by Mozart's operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro. In this opera, the women are constantly devising love schemes and thinking about their romantic relationships. The assumptions Bloom makes about his wife and daughter (some of them true, some of them enigmatic) reflect these roles. Though Molly is indeed sleeping with Boylan, Milly's relationship to him is unclear. Even more mysterious is the way in which Milly is problematically sexualized by her parents.
"Milly too. Young kisses: the first. [...] Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too. " (65)
MacIntosh Erlking
"Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel, that I'll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen." (106)
Macintosh, the mysterious man who appears seemingly out of nowhere at Paddy Dignam's funeral. He is associated with death, the number thirteen, and his identity remains a secret throughout the book.
Because of the negative, almost macabre associations with this character, I chose to imitate Schubert's Erlking. The Erlking, a menacing spirit, steals away a child from his father's horse in the song. I thought that the menacing, dark aspects of the Erlking were a perfect fit for the mysterious figure of Macintosh.
Impressionist Hatikva (affectionately dubbed "Satikva")
As mentioned above, and epitomized in the line, "He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not" (634), Bloom's relationship to a Jewish identity is fraught and complicated.
Though it is revealed in Ithaca that Bloom's family converted to Christianity (634-5), his personal relationship to Judaism is mysterious. We are never quite sure if his conversion was earnest or if it was a matter of fitting in.
At the end of Cyclops, Bloom defends Judaism, saying, "...Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me," (327), and the chapter ends with Bloom being equated to Elijah with absurdly serious religious language.
"When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. An they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of forty-five degrees over Donohoe's in the Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel." (330)
I chose the Israeli national anthem, Hatikva, to represent the question of Bloom's attitude towards Judaism. Like Bloom's identity, my Hatikva is blurred and ambiguous because I combined it with Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1. This tonally ambiguous piece of music, and the fact that Hatikva had to be changed to major in order to fit the iconic chords, makes for a disorienting take on the original song.
Bibliography
James Joyce, Ulysses, ed. Jeri Johnson (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.)
For Non-Joyceans
Ulysses is a book by James Joyce about an older man and a younger one who walk around Dublin. Almost, but not quite. It is also about Homer's Odyssey, the epic story of the hero Ulysses facing countless obstacles before returning home. Each chapter takes on a certain style, symbol, experimentation, until by the time we reach the chapter (or, to use the jargon, "episode") Oxen of the Sun the prose is imitating the origins of Anglo-Saxon prose and moving forward chronologically.
Bloom is the protagonist of the book. His wife, Molly, is cheating on him, and he often thinks of Milly's romantic life: he is worried about her new relationship with a young student. As Bloom is a parallel for Ulysses, his son Telemachus is Stephen Dedalus. Stephen is not Bloom's biological son but the two men are drawn together over the course of the day. Mrs. Breen is an old friend of Bloom's whose husband may be unstable; he is quite upset about the U.P.:up postcard.t
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