Sunphone Records Presents ...

Music in the Works of James Joyce

If he had not become a writer, there is a very good chance that James Joyce would still have made a name for himself by pursuing a career as a vocal performer. In 1904 he even shared the stage with the great opera singer and recital artist, John McCormack; and later on in life, after he had established himself as an author, he tirelessly promoted the singing career of his fellow Irishman and tenor, John Sullivan.

The close relationship between James Joyce and music has long been recognized by his readers, critics, and biographers. Joyce, like his father, was both an excellent singer (with a sweet tenor voice) and an accomplished pianist with an encyclopedic mastery of music of every type and genre, rivaling his vast knowledge of world literature. As a writer, he nevertheless incorporated music into all his works in increasingly complex ways, especially in Chamber Music, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake.

Beside helping our understanding of Joyce, studying his use of music is a wonderfully entertaining way to make the works more immediate and accessible.

Now Available: "Music from the Works of James Joyce" and "MORE Music from the Works of James Joyce"

Joyce was acquainted with music of all sorts, from grand opera to bawdy street ballads, and he interspersed countless allusions to these works throughout the body of his writings. What has long been rare in Joycean scholarship, however, is the opportunity to hear these songs performed in an historically accurate style that would be familiar to Joyce, and as his contemporaries would have heard them.

The selections on these recordings, released by Sunphone Records, are among the best known in the Joyce canon, and they include:

Volume I

1. Bid Adieu to Girlish Days
2. Silent, O Moyle
3. I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls
4. Oft in the Stilly Night
5. I'll Sing Thee Songs of Araby
6. Love's Old Sweet Song
7. Brigid's Song (or, "Dingdong! The Castle Bell!")
8. Blumenlied
9. Those Lovely Seaside Girls
10. My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl
11. The Holy City
12. M'appari (or, "Martha")
13. Yes! Let Me Like a Soldier Fall
14. The Bloom Is on the Rye (or, "My Pretty Jane")
15. The Low-back'd Car
16. The Croppy Boy
17. Sweet Rosie O'Grady

Volume II

1. "In the Shade of the Palm" (from Florodora)
2. "O Twine Me a Bower"
3. "The Groves of Blarney"
4. "Killarney" (from The Colleen Bawn)
5. "Oh! Ye Dead"
6. "Lilly Dale"
7. Suite of Stephen's Piano Improvisations
   ("Loath to Depart," "The Agincourt Carol," "Greensleeves")
8. "The Lass That Loves a Sailor"
    
   Suite from Chamber Music —
   Settings by Ross Lee Finney (1952):

9. "Strings in the Earth and Air" (I)
10. "The Twilight Turns from Amethyst" (II)
11. "Bright Cap and Streamers" (X)
12. "O, It Was Out by Donnycarney" (XXXI)
13. "Love Came to Us in Time Gone By" (XXX)

14. "My Lady's Bower"
15. "What-Ho! She Bumps!
16. "Shall I Wear a White Rose?"
17. "In Old Madrid"
18. Nuvoletta — by Samuel Barber (opus 25, 1947)
19. "The Lost Chord"

Wring out the clothes! Wring in the dew!
Godavari, vert the showers!
And grant thaya grace!
Aman.
— Finnegans Wake

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