Their Exagmination Round Our Factification for Incamination of Music from the Works of James Joyce

:: Jolas :: Jordan :: Bowen :: Connolly :: Pearce :: Ellmann ::

From a noted Joyce scholar

The performance of the concert at the James Joyce Colloquium held at the University of Buffalo (June 16-18, 1976) also drew the attention of Thomas Connolly, another well-known Joycean, who reported on the event:

Mr. McDermott joined Professor Zack Bowen of the State University of New York at Binghamton in the evening "Discussion and Performances: Music in Joyce." After Professor Bowen presented his paper to the hundred gathered scholars and students, Mr. McDermott sang some of the songs that are mentioned throughout Joyce's Ulysses. Most of those in the audience had never heard these songs sung, and it was a great treat to hear them rendered in his beautiful tenor voice.

Mr. McDermott is to be commended for a splendid performance. Never have I seen a group of serious scholars at a formal meeting so swept away by a presentation. Rarely have I seen a presentation quite like Mr. McDermott's.

— Thomas E. Connolly
Professor of English
State University of New York at Buffalo

A former professor in the Department of English and chair of the Faculty Senate of the University of Buffalo before his retirement, Thomas Connolly wrote and edited a number of important books on the work of James Joyce. Among these are The Personal Library of James Joyce: A Descriptive Bibliography, published in 1955 and republished in 1957 and 1974; a transcription of the contents of the author's exceptionally large notebook VI.A, published as James Joyce's Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for Finnegans Wake (Northwestern University Press, 1961); and Joyce's Portrait: Criticisms and Critiques (Appleton, 1962).

Connolly's many critical essays on English and American literature appeared widely in scholarly journals throughout his distinguished career. He passed away on March 18, 2002 in his home in California at the age of 84.

Building on Professor Connolly's pioneering work in cataloging the raw material of Joyce's last book, Brepols Publishers of Belgium has recently reproduced all of the Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo (the ones compiled after the writing of Ulysses) in a fully integrated, cross-referenced facsimile edition (V. Deane, D. Ferrer, and G. Lernout, eds.).

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