Music and noise in Joyce

In the passage from the story ‘Two Gallants’ that has been read in the previous talking head film, the narrator shows us two men walking past a harpist – a busker we might say nowadays. The sound of the music he is playing gradually diminishes as they continue up the street, until it is obscured by ‘the noise of trams, the lights and the crowd’. The sound of music gives way to the sound of traffic.

The little episode tells us much about Joyce and music and meaning – or maybe even Joyce and noise and cacophony. The song, ‘Silent O Moyle’ is one of the Irish Melodies, romantic lyrics to older Irish tunes written a century before Joyce by the poet Thomas Moore. They had become a staple of Irish music performance, partly based in the recovery of ancient Gaelic music, partly based in self-conscious English-language recreations of Irish myth, history and sentiment. The are not ‘folk’ music, not ‘authentic’: rather they are synthetic constructions which did much to create the sense of Irish cultural nationalism. When such a song is performed in Joyce, it usually means that there will be some implied critique of that nationalism, its dead ends, its clinging on to an unrecoverable past, its paralysing attraction to defeat and loss.

Even when the material in Joyce appears to be ‘traditional’, that is, when it is performed from the anonymous legacy of folk music transmitted primarily from memory in performance, it is frequently of uncertain provenance. ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ for instance, as sung in ‘The Dead’, is an Irish ballad about seduction and abandonment. Aughrim in County Galway is also the location of the battle in 1691 which marked the ultimate defeat of the Catholic King James by William of Orange. The song provokes Gretta Conroy’s memories of the death of a youthful lover, who used to sing it to her. But the song is of Scottish and English heritage, like much Irish music and song, the product of a synthetic mix of music and poetry across British languages and traditions. ‘The Croppy Boy’, which is sung in ‘Sirens’ (and you can hear as a soundtrack to some of the talks in this course), is a much-performed song of the United Irish Rising of 1798, which was written decades later. Its tale of the English officer impersonating a priest and forcing the confession out of the boy which leads to his hanging, is similarly a fictional or mythical construction of a memory of a traumatic historical event.

For Joyce, this is the historical noise of the song tradition, music and performance becoming cluttered with implications which inevitably drag them into dissonance. Moore was briefly associated with the United Irishmen. He was a college friend of the Irish political leader Robert Emmett, who was executed in 1803, and was the subject of many of Moore’s most celebrated songs of loss. Emmett is best known for his speech from the dock (another Irish tradition that Joyce satirises), in which he asked that no man write his epitaph until his country takes her place among the nations of the earth. At the end of the ‘Sirens’ episode of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom remembers this speech at the very moment he tries to make sure no one hears him letting off wind.

Seabloom, greasebloom viewed last words. Softly. When my country takes her place among. Prrprr. Must be the bur. Fff. Oo. Rprpr. Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She’s passed. Then and not till then. Kran. Kran, kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I’m sure it’s the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be. Karaaaaaaa. Written. I have. Pprrpffrrppfff. Done.

If this is one of the funniest ‘cloacal’ moments in the novel, it is also one which blasphemes against nationalist holy writ. It also rhymes, like the lyric of a song – albeit it in irregular and dissonant ways – around rr sounds: her, Prrprr, bur, Rprpr, Earth, oppor, sure, Burgund, Pprrpffrrppfff. Of course this is all done in words, some of which may not previously have existed: but the linguistic moment here is one of bodily and city noise after both musical performance and historical record. It leads into the ‘Cyclops’ episode, about national exceptionalism and race hatred.

‘Sirens’ ends with Bloom’s flatulence as a sort of coda. The episode had begun as well with an ‘overture’ playing the tunes of the words and events and street noises of its sonic experience. It turns around singing songs and listening to songs being sung in a hotel bar, whether they be Irish ballads or from opera (you also can hear the song ‘M’Appari’ from Flotow’s opera Martha, which is performed in the episode, on the soundtrack to some of the talks on this course).

This patterning by sound echoes through all Joyce’s work, and it inevitably attracts modern composers. John Cage’s 1979 Roaratorio is based on the seemingly random recitation of sections of Finnegans Wake, where spoken word is matched with performance by Irish traditional musicians. But then again, Joyce’s novel was named after the Dublin street ballad ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ (note the apostrophe), a tale of accidental death and then rebirth brought on by the smell of whiskey. If you can find a recording of Ronnie Drew’s gravelly voice singing the song with The Dubliners, you’ll get the idea.

Pause for thought

Now that you’ve read the article, we would like you to think about the following question:

• Why might Joyce be interested in popular songs and their performance? What is the relationship between popular songs and the stories and histories that they tell?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments.