The long list of musicians inspired by the writings of James Joyce fall into one of two categories: those who merely set his texts to music – as in the case of Kate Bush, the lyrics of whose 2011 song
Flower of the Mountain are taken from Ulysses character Molly Bloom – and those who build on Joyce's achievements, like John Cage. Deploring Joyce's conventional use of grammar, Cage wrote: “
Finnegans Wake employs syntax./ Though Joyce's subjects, verbs and/ objects are generally unconventional,/ their relationships are the ordinary/ ones.”
1 The American composer used fragments of
Finnegans Wake to form non-syntactic ‘mesostics’ which he incorporated – in the form of a reading– in his 1979 musical work
Roaratorio.
2 The Swedish artist Leif Elggren also comes under the second category. His new audio work based on Joyce's early short story
An Encounter features strangely ominous mutters, creaks and groans. These mirror the story's narrative tension, while their unmusical character foreshadows the Irish author's subsequent break with traditional literary language ... (Rahma Khazam)
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