"James Joyce: A Concert of Music," (review)

Like James Joyce, as a young man I enjoyed hearing live musical performances. The first professional music production I attended was on 12 February 1964 at New York's famed Carnegie Hall. Playing that evening were the Beatles, between their two appearances on the Ed Sullivan Showand in their first live American concert.

More than forty-six years later, I returned with my wife on a chilly New York evening to the scene of my initial encounter with the world of professional live music for the 6 October 2010 production of "James Joyce," the American Symphony Orchestra's performance of three works: Ballet Mécaniqueby George Antheil (1900-1959); the United States premiere of Lebendig begraben( Buried Alive), Opus 40by Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957), accompanied by a German solo vocal-poetry song suite; and the United States premiere of "Ulysses," a Cantataby Mátyás György Seiber (1905-1960), featuring a tenor and a chorale. ¹Antheil and Schoeck were among the few contemporary composers who appealed to Joyce's surprisingly conservative musical taste; Seiber is one of many others who were subsequently inspired by Joyce's work.

The performance was preceded by a "Conductor's Notes" discussion with the American Symphony Orchestra's Maestro Leon Botstein, who explained how and why he had put together the evening's program and offered some background on Joyce's connections to the composers and works:

First, there is the personal link between Joyce and Antheil. . . . Second, there is a biographical connection, namely Joyce's extraordinary response to a chance hearing of Schoeck's song cycle. Third, in Seiber's choral and orchestral work we encounter the magnitude of Joyce's influence on subsequent generations in a powerful musical approach to Joyce's best known and most influential book, Ulysses. ²

The most vivid tale Botstein recounted was of Joyce's attending, on 14 January 1935 in Zurich, a concert conducted by Schoeck, which featured his Buried Aliveperformed in German. Joyce was so impressed by this piece that he secured a copy of the piano vocal score the next day, as well as a copy of the German poems by the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) on which Buried Alive'slyrics are based. ³Joyce apparently intended to translate all of the poems, but only one survives. His English translation of the eighth of the eleven poems (sung in German in this piece) was reprinted in a handout included with the playbill for this evening's performance. Botstein further explained how, several days after the Zurich concert, Joyce paid an unannounced visit to Schoeck's home, knocking at his door in search of the composer. Joyce is said to have invited Schoeck to dinner and later to have given him a French copy of Ulysseinscribed "[i]n homage from your admirer, James Joyce."

Following Botstein's remarks, and before the Carnegie performance formally began, I had a few moments with the Irish-AmericanC actor-writer-politician Malachy McCourt (the late Frank McCourt's younger brother), who was attending the concert with his wife. The McCourts were seated beside Isaiah Scheffer, the founder and director of Symphony Space, New York's Upper West Side performance venue, where the annual Bloomsday reading of Ulysseshas been mounted for some thirty years. They were eagerly anticipating the music to come, especially the cantata, but McCourt expressed shock that Botstein (by his own admission) had never before heard Joyce read aloud. After all, Symphony Space is but a mile or two north of Carnegie Hall.

Antheil's most famous work, Ballet Mécanique, is a cacophony of sound, performed (in this version) on at least three xylophones and four pianos, with ten percussionists and a triangle, along with the digital assistance of at least one...