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Colm Tóibín in ‘Music and Ulysses‘ explores Joyce’s use of music in the novel, and the place of music in the Dublin of 1904. Song plays a vital element in Ulysses. The characters in the novel live in a web of small conspiracies, easy gossip, old associations. Many of them are connected to one another by an interest in music and song. Simon Dedalus, in the book, has a beautiful tenor voice. Molly Bloom is a singer. Her lover Blazes Boylan is arranging a concert for her. It emerges that Stephen Dedalus has inherited his father’s singing voice. Song not only connects the characters, but it allows the characters to soar above their own circumstances, as Simon does in the ‘Sirens’ episode.
About the speaker
Colm Tóibín is one of the most important Irish authors of the present day. He is the author of ten novels, including The Magician, his most recent novel; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. Colm Tóibín is a professor of humanities at Columbia University. Tóibín has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. He is the editor of One Hundred Years of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” from Penn State University Press. He lives in Dublin and New York.