Day: March 25, 2011

Before I even post the video, I have to note a couple of disclaimers:

1. I think James Joyce was one of the worst fiction writers ever to gain a readership.
2. IMO, This is the most unsingable thing Samuel Barber ever wrote. As music, I dislike it as intensely as I dislike James Joyce’s pretentious bullshit passing as storytelling in his novels*.

Those disclaimers aside, I sang this piece of… whatever it is at the urging of my voice prof about 40 years ago. Afterwards, I bid it a very unfond farewell and pledged to myself that I would forget it had ever been written. Alas, not to be. Recently, it’s been haunting me, perhaps because of the contemporary scene (all I’ll say to that). So, with no further comment, I inflict this thing upon you, gentle reader, if you dare listen to the thing:

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*I’ll admit that Joyce’s poetry, such as it is, is no better or worse than much of 20th Century “poetry”.