The Women of Leopold Bloom

for solo bassoon

Duration - approx. 9 min.

Program Notes:

The Women of Leopold Bloom is a set of pieces that caricature the women surrounding Leopold Bloom during James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. He has a wife that will cheat on him before the end of the day, a mistress that he only communicates with through the post, an infidelity that occurs from across a beach, and various barmaids and prostitutes that hassle and proposition him throughout his busy day. Bloom is Joyce’s modern Odysseus, a character lost in his own city and in his own life, who spends a day around Dublin finding himself and his way home.

Molly Bloom (morning)

The morning begins with Poldy leaving to get breakfast while he contemplates Molly’s impending infidelity. Before dinner, Molly will have slept with Blazes Boylan, and this piece represents the two lovers in Molly Bloom’s life. Bloom is the low slow notes and Boylan the fast high passages. The piece ends as ambiguously as Molly’s day, asking, does the last lone short eighth note represent her return to Bloom or her continuance with Boylan?

Martha Clifford

Martha, a pseudonym, is one of the women who answered Bloom’s ad looking for a typist. Although they have not met, there is a feeling of possible infidelity associated with their continued correspondence. Martha’s letter reads as part S&M and part ignorant sheltered housewife. The piece represents this in the “aggressive” staccato notes and the more slow innocent moving lines. The piece is slow, and unfolds like a letter that asks to be savored.

Lydia & Mina

The “Sirens” of the Ormond Hotel, Lydia and Mina try and “crash” Bloom with music. One of the more seductive songs of the chapter is the street ballad “The Croppy Boy”. This piece takes “The Croppy Boy” and creates three variations of the melody in F major, with a final unmarred repetition in A major.

Gerty MacDowell

Late in the afternoon Bloom winds up on the beach and sees Gerty MacDowell, who is at the beach with another lady and some children. Gerty, a parallel of Homer’s Nausicaa, notices Bloom and shows him her upper thigh and underwear. Bloom is aroused and masturbates. This piece starts with a glissando (a sexual innuendo) and continues with spastic, fast-moving passages until the climax of the piece.

Zoe Higgins

Zoe Higgins is the prostitute that Bloom meets while trying to save Stephen Dedalus. She asks Bloom many crude questions, and eventually gets annoyed with him after a long oration. This piece creates the aura of Zoe’s crassness through offbeat notes and fast register jumps.  Bloom’s responses are the fast connected lines. The adagio section is an homage to Wagner’s Ring cycle, which is alluded to in the climactic moment in the novel. he piece ends with an ascending run that represents Bloom’s terrifying vision at the end of the chapter.

Molly Bloom (evening)

This piece is derived from the experimental final chapter to Joyce’s novel. The final 44 pages of Ulysses is written in a “stream-of-thought” style that focuses on the thoughts of Molly Bloom. The piece is directly created from the chapter, with the length of each word used serially to determine interval-size (direction and octave displacement allowed). Also, the rhythmic notation is static, like the novel, with tempo accelerations and decelerations creating an elasticity like which would occur naturally during a reading.

This piece was premiered on a NACUSA concert on June 5th, 2006 by Richard Kandetzki. The current recording is from Keel Williams' recital in 2009 at UMKC.

Fall, 2012: Joseph Abad will premiere a new Saxophone Sonata.

Fall, 2012: Jordan Jacobson will perform fragments and memories in CT.

Spring-Summer, 2012: Jeux pour Jumeaux will be performed in San Francisco, CA.

Spring, 2012: Bobby Watson and the UMKC Big Band will premiere Rhapsody for Dean Moriarty in Kansas City, MO.

Spring, 2012: Ashly Evans will premiere Birdsongs in Houston, TX.

Spring, 2012: BA(da)SS will be performed by Ryan Ford in West Hartford, CT.

Spring, 2012: Jordan Jacobson will perform fragments and memories in CT.

Spring, 2012: Not Death, but Love will be premiered by Ineo Saxophone Quartet.

Spring, 2012: David Tayloe will perform A Page Out of Zen in CT.

May, 2012: The Invisible, Magic, Soccer Phone will be premiered in Middlefield, CT.

April, 2012: The UMKC Opera Dept. will perform portions of Songs from Behind the Curtain.

April, 2012: David Tayloe will premiere A Page Out of Zen in NY.

Feb. 17th, 2012: The 016 Ensemble will be perform Romanza for Alto Saxophone and Violin in Manchester, CT.

Dec. 3rd, 2011: Ryan defends his dessertation, Songs from Behind the Curtain at UMKC.

July 17th, 21st, 24th, 2011: Music Faculty from the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival will perform ...and those seven dwarfs in a series of concerts in Western Maine.

June 16th, 17th, 23rd, 24th, 2011:Orphée Redux will be performed by Rhymes With Opera on their East Coast Tour (NYC, Baltimore, Hartford, Boston).

June 12th, 2011:Selection from Songs from Behind the Curtain will be performed at the John Duffy Composers Institute in Norfolk, VA.

May 13th, 2011: The Ineo Quartet will perform the 1st movement of Not Death, but Love on their Fischoff Competition program in South Bend, Indiana.

March 19th, 2011: The Ineo Saxophone Quartet will perform ...and love is fire... from Not Death, but Love at the NASA conference in West Point, NY.

Feb. 25th, 2011: I. Jest will be premiered by Robert Olson and the UMKC Orchestra in Kansas City, MO.

Feb. 14th, 2011: Hebdomas Squatinae will be performed at the Nebraska at Kearney New Music Festival.

EVENT HISTORY