Listeners seeing the
Chamber Music by James Joyce
title could be forgiven for thinking this was an album of music actually written by
Joyce
, but it is something else. Chamber Music was the name of a volume of poetry written by the young
in 1905. True to form, he claimed that the title referred to the sound of urine tinkling in a chamber pot, and a line in Ulysses refers to this idea. Yet that all came later, and the poems are rather romantic, youthful lyrics, compact enough that some made it into an Imagist anthology. The composers commissioned here by the
Choral Scholars of University College Dublin
and their director
Desmond Earley
are far from the first to set these poems, which was something
himself hoped for. Earlier exponents include
Samuel Barber
,
Karol Szymanowski
, and
Luciano Berio
, as well as drummer
Steve Shelley
of the rock band
Sonic Youth
and several other songwriters on the pop side. However, it is good to have a large group of them together (this album with 18 covers half the poems, and a forthcoming second volume will have the rest). For one thing, although there are a few well-known contemporary composers here, such as
¿riks E¿envalds
, many in the group will be new to most listeners. For another, it is quite interesting how the music compels common stylistic traits from most of the composers. Those traits don't run all the way through;
Owen Brady
's
O, it was out by Donnycarney
cultivates an unrestrained Celtic idiom to match the subject matter. Elsewhere, there are extended-tonal sounds and a restrained mood that fit into English, not Irish, tradition. This is what
said he wanted (he hoped for settings by "someone that knows the old English music such as I like"). Whether this was communicated to the composers by
Earley
or they just naturally took to the idiom would be interesting to learn, but either way, the result is a remarkably unified set of songs, considering the variety of composers involved. The performances by the
Choral Scholars
and the
Solstice Ensemble
are smooth and understated, and
Signum Classics
contributes fine engineering at Blackrock College in County Dublin. An album that both
fans and lovers of choral music from the British Isles will enjoy. ~ James Manheim