FINNEGANS WAKE, BY JAMES JOYCE, IS MUSISCRITURE

Abstract

This paper proposes to approach Finnegans Wake’s relations with music, especially with electroacoustic classical music, which developed from the 1940s onwards. Despite Joyce’s predilection for traditional classical music, here we hypothesize that the experimental writing of the Irish modernist, more than applying typical forms of music, created a specific type of musiscription and anticipated procedures that composers could only achieve with the use of magnetic tapes and synthesizers. Thus, by the systematic use of multi-referenced puns, juxtaposed in dozens of languages and dialects, Joyce placed himself ahead of the musical vanguard of his time, which reached the additive synthesis of dense sound layers just a few decades after the initial publications of parts of Work in Progress, still in the 20s.

Keywords
Finnegans Wake ; Electroacoustic music; Innovation