Micro compositions: Joyce's Singing Pianola

One of the more fantastic chapters in James Joyce's Ulysses is 'Circe' which is written as a play script. Much of it takes place within a brothel which contains a pianola which has its own (sung) lines. If one were to attempt to dramatise this chapter then this represents a considerable, perhaps impossible, sound design challenge. How can a piano, a tuned percussion instrument with no variable resonators, give the impression of speaking? Even when just reading the text what is it that the reader does - do they imagine the sound of a piano singing, or is that impossible and they just imagine that the piano 'has sung' without actually realising the event in their minds? Perhaps cross-synthesis methods can help; although I was never that persuaded by 'Sparky's Magic Piano' perhaps we now possess the technology and insight to produce this kind of sound in a more plausible way.

It occurs to me that attempting to create the sound, or impression, or sensation of the singing pianola in Ulysses is a creative speech exercise that many people across a range of disciplines could attempt: how would a pianist/piano composer create the impression of speech using just that instrument? How could a vocalist make themselves sound more like a piano? How would a computer musician approach this compositional challenge? What physical 'thing' could embody both pianola and singing voice? What would a singing pianola look like? Would it need to have something identifiable as a mouth or could some other visual aspect indicate that it could vocalise?

A number of 'micro compositions' might arise from these questions, from piano pieces to physical objects to images to digital audio. If anyone is interested in this idea (I've had one expression of interest so far) then perhaps we could discuss whether/how these could be commissioned within the network?

Jez Wells
Posted 4th August 2011 at 10:16 AM