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Literary soundtrack inspired by Mrs. Dalloway

Posted in Mrs. Dalloway, music, Virginia Woolf, tagged literary soundtrack, Mrs. Dalloway, music, VirginiaWoolf on Saturday 16 May 2015| Leave a Comment »

A literary soundtrack inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway from The Paris Review, July 24, 2012.

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Virginia Woolf essay “Craftsmanship” set to music

Posted in essays, music, Virginia Woolf, tagged Brian Mark, Craftsmanship, Virginia Woolf on Wednesday 18 March 2015| 2 Comments »

Composer Brian Mark has set Virginia Woolf’s essay, “Craftsmanship,” to music. The piece was broadcast on 29 April 1937 as part of BBC Radio’s “Words Fail Me” series.

With “A Eulogy to Words,” he has fulfilled an eight-year ambition to create a piece for chamber orchestra and electronics. It is written for London’s Royal Academy of Music and conducted by Michael Alexander Young.

Maria Popova of Brainpickings.org called it “the best thing since the Solar System set to Bach and Carl Sagan adapted as a three-movement choral suite.”

Have a listen and tell us what you think of the piece, which runs nearly 10 minutes, in the comments section below.

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A song about Virginia Woolf

Posted in music, tagged Marissa Nadler, Virginia Woolf music on Tuesday 18 March 2014| Leave a Comment »

This song by Marissa Adler is simply titled “Virginia” and is from the album Ballads of Living and Dying.

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Researching sound in Mrs. Dalloway

Posted in books, music, Woolf and sound, tagged Aesthetics, Anne Fernald, Emma Sutton, Form, Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics on Tuesday 28 January 2014| 4 Comments »

As it turns out, sound studies in Virginia Woolf is a fairly new field. And in response to a query on the VWoolf Listserv, “the ‘sound in Mrs. Dalloway‘ article is yet to be writtten,” according to Anne Fernald, whose Cambridge Edition of the novel will soon be published by Cambridge University Press.

Interestingly, back in 2011, a student in one of Fernald’s classes at Fordham University wrote a blog essay titled “Allerseelen and Mrs. Dalloway,” in which she explores the eponymous street song in the novel.

A book newly published by Edinburgh University Press, Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics, Aesthetics, Form (2013), offers an overview of the young adult Stephens’ exposure to music — from opera to the gramophone. Author Emma Sutton then follows Woolf into her married life to document her musical tastes and point out how, “To many of Woolf’s early reviewers, the parallels between (contemporary) music and her work were self-evident” (15).

Sutton also provides detailed commentaries on Woolf’s allusions to classical repertoire and composers in her novels and considers the formal influence of music on Woolf’s prose and narrative techniques. And as one Listserv reader pointed out, the bibliography of Sutton’s work would prove an invaluable resource on Woolf and sound.

Respondents to the list also recommended the following resources for a study of Woolf and sound:

Crapoulet, Emilie.Virginia Woolf: A Musical Life. No. 50. Price £7.50
J. Hillis Miller’s chapter in Fiction and Repetition
Anna Snaith’s work on sound in general
Cristina Ruotolo on music
Rishona Zimring on social dance
Also look for stray comments on the backfiring car and music in others’ work
Look for more music in the draft version of the novel, reprinted as “The Hours.” Stravinsky is mentioned at the party (341), and Joseph Breitkopf’s favorite song is identified.
Pamela Caughie’s scholarship on sound, including her piece in Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2000).
Melba Cuddy-Keane’s “Modernist Soundscapes and the Intelligent Ear: An Approach to Narrative Theory through Auditory Perception,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory. Ed. Phelan and Rabinowitz, pub. in 2005. The chapter addresses the “increased auditory awareness” that results from “urban soundscapes” in Woolf’s short fiction and novels; Cuddy-Keane frames her discussion as part of her larger project “to promote the development of a critical methodology and a vocabulary for analyzing narrative representations of sound” (382). Although the essay contains only one page directly addressing MD, it’s very useful for thinking about sound in Woolf’s urban landscapes.
Rishona Zimring’s essay about sound in The Years: “Suggestions of Other Worlds: The Art of Sound in The Years.” Woolf Studies Annual 8 (2002).
Angela Frattarola’s “Developing an Ear for the Modernist Novel: Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, and James Joyce” in the Journal of Modern Literature 33.1 (2009).
Garrett Stewart’s chapter on The Waves in his Reading Voices
“The Modern Auditory I,” by Steven Connor, in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. by Roy Porter (Routledge 1997). Many writers are discussed, including Joyce and Beckett, but there’s also a short paragraph on Mrs. Dalloway.

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Music for Woolf appreciation

Posted in music, tagged Maria Paroussi, mixcloud, VirginiaWoolf on Wednesday 6 November 2013| Leave a Comment »

Maria Paroussi, a self-described “big fan of Virginia” who lives in Greece, has created a mixcloud dedicated to Woolf.

It includes tracks inspired by her, along with music that inspired her — two tracks from Beethoven and Schubert. Give it a listen. You’ll hear some familiar tunes.