Chamber Music

Strictly speaking, the poems that make up this early volume by Joyce do not fall into the category of "musical allusions," but rather are themselves "songs" (albeit without musical notes) that have been set to music and performed by a variety of composers and artists over the years.Of the manuscript of poems that were to make up James Joyce's second (and final) book of poetry, Pomes Penyeach, his friend Ezra Pound had not much good to say, suggesting to the author that this verse more properly belonged "in the Bible or in the family album with the portraits." About the poems in Joyce's first published work, on the other hand, Pound's enthusiasm was considerable:The quality and distinction of the poems in the first half of Mr Joyce's Chamber Music ... is due in part to their author's strict musical training. We have here the lyric in some of its best traditions...