Stanislaus Joyce - 14 September, 1904
from The Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce, page 75:
There is sickness in the house. I am the sick one. I am in bed in my own room alone in the evening. Eileen, my white-faced, thoughtless sister is playing the 'Rakes of Mallow' on the piano downstairs. I loathe the air. It is a mechanical repetition of the same two or three notes in the same succession, with a turn at the end of each phrase in it to the beginning, like the turn of a handle. She is playing it quickly and badly, stumbling every ten or fifteen seconds, stopping and beginning again. A long string of faces pass slantwise up before my eyes, so quickly that I can hardly distinguish… more >>
Stanislaus Joyce, The Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce. In George Harris Healey (ed.), The complete Dublin diary of Stanislaus Joyce (Ithaca, 1971), p. 75. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1447880521244 accessed: 13 December, 2024
Listeners
Listening to
hide composersRakes of Mallow | performed by Eileen Joyce |
Experience Information
Date/Time | 14 September, 1904 |
Medium | live |
Listening Environment | in private, indoors, solitary |
Notes
Stanislaus Joyce complains of his sister playing an air he dislikes on the piano whilst he lies in bed ill. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is his verbal transcription of her stumbling playing.