Whilst there are hundreds of musical references throughout Ulysses, the eleventh episode, ‘Sirens,’ is particularly musical. The scene is set in the Ormond Hotel bar where the men are singing and playing piano. Joyce tries to match the musical content of the episode with the style in which he writes it, so the episode is written in the style of a classical fugue, the fuga per canonem. The first couple of pages list various sounds that appear in the episode, as if the orchestra is tuning up, playing little themes and motifs, and this tuning up ends, as it were, with the appearance of the conductor and the word ‘Begin.’ What the men sing varies from rebel ballads to arias from the popular operas of the time, and the action is overseen by the two ‘sirens,’ the two barmaids, Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy.
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