James Joyce’s Music Performed: The ’Sirens’ Fugue in Experimental Re-Translation

Fugues are complex musical compositions whose intricate contrapuntal texture enchants listeners and performers alike: but how can they be composed from written words, silent on the pages of a book? When James Joyce said that, in the ’Sirens’ episode of Ulysses (1922), he aimed to write a fugue, he left his critics and readers wondering about the musical nature of the episode, as well as about the success of his musical intent. In this lucid interdisciplinary study, Arianna Autieri, a musician and translation scholar, interrogates Joyce’s ’Sirens’ from the standpoint of the (re)translator, investigating how experimental translation can serve as a performative answer to Joyce’s famous musical conundrum.

Arianna Autieri is SNSF Ambizione Research Fellow at the Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften in Switzerland, where her research focuses on creativity, AI, and song translation.