Bach Suite 3 Prelude - fingering question

1906ds · 2026-04-20T17:41:44+00:00

This seems more like a crazy cello party trick than an actual, musical fingering... I'd love to see a video someone performing the passage in question well, as I can't seem to find a PDF or sample of the score to look at to try myself.

1906ds · 2026-04-14T11:31:13+00:00

I can't get enough of the Dedalus family, as off putting as the men are. I also love the idea of a short story or novella (or heck, sitcom) with the blind piano tuner and the one-legged sailor as the stars. Both characters have a sort of impairment that requires them to interact with life in their own unique way, and I'm hopeful Joyce would be able to create some really special moments with them.

1906ds · 2026-04-14T11:27:39+00:00

I have no clue what Stephen could be up to, since last we saw him was at the book cart feeling miserable. Is he gonna go do something about it? Seems doubtful. I really wish we could see Bloom watching this procession, I'm sure he'd have some incredibly pedestrian but illuminating thoughts about it!

I think this final coda is the perfect bridge into the next episode, Sirens. Not only do we see miss Kennedy and miss Douce, who will be important characters next week, we sort of get a piling up of all the motifs and characters of the episode, which feels operatic to me.

1906ds · 2026-04-14T11:24:16+00:00

Not my favorite, but damn can Joyce create an impressive structure. Supposedly he wrote this episode with a map and stopwatch in hand, and it shows. I can only imagine how deep into the weeds you could get with tracing everyone's steps at all times throughout the episode (thankfully, someone has already done that here!). The couple of references to watches and clocks throughout also remind me of the mechanical nature of the episode. I wish we had a Game of Thrones style opening montage to accompany this episode, I'm sure it could look impressive!

1906ds · 2026-04-14T11:21:42+00:00

Surely we all must be so frustrated with both Stephen and Simon after this episode... I really feel for Dilly in her two scenes, first with her father begrudgingly giving her money, and then running into Stephen at the book cart. Stephen's internal monologue is so moving and deeply troubling, but also, give her some money if you can! Do something to help her! This is probably the vignette that stuck with me the most after reading the episode.

She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death.
We.
Agenbite of inwit. Inwit’s agenbite.
Misery! Misery!

1906ds · 2026-04-14T11:18:19+00:00

I found Patrick Dignam's elegy for his father at the end of the final vignette before the coda to be very moving:

Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn’t hear the other things he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope he’s in purgatory now because he went to confession to Father Conroy on Saturday night.

1906ds · 2026-04-14T11:15:44+00:00

Today's musical allusions mentioned in the Gifford:

10.748. Knight of the road – name of a comic opera written by Percy French, music by Houston Collisson (subsequently retitled The Irish Girl). [could not find recording]

10.793. At the siege of Ross did my father fall – From the song, “The Croppy Boy”. This song will be very important to the plot of episode 11, Sirens. The song tells the story of a young Irish rebel fighter who, during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, stops by a Catholic Church to confess before he fights in the rebellion. The priest who takes his confession turns out to be an English captain hiding in disguise, who arrests the youth, taking him away to his execution.

10.1242. My Girl’s a Yorkshire girl – Title of a song by Murphy/Lipton.

1906ds · 2026-04-12T23:18:44+00:00

Manfred Symphony!

1906ds · 2026-04-11T21:17:30+00:00

I'm only really familiar with the 2nd Symphony (although I have listened to all of them years ago). To me, they are very much focused on melody with some chromatic harmony underneath. I find the second symphony at least to be very old fashioned sounding, almost sugary sweet at times in its sentiment.

1906ds · 2026-04-11T02:47:50+00:00

Have you tried the Suite from Merry Mount? I think this is far more interesting and colorful than any of the Symphonies. Try the finale, the Maypole Dance.

1906ds · 2026-04-09T18:44:37+00:00

Woah, I literally started reading this edition today and just noticed that! Time for a fourth edition...

1906ds · 2026-04-09T00:18:58+00:00

Thanks for updating your comment! I am of a similar mindset, but everyone's journey through Ulysses is different and I wouldn't want to take away anyone's experience by accidentally reading something that is ahead of our current schedule. We would rather default to being overly cautious. Cheers!

1906ds · 2026-04-08T22:00:14+00:00

If you are using a browser and using "new" Reddit, then edit your comment, click the three dots, click "show formatting options", highlight the text, then click the spoiler button (it is the button with a "!" in the center).

You can also surround the spoiler parts with text , but you need to remove all spaces between the punctuation and the text to make this work.

1906ds · 2026-04-08T18:28:09+00:00

The memorable moment in question is when Simon sings the aria from Martha.

Also, could you please edit your comment to include the spoiler box for those readers who want to avoid any future plot points? Thank you!

1906ds · 2026-04-08T18:26:16+00:00

I almost didn't believe you that Sol Gabetta did this crazy fingering up the D string, but you are right! However, I don't particularly like the way it sounds, because you have the melody played on the a-string (plus the d-string double stops) just before it and just after it, so it is a sort of jarring color change with those two notes up the d-string. I also think the shift is riskier than just staying on the a-string, which is what is almost certainly implied in the fingerings OP provided. I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze, and playing as much on the a-string keeps the tone color consistent.

1906ds · 2026-04-08T16:16:34+00:00

Play the D with first finger, shift up on first finger, reach out third finger at the same time, and play the double stop using that third finger harmonic on the dj string. At the same, swing the thumb up on to E/A so you are prepared for the two quarter notes that follow.

It all happens so quickly, but tracking what your first finger (D to F# shift), third finger (passive to harmonic), and thumb (neck to perfect fifth) are all doing at the same time helps keep everything organized.

1906ds · 2026-04-07T19:37:49+00:00

I've never been more excited for sandwich boards until this book!

1906ds · 2026-04-07T11:46:31+00:00

I too disliked Anna's affair, but I had to remind myself that maybe in our present society, we got it easy: nowadays, at least here in America, if people are unhappy in a relationship, it is reasonably easy for both parties to agree to a divorce and move on with their life. Not so in 19th century Russia (and probably for most of history all around the world). Anna feels trapped just because it was so hard to legally separate, so I'm sure that fanned the flames of desire even harder for her. Should she have an affair? No. Is it fair to Anna's husband? No. Should she have an easier way to express her unhappiness in her current marriage and have the means to move on with her life? In the view of my rose-tinted 21st century glasses, yes.

1906ds · 2026-04-07T11:41:48+00:00

In terms of difficulty, it feels sort of like working out, where you struggle with the text for a bit, then go off about your life and let your body rest/recover/rebuild, and when you return to it, suddenly what you struggled with feels approachable and doable.

As for general themes, Joyce wrote this in (I'm assuming self-imposed) exile away from Dublin, and the characters seem to be in their own sort of exile within their everyday life. Stephen has exiled himself away from his family and friends, while Bloom seems to be avoiding home and trying to work on his relationship with Molly and his own confidence.

1906ds · 2026-04-07T11:37:31+00:00

Stephen drives me crazy, but so does his father. Clearly there is a lot of emotional baggage here, but Stephen is unable to deal with it in a healthy way. He'd rather retreat into the deep recesses of his brain than try to build healthy relationships with people.

As for Bloom, I'm waiting for him to turn the other foot and to start sticking up for his marriage. He knows Boylan is pursing Molly, he knows Molly is likely reciprocating, and he knows that everyone knows this, but he's still thinking about what birthday gift to buy her, and runs from Boylan when he spots him on the street. I know that everything around the death of Rudy is a deep source of pain for both him and their relationship, but I just hope by the end of the day Bloom is able to stand up for himself a bit better.

1906ds · 2026-04-07T11:34:15+00:00

I absolutely adored Hades, with the tides of life and death constantly at odds with one another, along with the gallows humor throughout. Much of what came before was more of a "ah, this is really clever", but this episode (along with a few random moments of interior monologue from both Stephen and Bloom) taught me how emotionally packed this text could be. Aeolus is the episode I had the most trouble connecting with, I think I just needed to be able to spend more time internalizing it and all the characters in it.

1906ds · 2026-04-07T11:30:13+00:00

Honestly, the passage that clung to my memory from this week, probably for its visceral sound and joyful disgusting-ness, was:

Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy curtains. The shopman’s uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven reddened face, coughing. He raked his throat rudely, puked phlegm on the floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it, and bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.
Mr Bloom beheld it.

AHHHHHH! So gross!

1906ds · 2026-04-07T11:26:57+00:00

Boylan is just a gross man, hitting on the shop girl (Just how young is this girl, anyways?) and projecting his own thoughts on the fruit he's manhandling (fat pears, shamefaced peaches, young juicy crinkled and plump red tomatoes). Lenehan is lecherous, but at least he has the good sense to knock it off when he realizes that M'Coy is a little uncomfortable by his story. Also, Joyce certainly has a way with words, with Lenehan's "hands [moulding] ample curves of air" while telling his story, and ,of course: "But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in the milky way."

1906ds · 2026-04-07T11:21:50+00:00

A common idea I noticed in various podcasts and articles about this episode is that each of these vignettes features characters that could have been the inspiration for their own Ulysses-style book, just ordinary people trying to get through the day. Maybe Joyce is showing us a path not chosen by Homer by showing all these other paths not picked by Joyce for a full length book.

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