Listening to Iris Murdoch: Music, Sounds, and Silences

Contents

• 1. Chapter 1 Listening to Iris Murdoch.
• Introduction.
• Music and sound in fiction: a review of the field.
• Music in Murdoch’s life.
• Discussions of music in Murdoch’s philosophy.
• The sound-worlds in Murdoch’s fiction.
• Part I – Music.
• 2. Chapter 2 ‘The music is too painful’: Music as character and atmosphere.
• Introduction.
• ‘Awaken, my blackbird’: Music in The unicorn.
• ‘Like a breathless enchanted girl’: Music in The red and the green.
• The swan princess: Music in The time of the angels.
• ‘The concourse of sweet sounds’: Music in The nice and the good.
• Conclusion.
• 3. Chapter 3 ‘The point at which flesh and spirit most joyfully meet’: Singers and singing.
• Introduction.
• ‘Che cosa e amor?’: Singing in The sea, the sea.
• Singing as exclusion in The message to the planet.
• ‘Never to sing again? Never?’: Singing in The philosopher’s pupil (1983).
• Conclusion.
• 4. Chapter 4 Musical women and unmusical men.
• Introduction: ‘Of course they never let the women sing.’.
• Quiet women: The good apprentice.
• Silent pianos.
• No women composers.
• Opera, intimacy, sexuality and androgyny in A fairly honourable defeat.
• Conclusion.
• Part II – Silence and sound.
• 5. Chapter 5 ‘Different voices, different discourses’: Voices and other human sounds.
• Introduction: Serious noticing.
• ‘The long search for words’: Something special.
• ‘The quiet sound of voices’: The sandcastle.
• ‘Intolerable with menace’: Henry and Cato.
• ‘A mechanical litany’: The good apprentice.
• Conclusion.
• 6. Chapter 6 ‘Like a clarity under a mist’: Ambient noise and silence, dreamscapes and atmosphere.
• Introduction.
• The sacred and profane love machine: The drama of silence.
• The black prince and Under the net: Silence and art.
• Bruno’s dream: Synaesthesia and perception.
• Nuns and soldiers.
• Conclusion.
• Part III – Settings.
• 7. Chapter 7 ‘Just bring me the composers’: Musical settings of Iris Murdoch’s words.
• Introduction.
• The servants – opera: music by William Mathias, libretto by Iris Murdoch.
• The round horizon, cantata in five parts: music by Christopher Bochmann, words by Iris Murdoch.
• The one alone: Radio play with music by Gary Carpenter.
• A year of birds: Song cycle for soprano and orchestra by Malcolm Williamson.
• Forgive me. In memoriam Iris Murdoch, 1919-1999, for unaccompanied vocal ensemble (SATB) by Paul Crabtree.
• Inspired by Iris: Paul Hullah and Kent Wennman.
• Paul Hullah, All the names under the sun and Home.
• Kent Wennman, A Jerusalem conversation and The thinker and the feeling one.
• Conclusion: Iris Murdoch set to music.
• Coda Sound, music, silence and listening.
• Part IV – The music.
• Appendix 1 Music mentioned in Murdoch’s fiction.
• Classical composers.
• Vocal music.
• Chronological list of music mentioned in Murdoch’s fiction.
• Appendix 2 Items in Iris Murdoch’s Oxford music collection held at Kingston University Library.
• Iris Murdoch’s manuscript notebooks of songs.
• Anthologies, collections, scores etc.
• Single works.