Soft Morning City

Soft morning, city!

2022 marks the centenary of both the publication of Ulysses and Joyce commencing work on Finnegans Wake. “Soft morning, city!” Is Anna Livia Plurabelle’s dawn greeting as she starts on her final journey, as the river, fed by rain in the Wicklow hills, winds its way through Dublin to the sea, before being taken back up to the “great blue bedroom” to fall again as rain, thus restarting the cycle.

The image of this journey was the starting point for this piece. Soft tapping on the soundboard evokes the sound of rain, gentle at first, eventually becoming a torrent. The gradual awakening of the city is reflected in the progressively denser and more active textures.

Like much of my music, the material is derived from the natural harmonic series; to this end, the guitar is tuned in microtonal scordatura, and explores the new resources opened up by Katalin Koltai’s invention of the magnet capo system, which she describes as having “a similar function to a piano pedal; notes can be held without using the left hand."

The piece is dedicated with my heartfelt thanks to Katalin, one of those rare musicians who makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about their instrument.

Gráinne Mulvey 2021