Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Péter Egri: (Per)chance: Joyce and Cage

phrases, related them to each other, found their musical equivalents, and, in fact, based his setting on them. He has set the phrase "by silentsailing night" using five eighth notes and a dotted half note (bars 1-2) following closely the rhythmic pattern of Joyce's syllables. The first and last notes of the motif are Bs, just as the first and last notes of the whole song are B-s. They make it clear that the lack of any key signature does not indicate the tonality of C major or A minor. Nor do the B-s represent B major or B minor. They are just the notes around which the E (four steps up) and the A (one step down) turn. The miniature motif may remind one of an Oriental segment, a pentatonic fragment (violinist Zsolt Sokoray's conjecture). The motif creates a hovering and gently undulating effect, which is stepped up by dreamlike repetition, rhythmic variation and the changing order of the same notes. The quiet floating of co-ordinated musical motifs corresponds to the silent streaming of co-ordinated linguistic phrases listed in an Impressionist-Surrealist nominal manner. Within the first twentyseven words not a single verb appears, no predicate occurs. "Lay" is a static verb. It is only in the second part of the song that the insistent urge of dreamy desire generates a set of verbs welling up in the imperative form ("win me, woo me, wed me, ah weary me!"). They may be triggered off by a possibly Viconian impulse of cyclic recurrence implied in "as fain would she anon, for soon again 'twill be." This may be the reason why "win me" sounds a rhyming answer to the call of "'twill be," and why the music in this phase becomes more animated. In assessing the importance of all such procedures of change and variation, one must bear in mind that the elements to be changed and varied are very limited in scope. Besides B, E and A, no other notes are heard in the entire composition. The melodic range of Cage's song is deliberately small. Its voluntary minimalism perfectly fits the calm of the night, the mood of the dream, the mind of the dreamer, the shape of the girl, and the gentleness of desire. Disregarding the key structure of the major

—minor system goes hand in hand with overstepping the time signature of 4/4: the six notes of the musical motif spread over two bars and relativize the very first bar line. This is not an isolated case (cf. bars 4-5, 8-9, 9-10, 12-13, 73