ABSTRACT
The story of how Daniel took "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly" from the page to the stage: the decisions he made in scoring the music and in vocalizing this song from Finnegans Wake, and the many problems that had to be solved in turning Joyce's words to song. When the Finnegans Wake typesetters set the first galleys, they did not include the musical notation; neither they set the title or the line about Phoblacht. "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly" is a tune of uneasy listening music, and Joyce designed it so the uneasiness is felt by the singer as well as the audience. It is also a song of gossip that makes each singer throw a little of his or her own vocal styling into the telling of the tale. As the complexities of the song unfold, all singers of "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly" end up synthesizing from their own wits, as well as from pages of Finnegans Wake.
