(I'd check on all that before you go setting any large chunks of Ulysses, hh - there'll be complications  . For a start, it's not necessarily the case that the updated copyright legislation applies retrospectively to works that have already had their copyright terms determined - by dint of being written before the law was passed, eg. Secondly, it's an Irish book, so I don't know how Irish law, EU law and British law would intersect on this. And thirdly, Ulysses is the sort of book that has had some pretty hefty editorial work done to it, so be careful that those later editions aren't classed as copyrighted works in their own right.)

Joyce's copyright would never have extended beyond 2011 under any earlier copyright legislation, though, would it? So once the 70-year term is expired in 2011 I imagine we'll start to see a great wide riverrun (excuse the pun) of Joyce settings.

That's true. It should be added, though, that the 1984 'scholarly edition' t-p mentioned in her first post is far from uncontroversial, and most scholars prefer to return to an earlier text (as did Penguin when they returned to the 1960 edition for their 1992 Penguin Classics reissue).

Perhaps not so much 'rather than' as 'as well as'? I'm pretty sure the kind of friction that results from inwardly voicing what looks like utter gibberish to find out that perfectly comprehensible words are hidden under it (often several at once, of course, and in several languages at that) isn't something that happens by accident...

But you really should 

No, never heard that one, harmony.

I once heard a few chapters from Ulysses adapted for radio in Ireland (in the early 1980s, I believe). It was very good. I would love to have that production on disc but I don't know if it was ever commercially issued.

This short excerpt from the long chapter entitled "Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce" in Book One ("The Revolutionary Simpleton") of Wyndham Lewis's "Time and Western Man" will tell Members we think all they need to know about Joyce:

"One of the main preoccupations of the hero of Ulysses is that arising from the ravages of the gentleman-complex - the Is he or isn't he a gentleman? - the phantom index-finger of the old shabby-genteel typical query pursuing the author. In this instance, as he is not writing about himself, we are given to understand that the figure in question is not. His gargantuan villain-of-the-piece is not even allowed to be very closely connected with the noble de Trop Bloggs. But the implicit theme of the entire piece, what moves Joyce to churn up the English tongue in a mock-Elizabethan frenzy, is the burning question still of his shabby-genteel boyhood, namely, To be a 'toff,' or not to be a 'toff.'

"In the respectable, more secluded corners of the Anglo-Saxon world, every one has at some time met keepers of tiny general-shops in provincial towns, char-ladies, faded old women in lodging-houses, and so on, whose main hold on life appears to be the belief that they have seen better days; and that really, if every one had their due, they, like their distant relatives, the de Bloggs, would be rolling in their Royces, and Ritzing it with the best. Because we do not usually associate this strange delusion with eminent authors, that is not a reason why, nevertheless, they should not be secretly haunted by it; especially if, as with Joyce, they issue from a similar shabby-gentility and provincial snobbishness. In spite of this necessary reflection it is always with a fresh astonishment that you come upon this faded, cheerless subject-matter."

We do not recommend the book Madame Pianiste since reading it - or at least more than a page or two - could not conceivably be a pleasure for any one at all.

t-p, just wait 'till you get to:

"Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyrining imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid! And gold flushed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the
Gold pinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castille.
Trilling, trilling: I dolores.
Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose! Notes chirruping answer.
Castille. The morn is breaking.
Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
Coin rang. Clock clacked.
Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!
Jingle. Bloo.
Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.
A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.
Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.
Horn. Hawhorn.
When first he saw. Alas!
Full tup. Full throb.
Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.
Martha! Come!
Clapclop. Clipclap. Clappyclap.
Goodgod henev erheard inall.
Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up.
A moonlight nightcall: far: far.
I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming.
Listen!
The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the?
Each and for other plash and silent roar.
Pearls: when she.
Liszt's rhapsodies.
Hissss."

Berio's treatment of it is a joy to the ear too.