Listening to Iris Murdoch Music, Sounds, and Silences

When we think of Iris Murdoch’s relationship with art forms, the visual arts come most readily to mind. However, music and other sounds are equally important. Soundscapes – music and other types of sound – contribute to the richly textured atmosphere and moral tenor of Murdoch’s novels. This book will help readers to appreciate anew the sensuous nature of Iris Murdoch’s prose, and to listen for all kinds of music, sounds and silences in her novels, opening up a new sub-field in Murdoch studies in line with the emerging field of Word and Music Studies.

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 letthe 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.

Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Flinders University, South Australia. She has written extensively on various literary topics, often in connection with music. Her publications include From a Tiny Corner of the House of Fiction: Conversations with Iris Murdoch (2003) and other edited works on Murdoch, as well as monographs on V.S. Naipaul and J.M. Coetzee.