Listening to Iris Murdoch

<p>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.</p><div><br></div>