SOURCE: "The Elizabethan Connection: The Missing Score of James Joyce's Chamber Music," in James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, Winter, 1981, pp. 133-45.

In the following essay which was originally presented at the Seventh International James Joyce Symposium, Russel analyzes the rhythm and structure of Chamber Music, and notes its similarity to Elizabethan poetry.

James Joyce knew exactly what he was doing in the small volume of poems called Chamber Music. He might have called them Elizabethan Songs or simply Lyrics or Airs; he might even have called them A Short or Selected History of English Poetry, or Exercises in Metre or Verse. But then Joyce, even as a young man, was hardly one to provide explanations. So he accepted his brother's choice as the title, which actually does rather well in conveying the overall spirit. The range is not cosmic nor even symphonic. A small concert hall can accommodate...