"Penelope, or "Molly's Reverie"" genre: Vocals
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	A musical setting of passages from the last chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses. This is a nine-minute work that might someday serve as the closing scene of an opera based on Ulysses. It was originally for voice and guitar (1995) and later arranged in the present version for voice and piano (1999).
	Credits: Lise Uhl, soprano; Gail Wade, piano
	Story Behind the Song Notes on Penelope The finale of James Joyce's Ulysses is a lengthy stretch of uninterrupted, unpunctuated prose in which Joyce attempts to capture on paper the capricious thoughts of Molly Bloom in bed at two o'clock in the morning. Her husband Leopold Bloom has come home very late, and after a brief interrogation by Molly, he falls into a sound sleep. She, however, lies awake, and her thoughts run rampant. The primary subject of her ruminations is her troubled marriage and her consequent adulterous liason with Hugh "Blazes" Boylan that afternoon. It has been more than ten years since her husband has given her the affection she needs, and she feels that it is his fault if she is an adulteress. But even though Boylan did give her "what she badly wanted," by the end of the book it becomes apparent that she will not likely continue the affair. Bolyan is crude and arrogant and businesslike, while Bloom is (or was) sensitive and caring. From the fifty-odd pages of Molly's reverie, I have selected a tiny portion that focuses on Molly's shift away from Boylan toward Bloom. The last pages of the book are an ecstatic recollection of the day he proposed to her sixteen years earlier. She remembers why she liked Bloom in the first place, and why she will ultimately return to him. Even with all his faults and shortcomings, Bloom is still the man she knows and loves best. I wrote Penelope in 1993-94, and expanded it to the present length in late 1995. Originally written for voice and guitar, I felt that it needed a more substantial accompaniment and made this piano arrangement in the fall of 1999. It is written for and happily dedicated to Martha McCarroll, whose kind words and encouragement inspired me to start composing again in the fall of 1993. Jonathan Kulp, 1999 Lyrics Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs...I suppose it was meeting Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking about me and Boylan set him off well he can think what he likes now if thatll do him any good...O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chance at all in this place like you used to long ago...I cant help it if Im young still can I its a wonder Im not an old shriveled hag before my time living with him so cold never embracing me except sometimes when hes asleep...nobody understands his cracked ideas but me still of course a woman wants to be embraced 20 times a day almost to make her look young no matter by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody...the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head...yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes sixteen years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is...and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mister Stanhope and Hester and father and old Captain Groves...and the Spanish girls laughing...and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras...O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the fig trees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens...and Gibralter as a girl where I was a flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used...and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

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