The prelude to Sirens includes "a call, pure, long
and throbbing. Longindying call." The words suggest a human
voice filling the air with plaintive emotion, but in fact this
is one more instance (after "hoofirons, steely ringing,"
Simon Dedalus "picking chips off rocky
thumbnail," and the "husky fifenote" of his pipe) of
music coming from objects not usually regarded as musical.
When Simon leaves the bar for the saloon, it becomes clear
that the reference is to a tuning fork left behind after
someone tuned the Ormond's piano.
Miss Douce tells Simon that a young blind tuner, "Not twenty
I'm sure he was"—"So sad"—has been in to get the piano ready
"for the smoking concert." This is the same blind "stripling"
whom Bloom helped across the street in Lestrygonians
and whom Farrell nearly knocked down in Wandering Rocks.
Miss Douce says, "I never heard such an exquisite player,"
piquing Simon's interest. He wanders away, and "From the
saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork the
tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again.
That he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It
throbbed, pure, purer, softly and softlier, its buzzing
prongs. Longer in dying call." Then Simon himself begins
to play the piano.
A tuning fork must be mathematically "pure": if it does not
produce just one exact frequency when struck, with no
overtones, it is useless. Its tone is also "long in dying,"
aiding the tuner in his work. But the voice that describes
Simon striking the tuning fork is not interested in
practicalities. The prose is extraordinarily poetic—or, a
synonym, musical. It makes the piece of buzzing metal sound
like a passionate, poignant human voice. These qualities are
captured in the brief thematic statement in the overture,
which mentions no metal tool but only "a call" (someone crying
out?), "pure" (spiritually chaste?), "long and throbbing"
(racked with emotion?), "Longindying" (an operatic heroine
with tuberculosis?). The sadness of the boy's condition bleeds
out into the object he left behind.
