Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses/Lotus Eaters/079

Annotations

vibrato     (Italian) vibrated. In English vibrato is a technical term which describes the musical technique of quickly and repeatedly raising and lowering the pitch of a note by a small amount in order to impart an emotional expressiveness to the note. The practice is particularly associated with vocal music and string technique. Some types of organ can produce a similar effect by altering the pressure of the air passing through the pipes. Bloom is probably thinking of the vox humana stop on a church organ. This stop uses a tremulant (or tremolant) to achieve a vibrato effect. Vox humana is Latin for Human voice, so Bloom is justified in saying that, he knew how to make that instrument talk....

Stabat Mater     (Latin) The Mother Stood. Stabat Mater are the opening words and traditional title of a 13th-century hymn to the Virgin Mary. The hymn is sometimes known as the Stabat Mater Dolorosa (The Sorrowful Mother Stood) to distinguish it from another work with the same opening. It recounts the suffering of Christ's mother during his Passion. It has been set to music several times.

Quis est homo?     (Latin) Who is the man? These are the opening words of the third stanza of the Stabat Mater. In Rossini's setting, Quis est homo? is a duet for soprano and mezzo-soprano.

Gloria     (Latin) Glory. The opening word and traditional title of the hymn Gloria in excelsis Deo (Glory to God in the highest), the Greater Doxology or Angelic Hymn which forms part of the Ordinary of the Latin Mass.

The Gloria in the spurious Mozart's Twelfth Mass is still a popular piece with amateur choirs.