Bid adieu

Pendelton is a
largely forgotten composer, conductor and organist. He was born in Cincinnati
and studied in New York and then Paris, where he settled, becoming an important
member of the musical community, often directing the main French orchestras and
holding the post of organist at the American Church on the Quay d’Orsay in
Paris from 1935 to 1975. He was the Paris music critic for the New York Herald
Tribune for 20 years and was a friend of Joyce, Hemmingway and Picasso. He
composed concertos, a children’s opera and songs, and his music has been
performed by Ormandy, Serkin and Boulez among others.  Yet there is no mention of him in Grove’s
Dictionary or Slonimsky’s American equivalent.

Bid adieu first appeared in Chamber
Music in 1907 as the eleventh of the thirty-six poems. Joyce himself
thought the verses in the volume would make good texts for musical settings: I hope someone will do so, someone that
knows old English music such as I like. 
He decided to create the rather Elizabethan air for Bid adieu, his only known composition and his friend Pendleton
provided the arrangement.