''Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake'' is a musical composition by

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Def ...

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...

. It was composed in 1979 for Klaus Schöning of

West German Radio Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (''West German Broadcasting Cologne''; WDR, ) is a German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a constituent member of the con ...

, and premiered as one of the entries in Schöning's radio series. The piece is a realization of another Cage score, ''____,____ ____ circus on ____'', which consists of an instruction on how to translate any book into a performance. The book used for ''Roaratorio'' is '' Finnegans Wake'' by

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...

, a long-time favorite of Cage's. Texts from it appear also in Cage's songs ''

The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs ''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs'' is a song for voice and closed piano by John Cage. It was composed in late 1942 and quickly became a minor classic in Cage's oeuvre. The text was a reworked version of a passage from James Joyce's ''Finne ...

'' (1942) and ''

Nowth upon Nacht ''Nowth upon Nacht'' is a song for voice and piano by John Cage. It was composed in 1984 in memoriam for Cathy Berberian, the celebrated soprano singer, wife of composer Luciano Berio. The text is from page 555–6 of James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wak ...

'' (1984). The text of ''Roaratorio'' was published separately as ''Writing for the Second Time through Finnegans Wake''.

References

* Fetterman, William. 1996. ''John Cage's Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances''. Routledge. (pp. 216–221)

Media

Notes towards a re-reading of the “Roaratorio”
the work of John Cage and his special relationship to radio at Ràdio Web MACBA 1979 compositions Compositions by John Cage Finnegans Wake Music based on novels {{classical-composition-stub