Roaratorio
Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake is a musical composition by American avant‑garde composer John Cage. It was composed in 1979 for Klaus Schöning of West German Radio and premiered as one of the entries in his radio series. The piece realizes Cage’s indeterminate conceptual score “_____, _____ Circus on _____”, which provides instructions on translating any book into performance; for Roaratorio, the source text is James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake. Texts from it also appear in Cage’s songs “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs” and “Nowth upon Nacht”. The mesostic text of Roaratorio was published separately as Writing for the second time through Finnegans Wake.
Text source and structure
Cage reduced Joyce’s 626‑page novel to a 41‑page mesostic, Writing for the second time through Finnegans Wake, by centre‑column acrostics spelling “JAMES JOYCE”.Composition
The recorded mesostic recital is interwoven with:- environmental field recordings, selected by I Ching chance operations from the 626 place‑names in Joyce’s novel and gathered by radio stations and private individuals;
- improvisations by six Irish musicians.