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

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

. It was composed in 1979 for Klaus Schöning of West German Radio

Westdeutscher Rundfunk

Westdeutscher Rundfunk 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 consortium of German public-broadcasting institutions, ARD...

, 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

Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...

by James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, 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

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...

(1942) and Nowth upon Nacht

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....

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

Media

• Notes towards a re-reading of the “Roaratorio” the work of John Cage and his special relationship to radio at Ràdio Web MACBA