John Cage (1912 – 1992)
Roaratorio – An Irish Circus On Finnegans Wake
Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake
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Recorded In Stuttgart, Germany and Ireland – 1979
Ars Acustica
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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
I bet very few (if any) Classical Music bloggers are reviewing this piece – I don’t know why – it’s awesome if you’re pulling an all nighter and the sun is about to rise! (Sorry, not actually one sentence – but I used dashes to make it look like it.)
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Klaus Schoning (English translation by John Patrick Thomas and W. Richard Rieves)
John Cage, who died in New York on August 12, 1992 just short of his 80th birthday, stands as one of the greatest and most pioneering artists of the 20th Century.
In addition to his musical works and closely tied to them is a body of extensive poetic philosophical work which he published successively in his books Silence (1961), A Year From Monday (1968), M (1970), Writings Through ‘Finnegans Wake’ (1978, together with Alison Knowles), Empty Words (1979), Themes & Variations (1982), Roaratorio, An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegans Wake (1982), Laus Schoning, editor), X (1982), and the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1988).
Many of these poetic texts were written to be read aloud, an oral literature, which John Cage with his extraordinary voice often recited himself. A kind of sound poetry whose character may be recognized in the variety of pitches and inflections, of movement and rest, of tempi and rhythms, of breathing and silence. As John Cage put it: Poetry is ambiguous, it lets musical elements such as time and sound enter the world of words.
A productive and continuous collaboration between John Cage, the poet, and the medium of radio developed from the end of the 1970s when the Studio Acoustic Art at the WDR in Cologne invited Cate to realize a large number of his poetic works as radio pieces and sound compositions thereby making them available to a wider public.
The results works are: Roaratorio, An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ (1979), James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1982), Themes & Variations (1983), Muoyce (1984), HMCIEX (1984), Mushrooms et Variationes (1985), Diary (1) (1987), Writing Through The Essay ‘On The Duty of Civil Disobedience’ (1988), The First Meeting of the Satie Society (1987), Mirage Verbal, Writing through Marcel Duchamp, Notes (1989), Erik Satie: An Imaginary Conversation (1990), and h-WDR (1987).
In 1992 WERGO released on 8-part CD edition of John Cage reading his Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse).
Beginning in the 1940s, Cage was occupied with the epochal work of James Joyce, particularly with the hermetic and difficult ‘Finnegans Wake.’ In 1942, Cage set a passage from the ‘Wake’ which he titled ‘The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs’ and in 1984 ‘Nowth upon Nacht’ in memory of Cathy Berberian.
In his radio piece, ‘An Alphabet,’ Cage himself plays the role of James Joyce, speaking texts from ‘Finnegans Wake.’ In the 1970s and 80s, Cage composed his five ‘Writings through ‘Finnegans Wake,’ a kind of ‘writing through,’ as opposed to reading through, Joyce’s work using different literary methods.
The resulting five poetic texts were designed to be read aloud in the manner of oral, meditative poetry whose sense is contained in the sound: a kind of ‘soundsense’ as James Joyce once characterized ‘Finnegans Wake.’
With Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegans Wake,’ Cage realized a work which within months of its premiere in 1979 at the WDR in Cologne became an international sensation and must be ranked as one of the key works of Ars Acustica in the 20th century.
As an exceptional example of poetry for the radio, it was awarded the Karl Sczuko Prize in 1979 and was presented during the Donaueschigen Festival. The prize citation read, ‘Cage opens up on endlessly rich acoustic world, althought it is strongly rooted in literary and musical ideas. It is a world made up of sounds, text and music, one in which the listener is able at will to experience and at the same time be exposed to sounds which the normally one-dimensional medium of radio cannot customerily offer.’
In ‘Roaratorio,’ Cage’s experiences with music and poetry, oral recitation and tape montage, and his close association with Zen Buddhism, lead to an all-inclusive cosmology built out of human voices, natural sounds, sounds coming out of the immediate environment, noises, singing, and music.
His ‘Writing for the Second Time Through ‘Finnegans Wake,’ which consists of quotations from ‘Finnegans Wake,’ forms the verbal component for ‘Roaratorio.’ The steadily repeated name of James Joyce forms the central axis for the mesostic text. John Cage recites this meditative oral poem himself. The beginning of the recording Cage made is presented on this WERGO CD.
For the composition of the music, a complex sound and noise ambience, the Joyce text was again diassembled. With the help of the ancient Chinese oracle book, the ‘I Ching,’ Cage used chance operation to determine 2293 sounds depicting locations and noises that appear in ‘Finnegans Wake.’
Cage formed all this into a polyphonic collage. The montage is expanded by the inclusion of Irish ballads, jigs, and instrumental music which he recorded in Ireland. Cage considered this piece also as an opportunity to transpose works from the world of literature into an acoustical situation in which the language is accessible to all: ‘I think more and more we need a language which doesn’t require translation.’
Numerous radio stations in Europe, America, and Australia have broadcast this work which has become a classic of acoustical art. It has been presented by the WDR at international festivals as a live-performance with John Cage and Irish musicians. Merce Cunningham choreographed a ballet to ‘Roaratorio’ for his Dance Comapny, which has been performed in Lille, London, Frankfurt, Avignon, and New York with great success.
Heinrich Vormweg on the presentation of the Karl Sczuka Prize to John Cage for ‘Roaratorio’ at Donoueschingen in 1979: ‘Roaratorio’ equates Joyce with Everyman, and it equates Everyman with every meaning and every sound, and it equates every sound, every note, every word with the one word, allowing all this to co-exist in a kind of universal music which – and this is the most surprising thing – gives one an overwhelming feeling of openness and hope. ‘Roaratorio’ is one large tablet of contemporary cuneiform, full of clues and messaages yet undecipherable; it is an act of devotion and of laughter, an apotheosis of agreement with this world and at the same a vast utopian scheme, a radio challenge to a different life in this world. A scheme of equality and of peace attained with it. Here is art demonstrating a step into the future, into a future deserving of this name.’
Klaus Schoning (English translation by John Patrick Thomas and W. Richard Rieves)
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TRACK LISTING:
John Cage (1912-1992)
- Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegans Wake’ [60:09]
- Writing for the Second Time Through ‘Finnegans Wake’ [14:14]
FINAL THOUGHT:
I mean, yeah, impressive work – but I wouldn’t want to hear it over and over on a loop.
Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company