John Cage: Roaratorio

Premiere of the piece: 1979, cd: 1979

commission from the West German Radio and IRCAM for Cage to realize a work based on
his favorite book, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake

- cataloging the many sounds and locations mentioned in the book
- a recording of each sound was made at the noted locations
o Cage defined a set of instructions based on chance operations for recording
ambient sound in some of the 2462 places mentioned in the book
o Each traditional Irish tune which appears is listed, as are the 1210 sounds of
Cage's "Listing", ranging from farts to thunderclaps, and the instructions
explaining how ambient sounds are to be "collected" at the places mentioned
in the book.
- these were then laid out in the sequence in which they are mentioned in the Wake
and mixed
- added Cage's rendering of the text
- massive collage of 62 tracks of tape lasting about an hour
- added to this is live accompaniment from leading Irish musicians on traditional
instruments, performing traditional Irish music
- RESULT:” enthralling stew of words, sound and music unlike anything you've
encountered before”. In the piece the whole world seems to be on stage expressing
universal meanings: In the same time the soundscape strucks with its Irishness
creating a very local feeling as if the auditor made an enormously long jorney in
different places of Ireland.

„We went through my Listing through Finnegans Wake several times extracting categories,
for instance, various kinds of music, instrumental and vocal, various kinds of humanly
produced noise, shouts, laughter, tears, various birds and animals, sounds of nature, water,
wind, etc.”

4 layers:
- Lisiting (sound libraires – Cologne e.g.)
- places (1 month recording in Ireland)
- recording of the reading of the mesostics
- circus of Irish music