Roaratorio - Misplaced Pages

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 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, a long-time favorite of Cage's. Texts from it appear also in Cage's songs The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942) and Nowth upon Nacht (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. ISBN 3-7186-5643-4 (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

v t e John Cage
List of compositions Works for prepared piano
Music	Constructions (1939–41) Imaginary Landscapes No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 (1939–52) Music for an Aquatic Ballet (1938) Living Room Music (1940) Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) Music of Changes (1951) 4′33″ (1952) 27' 10.554" (1956) Variations (1958–67) Cheap Imitation (1969) HPSCHD (1969) Song Books (1970) Etudes Australes (1974–75) Apartment House 1776 (1976) Etudes Boreales (1978) Freeman Etudes (1977–90) Roaratorio (1979) As Slow as Possible (1985/1987) But What About the Noise ... (1986) Europeras (1987–91) Number Pieces (1987–92)
Books	Silence (1961) A Year from Monday (1968) Notations (1969) M (1973) Empty Words (1979) X (1983)
Depictions	The Revenge of the Dead Indians (1993)
Related	Crete Cage (mother) Xenia Cage (wife) Indeterminacy in music West Coast School Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Category

v t e James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939)
Inspirations	Achmet Borumborad "Finnegan's Wake" The New Science The House by the Churchyard
Inclusions	"The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly" Bellsybabble Quark
Books	Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (1929) A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944) The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) War and Peace in the Global Village (1968) Joysprick (1973)
Music	The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942) Bitter Ending (1972) Roaratorio (1979) Symphony No. 1 RiverRun (1983) Nowth upon Nacht (1984) Waywords and Meansigns (2015)

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