http://www.thewire.co.uk/images/artists/john_cage/john_cage.jpg|right @M3U@ [http://praxis.bluesphereweb.com/Roaratorio-1.mp3 Part One (to Line 220)],, [http://praxis.bluesphereweb.com/Roaratorio-2.mp3 Part Two (to Line 406)],, [http://praxis.bluesphereweb.com/Roaratorio-3.mp3 Part Three (to Line 594)],, [http://praxis.bluesphereweb.com/Roaratorio-4.mp3 Part Four (to End)],, ]]] ++++'''Roaratorio '''++++ [[[ ]]] +++'''An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake'''+++ [[[ "'Finnegans Wake' is one of the books which I've always loved and never read," Cage announced amusingly at the Nova Convention in 1979, before patiently explaining how he constructed the mesostics on the name James Joyce which make up his "Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake". When invited by Klaus Schöning to provide music to accompany his text, Cage reread Joyce's book, painstakingly listing all the sounds mentioned in it, and defined a set of instructions based on chance operations for recording ambient sound in some of the 2462 places mentioned in the book as listed by Louis Mink in his "A Finnegans Wake Gazeteer". From the outset, Cage imagined a "circus" featuring the Irish traditional music that underpins Joyce's work, and traveled to Norwich to hear "the King of Irish singers" Joe Heaney perform in a local pub. Heaney agreed to participate and recommended Cage also use traditional Irish music for fiddle, flute, uillean pipes and bodhran drum. The resulting hörspiel "Roaratorio" represents not only the culmination of Cage's concerns in the 1970s with text composition based on existing writings (notably Thoreau's "Journal"), but its glorious 62-track tape montage of everything from Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge" to police car sirens and bleating sheep also recalls the inspired mayhem of his "Variations III and IV" and even looks further back to his 1942 radio play with Kenneth Patchen, "The City Wears A Slouch Hat". With Mode's typical concern for detail, the two accompanying booklets include Cage's introduction to the work (a speech made at Donaueschingen in 1979), a somewhat edited (annoyingly so) 29-page transcription of "Laughtears" (a conversation with Klaus Schöning), and, in all its typographical glory, the complete 41-page text of "Writing.." itself. 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. Cage's score describes how to go about "translating a book into a performance without actors, both literary and musical or one or the other" - any book in fact, since the work's correct title is "(title of composition), (article) (adjective) Circus On (title of book)" - in theory, listeners could have a go at producing their own "Roaratorio", using Cage's hour-long recording of "Writing". One hesitates to use the word indispensable, but it's surely justified for such a beautifully realised edition of a work featuring (arguably) the twentieth century's most influential author and composer. ~~--- Dan Warburton, [http://the-wire.co.uk The Wire]~~