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| A drawing of Joyce (with eyepatch) by Djuna Barnes from 1922, the yr wherein Joyce started the 17-year process of writing Finnegans Wake |
“Finnegans Wake has been ill-used by approaches that try and ‘decode’ it by means of what’s absent: in ignorance of the sheer pleasure that the language embodies. There isn’t a iceberg, no skeleton key; Finnegans Wake shouldn’t be a cipher. It’s only itself”, opines composer Alastair White thus giving us an intriguing lead-in to his formidable thirteen-year undertaking to create a cycle of works based mostly on James Joyce’s epic, modernist novel.
White’s undertaking is meant to steer as much as the work’s centenary in 2039 (!) It’s value making an allowance for, nevertheless, that Joyce took 17 years to finish Finnegans Wake: he began sketching in 1922 and the work was lastly revealed in e-book type in 1939. Joyce died twenty months later in Zürich, on 13 January 1941.
As an preliminary line within the sand, white is presenting the opening live performance of the cycle, Finnegans Wake: Right here Comes Everyone on the London Irish Centre on Saturday 5 September 2026.
This primary instalment — a one-hour reimagining of an operatic overture — is carried out by veteran avant-gardists Roger Redgate and Ensemble Éxposé. Ensemble Exposé was fashioned in 1984 by the composers Richard Barrett, Roger Redgate and Michael Finnissy, and is recognised for championing essentially the most difficult of up to date music.
Full particulars from the London Irish Centre’s web site.
