Celebrating 75 years of Finnegans Wake
Published on 11th June 2014
May 2014 marked the 75th anniversary of the publication of Finnegans Wake. To celebrate Dublin City Public Libraries hosted the wonderful Sinead Murphy and Darina Gallagher performing Here's Comes Everybody! a musical journey through Finnegans Wake.
This performance explores the musical pulse at the heart of Finnegans Wake. The irreverence and subversion of Joyce's comic masterpiece is evoked through parlour song, music hall, nursery rhyme, folk song, street ballads, sea shanties, hymns, carols and the American songbook. James Joyce filled his work with music and in Finnegans Wake there are almost 1,000 song references and allusions. These songs create the dreamlike transformations of the Porter- Earwicker family and express the ambience and cadences peculiar to the city of Dublin.
Recorded at Drumcondra Library on 22 May 2014.
Performers Sinead Murphy and Darina Gallagher (the Shannon Colleens) have been exploring music in the works of James Joyce for the last four years with their award-winning show Songs of Joyce and Cafe Chantant. They have toured nationally and internationally to critical acclaim including tours to New York, Boston, Prague, Budapest and Moscow.
‘It was brilliant, funny, poignant.’
Dr. Ron Paul, Gothenburg University, Sweden
'an utterly charming show which rattles along with mirth and music, one of the most enjoyable evenings of the year.'
Rory O' Connor, Tread Softly - Yeats International Festival
'A Joycean feast of music hall memories' 'delightful'
Anne Madden, The Belfast Telegraph
“comic joy – with a real sense of joie de vivre.”
Alan Chadwick, Scottish Herald
If you would like to take the plunge and try Finnegans Wake we have copies available to borrow in our libraries, check the catalogue for availability. For researchers and aficionados, the Dublin and Irish Collections at Dublin City Library & Archive hold secondary material and rare original 'fragments of a work in progress' published during the late 1920s and 1930s (which turned out to be parts of Finnegans Wake).
- Anna Livia Plurabelle, by James Joyce, with a preface by Padraic Colum. Limited edition (1928)
- Anna Livia Plurabelle, fragment of work in progress. First edition (1930)
- Haveth childers everywhere, fragment of work in progress. First edition (1931)
- Two tales of Shem and Shaun, fragments from work in progress. First edition (1932)
- The mime of Mick Nick and the Maggies, a fragment from work in progress. Limited edition (1934)
- Storiella as she is syung, a section of 'work in progress'. Limited edition (1937)