Robert Hughes

mixed choir, 6-part, optional electronic audio track

HCE by Robert Hughes
Lyrics: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
For SATB and (optional) tape (Moog synthesizer and voices)
Excerpt from a larger work, a 1977 commission from the San Francisco Symphony

Duration with tape: 4:20
Duration without tape: 3:38

Note: the recorded versions uploaded to Soundcloud substituted the words Minotaur and Ariadne for a special production. The names from Finnegans Wake, “Math-hee-hew, Mar-kee-hew, Lu-kee-hew, John-whee-hew” are found in the published score.

Program Notes delivered viva voce by Bob Hughes to the San Francisco Symphony audience, August 5, 1977:

“When I began to write this piece for a very large number of musicians, I happened to be reading Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. On the first page, there’s a place in Ireland called Howth Castle and Enviros, or, HCE. There is a character named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Mankind itself is described as Homo Capite Erectus, man (or mammal), that is, with his head up. Later one comes across Hear! Calls! Everywhere! By the end of the book HCE stands for Here Comes Everybody; and indeed, that’s just what happens in this summer workshop – Here Comes Everyone, from the youngest to the oldest members of the community.

“H C E, very fortunately, in the German system of notes means B C E – with H having the function of B in the solfeggio system. All of the music variations of HCE use the notes HCE in one way or another. Usually, they start with H C E. 

“The words from Finnegans Wake only appear in the choral setting. The chorus has an interesting thing to do, which is to sing the sound of the Fall of Mankind. The life cycle, according to Finnegans Wake, starts at the beginning, as we all know, with a Fall. It started with a fall of Satan from Heaven, perhaps; or it started with the fall of mankind from Adam and Eve. And so, the chorus begins the piece with Joyce’s writing of the Fall:

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

“The phrase repeats throughout as an ostinato, which, like the text of Joyce’s remarkable book, returns the end back again (Finn, again) to the beginning.”