This one is bizarre. In fact, it's frankly hilarious. It's a very short (just over a minute) composition for voice and piano, though the piano is more of a percussion instrument here since it's played by simply slamming down the piano lid a few times. The lyrics consist of text from Joyce's Finnegans Wake and are half-sung half-screamed using high-pitched notes in an extremely dramatic, operatic manner. The oddness and the unrelenting shrillness of the piece are really quite comical.
It's difficult to know how to make sense of it, but it helps to note that it was written to be performed right after Cage's 1942 The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, another composition for voice and piano based on Finnegans Wake. I suppose it doesn't help that much, though. Besides the instrumentation and the lyrics the songs aren't much alike - Wonderful Widow is far calmer, with a fairly straight vocal performance and some light tapping on the piano. I imagine that Nowth Upon Nacht would be something of a shock coming right after it.
One minute of shrill vocals with a few loud bangs. Hardly one of Cage's best compositions, but I think it might take the title of the most incongruous composition of the latter half of his career (and probably all his career). I can't really place it with anything else he was doing during this time. It almost seems like it might have been something of a joke. It's definitely amusing.
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