Cornelius Cardew (May 7, 1936 – London, December 13, 1981) was an English avant-garde composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. May 7 is the 127th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (128th in leap years). ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. ... December 13 is the 347th day of the year (348th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Government Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister Tony Blair MP Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq... A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... Howard Skempton (born 1947), is a British composer and accordionist, and one of the founder members of the Scratch Orchestra, formed in 1969. ... Michael Parsons is a British musician, and co-founder of the Scratch Orchestra. ... The Scratch Orchestra was an experimental musical ensemble founded in 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton. ... Experimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. ...

Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. He was the second of three sons whose parents were both artists — his father was a pioneer potter. The family moved to Cornwall a few years after his birth where he was later accepted as a pupil by the Canterbury Cathedral School which had evacuated to the area during the war due to bombing. His musical career thus began as a chorister. From 1953-57, Cardew studied piano, cello, and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1957, he performed in the British premiere of Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître (having learnt to play the guitar for the occasion as no professional guitar player was available). Having won a scholarship to study at the newly established Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, Cardew served as an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1958 to 1960. He was given the task of independently working out the composition plans for the German composer's score Carré: Location within the British Isles The busy main street Winchcombe is a Cotswold town in the Local Authority District of Tewkesbury, in Gloucestershire, England. ... Gloucestershire (pronounced ; GLOSS-ter-sher) is a county in South West England. ... Cornish Flag Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow) is a county in South West England on the peninsula that lies to the west of the River Tamar. ... The Royal Academy of Music (sometimes abbreviated to RAM) is a music school in London, England and one of the leading music institutions in the world. ... Pierre Boulez Pierre Boulez (IPA: /pjɛʁ.buˈlÉ›z/) (born March 26, 1925) is a conductor and composer of classical music. ... Le marteau sans maître (The hammer without master) is a piece of classical music composed by the French composer Pierre Boulez. ... Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22, 1928) is a German composer. ...

"As a musician he was outstanding because he was not only a good pianist but also a good improviser and I hired him to become my assistant in the late 50s and he worked with me for over three years. I gave him work to do which I have never given to any other musician, which means to work with me on the score I was composing. He was one of the best examples that you can find among musicians because he was well informed about the latest theories of composition as well as being a performer." — Stockhausen

In 1958, Cardew witnessed a series of concerts in Cologne by John Cage and David Tudor which had a considerable influence on him, leading him to abandon post-Schönbergian serial composition and develop the indeterminate and experimental scores for which he is best known. He was particularly prominent in introducing the works of American Avant-Garde composers such as Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and Cage to an English audience during the early to mid sixties and came to have a considerable impact on the development of English music from the late sixties onwards. John Cage For the character of John Cage from the TV show Ally McBeal see: John Cage (Character) John Milton Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American experimental music composer, writer and visual artist. ... David Eugene Tudor (January 20, 1926 - August 13, 1996) was a pianist and composer of experimental music. ... Serialism is a rigorous system of composing music in which various elements of the piece are ordered according to a pre-determined ordered set or sets, and variations on them. ... Morton Feldman (born January 12, 1926, died September 3, 1987) was an American composer. ... La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer. ... Christian Wolff is the name of at least two notable individuals: an eighteenth-century philosopher and mathematician - see Christian Wolff (philosopher) a twentieth_century composer _ see Christian Wolff (composer) a German actor This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the...

Cardew's most important scores are Treatise (1963-67), a 192-page graphic score which allows for considerable freedom of interpretation, and The Great Learning, a work in seven parts or "Paragraphs," based on translations of Confucius by Ezra Pound. The Great Learning instigated the formation of the Scratch Orchestra. Treatise, composition by British composer Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981). ... Musical Graphic notation is a form of Music notation it refers to the use of non-traditional symbols and text to convey information about the performance of a piece of music. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Ezra Pound in 1913. ...

In 1966, Cardew joined the free improvisation group AMM which had formed the previous year and included English jazz musicians Lou Gare, Eddie Prevost, and Keith Rowe. Performing with the group allowed Cardew to explore music in a completely democratic environment, freely improvising without recourse to scores. Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste of the musicians involved, and not in any particular style. ... AMM is an important British free improvisation group, founded in London, England in 1965. ... Keith Rowe (born March 16, 1940 in Plymouth UK) is a British free improvisation guitarist. ...

While teaching an experimental music class at London's Morley College in 1968, Cardew, along with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons formed the Scratch Orchestra a large experimental ensemble, initially for the purposes of interpreting Cardew's The Great Learning. The Scratch Orchestra gave performances throughout Britain and elsewhere until its demise in 1972. It was during this period that the question of art from whom was hotly debated within the context of the Orchestra, which Cardew came to see as elitist despite its numerous attempts to make socially accessible music. Following the demise of the Orchestra, Cardew became more directly involved in left-wing politics and abandoned avant-garde music altogether, adopting a populist though post-romantic tonal style. He spent 1973 in West Berlin on an artist's grant from the City, where he was active in a campaign for a children's clinic. During the 1970s, he produced many songs, often drawing from traditional English folk music put at the service of lengthy Marxist-Maoist exhortations; representative examples are Smash the Social Contract and There Is Only One Lie, There Is Only One Truth. And in 1974, he published a book entitled Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, which denounced, in Maoist self-critical style, his own involvement with Stockhausen and the Western avant-garde tradition. Cardew was active in various causes in the fringe of English politics and subsequently was involved in the People's Liberation Music group with Laurie Scott Baker, John Marcangelo, Vicky Silva, Hugh Shrapnel, Keith Rowe and others. The group developed and performed music in support of various popular causes including benefits for striking miners and Northern Ireland. He was a co-founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). However, in the late 1970s and shortly before his death he began to break away from the ideological rigidity which he had maintained since the demise of the Scratch Orchestra. Morley College is an adult education college in London, England. ... The Scratch Orchestra was an experimental musical ensemble founded in 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton. ... Boroughs of West Berlin West Berlin was the name given to the western part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. ... Marxism refers to the philosophy and social theory based on Karl Marxs work on one hand, and to the political practice based on Marxist theory on the other hand (namely, parts of the First International during Marxs time, communist parties and later states). ... Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought (Chinese: 毛泽东思想, pinyin: Máo Zédōng Sīxiǎng), is a variant of Marxism-Leninism derived from the teachings of the Chinese communist Mao Zedong. ... Social contract theory (or contractarianism) is a concept used in philosophy, political science, and sociology to denote an implicit agreement within a state regarding the rights and responsibilities of the state and its citizens, or more generally a similar concord between a group and its members, or between individuals. ... Self-criticism (or auto-critique) refer to criticizing ones own beliefs, thoughts, actions, behaviour or results; it could occur in private or in public. ... Logo of the RCPB-ML The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (RCPB-ML) is a British communist political party. ...

Cardew died in 1981, the victim of a hit-and-run car accident near his London home in Leytonstone. The driver was never found. Leytonstone is a place within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. ...

It is interesting to note that the first time the term minimalist was used to describe a musical composition appear in a review of Cardew's The Great Learning by then music critic and later composer Michael Nyman published in 1968 in The Spectator. Minimalist music is a genre of experimental music named in the 1960s which displays some or all of the following features: emphasis on consonant harmony, if not functional tonality; reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells, with subtle, gradual, and/or infrequent variation (no... Michael Nyman (born March 23, 1944) is a British minimalist composer, pianist, librettist and musicologist, perhaps best known for the many scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the British filmmaker Peter Greenaway. ...

Other composers in the same vein (either early avant-garde or later political-polemical), and sometimes collaborators with Cardew, include Hanns Eisler, Michael Chant, Marc Blitzstein, Frederic Rzewski, Christian Wolff, and Luigi Nono. Hanns Eisler (July 6, 1898 - September 6, 1962) was a German and Austrian composer. ... Michael Chant Michael Chant is an English composer and political activist. ... Marc Blitzstein (March 2, 1905 – January 22, 1964) was an American composer. ... Frederic Anthony Rzewski (born April 13, 1938) is an American composer and virtuoso pianist. ... Christian Wolff (born March 8, 1934) is an American composer of experimental classical music. ... Luigi Nono (29 January 1924 - 8 May 1990) was an Italian composer of contemporary music. ...

The German musician and composer Ekkehard Ehlers published a Cardew-inspired work in 2001 (Ekkehard Ehlers plays Cornelius Cardew, Staubgold Records). Ekkehard Ehlers is an electronic music artist, in the ambient category. ...

A 70th Birthday Anniversary Festival, including live music from all phases of Cardew's career and a symposium on his music, took place on Sunday, May 7, 2006 at the Cecil Sharpe House in London. 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Selected discography

• The Great Learning Paragraphs 2 and 7 (1971; re-released 2002) Deutsche Grammophon.
• Thälmann Variations (solo piano, rec. 1975 in New York, publ. posthumously, 1986)
• Cornelius Cardew Piano Music musicnow 1991 (the composer; Andrew Ball and John Tilbury, Andrew Bottrill, 79.00)
• We sing for the Future! Interpretations of two compositions for solo piano (We Sing for the Future!, Thälmann Variations) by Frederic Rzewski (2002) New Albion
• Four Principles On Ireland And Other Pieces (Ampersand)
• Treatise (Hat[Now]Art)
• Chamber Music 1955-1964 (Matchless Recordings)
• Material (Hat[Now]Art)

Bibliography

• Coriún Aharonián, "Cardew as a Basis for a Discussion on Ethical Options" Leonardo Music Journal 11 (2001) pp. 13-15
• Virginia Anderson, "Chinese Characters and Experimental Structure in Cornelius Cardew’s The Great Learning" Journal of Experimental Music Studies
• Virginia Anderson, "Cornelius Cardew Lives" openDemocracy.net
• Richard Barrett, "Cornelius Cardew" in Michael Finnissy & Roger Wright eds. New Music 87 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)
• Brian Eno, "Generating and Organizing Variety in the Arts," Christoph Cox & Daniel Warner eds. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (New York & London: Continuum Books, 2005) An insightful study of "Paragraph 7" of The Great Learning
• Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• Michael Parsons, "The Scratch Orchestra and the Visual Arts" Leonardo Music Journal (Vol. 11, 2001) pp. 5-11
• Victor Schonfield, "Cornelius Cardew, AMM, and the Path to Perfect Hearing" Jazz Monthly (May 1968)
• Timothy D. Taylor, "Moving in Decency: The Music and Radical Politics of Cornelius Cardew" Music & Letters 79:4 (November 1998): pp. 555-576
• John Tilbury, "Cornelius Cardew" Contact No. 26 (Spring 1983) pp. 4-12
• John Tilbury, "The Experimental Years: A View from the Left" Journal of Experimental Music Studies. Originally published in Contact 22 (1981), 16-21
• Daniel Varela, "‘A Question of Language’: Frederic Rzewski in conversation about Cornelius Cardew" Journal of Experimental Music Studies

External links

• Cornelius Cardew on British Composers Project
• Information and CD of Peoples Liberation Music
• UbuWEB Historical: Cornelius Cardew (includes PDF of Stockhausen Serves Imperialism and commentary by Kyle Gann.)
• Cornelius Cardew on Matchless Recordings Includes the Cornelius Cardew Reader, and recordings with AMM and of his piano works by John Tilbury
• UbuWEB: Cornelius Cardew Cornelius Cardew Memorial Concert (1985)
• UbuWEB Papers: Toward an Ethic of Improvisation by Cornelius Cardew (1971)
• An online animated analysis of Treatise at the Block Museum Website
• Online recordings of Treatise by the Seattle Improv Meeting
• Cornelius Cardew: The Unofficial Resource