Cornelius Cardew 'treatise' and graphic scores

Cornelius Cardew - Visionary or Twat?

http://www.ubu.com/historical/cardew/cardew.html

it's the only way to hear the piece if you aren't actively involved in playing it, too; I've read many vicious reviews of this piece from critics who are completely used to being in the passive listening role, and consume a recording of it in exactly the same manner they consume any other recording, absolutely missing the point.

this is an amazing piece to play with friends, with absolutely any instrumentation.

what recording do you have, Julio? please don't tell me it's just a tagless mp3.

I'd love to see this being performed but its not gonna be something that will be, but it works very well as a recording.

However I have watched a few pages of this played last year (lasted about 20 mins) by two reed players, whose names I forget.

thanks for the link marcus.

http://www.hathut.com/covers/122b.gif

Cage wasn't really trying to use silence to an effect in that way, however.

I have a book of Cardew's scores and they're pretty and all but I've never actually heard his music.

You will almost certainly like 'treatise'.

Are there any other composers today who are using graphic scores? or has cardew set such a high standard for this that no one else seems to be trying (I think some of cage's scores were graphic, but I'm thinking of other contemporary composers)?

i think boulez also did some graphical scores, like i seem to remember one with various shapes and primary colors, but i'm not sure if that was him or someone else

* not really

'Lines Ensemble' Performs: Cornelius Cardew's 'Treatise'
Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street SF, CA

Liz Allbee, Alicia Byer, Sarah Cahill, Ann Dentel, Danielle DeGruttola, Aurora Josephson, Kendra Juul, Blevin Blectum, Cheryl Leonard, Patty Liu, Kristin Miltner, Lisa Sangita Moskow, Sarah Schoenbeck, Karen Stackpole

spot the Mills / Braxton / Rainbow Caroliner alumni

and the garden of memory is on monday in oakland

>camden people's theatre, 58-60 Hampstead Road London NW1 2PY
>
>As part of their tenth anniversary festival, CPT:X - see website:
>www.cpt.dircon.co.uk/forthcoming_host.html
>there will be a three-day festival of "poetry, music and performance...
>and all points in-between". As part of this there will be a performance
>on the Saturday night, from 7:45pm, "Significant Others"; performances
>of work not by the performers, rarer in the theatre and poetry worlds
>than in, say, classical music. One of these "cover versions" will be an
>extract from Cornelius Cardew's "TREATISE", a 193-page graphic score.
>The musicians will include John Butcher: saxophones; Simon H. Fell,
>double-bass; Susanna Ferrar, violin; Harry Gilonis: percussion, and Tim
>Hodgkinson, clarinets.

http://www.ubu.com/sound/cardew.html

you guys should go. I wish I could go.

ST GILES CRIPPLEGATE - Christian Wolff at 70
Starts Friday, October 29 2004 at 7:30 PM

Dal Niente Projects and COMA
Christian Wolff: Changing the System (1972-3)
Cornelius Cardew: The Great Learning Paragraph 3 (1970-1)

according to the notes, paragraph 3 is:

1 page, for large instruments and voices, duration about 45 minutes, text: 'Things have their root and their branches, affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught.'

christina wolff was first - for those who don't know 'changing the system' is for several groups of four (there were five for this performance - two groups of singers, two for percussion instruments and one for brass/percussion). I wz a bit late so it took me a while to get into it and seeing the logic from the random - not quite the kind of thing that could be performed at a concert hall (which I guess is the point) so the groups were spread round the church. The ending has those teasing silences that reminded me of the performance of 'for philip guston' that I attended earlier this year.

'Paragraph 3' sounded reminded me of Oliveros and totally diff from uncertanties of 'treatise', the COMA singers were not professional, anyone can take part and the thought that anyone could join this group (there's an email addy in the programme) made me all warm and fuzzy.

shawn feeney's electronic realisation: https://vimeo.com/24759329

the actual score -- when animated -- always reminds me of the look of george dunning's yellow submarine

which reminds me (since it's where i first wrote that observation down) here's a little piece i wrote about it (pdf -- you have to scroll down) : http://www.soundmatters.org.uk/content/documents/exhibition-guide/CC_SM_guide.pdf

and here's a version by the SYNTAX ensemble now the youtube embeds are sorted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMzIXxlwuCs

Treatise: An Animated Analysis -- a fair proportion of which seems "state the bleedin obvious" to me, but perhaps i have been thinking about this object for too long

Takes me back to my slog through Tilbury's biog at the start of the year, I must pick it up again.

i close-read a few sections for that "sound matters" catalogue piece and speedread the rest: i was actually constantly torn between "dude NO ONE needs to know this much abt xxx" and "i feel there is actually more to say here on this topic" (ie that someone not so caught up in and basically sympathetic to a lot of CC's odder stances might have a sharper perspective?)

i'm still glad the JT biog exists but blimey

Agree with all of that. JT not only sympathetic to CC's later wrongness but complicit in, of course.