Cornelius Cardew and the Freedom of Listening

Cardew et la Liberté de l’Ecoute/ Cornelius Cardew and the Freedom of Listening
CAC Bretigny 5th April - 27th June 2009
Curated by Dean Ikster, Jean Jaques Palix, Lore Gablier.

“….from all those who carry across one thing into another state: an adaption works best when it is a genuine transaction between the old and the new, carried out by persons who understand and care for both, who can help the thing adapted to leap the gulf and shine again in a different light. In other words, the process of social, cultural and indiviidual adaption, just like artisitic adaption, needs to be free, not rigid if it is to succeed. Those who cling too fiercely to the old text, the thing to be adapted, the old ways, the past, are doomed to produce something that does not work, an unhapiness, an alienation, a quarrel, a failure, a loss.” Salman Rushdie (1)

Who is Cornelius Cardew? What was the Scratch Orchestra and what was Scratch Music?
One of Cardew’s works being performed on the 16th & 17th May at CAC Bretigny in the outskirts of Paris is titled The Great Learning and there is the sense that with this exhibition, concerts and performances we are approaching a great learning curve, and we are on a journey of discovery.

In the exhibition, documents from the 1960’s and 1970’s are displayed in specially created cabinets and on the walls of the gallery; newspapers, concert posters, original compositions, conceptual ideas and revolutionary songs. There are two video monitors, a video by Luke Fowler tracing the history of the Scratch Orchestra with interviews and archive footage mixed together with present day situations, sounds and images reflecting an artistic empathy and suggesting a continuity. The other  video shows documentation of a performance of The Great Learning - Paragraph 7 under the direction of Jean Jaques Palix with students and staff from Valence Art School in France.

Among the documents on show are those describing different actions carried out in public spaces by various members of the Scratch orchestra situating the work within the conceptual art movement of the 1970’s along with images of The Scratch Orchestra ‘on the road’ visiting town halls, village squares, urban and rural communities up and down the country.

Laid out under glass in a long cabinet is the 193 page graphic composition ‘Treatise’, written or more accurately drawn by Cornelius Cardew. An abstract drawing in black and blue ink on landscape A4 format paper unfolding horizontally. The empty music staff still present at the bottom of the page, remains as an indication of which way up we should read the score and for notation should musicians need it.

On page 153 of Traetise, a peak, a curve, rectangles, a semi circle and a dot leaves one thinking how a musician should approach such a schematic composition.  But Cardew was intentionally seeking to turn the musician from a ‘passive’ interpreter of notes and music into an active thinker in the translation of forms into sounds where the pitch, tone and duration of each note, the choice of instruments and the number of players was left open to interpretation. The history of Treatise is documented in detail by Cardew in the Treatise Handbook, which appeared in print some years after the completion of the score. The first part of the Handbook consists of working notes, which shed light on many aspects of Cardew’s musical thought.

Each time a page or a paragraph from a Cardew work is played it will sound different because within Cardew’s libertarian approach is a challenge for each musician and what we hear will not only reflect the musician or musicians’ engagement with music and sound in general but reflect the challenge that Cardew poses.

In the magazine Performance the composer David Bedford described his experience with Cardew’s work: “Speaking as a performer in many of Cardew’s early works it must be said that the experience was totally rewarding. Our creativity was constantly being challenged, and the empathy of the performers, channelled into producing a coherent piece of music despite sometimes sketchy and sometimes paradoxical instructions, was often remarkable. It should be pointed out that none of Cardew’s works ever gave total freedom to the performer. The instructions were a guide which focused each individual’s creative instinct on a problem to be solved - how to interpret a particular system of notation using one’s own musical background and attitudes”. (2)

For the opening of the exhibition Keith Rowe former member of The Scratch Orchestra, co-founder and ex-member of the free improvisation group AMM, Peter Todd independent filmmaker, film curator, writer and editor and Luke Fowler artist interested in radical  social experiments from the past, performed ‘Expanded Cinema for Cornelius Cardew’.

Keith Rowe was seated behind a table upon which a transistor radio, a small part of a guitar neck, various knobs, jacks and cables and Cardew’s manuscript ‘Treatise’ open at page 153 were arranged. He performed an improvised solo while Peter Todd and Luke Fowler projected 16 mm films. One projection on top of the other, Luke Fowler’s images on top of Peter Todd’s, all edited in camera, showed bookshelves, old cupboards, interiors and hallways. All appeared to be imbued with a personal memory and history. One of Peter Todd’s images of a room is in fact the Holst room in Morley College, London where Cornelius Cardew taught in 1968 and which gave rise to the formation of the Scratch Orchestra.

The images were passive and unobtrusive allowing sound and image to coexist. The images helped us focus our ears and the sound at times seemed to fit perfectly to an image in an abstract and subliminal way. Keith Rowe tuned into radio sounds that murmured in the background and at times you weren’t sure if it was somebody talking in the audience or sounds from outside. Mixed with electronic sampling your ears reached into the space, stretching to hear the subtlety and layering of sounds, heightening our auditory perception. Towards the end of the performance a child was talking to her father unaware of what was going on around he, her voice blending in perfectly with the closing sounds of the performance capturing the essence of improvisation.

What happens in the space between the reception of sound and image is continually changing and is dependent on the way in which the spectator receives the sounds and images at any given time. This space ‘between’ where the work takes form is similar to Harun Farocki’s method of ’soft montage’ where two images are presented side by side creating a mental space from their juxtaposition and in this in between space we find meaning and significance.

The performance in the exhibition space gave a wonderful sense of the continuity of free association and free thinking that runs through the exhibition It was a fitting homage to Cardew and a welcome break from market-produced contemporary art. The performance was intense but unassuming and self effacing, it existed for what it was, it wasn’t trying to be radical or contemporary.

The documentation on show can only testify to and provide an insight into the revolutionary approach and experimentation that was invested in music by a small group of people in England in the 1970’s . The rest is really up to the visitor to pursue, to reflect upon, and to venture further. But there is a sense that once we start to join the dots together we realise that what from the outset appears to be a short, obscure and radical historical moment has had and still has repercussions throughout the contemporary art and music fields. Cardew, this maverick composer, musician and radical opens up into an international personality, contemporary of Karlheinz Stockhausen, David Tudor and John Cage.

Given the widespread influence of Cardew within contemporary music, his influence on Brian Eno, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman to name the most accessible and commonly recognised household names and given his recently acquired status as one of the most important composers of the second half of the 20th Century, why does Cornelius Cardew still remain an esoteric, marginal figure in contemporary music? If we read between the lines the answer lies in the various documents on show;  his rejection of the avant-garde, his involvement with the Marxist-Leninist wing of the British Communist Party and his early death.

The exhibition is like a jigsaw, we have to piece together bits of information to build a picture of Cornelius Cardew. It is made up of;  Cardew as apprentice to Stockhausen as interpreter of works by Morton Feldman, John Cage, David Tudor and Boulez, Cardew as member of AMM, as co-founder of the experimental performing ensemble The Scratch Orchestra, and Cardew as political activist serving the people not the ruling classes, fighting for the collapse of imperialism and bourgeois culture.

Joined together these fragments begin to create a picture of Cardew as an extremely talented, innovative, erudite and uncompromising figure and help us understand the short life and huge impact that he left behind.

Finally it is only left to thank the curators for the work and research that has gone into mounting this exhibition, and to the CAC in Bretigny for taking it on board and  for shedding light on Cardew and his contemporaries, their radical approach and convictions and for placing it in an historical and international context that connects us to the present day. The context seems particulalry appropriate: an art centre on the periphery serving the local population and bringing together visual art and music.

(1)  A fine pickle,  Guardian Reveiw Sat. 28/02/09.
(2)    Cornelius Cardew: An Appreciation, Performance, April-May 1982, p.11

Further performances and concerts on the 16th and 17th May - The Great Learning Paragraph 1 & 5 & 7. 7th June - The Tiger’s Mind, Volo Solo and Treatise and on the 22nd June Meditation on Wage Labor and the Death of the Album. For more information on exhibition and events: www.cacbretigny.com

Louise Crawford
Louise is an artist and writer based in Paris.

May 11th, 2009