Cornelius Cardew

Cornelius Cardew (May 7, 1936–December 13, 1981) born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, was an English avant-garde composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble.

Related Topics:
May 7 - 1936 - December 13 - 1981 - Winchcombe - Gloucestershire - English - Avant-garde - Composer - Howard Skempton - Michael Parsons - Scratch Orchestra

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During his avant-garde phase, Cardew was notable for Treatise, a graphic score purely psychologically interpreted, and The Great Learning, based on Confucian philosophy.

Related Topics:
Treatise - Graphic score - The Great Learning - Confucian philosophy

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From 1958 to 1960 Cardew served as an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen, working on Stockhausen's Carré. With John Tilbury, he was one of the best known performers of cello and piano pieces by Stockhausen, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, and other experimental composers. Cardew also perfomed with the free improvisation group AMM.

Related Topics:
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Carré - John Tilbury - John Cage - Morton Feldman - Christian Wolff - Experimental composers - Free improvisation - AMM

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While teaching an experimental music class at London's Morley College in 1968, Cardew, Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons formed the Scratch Orchestra, a large experimental group that for several years gave performances all over Britain and elsewhere. It was during this period that the question of `art from whom' was hotly debated and Cardew became more directly involved in politics. He spent 1973 in West Berlin on an artist's grant from the City, where he was active in a campaign for a children clinic.

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On returning to London, Cardew became part of Peoples Liberation Music group with Laurie Scott Baker, John Marcangelo, Vicky Silva, Hugh Shrapnel, Keith Rowe and others. The group developed music to serve the people's movement participating musically in many of the current issues of the day.

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Cardew eventually abandoned avant-garde music as it was understood at that time, adopting a populist though post-romantic tonal style. During this period, 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. He also wrote a book titled Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (1974), which included "self-criticism" of his own involvement with Stockhausen in the Maoist style. Espousing Maoism, Cardew was active in various causes in the fringe of English politics. He was a co-founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). However, in the end of the 70s he broke away from Maoism.

Related Topics:
Maoism - Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

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The composer's later work has been described as minimalist and in fact the term seems to have been first used in relation to music by the English composer Michael Nyman, in a 1968 review in The Spectator of Cardew's The Great Digest.

Related Topics:
Minimalist - Michael Nyman

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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.

Related Topics:
Hanns Eisler - Michael Chant - Marc Blitzstein - Frederic Rzewski - Christian Wolff - Luigi Nono

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Cardew died the victim of a hit-and-run car accident in London. The driver was never found.

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The German musician and composer Ekkehard Ehlers published a Cardew-inspired work in 2001 ("Ekkehard Ehlers plays Cornelius Cardew", Staubgold records).

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