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Treatise by Cornelius Cardew

by Ensemble & The Vocal Constructivists

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INTRODUCTION
This performance of Cornelius Cardew’s mammoth ‘Treatise’ took place at some point in early 2015 (I forget exactly when) at the ‘Crit Pit’ in Greenwich University, south London, to an audience of roughly a hundred people. What you can hear consists of an interpretation of the piece by a one-off ensemble of improvising musicians – Ensemble - and The Vocal Constructivists. The performance lasted around two and a half hours, with the score projected on a screen while we played. I was one of the guitarists.

As this was a group performance of a well-known piece by an established composer, I have put this as a free download; it would not be right for me to make money from anyone downloading this.

Rehearsals for the performance took place sporadically at Café Oto Project Space, east London.

Ensemble:
David Ryan, co-ordinator / leader and Clarinet

Dylan Bates - Violin
John Bisset – Guitar
Ansuman Biswas – Percussion / Viola
Matthew Burgass – Guitar
Hutch Demoulpied – Flute / Trumpet
Carol Finer – Banjo / Percussion / Objects
John Garcia Rueda – Tiple
Anna Greco - Soprano
Natalie Hancock – Cello
Ed Lucas – Trombone
Sue Lynch – Saxophones
Aisha Meade – Flute
Neil Metcalfe – Flute
Ian Mitchell – Bass Clarinet
Adrian Northover – Soprano Saxophone
Roland Ramaman – Trumpet
Matt Scott - Accordion
Clare Simmonds – Toy Piano / Keyboard
Dominic Simpson - Guitar
Loz Speyer – Trumpet
Noel Taylor – Bass Clarinet
Artur Vidal - Saxophone
Jerry Wigens – Bass Clarinet / Mandolin
John Wollaston – Electronics / Cymbal
Joe Zeitlin – Cello

The Vocal Constructivists:
Jane Alden, co-ordinator / leader

Barbara Alden
Robert Barry
George Chambers
Stef Conner
Alison Cross
Linn D.
Becky Hardwick
Rachel Hewitt
Penny Homer
Jill House
Charles Hutchins
Celia Jackson
Dominic McGonigal
John McLeod
Celia Springate
David Till

CONTEXT
[The text below has been taken from a mixture of text from Wikipedia, my own words, and from orchestra leader David Ryan’s introduction to the piece]

‘Treatise’ was written between 1963-7 by the English composer Cornelius Cardew (1936-81), a key figure in experimental music. It is famous for not using conventional music notation, but instead a visual representation of music known as a graphic music score, comprising 193 pages of lines, symbols, and various geometric or abstract shapes that largely eschew conventional musical notation, even while containing variations and mutations of staves and geometric forms. Other than that, we find evolving visual narratives of lines, circles, triangles, rectangles, dots, and notes.

Implicit in the title is a reference to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and particularly his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of 1921, which was of particular inspiration to Cardew in composing the work. ‘Treatise’ acts as a means of interrogating the possibility of music, performance, and its notation; running through the gigantic score is a double stave, possibly inviting the reader to make his or her own realisation – translating the graphics into conventional notation. Yet the score is not accompanied by any explicit instructions to the performers in how to perform the work, or what sound-producing means are to be used. It is clearly not strictly structured as per conventional classical music, but instead operates as a kind of ‘sound-piece’.

Although the score allows for absolute interpretative freedom (no one interpretation will sound like another), the work is not played spontaneously, as Cardew had previously suggested that performers devise in advance their own rules and methods for interpreting and performing the work. When preparing for the performance that you are listening to, by necessity, we did exactly that. There are therefore infinite possibilities for the reinterpretation of ‘Treatise’ that fall within the implications of the piece and general principles of experimental music performance in the late 1960s, including presentation as visual art and map-reading. This means that there is no ‘definitive performance’ of ‘Treatise’, a sentiment that Cardew himself would undoubtedly concur with. The musical world evoked in ‘Treatise’ is seemingly inexhaustible in terms of diverse responses and interpretation.

Although the bottom of each page has two five-line musical staves, this is not, apparently, meant to suggest piano or other keyboard instrument(s). It is apparently only meant to indicate that the graphic elements are musical, not purely artistic, in character. There is no specific interpretative key to these notational elements (unlike John Cage’s ‘Concert for Piano and Orchestra’, 1957, for example), although, under pressure from his publishers, Cardew did reluctantly provide a ‘Treatise Handbook’ in the early 1970s. This essentially took the form of a performance history sketch and extras from his compositional diary of thoughts-in-progress on composing the piece.

Cardew single-handedly introduced several key innovative approaches to experimental music in the UK, from avant-garde serial techniques, Cagean indeterminacy, graphic music, free improvisation, and collective music. Yet in Cardew’s personal life, he would become more and more drawn to political activism, eventually establishing himself as a co-founder and member of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) in the late 1970s. This would subsequently lead to him repudiating his own work, including ‘Treatise’.

I wrote a blog post a couple of days after the performance, where I discussed the ‘other’ music notations that have existed, going back thousands of years, particularly in Asia, rather than the conventional music notation that we are used to. It could be argued that the graphic notation of ‘Treatise’ actually harkens back to this pre-conventional music notation period, where the performances of the pieces were generally allowed to be less rigid and more improvisatory than in fixed conventional notation. You can read about them here: goodnightlondon.blogspot.com/2015/04/i-was-recently-invited-to-take-part-in.html

For more on Cornelius Cardew:
britishmusiccollection.org.uk/composer/cornelius-cardew

credits

released November 27, 2020

Composed by Cornelius Cardew.

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Dominic Simpson London, UK

This page compiles just some of the music that London-based Dominic Simpson, a node in London’s left-field music scene, has been involved with under various band-names and aliases. He is currently working on a new album under the moniker Dream Maps.

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