Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

“Well, It's a Vertebrate …”: Performer Choice in Cardew's Treatise

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01411890600840578

1547-7304

Virginia Anderson,

Visual Culture and Art Theory

Abstract Treatise (1963–1967) by Cornelius Cardew (1936–1981) is perhaps the largest-scale piece of graphic notation ever written. Cardew created Treatise, influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as a combination of graphic elements that could be read symbolically—as language, a code, or notation. However, Cardew published Treatise with no performance instructions, thereby allowing it to be read as graphic art as well. Treatise has inspired questions on the philosophy and aesthetics of notation, and even to the nature of composition and of performance itself. Solutions for the performance of Treatise have been suggested both before its publication—through excerpts from Cardew's diaries—and after, through post-publication performance accounts. Notes 1Some of the material here appeared in my thesis, British Experimental Music as a Separate Art-Music Culture (Ph.D. thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2004). My gratitude goes to my supervisor, Katharine Ellis, for her advice on this earlier work. Thanks also to the composers, performers, and students who answered my questions as to their Treatise performances, to Marc Dooley of Edition Peters, London, for permission to use the examples from Treatise; also to Colin Green at MDS, London, for permission to use Universal Edition materials; and finally to Deborah Kauffman, editor of this Journal, for her sage guidance. 2Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. David Pears and Brian McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1974). 3Cornelius Cardew, Treatise Handbook (London: Hinrichsen, 1971). 4Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Circles," in Selected Essays, ed. Larzer Ziff (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 2; quoted in Christopher Shultis, Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 10. 5Schultis, 10. 6Cardew, diary entry headed, "November 18 66 Buffalo"; in John Tilbury, "Cornelius Cardew," Contact 26 (1983), 6; bracketed explanation is Tilbury's. 7David Pears, Wittgenstein (London: Fontana Press, 1971), 12. 8Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus. Cardew's version of the first proposition, "The world is everything that is the case," may have come from the first English translation of 1922, or he simply may have remembered it that way. 9Tilbury, "Cardew," 6. 10Cardew, Treatise Handbook, xi. 11"Time-space" refers to a situation in which the relative length of an event as pictured in the notation is proportionate to the time in which it is to be played. 12This was also the first public performance in which a player got lost, when "John Tilbury was two pages behind most of the time" (Cardew, Treatise Handbook, xi). 13Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (New York: Schirmer Books, 1974), 100. Nyman first called this central line ("a life line"?). 14Roger Smalley, "A Beautiful Score," The Musical Side 109/1503 (1968), 462. 16Smalley, "A Beautiful Score," 462. The note in brackets is Smalley's. 15Cardew, New Musical Supplement of the International Times, no. 25, quoted in Smalley, 462; Cardew, Treatise Handbook, i. 17Cornelius Cardew, "Report on Stockhausen's Carré," The Musical Times 102, no. 1424 (1961), 620. 18Cardew, "Report on Stockhausen's Carré," 619. 19Cornelius Cardew, "Stockhausen's Plus-Minus," London Magazine, April 1967, 86–8. 20Cardew, "Plus-Minus," 86. 21Robin Maconie, The Works of Stockhausen (London: Marion Boyars, Ltd., 1976), 177–81. 24Cardew "Plus-Minus," 87. Cardew satirized Plus-Minus in Solo with Accompaniment (1964), in which the soloist plays simple long tones while the accompanist has to build a part using a complicated Stockhausenesque score. 22Maconie, 177–9. 23Maconie says harmonium; Maconie, 181. 26Cardew, "Plus-Minus," 87. 25Cardew, "Plus-Minus," 87. 27Maconie, 181. It is interesting that Stockhausen felt the need to stress the lack of consultation, and that Maconie felt the need to note this. 28Stockhausen, Texte Band III: zur Musik 1963–70 (Köln: DuMont Schauberg, 1971); quoted in Maconie, 181. 29Cardew, "Plus-Minus," 88. 30Gavin Bryars, email message to author, May 15, 2003. Tilbury does not remember using this source. Bryars used a combination of Schubert and the pop song "Eloise" in this concert, which subverted Stockhausen's hoped-for modernist sound. Tilbury was Cardew's collaborator and pianist, and worked with Cardew in the same way as David Tudor did with John Cage. 31Cardew and other British experimentalists (including Nyman) almost consistently use no space ("LaMonte"), whereas Americans, including Young himself, use the space ("La Monte"). I shall keep the British spelling where it occurs in quotations. 32Cardew, "On the Role of the Instruction in the Interpretation of Indeterminate Music," in Treatise Handbook (London: Hinrichsen, 1971), xv. 33Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x. 34 Treatise: An Animated Analysis, http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/picturesofmusic/pages/anim.html; accessed November 3, 2002. The author's name is not given, although several writers are responsible for the content of the entire site. Much of the analysis on this site quotes extensively from Brian Dennis, "Cardew's Treatise (Mainly the Visual Aspects)," Tempo 177 (1991), 10–6, who shows a clear division of elements to be used in symbolic interpretation. It is also associated with the first recorded performance of Treatise in its entirety by a group conducted by Art Lange in Chicago in 1998 (recorded on HatHutRecords [hat(now)ART 2–122, 1999)]. Lange is interviewed in another part of the site. 35Cardew, diary entry, 5 February 1965; in Cardew, Treatise Handbook, vii. 36Cardew, Treatise Handbook, i. 37Cardew, Treatise Handbook, ix. 38Cardew, Treatise Handbook, ix. 39Paul Griffiths, Modern Music: The Avant Garde since 1945 (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981), 140. Experimentalists are also often prone to satirize the avant garde, as in Cardew and Rzewski's, or Bryars and Tilbury's versions of Plus-Minus. Both experimental duos were able to do this by following instructions, while ignoring avant garde performance practice that demands that the performer intuit the composer's intentions. Kagel, on the other hand, ignored the more general imperative that performers work for a good, as well as an accurate interpretation of the score. 40Hobbs, in conversation with the author, May 17, 2003. Hobbs was Cardew's first student at the Royal Academy of Music. 41Cardew, Treatise Handbook, ix. 42Cardew, Treatise Handbook, ix. 43Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x. 44Hobbs, in conversation with author, April 2003. 45Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x. 46This arrangement is as deeply held as the impression from maps that there is an "up" north and "down" south. 47Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x. 48Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x. 49Christopher Hobbs, "AMM: Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe," Perspectives of New Music 21/1 (1982), 34. 50Zoe Sosinka, AMM—A History and Aesthetic (undergraduate dissertation, De Montfort University, UK, 1994), 3. 51Kenneth Ansell, "AMM: The Sound as Music," The Wire 11 (January 1985); as quoted in Sosinka, 3. 52Hobbs, "AMM," 35. 53Eddie Prévost, liner notes to AMM, Laminal (Matchless Recordings, MRCD31, 1996). The term "laminal" comes from Evan Parker's description of AMM sound as "laminar" (Evan Parker, talk at the Actual Music Festival, ICA, August 1980. Quoted in Clive Bell, "History of the LMC," Variant, issue 8 , accessed 25 May 2003). 54Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x. 55Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x–xi. 57Cardew, Treatise Handbook, xi. 56Hobbs, "AMM," 35. 58Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x. 59Cardew, Treatise Handbook, vii. This seems to be an allusion to AMM, as the letters "AMM" are an acronym, the meaning of which is secret. 60Cardew, Treatise Handbook, x. 61Cardew, Treatise Handbook, xi. 62Lewis, "Improvised Music after 1950," 96. Quotations from Carl Dahlhaus, "Was Heisst Improvisation?" in Improvisation und neue Musik: Acht Kongreßrefeate, ed. Reinhold Brinkmann (Mainz: Scott, 1979), 9–10. 65Christopher Ballantine, "Towards an Aesthetic of Experimental Music," The Musical Quarterly 63/2 (1977), 235. 63"Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water onto the stage for the piano to eat and drink. The performer may then feed the piano or leave it to eat by itself. If the former, the piece is over after the piano has been fed. If the latter, it is over after the piano eats or decides not to." 64Lewis notes that Dahlhaus exempts non-Western music, but he finds other major problems when this definition is applied to Afro-American and Euro-American experimental music. 66Victor Schonfield, "Indeterminate Scores [Letter]," The Musical Times 110/1514 (1969), 375. 67"Jede Deutung hängt, mitsamt dem Gedeuteten, in der Luft; sie kann ihm nicht als Stütze dienen. Die Deutungen allein bestimmen die Bedeutung nicht." Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 80–80e. 68Cardew, Treatise Handbook, vii. 69Cardew, Treatise Handbook, xii. 70Elliott Schwartz, personal correspondence to author, May 8, 2003. 72Kevin Holm-Hudson, personal correspondence to author, April 28, 2003. 71Cardew, Treatise Handbook, i. 73Cardew, Treatise Handbook, i. 76Elliot Schwartz, personal correspondence to author, May 4, 2003. 74According to COMA member Stephen Chase, the division was as follows: "pp.1–14 (ensemble), p190 (flute and cello), p16–19 (ensemble), p89 (clarinet and bass clarinet), p168 (guitar), pp42–44 (ensemble) p91 (viola, cello, guitar, piano), pp63–64 (sax), pp84–85 (ensemble), p64 (organ), p150 (ensemble), p183 (piano), pp187–193 (ensemble)"; S. T. Chase, personal correspondence to author, May 1, 2003. 75Chase, personal correspondence. 77Published in Four Works (London: Universal Edition, 1967). 80Cardew, Treatise Handbook, xix. 78John Tilbury, "The Music," Program notes, Cardew Memorial Concert, Queen Elizabeth Hall, May 16, 1982, p. 7. 79Barney Childs, "Some Notes toward a Philosophy of Notation," ASUC Proceedings 1972–73 (1974). 70. 81John White, Letter to Cornelius Cardew, April 23, 1971, published in John White, Machine Letters, accompaniment to the program for a concert of White's Machine for Tuba and Cello, May 17, 1971 at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.