Customer Reviews (2)

Almost Always the Good Disciple
The other reviewer of Tilbury's very good biography of avant-garde composer Cornelius Curlew presents an ode to the composer's ideological purity, rather than a review of the work under examination.Make no mistake: Tilbury, a companion of the late composer, has done a marvelous job.Persons desiring a review of the book itself, in lieu of a paean to Cardew's political purity, should check out Richard Gott's insightful article "Liberation Music," in London Review of Books 31:5, pp. 9-11 (12 March 2009).
Contemporary American composer John Adams provides insight into Cardew's complex psyche in his memoirs, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life.Adams tells of inviting Cardew to lecture in San Francisco during the Viet Nam War.Cardew showed up late for the appointment, after most of the audience had left, angered by the unexplained delay.Instead of attending his own lecture, Cardew sought out the nearest anti-war protest.Later that night, when Adams tried to engage Cardew in conversation, the latter could only spout political, anti-American slogans and refused to engage in normal dialogue.
Adams also talks of Cardew's performance practice in the aleatory music of John Cage:Cardew in fact sought out what he believed to be the most textually correct way of performing that music, and then slavishly adhered to it, rather than exploring the inherent freedom that improvisatory music provided the performers.Before that, Cardew had been the ardent disciple of Karlheinz Stockhausen, before turning on him in his notorious talk "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism."True to form, once Cardew slipped under the spell of Canadian Maoist Hardial Bains, he became the ultra-orthodox, if ultra-extreme, member of the Communist Party of England.
Both Adams and Tilbury (as well as Gott in his LRB review) point out Cardew's deep need for contextual certainty; the man simply could not abide ambiguity or shades of gray in anything.Cardew's was a world of absolutes.In his case, the Maoist brand of Marxist-Leninism was his one certainty; he subjugated his considerable musical talents to a political point of view that has become an irrelevancy in the 21st century.As Gott points out:"Tilbury writes of Cardew's 'unfinished life,' and it is of course possible that he might have dusted himself down and set off in a new direction after the collapse of Communism.Yet having rejected so much of his past, it is difficult to imagine what he might have gone on to do."
I've been a musician all my life.Before reading this book, I'd never heard of Cardew.Once I close its pages, I expect never to hear of him again.It's a shame; because the man must have been talented.But he confused music with his version of political correctness, and as a result seems destined to obscurity.

Well Well Cornelius
lots of richly diverse reflections,heartfelt anomalies ,ancedotal paraphenalia of substance herein; What Tilbury;s work suggests isE.P.Thompson's powerful lifeworlds of the English working people,not only about theory of emancipation, but how, and why people live;something the New Left learned quickly;But also Tilbury's work also embraces (indirectly) Sartre's opus on the bourgeois Flaubert,with fragments of aesthetic objects promuligated, the personal homespunparticles of places,images,abandoned lovers,notational processes of life;although a "life" can be read as an axiom for all human existence This work also suggests those words of Isaac Deutscher,his potent readings on the sweeps of history of Soviet Russia and the consequences; "The Prophet Outcast" was Cardew;(as blasphemous as that sounds to some), Tilbury's painstaking words here are also substantive, situating his own marxist perspective from the committed timbre of his voice,his disgust with the systems that produce poverty and corruption generation after generation;as now the greed-mongers and their bailouts of the world banking systems; far beyond what Cardew may have thought.

Here as well there are gentle words for a fallen comrade,with wonderful vintage photos as the young Cardew(circa 1943) with his two brothers, and the powerful durable image of their mother standing behind them,He received this strength from her. But Tilbury had struggled with this comradship for decades. He once gave up his means of subsistence allowing Cardew to borrow his grand piano for a concert, takened through the front window with a hoist on Arbuthnot Road; The piano was returned a few days later;and their aquaintance holds through then;It dates from circa 1960, engaged as duo-pianists for concerts in London,possibly Cage, Feldman and Cardew, perhaps the elegant "Two Books of Studies". Then taking the Berlin night-train to the Warsaw Autumn Festival,as a small cultural cadre managing the British avant-garde as in a sealed vial;The way the Germans allowed Lenin to get mount the train to Russia.They thought it inconsequential.

Cardew's life was enigmatic; he first embraced the new music avant-garde,studying with Stockhausen; but affirming quite early his ownunique ways/means,taking conceptual pathways that added richness to innovations in the post-war avant-garde; he thought these experimental strains only went so far,at an expense,of communication;that the avant-garde as time progressed seemed to develop only higher levels of abstractions, as Engels said of free thinkers,those who simply prefer to soar higher in the sky than all previous contemplations to date;for music then its agendas its schemes of engaged alienation(a term of Eddie Prevost)an elitist separation against a public sphere,preferring the comforts of art collectors and galleries as Cage;the culprits di in fact become Stockhausen and Cage,and the cadres who supported them;both did 'serve imperialism',as Cardew's seminal book from the Seventies"Stockhausen serves Imperialism" a full chapter given by Tilbury in exposition of it;we all do serve some Master and experimentalism in music was only important up to a point, and Cardew soon responded quite early with relevant alternatives as his monumental "Treatise", a graphic piece in impeccable notation with no instructions to make musicians speak again in dialogue,no cold abstractions, of arbitrarily placing plexiglass sheets over grids for density levels and spatial distributions of tone and timbres, (as Cage's "Fontana Mix")Later the 9-Hour "Great Learning" written for any numbers of performers.As interesting as the avant-garde seem to be Cardew thought it useless for average working people, and it was, innovation exists and functions only within specific contexts,and at a social cost,something all his critics really never understood about Cardew; The West ran an overabundance of surplus of culture with what Ernst Mandel calls, "late capitalism". Tilbury weaves this cultural and social history within Cardew's life

Tilbury also provides fascinating fragments of Cardew's "Lebenswelt";The flat on Agar Road, I recall a photo of Cardew at his writing desk lining a musical score,this was the coldest place in London,said Fredric Rzewski,a place where the outside schrubbery made its way through the large windows.This work builds on countless interviews and reflections with those who knew Cor even tangentially during his various "lives", unfinished, incomplete, with questions,blindspots,brilliances,innovations, andactivist dialogue.As Cardew's coffee cup with a chip in it,made by the Cardew family artisan potters whose work retains a substantive longevity, as Cardew's life itself.His last place of existence on Leyton Park Road,reveals this longevity with its small yet livable rooms where meetings were held numerously with an inspired simple garden,then inside off the two windowed garden doors we find a crowded parlor with marxist newspapers,leftist theoretical books and journals, music manuscript,flowers and a tattered white upright piano.

Cardew lived in Germany(circa 1973) in odd amounts of time,and always found a means for his activism, as the "Bethanien Song", a mass song in the tradition of Eisler,in response to the closing of a health facility in Berlin (Kreuzberg)replacing it with an art gallery,both were needed said friend Erhard Grosskopf, but both could not be maintained,and again Tilbury provides great details on the elaborate lengths the Berlin government went to "freeze" out the impovershied,through lack of doctors and medical centers for the working poor.In the USA this is "red-lining" to isolate neighborhoods to become blighted allowing venture capitalists to escape with their millions.

The bourgeois period circa 1954-1964 is represented and roughly has interest even today with fascinating resonances for the piano, the "February Pieces", and the dedications to friends in the "Three Winter Potatoes".This music was rejected during the period contemplated in fits of left extremism. This music became "orphaned" castigated set outside the door in the cold. Cardew came to regret his apostasy in some respects,where toward the end of his life was beginning to mend fences; and again Tilbury does not flinch in explicatories of contexts of the extremism Cardew took, first with the importation ofa simplified Maoism into London,certainly not as vigorous as Sartre's or Godard's in Paris.

Cardew's activism began in the Scratch Orchestra,(circa 1970)in the context of the rebellions in Europe against the war in Vietnam, but also for changes within education,employment and the avant-garde. He grew indifferent to the world political situation in which culture had found itself, thereby re-channeling his creativity to writing music for political causes, benefits for striking workers, funds for families whose homes were firebombed by Right-Wing extremists. The avant-garde came to look pretentious,and indulgent by immediate comparison.

1,000 odd pages we have here, Tilbury took no shortcuts in his developments of Cardew full life including his arrests and imprisonments;He was also homeless for a time living in a train station in the north of London maintaning the station, keeping it clean for its users;But loved and hated by some nonetheless.
The numerous memorial concerts after his death and yearly recognitions seem to set off a resurgence in his musical work for a time;Concerts and memorials continue throughout the globe performing all his oeuvre was accomplished.
Cardew was killed in a suspicious road accident,December 1981 so it was revealed without much reportage,also any clear evidence has refused to emerge and remains shrouded. Here Tilbury for the first time gives an account on the these suspicions surrounding Cardew's fall in the street with a blow to the head, without socks returning home either from a lesson in Chinese,or a trip to Birmingham. ... Read more

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good collection, Who was Cardew?
Cornelius Cardew emerged from the post-war avant-garde, he was the first to introduce the music of John Cage and Morton Feldman into to the bland conservatism that was the culture of England. He believed in an ethical basis for creating music, and always thought something more was required within the avant-garde besides "shock therapy" of John Cage or the rareified abstractions of Morton Feldman. Naturally the political card was not played until the various rebellions in Europe against the War in Vietnam, and the growing elitism in culture that was fast marginalizing students from jobs and education,today it is immigrants, not even students as the Paris Riots, Clichy Sous-Bois reveal; we see this in greater relief today where globalization has reduced every inch of the globe to a common denominator.

Cardew thought improvisation through graphic notation was sort of awelcome compromise, getting the best of both worlds, complexity, highly refined pieces, interaction of musicians, open form, indeterminate realms a la Cage,and socio-political committment. AMM the improvisation group for which his mounumental TREATISE was written serves as still the best most comprehensive particle of this paradigm. It is a score of 193 pages of musical graphics in impeccable draftsmenship but without a shred of instructions on how it is played.

If you do not know who Cardew was, this is a good selection of old re-writes collection of articles from all over the place, the British journals, marginalized new music magazines that no one cares about any more. Deep probing essays by some of Cardew's close associates and friends are here to mine the depths of his activist ethical perspective in music, Eddie Prevost, John Tilbury, Christian Wolff, Howard Skempton. I don't know if anyone thinks of Cardew anymore since his turn to an extreme formation of Marxism in England sort of turned people off he could have made inroads with, that was part of his orthodoxy of the human spirit, Cardew I think will always be there as a means of measuring where music was suppose to be, what it was suppose to do to make it more accessible without giving in the market surplus value schemes, the avant-garde was suppose to guard against the colonialization of one's lifeworld, that hasn't happened, in fact most composers today want to be colonized in the worst possible way, want to be loved like the death's head moth. Cardew may remind us of where we perhaps made a wrong turn. ... Read more

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art & politics: documenting praxis
This a compelling (& still relevant) grouping of criticism, performance history & discussion of compositional choices. The focus on integrating aesthetic production with (some might say subordinating to) active political commitment to social progress is something of an antedote to the melancholic or hibernating sensibility that seems to have haunted & paralyzed much of the avant-garde over the past quarter century. The writing is clear, empassioned and, like the music Cardew et al argue for, concerned with serving its audience - the working class. The almost economistic Marxism is refreshingly very anti-pomo (e.g. the authors see a very clear correspondence between cultural products and the class positions they reveal). Still, what i find most useful about this book is its very provisional, dialectical and self-critical honesty as we are allowed a glimpse of what it is to be a committed artist engaged in active social change. Don't take my word for it; the entire book is available for free download at ubuweb.

Extremist yet what the musical avant-garde needed
While returning home late on a cold night in December 1981, composer Cornelius Cardew was struck by a hit-n-run driver. The situation surrounding his death is indeed opaque, that he may have been murdered bythe extreme right-wing working in London. Cardew led a dangerous life, asan activist Marxist. He was arrested for his activities in Camberwell andfor a time was homeless,living in a train station in the north of London.The last year of his life he was learning various Asian languages,Pakistani,and Indian to work within those communities against a growingracism,where firebombings of homes was becoming a frequent occurence. Healso had an innate gift for organizing rallies and demonstrations againstthe Right-Wing, and that may have been the cause of his demise. Still hewas loved and admired by countless musicians,artists and activists. Therewere numerous memorial concerts after his death in London,Rome,NewYork,Toyko, Australia and Chicago, as well as specific pieces written forhim in remembrance by Skempton,Curran,Lombardi. This work"Stockhausenserves Imperilaism" was like a cup of hot black coffee for soberingthe musical avant-garde when it was written in the early Seventies and itis a shame it is now out-of-print. There is an Italian translation,although next to impossible to obtain.Although Cardew's demeanor, the tenorof his language was a bit extreme, against the avant-garde he once lovedand became an important integral part of in England,he believed in the pathhe had chosen. And here he gives along with Rod Ely and John Tilbury abrief history of The Scratch Orchestra, an odd mixtures of professional andnon-professional musicians,conceptual artists,composers from all walks oflife. One Scratch credo was"to create music for those who needit". And they frequently did this playing Beethoven Symphonies withwhatever means available, piano,two saxophones,one cello, one trumpet andaccordeon. Morton Feldman once said of Cardew, that any advancements,anyprogressive strains for music in England will only come about because ofCardew's efforts. So you might ask "why does Stockhausen serveimperialism?" and not Cage, nor Berio,nor Boulez. Well they all do,and it was Cardew's function here to make known the growing elitism thatwas becoming part of the avant-garde. To make known the role of the artist.Stockhausen was an consummate example for Cardew's diatribe, a careeristcomposer(Stockhausen) who expolited the market and musical genres freelyobsconding with concepts from Cage,and Cardew and whatever was the currentbuzz as his hippy=like "Stimmung" where six vocalists sit in acircle intoning the names of lost Indian and Asian gods, or his excursionsinto graphic notation holdovers from Cage, and more importantly Cardew, his193 page "Treatise" written in with impeccable craftsmanship of ameans toward a structured improvisation. But Cardew's relavance inretrospect of close to 30 years, is he tried to question what theavant-garde was doing and attempted to create a bridge between theadvancements of culture and aesthetics and a politics that craved freedomunpretenciously. Hebegan to set Irish and Chinese revolutionary songs forthe piano, and made music the central means of his activism. No one to datehas really appraised Cardew's political work in culture from within thiscontext, and no one has seriously dealt with the set of problematics of anengaged musical artist. All see him as an ungifted extremist,as criticsJohn Rockwell, Norman Lebrecht,Adrian Jack,Robert Morgan,or Samuel Lipman.In contrast perhaps the current work on Brecht by Frederic Jameson or thewritings of Paolo Freire are more vigorous beginningsin attempting toidentify the conceptual categories envolved for an engaged politicalartist. But the New Left today has ceased having an affinity for activismas Cardew espoused, he is like an ancient preserve of an old lost time thatfew would care to remember or rethink. The opposite theoretical realm ofthis work would be Derrida's "Spectres of Marx" where activism itseems only exists in the performative realm of thought within the safeconfines of the four corners of the page. ... Read more

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"Any direction modern music will take in England will come about only through Cardew, because of him, by way of him. If the new ideas in music are felt today as a movement in England, it's because he acts as a moral force, a moral centre."

This is Morton Feldman's assessment of Cardew's importance, an assessment that took on prophetic status when Cardew cofounded the Scratch Orchestra in 1969. This orchestra was a culmination of the ideals expressed in Cardew's own music in the 1960s when, working in almost total isolation from the musical establishment, he patiently drew together a large group of composers and performers into experimental music through his own compositional activities and through teaching. This group became the nucleus of the orchestra.

The draft constitution of the Scratch Orchestra opens as follows: "Definition: A Scratch Orchestra is a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (music-making, performance, edification).

"Note: The word music and its derivatives are here not understood to refer exclusively to sound and related phenomena (hearing, etc). What they do refer to is flexible and depends entirely on the members of the Scratch Orchestra.

"The Scratch Orchestra intends to function in the public sphere, and this function will be expressed in the form of—for lack of a better word—concerts."

This lively book on the repertory the orchestra created is as much graphic and visual as it is verbal and about aural events and happenings. This is because scratch composers are often possessed of strong visual imaginations—after all, scratch music itself (as the above "Note" suggests) is meant to be perceived by the eye and indeed by all the senses and not just by the ear (the sensual mix varies from one composition to another). Also, the notation used in preparing scores for actual performance may be graphic, collage, verbal, musical, or whatnot.

The main body of the book depicts a selection of such scores. They are composed of written words, photographs, maps, graphs, diagrams, musical flow charts, conventional musical notation, whimsical drawings, playing cards, crossword puzzles, and various other things. Together, they give the reader some idea of what it is like to put on a scratch music event. ... Read more

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Thanks. This was super
The guy responded at lightning speed to any email I sent. Sent it out the next minute and got it incredibly quick.

It would be great if he had every book I needed.

Scratch Music, What is It? Where can you hear it?
This nifty little book was actually edited by Cornelius Cardew. Cardew was a founding member of the Scratch Orchestra, a motely collection of musicians,non-professional instrumetalists,conceptual artists,writers,sheepfarmers,philosphers,composers,improvisors,and those who fall somewhereusefully between/amongst all of the above. This was a time of the highlibertarian avant-garde where conceptual excesses, performance art,happenings, improvised music and graphic notation was all well within theorder,the excitement of the day. What you will find here are compositions,activities,graphics,idiosyncratic descriptions ofactivities,hearts,spirals,what looks like star maps and actually a classicScratch work "1001 Activities" as well as the Scratch DraftConstitution from May 1969. What is Scratch Music? and who creates it? atextbook definition would be, it is halfway between composing andimprovising, no artistic buttress should be placed between a human beingand art,in other words, and at that time this was an incredibly usefull wayto learn,to educate and to make music. The result lead many artists to findthemselves and their work. And if you talk to any Scratchers,most will saythey got more out than they put in. This was again the necessary credo ofthe day. Those who create Scratch music must affirm between themselves whatshould take place however not a strict narrative, a note-for-note scenariois not necessary, merely a brief sketch will do,verbal or written, muchlike this modest but exciting book. Where might one encounter Scratchmusic? Well around the early Seventies if you happen to be riding theLondon Subway System (The Tube) you might encounter some arrangements ofIrish Songs at The Victoria train station or near the tracks of TheElephant & The Castle Tube stop, Trafalgar Square, or Leeds College oropposite a museum. Of the "1001 Activities" some you might try ifyou haven't already is #285 Groan, or #314 Sing a Lullaby or #451 Sink intooblivion,or #548 Drop a clanger. The Scratch credo didn't emigrateusefully, here in The United States there really was no equivalent exceptthe FLuxus and they had a primary exclusive focus in New York City andnever became political as a left of the Scratch became.Fluxus was morevisually oriented,more toward purified performance art, and music was aby-product of their art. Whereas Scratch always promoted the public spherewith more social perspective.giving concerts, and playing at benefits andat worker meetings or student "duus". Fluxus and otherlike-minded groups in Europe, like those surrounding conceptual artistJoseph Beuys never developed an activist social sense, and theri primaryfield was the more upscale confines of a gallery or some similar artinstitution,even they they may have felt they did. Scratch by contrast isstill alive today although on a reduced scale and energy levels given theaging population of its cadre.Scratch however has made a primary documentto be remembered has recorded the one monolith work written,tailored for it"The Great Learning" by the late Cornelius Cardew. This is aseminal,innovative work of the avant-garde, and is a modest 9 Hourduration,With organ and stones and many human voices and whateverinstruments happen to be around. The text is based on the"Analects" of Confucius, divided into paragraphs, and isavailable(the recording that is) from the British Counsel in London,or theycan point you in the right direction in order to obtain it. ... Read more

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seminal
The Improvisation ensemble AMM began in the early Sixties with rehearsals sometimes in the basement of the The London School of Economics, Eddie Prevost,(percussion) Keith Rowe,(electronics, guitar, radios) Lou Gare,(saxophone) and Cornelius Cardew,who joined later as pianist and cellist, Cardew thought through a kind of "ethics" for music, the work of improvisation was situated in the center of the avant-garde, a non-elitist approach so more people can engage in the music making process;so a score,music graphics was needed; something to contemplate and look at; to survey, materials for focus on the dimensions of an ensemble, here fairly complex in its quintet, quartet structural frame,so we have a score to read, music just like other "Other" musicians and creators, so Cardew began "Treatise", with sketch pages He worked as a draughtsman,so had impeccable grpahic skills, and this helped support himself as it was difficult living as a musician in England,"The Queen's Plot", just as today, some things never change;Cardew did however had some composition students who shared similar lifeworld views as Howard Skempton;and then th situs of The Scratch Orchestra came in the late Sixties; "Treatise" however is one of the center works that brought new substance to the avant-garde,away from the coldly abstract graphic pieces John Cage and Earle Brown had contributed; Cardew thought the highlt refined innovations of the avant-garde was too narrow in conception, Cage, Boulez, Stockhausen, all worked at the "science" of composition where improvisation really had no place in their creativity, even Stockhausen,(who embraced everything genre) any realm of improvisation with his group(Telemusik) that began with the word pieces "From the Seven Last Days" was strictly contolled by him, you rarely find another personalityemerging from the texture in their performative work. Cardew however had more a sociality,then political dimensions to engage in the process of making music.

"Treatise" is not an invitation to do whatever you like, as most think, you need to work at this work with greater levels of thought just as any piece of music or narrative script you engage as an artist.
You first need to select the pages you want to perform, usually four-five is enough for a first reading, or simply on one page. You then can make notes within the score,a xerox copy of course so you are not scribbling on your original. Once you have a concept of how the graphics work, you then can write parts for other musicians who are not so inclined to freely improvise, even gifted improvisors can fall on their face in this work playing simply what they always play. "Treatise" invites you to explore an unknown realm of music,to think past your own performing abilities and lifeworld experiences, you need to think through the work to see a horizon,for example pages 12-16 are fairly minimal in graphic substance, single lines, this can be interpreted)read) as a sustained sound, on the piano, or electric guitar, also can be micro-intervals, out-of-tune, or under the strctures of "just intonation", the result is a "floating" like content of music;Cardew doesn'y give many clues on how the work is performed; I always thought of keeping a "diary" of performances.
the score however contains a two-line music system at the bottom margin indicating that the piece does indeed proceed from Left to Right as usual, the time then can be interpreted as one minute per page, or one second per page, inviting violence and brutality, for how do you the play the complex graphics so fast?, really impratical !, I've found with working with other musicians in Chicago, that four pages, 15 minutes a page works best, it gives you time to explore the "dialogue" with the other muscians you have invited to play with, "Treatise" is a "working-out", an invitation to share ideas, and concpets, music, melodies with others, something the avant-garde lost touch in its days of elitism and now market homogenization. ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Cornelius Cardew, Gilbert et George, Banksy, David Mach, Lynn Chadwick, Mac Adams, Richard Hamilton, Keith Milow, Victor Burgin, Hamish Fulton, Philippe Bradshaw, Cosey Fanni Tutti, David Michael Clarke, Sara Watson, Sebastian Horsley, Barry Flanagan, Geoff Bunn, Keith Tyson, Martin Creed, Jim Lambie. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Cornelius Cardew (* 7 mai 1936, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire - † 13 décembre 1981, Londres) était un musicien et compositeur britannique de musique contemporaine, improvisée et avant-gardiste. Membre du groupe AMM et l'un des fondateurs, avec Howard Skempton et Michael Parsons, de l'ensemble expérimental Scratch Orchestra. Rares sont les musiciens du siècle qui, comme l'anglais Cornelius Cardew, auront essayé de faire cohabiter musique et politique avec autant d'exigence, d'intensité et d'inventivité. Compositeur, performeur, graphiste professionnel et militant marxiste-leniniste très engagé, il incarne à la fois les paradoxes et la formidable ébullition intellectuelle de son époque. Depuis sa disparition en 1981, son œuvre n'a cessé de prendre de l'importance aux yeux des nouvelles générations de compositeurs. Né en 1936 dans une famille d'artistes, Cardew débute sa carrière musicale comme choriste. Admis à la Royal Academy of Music de Londres, il y étudie le piano, le violoncelle et la composition et devient un musicien remarquablement complet. En 1958, il se voit attribuer une bourse qui lui permet d'être l'assistant de Karlheinz Stockhausen au Studio for Electronic Music de Cologne. Stockhausen est impressionné par les talents variés de Cardew, qui peut aussi bien interpréter de complexes partitions pour piano qu'improviser très librement sur n'importe quel inst...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Chapters: J. B. S. Haldane, Kim Philby, Jessica Mitford, C. L. R. James, Cambridge Five, Cornelius Cardew, Alexei Sayle, David Aaronovitch, Beatrix Campbell, Christopher Hill, Dona Torr, Ken Gill, Mark Anthony Bracegirdle, Sid French, Arthur Wynn, Esmond Romilly, Bernard Coard, John Cairncross, Andrew Murray, Malcolm Caldwell, Harpal Brar, Claudia Jones, Doreen Young Wickremasinghe, Duncan Hallas, John Saville, Gerry Gable, William Frank Thompson, David Widgery, James Klugmann, Vic Allen, Mike Hicks, Philip Spratt, A. L. Morton, John Peet, Rodney Hilton, Reg Birch, Anita Halpin, David Guest, Kate Hudson, Andy Brooks, Alister Watson, Johann Eccarius, Hugh Faulkner. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 199. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Harold Adrian Russell Philby, who was commonly known as Kim Philby (1 January 1912 11 May 1988) was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union. A communist, he served as an NKVD and KGB operative. In 1963, Philby was revealed as a member of the spy ring now known as the Cambridge Five, along with Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing classified information to the Soviet Union. His activities were moderated only by Stalin's concern that he might be a double agent. Philby was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from 1946 to 1965. Born in Ambala, Punjab, British India, Philby was the son of St. John Philby, a British Army officer, diplomat, explorer, author, and Orientalist who converted to Islam and was advisor to King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia. He was nicknamed after the protagonist in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim about a young Irish Indian boy who spies for the British in Ind...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=17012 ... Read more

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Der Erwerb des Buches enthält gleichzeitig die kostenlose Mitgliedschaft im Buchklub des Verlags zum Ausprobieren - dort können Sie von über einer Million Bücher ohne weitere Kosten auswählen. Das Buch besteht aus Wikipedia-Artikeln: Elton John, Andy Summers, Van Morrison, Chris Rea, Oliver Wallace, Lawrence Casserley, Cornelius Cardew, Karl Jenkins, James Ford, Kenneth J. Alford, Harry Gregson-Williams, Joseph Horovitz, Mischa Spoliansky, William Mathias, Adrian Cruft, Hans May, Jolyon Brettingham Smith, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Guy Chambers, George Fenton, Richard Barrett, Julius Benedict, Anne Dudley, Matthew Taylor, Richard Ryan Graves, Vivienne Olive, Ethel Leginska, Alan Wilder, Huw Warren, Tony Coe, Adrian Sherwood, Reginald Foresythe, Donald Swann, John Thomas, Tristram Cary, Daniel Jones, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, Ronald Binge, Giles Swayne, Nicholas Maw, Allan Cunningham, Ifor James, Mike Pratt, Gary Marx, George Benjamin, Percy Young, Rupert Gregson-Williams, David Julyan, Hugh Allen, Tony Britten, Thomas Bidgood, Haydn Keeton, Barry Gray, Philip Rosseter,. Online finden Sie die kostenlose Aktualisierung der Bücher. Nicht dargestellt. Auszug: Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE (* 25. März 1947 in Pinner (London), Middlesex; geboren als Reginald Kenneth Dwight) ist ein britischer Sänger, Komponist und Pianist. Mit über 570 Millionen verkauften Alben und 320 Mio Singles zählt er seit den frühen 1970er Jahren zu den erfolgreichsten Musikern in der Geschichte der Popmusik. Seine Kompositionen intoniert er, sich selbst auf dem Klavier begleitend, mit Blues-Falsett. Sein Repertoire reicht von Balladen über Rock- und Rock-'n'-Roll-Titel bis hin zu gospelartigen Blues- und Boogie-Nummern. Nach der frühen Trennung seiner Eltern, Stanley und Sheila Dwight, wuchs Reginald Kenneth Dwight vor allem bei seiner Großmutter Ivy auf. Zu seinem Vater hatte er keine gute Beziehung; das von Desinteresse am Sohn geprägte Verhältnis verarbeitete ...http://booksllc.net/?l=de&id=75216 ... Read more

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Chapters: Catherine Parr, Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Cornelius Cardew, Jack O'newbury. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 31. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Catherine Parr (c. 1512 5 September 1548) was the last of the six wives of Henry VIII of England. During her third marriage, she was queen consort of England and Ireland. She was the most-married English queen, as she had four husbands. Catherine Parr was born at Kendal Castle in Westmorland, North West England, where her ancestors had resided since the fourteenth century. She was the eldest child of Sir Thomas Parr, of Horton House, Northamptonshire, descendant of King Edward III, and the former Maud Green (6 April 1495 20 August 1529), daughter of Sir Thomas Green, of Greens Norton, Northamptonshire. She had a younger brother, William, later 1st Marquess of Northampton, and a sister, Anne, later Countess of Pembroke. Sir Thomas was Sheriff of Northamptonshire, Master of the Wards and Comptroller to King Henry VIII. Her mother, Lady Parr, was an attendant of Catherine of Aragon. At the age of seventeen in 1529, she became the wife of Edward Borough. For many years it has been argued that she married the elderly Edward Borough, 2nd Baron Borough of Gainsborough who died in 1529. However, it is generally agreed by Catherine's recent biographers that she married the 2nd Baron's grandson, who shared his first name. The younger Edward Borough was in his twenties and may have been in poor health. He served as a feoffee for Thomas Kiddell and as a justice of the peace. His father, Sir Thomas Borough, Anne Boleyn's chamberlain, also secured a joint patent in survivorship with his son for the office of steward of the manor of the soke of Kirton-in-Lindsey. The younger Edward Borough died in the spring of 1533. In the ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=47406 ... Read more

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Der Erwerb des Buches enthält gleichzeitig die kostenlose Mitgliedschaft im Buchklub des Verlags zum Ausprobieren - dort können Sie von über einer Million Bücher ohne weitere Kosten auswählen. Das Buch besteht aus Wikipedia-Artikeln: Ernst Pauer, Cornelius Cardew, Norma Winstone, William Alwyn, Oren Marshall, Michael Garrick, Alexander Mackenzie, Norbert Brainin, Jeff Clyne, Martin Speake, Gervase de Peyer, John Blackwood McEwen, William Henry Bell, Edward Dannreuther, Károly Binder,. Online finden Sie die kostenlose Aktualisierung der Bücher. Nicht dargestellt. Auszug: Ernst Pauer (* 21. Dezember 1826 in Wien; † 5. Mai 1905 in Jugenheim) war ein österreichischer Pianist, Komponist, Musikpädagoge und Musiktheoretiker. Pauers musikalische Wurzeln führen zur Familie Streicher, seine Mutter war eine geborene Streicher, er war ein Enkel von Andreas Streicher. Sein Vater war der lutherische Superintendent von Wien gleichen Namens, Ernst Pauer. Von 1839 bis 1844 studierte er in Wien Komposition bei Simon Sechter und Klavier bei Mozarts Sohn Franz Xaver Wolfgang. Weitere Studien erfolgten ab 1845 bei Franz Lachner in München. 1847 bewarb er sich auf Empfehlung Lachners als Nachfolger von Heinrich Esser als Dirigent der Liedertafel in Mainz und wurde ausgewählt. In Mainz schrieb er im Auftrag von Schott & Söhne zwei Opern, Don Riego (1849) und Die rothe Maske (1850). Beide Opern wurden in Mainz und Mannheim aufgeführt. Pauer komponierte auch Chormusik, Overtüren und Zwischenspiele für die Mainzer Bühne. Im April 1851 trat er von seinem Mainzer Amt zurück und ließ sich in London nieder. Von Anfang an wurde Pauers Klavierspiel in London aufs Höchste bewundert. Er gab dort eine Reihe von Konzerten, in denen er die Entwicklung des Klaviers von 1600 bis in die Moderne darstellte. Von 1859 bis 1864 lehrte er an der Royal Academy of Music. Er war besonders um die historische Aufführungspraxis bemüht. 1876 wurde er zum Vorstand der Klavierkl...http://booksllc.net/?l=de&id=4367015 ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on June 1, 2010. The length of the article is 1585 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981): A Life Unfinished.(Cornelius Cardew: A Reader)(Book review)
Author: Tom Bickley
Publication: Notes (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2010
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 66Issue: 4Page: 766(3)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Elisabeth Lutyens, Malcolm Arnold, Richard Rodney Bennett, Kenneth Leighton, Cornelius Cardew, Elizabeth Maconchy, Michael Nyman, Brian Ferneyhough, Herbert Howells, Natasha Barrett, Alun Hoddinott, Howard Ferguson, Patrick Larley, Jonty Harrison, George Benjamin, Gavin Bryars, Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle, John Mccabe, Oliver Knussen, John Tavener, Arthur Oldham, James Macmillan, Jonathan Harvey, Adrian Moore, Philip Jeck, Philip Wilby, William Lloyd Webber, Julian Anderson. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Elisabeth Lutyens était une compositrice britannique, née Agnes Elisabeth Lutyens à Londres (Angleterre) le 9 juillet 1906, décédée à Londres le 14 avril 1983. Fille de l'architecte Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), elle étudie la musique en 1922 à l'École normale de musique de Paris, puis en Angleterre à partir de 1923, à titre privé avec le compositeur John Foulds et, de 1926 à 1930, au Royal College of Music de Londres (la composition et l'orgue avec Harold Darke et l'alto). Au début de sa carrière, elle s'oriente vers la musique sérielle prônée par la seconde école de Vienne, sans toutefois en devenir, de son propre aveu, une adepte "pure et dure". Elle aura en outre des activités de pédagogue et enseignera la musique en privé (parmi ses élèves, citons Malcolm Williamson). Le vaste catalogue de son œuvre comprend des compositions dans des domaines variés : pièces pour instrument seul (piano, orgue, guitare, violon, alto, etc), musique de chambre (dont treize quatuors à cordes), œuvres pour orchestre (pièces pour orchestre de chambre - notamment plusieurs "concertos de chambre" -, un concerto pour alto...), œuvres pour voix soliste(s) et/ou chorales, musiques diverses pour la scène (ballets...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Chapters: Gustav Holst, Brian Jones, Greenbelt Festival, Joe Meek, Cornelius Cardew, Pigbag, Jaz Coleman, Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Herbert Howells, Edward Ii, Würzel, Old Swan Band, Robb Huxley, Cheltenham Music Festival, Nilon Bombers. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 105. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones (28 February 1942 3 July 1969) known as Brian Jones was an English musician and founding member of The Rolling Stones. Jones was a gifted multi-instrumentalist, and known for the use of non-traditional instruments such as the sitar and marimba and to experiment with the slide guitar in the work of The Rolling Stones. Jones is also remembered for cultivating his image with flamboyant attire and a lifestyle that included recreational drug use during the dawn of a new youth culture that centered around "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll." Jones was born in the Park Nursing Home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, on 28 February 1942. An attack of croup at the age of four left him with asthma, which lasted for the rest of his life. His middle-class parents, Lewis Blount Jones and Louisa Beatrice Jones (née Simmonds) were of Welsh descent. Brian had two sisters: Pamela, who was born on 3 October 1943 and who died on 14 October 1945 of leukemia; and Barbara, born in 1946. Both Jones's parents were interested in music his mother Louisa was a pianist who taught lessons, and in addition to his job as an aeronautical engineer, Lewis Jones played piano and organ and led the choir at the local church. Jones eventually took up the clarinet, becoming first clarinet in his school orchestra at 14. In 1957 Jones first heard Cannonball Adderley's music, which inspired his interest in jazz. Jones persuaded his parents to buy him a saxophone, and two years later his parents gave him...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=81456 ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (RCPB-ML) is a British communist political party. It was originally named the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist), until it was reorganised after rejecting Maoism. The party's thinking is based on the politics of Hardial Bains, who died in 1997. Born in India, Bains travelled the world founding anti-revisionist communist parties.Like other Bains-inspired parties, the then CPE(ML) took the Chinese side in the Sino-Soviet split, thus being endorsed by Albania, then allied with Maoist China, and opposing both the capitalist West and the Soviet bloc. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

marvelous Cardew piano
Hinrichsen Edition No.771;
these two works are worth a flatter chosen to be published together.
"The February Pieces",reveals Cardew's unique gifts as a 'piano composer', a skilled timbralist,an organizer, with a sensitivity to modern timbres.
The pieces are sectioned,(conceived) into four(s), and can be played either working one consecutively after the other,sort of the "block-style"(less interesting)than the "indeterminate" where you may jump around "two,three or four systems may be combined", as noted in the score.
The piano writing is quite threadbare,elegant,unassuming, pastoral as can be for the modern language, with high levels of ornamentations,fistfulls of tones, and black dotes (pitches) without stems, deployed as chords,or singly. Cardew managed to capture a kind of Webern-esque ugly-beauty;yet somewhat more lyrical; yet adhering to an terse violent,brutal pointillisms,yet not extreme by any means as the gratuitous "irrationalisms" in the young Boulez.
Cardew didn't believe in "alienation schemes",(a term by Eddie Prevost) and encouraged the avant-garde should to do something beyond itself, to transcend its existence,often with the post-war existential angst portrayed-purveying various nebulous levels of abstractions, as the "haute" avant-garde of Cage.
Theodor Adorno had similar misgiving questions on the post-war avant-garde, that it had magnetized its conceptions for the sake of novelty; as graphic notation. Yes Adorno was blind to much of the unique overriding energetic spirit of the British avant-garde as represented by Cardew.This temporalizations of musical graphics had developed quite nicely, still with meaning and substance held in ambience and seemed to get compromised at times.

Here in Cardew there are performative freedoms allowed, as no metronome markings are given, the proportional notation seems to function by excerpts, the music structured by single lines on the page, each "piece" retaining its own timbral distinctiveness of register, of gesture, of texture,of clarity, or opacity,like the mildclammy coldnesses,damp England in February months.
There in each line(or fragment of it) seems to represents one complete idea. Traditional musical symbols are deployed yet they are concocted, "messed-with" elegantly,and never wholly determined. Transcribed like a lapidarian,the grpahics are gorgeous to see, you can gaze for quite some time.
Musical pulse is indicated for smaller rhythmic values as "as fast as possible",then all other rhythmic indices of symbols representing treal time then must rotate around a pulse established from the smallest temporal unit"afap".

"The Octet for Jasper Johns" is a marvelous work,wonderful to hear as a chamber work. Here it is deployed by one single page of 60 graphic items,"each sign is a musical event" says Cardew deployed in "stamp-like" graphic simplicity;although large enough for the naked eye;

Cardew utilized Johns's penchant for extranneous/multifarious signs,symbols embedded, thrown-in the mix in(assemblage) format in the welter(textures) of the process, for Johns himself a vigorous purveyor of many techniques for making graphic pieces.
Art for both creators revolved around a distinct process,a temporalization where materials are deployed/handled distinctively,uniquely for each particular work;Cardew's connection to Johns is with the graphic numerical symbols,a numer represents time to be passed, to be shaped and manipualted.In fact Johns has a non-canvas work where he wrote the numbers "1 thru 10" juxtaposed on top of each other, therby distorting the clarity of what you see, making the viewerdecipher the numbers. Similarly Cardew requests the prospective performer to "look within", "look inside" yourself as Marcus Aurelius,once prompted in his more philosophical writings.

But here this is a piece of music,so for Cardew the numbers serve as events,materials to be manipulated, played with a mute, or banged on a drummed,or swirled on top of a tympnai; a number for example may be embedded in a treble or bass staff clef with one single tone, with the number "7", or "4" neatly juxtaposed on yop of it, or graphically,like an amoeba, wrapping a curl around the music note. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

shortage of virtuoso pieces
the late Sixties,(circa London,Rome) the avant-garde had a crisis of spirit,and lacked new virtuosic pieces for the piano,so here Cardew at the request of pianist John Tilbury, wrote a realization of a few pages from Cardew's own monumental graphic work "Treatise".

"Volo Solo" is the result where the performativediscourse is basically repeated notes,tones,full chordal diapasion items at times; other, single threadbare isolated tones in the upper registers;all however encompassing a free atonality prevalent in Cardew's early period.There is a centripetal energy at work as well, as the repetition foments, builds in volume,with elegant linear lines,arrays;thirds and scalular materials all to eventually disapate. This period almost sticktly represented by piano works,we find this same creative discourse in the brilliant "February Pieces", and "Three Winter Potatoes".

In "Volo Solo"you can utilize it much the way Bach did for certain pieces, as generic material(s) for further reading/realizations. It is possible to "electronify" the piano,amplify it,and distort whatever it plays, placing contacts microphones on the piano's underside, a separate realization then can occur utilizing the same pages from "Treatise"as the pianist only read as another part of this electronic technician/accompaniment. The results can be unknown where you really cannnot decipher where one contrapuntal line leads/ends and the other intercepts or smears,or fragments the music being played, what gets distorted, or allowed freedom to resonate;sometimes is wholly "unknown" for each part exists(can exists) separately, independently)this all can be quite fascinating and creative. Cardew had encouraged a kind of 'collective' music making later developed full-tilt with Scratch Orchestra events.

Cardew's early music has a kind of threadbare clarity,beautiful in the traditional sense'He always thought the avant-garde should be more social, gregarious,"collective in spirit".So to it,as "Volo Solo" exhibits;the way he voices chords,no matter how large,or content with single unadorned melodic arrays;andpredominantly lyrical in the crevices although adhering to a modernity within the piano's language of writing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

libertarian transmogrified into What? for now Yehtz-Zeit
the late Cornelius Cardew knew how to excite masses of people, how to organize them,n' talk to them, he began by introducing the post-war avant-garde into the bland conservatism of British culture, something that Thatcher and Blair further exploited and intensified,with privatizations of public wealth and properties,eradicating the advances of working people, for the ruling elites of Westminster.
Cardew was one of the founders of the Scratch Orchestra, a collection of artists,musicians, serious, jazz, improvisors,giggers from all walks n'lifeworlds, exhibiting multifarious sensibilties, but all deeply devoted to a collective product, working within the human frame most of the time heartfelt and conscious of class,history and place, something we rarely see today, with the cuthroat improvisor tribes that think they control the market of what they do, due to ignorance,they bounce from expression to genre changing whenever convenient mindlessly; Cardew however learned well from working with people,encouraging them to be creative; he was a good listener;and first endorsed the conceptual freedoms of John Cage, Cardew was the first to introduce his music again within British culture that always had a pathological stigma against modernity in any guise or shape. This was the early Sixties,and Cardew thought the USA culture, was quite progressive, even with Elvis and Kennedy and a means for furthering thought within culture, of course the Beat poets appealed to him with more a radical subversive frame;some ten years later "The Great Learning"was written, it functions on multifarious levels,a piece of performance art, conceptual music, in graphic notation for amateurs and professionals simultaneously,written to unite people to work together; ones devoted toward harboring a collective expression of voices and sensibilities, the shame here is that this recording is only part of the entire 9 Hours of the "Great Learning". The piece is without reservation a seminal work of the post-war avant-garde,one that had a social conscious; it responded to the need to work together toward a collective organization,without sacrificing the aesthetic perceptions of pleasures, singable melodies,with organ-like ustains timbres, homemade percussion as stones,all we might see profoundly missing today with concepts of "multitude" discussed within the radical frames of politics,The Scratch Orchestra wanted an art not simply to tiltillate museum and art collectors,( something the Cage School in retrospect had run toward;artistic elitism was an issue that was fast becoming a norm also in now institutionalized forms as exhibited by Stockhausen, and Boulez.Both had it seemed "stopped barking like a dog outside" and was allowed insidethe establishment to sell aesthetic wares to the ruling cultural elites of Europa, and then USA. Cardew was never so fortunate, then adopting his own formation of extreme Leftism as a philosophy of life and a central focus for art.The original texts was from the "Analects" of Confucious, later changed to Mao, and returned to its original words; You will not find many recording of this work available, and since Cardew's death in December, 1981, there was some funds made available to record this work in its entirety, the British Council sponsored a performance in London inthe Eighties of collected old Scratch Orchestra performers who after Cardew's death saw another means of collectivity. "The Great Learning" has simply beautiful parts, of untrained voices, who try their best to deliver the text, with percussion moments, and organ. . . the work slowly works on you. . .it needs patience of contemplation and may remind you of a conscious Zen beauty . . . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

schooltime graphics
this is a graphic piece,with the ubiquitous cover you see still today on composition/writing booklets,tablets,folders,notbooks for grade school, with the typical black/white texture with a center held in a box for the subject.Here however Cardew's booklet is very small 8 (vertical)inch by 3-4 inch; the object is to transform the graphics into music,solo or chamber. Cardew toke great orientation from John Cage, and in many ways brought a new,more playful content to graphic notation, in one respect you could say he was more "lyrical","playful" in his graphics than the cold calculations charts, tables, plexiglass, configurations of Feldman,Brown,Wolff and Cage.In fact part of Cardew's genius was to develop graphic notation as his monumental "Treatise" attests. Yet he never really went beyond that work,how could anyone. "Treatise" is an exhaustive discourse. He worked as a graphic designer up till the end of his life really,doing plans for objects places, demographics,so these skills were not lost on his music.

"Schooltime Compositions" was written for the Scratch Orchestra to havemarerials in an impromptu way of making music anyplace, anytime, by whatever means was at hand, and this work, fits neatly into a breast pocket, or clarinet case. ... Read more