Customer Reviews (2) 
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.
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