''Treatise'' is a
musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...
by
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew (7 May 193613 December 1981) was an English experimental music composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental music, ...
(1936–81).
Summary
Written between 1963 and 1967, ''Treatise'' is a
graphic
Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, ...
musical score comprising 193 pages of lines, symbols, and various geometric or abstract shapes that largely eschew conventional
musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...
. Implicit in the title is a reference to the philosophy of
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...
, which was of particular inspiration to Cardew in composing the work.
The score is not accompanied by any explicit instructions to the
performer
The performing arts are The arts, arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art object ...
s in how to perform the work, or what sound-producing means are to be used. Although the bottom of each page has two five-line musical staves, this is apparently not meant to suggest piano or other keyboard instrument(s), only to indicate that the graphic elements are musical and not purely artistic in character.
Although the score allows for absolute interpretive freedom (no one interpretation will sound like another), the work is not normally played spontaneously, as Cardew had previously suggested that performers devise in advance their own rules and methods for interpreting and performing the work. There are, however, almost infinite possibilities for the interpretation 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.
The British composer
Julian Anderson
Julian Anderson (born 6 April 1967) is a British composer and teacher of composition.
Biography
Anderson was born in London. He studied at Westminster School, then with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music, with Alexander Goehr at Cambri ...
describes ''Treatise'' as "very suggestive musically...what's wrong with playing, say 10 pages of ''Treatise'' only using the
white notes
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. ...
, or only using maybe the
Dorian mode." The few available recordings, or more accurately, recordings of realisations of the score, all adopt a relative slow tempo and a sonic world, which "sounds like
AMM".
Subsequently Cardew embraced
Maoism
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Chi ...
and wholeheartedly repudiated this and other works of his
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
period.
A savage indictment of ''Treatise'' may be seen in a speech delivered by Cardew at the ‘International Symposium on the Problematic of Today’s Musical Notation’ held in Rome in October 1972, as transcribed in his highly polemical book ''
Stockhausen Serves Imperialism'' (1974).
Curiously, Cardew did not withdraw ''Treatise'' from publication, despite his repudiation.
In popular culture
Sonic Youth play a 3:29 minute excerpt of page 183 of ''Treatise'' on their album ''
SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century'' (1999).
References
External links
An online animated analysis of ''Treatise'' at the Block Museum Website
Online recordings of ''Treatise'' by the Seattle Improv Meeting{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060619193347/http://www.spiralcage.com/improvMeeting/ , date=2006-06-19
A draft version of Virginia Anderson, '"Well, It's a Vertebrate" Performer Choice in Cardew's ''Treatise.Animated electronic realization of "Treatise" by Shawn Feeney
Compositions by Cornelius Cardew
1967 compositions