Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. He studied piano, cello and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, and from 1958 to 1960 worked as assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne. He championed John Cage and Morton Feldman, and joined the improvising group AMM in 1966. His graphic score Treatise (1963-67) runs to 193 pages, and he also wrote The Great Learning. In 1968 he co-founded the Scratch Orchestra with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons. In the 1970s he rejected the avant-garde and joined a Marxist-Leninist party.
Scratch Music (book)
Very rare introduction to Scrath Music edited by Cardew including "scores" by the composer himself, Lou Gare, David Jackman, Christopher Hobbs, Howard Skempton, Tom Phillips and many other British musicians and artists, published by Latimer in 1972.
Musicworks 80 - Looking Back (CD+magazine)
One of the best magazines of experimental music / sound art, founded by John Oswald and published since 1978. Includes feaurures, essays, interviews, reviews, etc., and comes with a CD with (often exclusive) music/sound in relation to the contents of the magazine. In this issue: Scratch Orchestra, sound poetry and sound art, etc.
The Great Learning
All seven Paragraphs of Cardew's The Great Learning by the Scratch Orchestra Strasbourg under Didier Aschour, an orchestra born from an open call and two years of shared practice: 4CD box with a 116-page booklet.
Exotica, The Great Learning, Cybernetics III / Contrappunto Dialettico Alla Mente
Earlier this year, Deutsche Grammophon announced and delivered one of the most exciting initiatives in recent memory: a brand-new audiophile vinyl reissue series dedicated to crucial avant-garde and experimental works from its own extensive catalog. Beginning with Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien No.1 / Société II (1970), Mauricio Kagel's Acustica (1972), and Tōru Takemitsu's Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden (1980), these deluxe limited editions completely blew us away, returning…
The Great Learning
Limited and numbered edition, featuring original artwork and a newly designed, beautifully crafted collector’s sleeve with new liner notes by Bradford Bailey, and pressed on 180g vinyl. One of the most quietly radical entries in Deutsche Grammophon's legendary Avantgarde series - the run of albums issued between 1968 and 1971 that did more than almost any other label project to document the experimental music of its moment - returns to vinyl. Recorded in London in 1971, the Scratch Orchestra's r…
Ellsworth Snyder Plays New Piano Music (LP)
1976 LP on Advance Recordings with contemporaru compositions for piano, including two paragraphs from Cardew's Treatise, spanning from 1957 to 1972, performed by Ellsworth Snyder.
Four Principles On Ireland And Other Pieces (LP)
Compositions based on the revolutionary songs of different countries performed on the piano by the composer himself, released on Cramps' unparallelled "Nova Musicha" experimental music series in 1974.
Laminal (3CD)
Superb 1996 triple-CD set on Matchless Recordings presenting 3 exceptional full live recordings spanning 25 years (1969-1994). AMM: Cornelius Cardew, Christopher Hobbs, Lou Gare, Keith Rowe, Eddie Prevost and John Tilbury in different combinations.
Goodbye 20th Century
25th Anniversary Edition. Goodbye 20th Century is a double album of covers of Avant-garde recordings by Sonic Youth and collaborators. SYR4 features works by avant-garde classical composers such as John Cage, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Christian Wolff played by Sonic Youth along with several collaborators from the modern avant-garde music scene, such as Christian Marclay, William Winant, Wharton Tiers, Takehisa Kosugi and others. The album received mixed reviews, but most critics praised the gro…
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Connections (1970-1974)
Formed in Cambridge in 1969 by Tim Souster and Roger Smalley, Intermodulation started out as a 4 piece group with the addition of Robin Thompson and Andrew Powell (who soon moved on to other Cambridge projects, including a pre Chris Cutler Henry Cow). Powell was replaced by Peter Britton, and this incarnation of the group remained for the duration of their existence.
Having releasing a box set of works by Gentle Fire it felt necessary to do the same with Intermodulation and thus complete the ot…
Stockhausen es Funcional al Imperialismo
Spanishedition. Perfect bound. 190 pages. Cornelius Cardew's Stockhausen serves imperailism, originally published in 1974 is translated to spanish for the fist time. Seminal text for those who are interested in the intersection between experimental music and politics during the 70's.
The Avantgarde Series
The legendary DG Avantgarde vinyl series (1968-1971) is turning 55! In order to celebrate this occasion, the series is now released on 21 CDs for the first time. The Avantgarde series serves as a historical document for a time of radical change in musical thinking and the breaking of artistic boundaries. The question "What is music?" confronted many of the composers and musicians involved in the series, and the anti-authoritarian spirit of the 1960s and 1970s was a palpable influence. Deutsche G…
The Great Learning
** CD housed in a 4-panel digipak. Comes with 12-page booklet ** Tone Glow Records is proud to present a special archival recording of Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 7 from Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning. Conducted and formed by American composer Dean Rosenthal, the Montréal Scratch Orchestra featured 14 or so like-minded experimental music enthusiasts who performed the pieces at Redpath Hall on the McGill University campus in 1996. This release arrives on Cardew's 85th birthday and follows Ro…
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Tacet #04: The Sounds of Utopia
**2020 stock. 560 pages!** The sound arts and experimental music annual review's 4th issue, on the theme of utopias. Utopia belongs to those concepts that haunt both the history of ideas and the history of artistic practice. In this fourth issue,Tacetsets off to listen to the sounds of utopia emerging from sound art and experimental music, but also from sound design and our everyday use of sound technology. Mixing science-fiction short stories, theoretical analysis and artists' writings, this i…
Stockhausen Serves Imperialism
A notorious, influential and radical critique of the avant-garde music of Stockhausen and Cage, by maverick composer Cornelius Cardew
Four Principles On Ireland And Other Pieces (1974)
Having worked closely with Karlheinz Stockhausen during the late 1950s, the Irish-born Cornelius Cardew became a major figure on the European avant-garde music scene over the following decade. However, by the early 1970s Cardew had become deeply involved in the international communist movement which created a growing rift between himself and his colleagues (particularly after his book Stockhausen Serves Imperialism was published in 1974). As Cardew’s politics changed, so did his mu…
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We Sing For The Future & Thamann Variations
Recorded in 2002 by American contemporary composer and pianist, Frederic Rzewski, We Sing For The Future & Thälmann Variations are two compositions from English composer Cornelius Cardew’s Marxist-influenced 'People’s Liberation Music' period. Rzewski came to prominence in the mid-sixties in Rome as a founding member of the MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva) improvisation group (along with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum), which shared a vision with groups like Cornelius Ca…
Cardew works 1960-70
2024 stock. Cornelius Cardew's music of the Sixties is arguably from his most creative and experimental period as a composer, beginning with Autumn 60 and ending with the last paragraphs of The Great Learning in 1970. This decade can be divided into two parts, where the first half focuses on indeterminate music and the latter sees a growing emphasis on improvisation. Treatise functions as a bridge between these two periods, as it contains elements of both. This recording is a document of this du…
Treatise
Rare original edition, a few back in stock. ** 300 copies ** Cornelius Cardew's opus magnus Treatise is a 193 page graphic score written between 1963 and 1967 while he was performing with the improvisation group AMM. The score's graphic notation, with its intricately devised graphic lines, shapes and symbols was intended to question the limits of compositional practice. Decisions concerning pitch, timbre and duration, along with the choice of instruments and the number of performers, are left en…
Consciously
This compilation is a sort of 1970's alternative social history in song. An eclectic mixture of previously unreleased songs, with widely differing styles, performed by a diverse grouping of musicians. This all combines into a unique experience. Musicians: Cornelius Cardew; Pete Devenport, Vicky Silva, Laurie Baker, Hugh Shrapenl, Chris Thompson, Keith Rowe, John Marcangelo, Evan Parker, Pip Pyle, Dave Smith, Hamilton DeGale, John Tilbury, Alec Hill, Huw Warren, Nick Connors, Geoff Pearce, Robert…
We Only Want The Earth
2024 restock. Long out of print, subtitled "the Peoples' Liberation Music Tapes & other Songs", the tracks from this CD come from a rare collection of Cornelius Cardew's live recordings and studio sessions made between 1973-78. Plans to issue them on vinyl LP in the 70s never came to fruition (although small numbers of cassettes circulated). The original songs and arrangements are of the 70s and so reflect that time. Some people find it difficult to accept that revolutionary words can be set to …
Treatise (Prague Version, 1967)
Cornelius Cardew's graphic score Treatise in the only performance of its 2-hour version, recorded live in Prague on 15 October 1967 by the QUaX Ensemble directed by Petr Kotik, remastered from the original analog tape.
The Great Learning / Two Poems
Cornelius Cardew's "The Great Learning," is a great example of his struggles to reconcile his innate musical aesthetics and his intellectual belief that the "avant-garde" was inherently elitist. Written for a mix of musicians & non-musicians, it is a grand improvisatory work that nicely exploits the talents of whomever is performing it. Two of the seven "Paragraph's" are performed here by The Scratch Orchestra, who give the expected first rate performance. Bedford is known to many in the rock w…
The great learning
Long out of print, very rare nowadays - The Great Learning was one of British composer Cornelius Cardew's most important works, a series of seven "paragraphs" with text from the writings of Confucius and scored for generally large numbers of both trained and untrained performers. The original productions of this piece, in fact, served as the genesis of the legendary pro-amateur Scratch Orchestra. This 2000 release includes three of the paragraphs, two from the 1971 Deutsche Grammophon album that…
Silver Pyramid
Eddie Prévost's text piece Silver Pyramid performed by the Music Now Ensemble directed by Keith Rowe, with Cornelius Cardew and Lou Gare, recorded at the Roundhouse, London, on 4 May 1969.
Morton Feldman
Beautiful collection of Morton Feldman's earliest, shorter piano works from the early 50s, going through the late 70s
Piano Music 1959-70
John Tilbury plays Cornelius Cardew's piano works of 1959-1970 (February Pieces, Volo Solo, Winter Potatoes, Material, Unintended Piano Music), with Eddie Prévost on tam-tam in a Treatise excerpt. Recorded at the Royal College of Music, London, early 1996.
Chamber Music 1955-64
Chamber and solo works by Cornelius Cardew from 1955 to 1964, many recorded for the first time, played by Apartment House directed by Anton Lukoszevieze at Gateway Studio, Kingston-upon-Thames, on 6 and 7 April 2001.
Cornelius Cardew. A reader
A very nice book brings together a diverse collection of Cornelius Cardew's major essays and writings from different stages of his career, together with commentaries by other writers associated with his work. It reflects developments, changes and contradictions in his thinking about music from the late 1950s to the end of his life. As a companion volume to John Tilbury's biography 'Cornelius Cardew a life unfinished', Copula, 2006 (ISBN 0 9525492 3 9) it provides essential material for the study…