Cornelius Cardew - Visionary or Twat?

Pretty much my thinking, got the chance to read it, beats working etc. Tell you what though, it was all that Keith Rowe's fault... and Chairman Mao's.

Hard not to snigger @ the Scratch Orchestra changing its name to the Red Flame Proletarian Propaganda Team, to name but one of the increasing absurdities as the page numbers pile up.

Past the 850 mark and, in timely fashion, David Bowie has popped up, story recounted here.

950+. Cardew has just been to a Marxist-Leninist cultural festival in West Germany as one of three members of the Stalin Youth Group, he was 43 at the time.

lol

hahahaha

Figured out how to live.

man I really need this book

I'm more than happy with Tom D's updates tbh.

Finished. You'll thank me for it one day. The last third was a long grind, or a Long March.

great updates, "Red Flame Proletarian Propaganda Team" pretty much ended me.

In honour of the CPGB(ML)'s Progressive Cultural Association's Punk Rock Is Fascist! slogan, I'm working on a punk version of one of Cardew's later I HEART MAO pieces. To be fair, the comrades were never entirely convinced of the wisdom of the Punk Rock Is Fascist! campaign, apart from Cardew (of course) and, er, John Tilbury!

Some stuff for you rock fans out there:

The Scratch Orchestra apparently did a 45 minute version of "Sister Ray" at a concert in '69/'70 - even longer than the Velvets were doing themselves at the time. (Also, in a footnote earlier in the book, Tilbury attributes the composition of the music in "Sister Ray" solely to John Cale - which seems very bourgeois of him.)

Cardew supposedly 'jammed' onstage with Tangerine Dream in Berlin in 1973, though Tilbury speculates that it might have been with Agitation Free instead.

want the book but its like 80$ on amazon.

i hunted down some of his later stuff that was performed at his memorial, i think? and i liked it quite a bit

I am fond of some of the later piano pieces, but the few proletarian rock songs I've heard are dreadful.

Was just saying to a friend over the weekend the only biog I remember reading in the last 10 years was Jean Genet by Edmund White.

Since then I have read about two biogs I want to read and this is one of them. Well done for finishing it.

Stupidly, I've started reading the BS Johnson biog, having promised myself only to read novels for the foreseeable future.

I love Treatise and like some of his later piano music but I'm only now just listening to the album: 'Consciously', wow lol, sounds like a parody.

It's hilarious but, if you excuse the pun, not consciously so.

1970. Pre-Mao.

https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/large/mw283312/Cornelius-Cardew.jpg

cute

"Consciously" sounds like the worst imaginable result of Art Bears trying to go commercial.

I've got to imagine "condescension" wasn't in his lexicon.

From the "Bits of songs that sound like bits of other songs" thread:

Chorus of "Smash the Social Contract" by Cornelius Cardew and chorus of "Funky Gibbon" by the Goodies.

― Saturated with working class intelligence and not afraid to show it (Tom D.), Tuesday, December 3, 2013 11:44 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Was this ever resolved? So basically the Goodies mowed CC down on their trusty trandem, outraged at his blatant looting of their hit single, all as part of a fiendish plot to seize the means of black pudding production from the proletariat? Correct me if I'm wrong.

this stuff is endlessly fascinating to me in the ways it both fails and sort-of succeeds at pop. catchy, kitschy, hilarious and tragic all at once
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXEDZy4Z8os

(xp) As I think I said on this thread or some other thread, Dave McRae from Matching Mole (of 'Little Red Record' er, fame) played on (arranged?) the Goodies records, and I can very well imagine him being familiar with Cardew's work - so maybe the Goodies ripped off Cardew?

The songs are terrible but, tbf to Cardew, he was expected to churn out dozens of musical settings of the proclamations and thoughts of Hardial Bains as his contribution to the victory of the proletariat. Now, if only he'd realized that "Mouldy Old Dough" could have been re-written as "Hardial Bains".

the last time we discussed this (on a monty python thread, to morbs's huge irritation lol) i raised the possiblity that this shared tune has been repurposed from some common-property chant that pre-exists both: i referred to it as the "vote vote vote for nigel barton" song -- apparently in the belief that this 1965 dennis potter play includes this line being chanted (presumably by barton's political followers?) to this tune

obviously it would fit well, but does this actually happen? i was very confident previously but i now have no idea why

Oh yes, I remember that discussion.

first appearance also of matt #2's mysterious-tricycle solution to the cardew hit-and-run

xps would have helped if he was open to actually learning anything from actual (black) popular music & its connection with already existing struggles instead of trying to reinvent the wheel like a typical vanguardist. he’s obviously a unique figure but in that & so many other ways (the confused anti-imperialism, class guilt, hopeless attempts at populism) he feels like such a familiar “type” on the UK left, he’s painful & fascinating to hear/read/read about

This is quite a light hearted encounter between Cardew and some stuffy Radio 3 guy (from 1972 probably?) which shows he hadn't quite lost his sense of humour yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oksUcVauHXM

the last time we discussed this (on a monty python thread, to morbs's huge irritation lol) i raised the possiblity that this shared tune has been repurposed from some common-property chant that pre-exists both: i referred to it as the "vote vote vote for nigel barton"

Yeah, this.
There's an episode of "the odd couple" where tony randall reminisces about his time in the army and sings "let's hit hitler where he lives" to this tune.
I forget what the original is but p. sure it's a British march.

I forget what the original is

This is gonna drive me nuts all day

I think there might be a scene in "Inherit the wind" which uses it also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramp!_Tramp!_Tramp!

Think this is the original.

I think you're right but, just to complicate matters further, I think this also rips off "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viXBxuSSS6s

... not a Cornelius Cardew composition.

Could be linked to on any number of threads but the Cardew doc was finally what sold me on this:

https://artdaily.com/news/137857/New-release-showcases-an-eclectic-trove-of-music--poetry-and-spoken-word-made-between-1978-and-1996#.YQGpHy1Q1Bw

This is quite a light hearted encounter between Cardew and some stuffy Radio 3 guy (from 1972 probably?) which shows he hadn't quite lost his sense of humour yet.

Among other things, I was reading his account of collaborating with Stockhausen on "Carré", which he really deserved a co-composer credit for, and he had nicely wry sense of humour which comes across in a lot of his other writings - this was later surgically removed by Mao Tse-Tung. One of the things he mentioned, which kinda blew my mind, is that "Gruppen" was performed in Glasgow and a quick Google revealed that not only was it played in Glasgow but it was the UK premiere and it was broadcast live on the BBC!

OK, this is interesting (to me at least) both of Cardew's sons played with the Pasadenas, Horace on sax and Walter on drums:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Whom_It_May_Concern_(The_Pasadenas_album)

A lot closer to pop music than their dad ever managed!

The Great Learning is sick. I will - maybe - educate myself about Caredew's politics at some point, or I may not bother. But right now this piece is some beautiful fusion of Miles Davis/Herbie Hancock like jazz-rock and Ligetian choral Nirvana.

sat down to leaf thru the lesson books on my sister's piano -- idle sight-reading practice while everyone else is out doing their final xmas shop -- and came across a howard skempton piece by called "well, well, cornelius" (he studied under cardew; unclear from this piece what he learned aside from parallel thirds in several flats and extended-span bassline ostinati)

she tells me she plays it and likes it so well done everyone i guess

He was one of the three "founders" of the Scratch Orchestra, with Cardew and Michael Parsons.

He could be a visionary twat.

(xp) I think that meant he coughed up £5 to cover some printing costs, something like that

i feel like to be true to the way the scratch orc shd have written all the parts out by hand

'visionary' is a pretty twattish thing to be

it's too early to say