Cornelius Cardew, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, 1974(Edit)

Cornelius Cardew, ‘Stockhausen Serves Imperialism and Other Articles,’ Latimer New Dimensions : London, 1974. Download (pdf) — http://www.ensemble21.com/cardew_stockhausen.pdf Mark Berry, "After Wagner: Histories of Modernist Music Drama from Parsifal to Nono", Boydel Press, 2014

When Cornelius Cardew went crackers and became, first a Maoist and then a devotee of Enver Hoxha of Albania, he repudiated much of his own earlier work and the avant garde in general. He turned his fire particularly on Stockhausen, with whom he had worked closely as both student and assistant. In The Listener (15 June 1972), Cardew published a screed with the self-explanatory title “Stockhausen Serves Imperialism”. Here are two letters which appeared in the magazine the following week:

Attempting Marxist Music - Cornelius Cardew and Ireland, 1974(Edit)

Cardew and Sheila Kasabova, his third wife, went to live in East London, where he helped to form a political rock group – People’s Liberation Music – for which he sang and composed. Chinese revolutionary songs, and later Irish rebel and folk music, became his principal inspiration. Yet he remained much in demand in his earlier incarnation, playing and lecturing in Ireland, Germany, Italy, the United States and Canada, and even, for his Thälmann Variations of 1974, receiving praise from ‘revisionist’ critics. Alan Bush, a much older composer, who belonged to a more conservative musical tradition but was a member of the (Moscow line) British Communist Party, described the Variations as ‘splendid’. (The two men remained friendly, and when the impecunious Cardew was fined after accusations that he had assaulted the police at a demonstration, he was not above touching Bush for money.)

Cardew’s supporters today make much of the fact that he ‘later rejected Maoism’ (which is true), but they tend to gloss over the fact that he substituted for Mao the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha, and eventually ended up a defender of Stalin. In 1979 Bains’s party renamed itself the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), but Mao’s ghost and influence remained in the background.

As the 1970’s progressed Cardew focused increasingly on making explicitly political music. At first it was simply politically themed song titles, next was the introduction of more pop and folk composition styles, and finally the appearance of lyrics in Cardew’s compositions.

An aspect of Cardew’s new musical and ideological turn was his interest in folk music. One way Cardew would show support for the Irish struggle, for example, was to incorporate Irish folk themes into compositions. Another aspect was the move towards making the music slightly more accessible and less abstract. Cardew started playing and recording slight off-kilter, romantic pop and folk ballads on piano. The lyrics fully cemented the political content of his work, with no guessing left as to his politics.

There is of course a long tradition of lyrical leftists, from Joe Hill to Sweet Honey in the Rock to David Rovics. But Cardew was trying for something quite different. While the aforementioned artists generally articulate left politics broadly defined and in easily accessible terms, Cardew sought dense, hyper political lyrics that graphically spelled out the intricacies of his organization’s political line. This was at the height of the 1970’s Leninist party-building movement in England and around the world. Communicating the organizations positions was to become a central aspect of Cardew’s work.

The Marxist formation Cardew and his co-thinkers had hooked up with was called the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist). They had begun as enthusiastic supporters of revolutionary China but had broken with China after its political rift with Albania. Albania had long been an ally of China and many far-left China supporters stayed loyal to Albania after the break. These comrades believed there was a revolutionary continuity that connected the tradition of Lenin, the rule of Joseph Stalin, the ideology of Mao Tse Tung, and that of Albania’s Communist leader Enver Hoxha. For Cardew and his comrades every socialist country had finally fallen to revisionism—given up on the necessity of revolution—except Albania, the last true anti-revisionists.

Like Mao and Hoxha, Cardew believed that the USSR was also an imperialist country alongside the United States. His lyrics sneer at Soviet foreign policy, even the aspects supported by leftists. Nevertheless, Cardew’s political thinking must be admired for it’s loyalty to idea that revolution is possible. Cardew’s comrades also championed the Irish struggle while performing and living in England in the darkest days of the 1970’s. Cardew and his comrades were the truest of true believers, and selflessly dedicated.

It must be emphasized the extent to which national liberation in Ireland was dear to Cardew and central to his later work. Even on the far left it could be uncomfortable to be an unconditional supporter of Ireland’s right to self-determination by any means necessary while living in Britain in the 1970’s. Cardew was upfront and fearless. He recrafted classic Irish republican ballads, wrote new songs about the struggle, and performed in Ireland as part of a “tour in support of the Irish peoples fight”.

Unsurprisingly, his shows in the south of Ireland were in union halls, his shows in the north were in republican neighborhoods. Playing to republican crowds in West Belfast or performing in union halls or at demonstrations was a key aspect of Cardew’s attempt to bring his music to the front lines of the struggle. The band created in this period was called People’s Liberation Music and they cohered around the idea of making Cardew’s revolutionary songs mobile. Over nearly a decade they performed—with Cardew directing the band and playing piano—at countless anti-fascists and pro-labor demonstrations.

But there is an undeniable awkwardness to the Cardew’s songs in the People’s Liberation Music era. The songs buckled under the weight of the unmusical, hyper political lyrics. Basing the lyrics to a “pop” song on a speech by Chairman Mao (literally putting a speech to music) does not make for a particularly artful of compelling listening experience. Those who are familiar with the “Socialist Realism” painting style of the Stalin era will immediately recognize the strident, thrusting kitsch-Marxism portrayed in Cardew’s lyrics. Upon listening to the Peoples Liberation Music band you begin to wonder if this giant of the avant-garde isn’t wasting his talent. Cardew had been so searingly creative, so willing to work outside conventional musical norms, that to hear him creating quaint orchestral pop with unlyrical lyrics is an artistic disappointment. Basing his work on some strange conception of what “the people” could best relate to, he ends up with music that lands somewhere between a 70’s Broadway musical and an overzealous community church choir.

But strangely it somehow works. Cardew is so sincere, he so desires to put his talents at the service of revolution that the songs eventually win you over. Kitschy, heavy-handed, and sometimes poorly written, the songs of Peoples Liberation Music are a fun and fascinating way to look inside the vibrant and varied Marxist left of the 1970’s.

PLM People Liberation's Music(Edit)

Interview Cornelius Cardew (1975)(Edit)

From a KPFA program recorded on January 25, 1975, Charles Amirkhanian interviews the British composer, pianist, and Socialist, Cornelius Cardew. In the late 1960s and 70s Cardew’s interest in Socialist politics, the Chinese Revolution, and the teachings of Mao Zedong, led him to reevaluate the academic avant-garde, essentially rejecting it as elitist, and irrelevant to the struggles of the working class. He went on to be a founding member of both the Scratch Orchestra and the People’s Liberation Music, both of which were nonhierarchical musical collectives with decidedly pro-Socialist intentions. In this program Cardew discusses the political aspects of his music as well as playing a selection of his protest songs and politically inspired solo piano works. Cardew died in 1981, the victim of a suspicious hit and run accident. The program concludes with a spontaneous performance art piece by Ingram Marshall, otherwise known as eating lunch, and a brief excerpt from a tape work by Anthony Gnazzo.

Cornelius Cardew, 1981(Edit)

Cardew continued with his political activism in the early years of the Thatcher era, taking part in the Irish and anti-racism struggles. In June 1981, he addressed a large conference against racism and fascism at the Conway Hall (some 500 people attended), and in October of that year was thrown out of the House of Commons gallery after shouting ‘this House stinks of racism’ during a speech by Enoch Powell. He was frequently arrested, and on one occasion sent to prison for a month.

He had just initiated work in Britain on the Second International Sports and Cultural Festival which was held during 1982, and had begun a Masters Degree in Musical Analysis at King's College London in 1981.

Very early in the morning of Sunday, 13 December 1981, walking in the dark from Stratford station to his home in Leyton, East London, Cardew was knocked down by a car on an icy road and killed instantly. He was only 45. He had returned late from a political meeting in Birmingham. The car disappeared and the driver was never traced. The coroner concluded that the death was accidental, but other political activists had been killed in strange circumstances in the course of that year, and in the obsessive atmosphere generated by a small sect, conspiracy theories were inevitable. On an unlit road, why had he been walking with, rather than against the traffic? As someone who suffered terribly from the cold, why were his thick socks still in his briefcase? Was it possible that he had been pushed out of a car, and that his severe injuries – a massive blow to the head and an almost severed leg – had been caused earlier by an unknown assassin? Was this the work of the state, or of a Nazi activist?

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