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!!!Cardew, Autumn '60 {html} <TABLE BORDER="0"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="700"> Cornelius Cardew's music of the '60s is arguably from his most creative and experimental period as a composer, beginning with <i>Autumn 60</i> and ending with the last paragraphs of <i>The Great Learning</i> 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. <i>Treatise</i> functions as a bridge between these two periods as it contains elements of both.<br><br> <i>Autumn ’60</i> is a work for undetermined instrumental ensemble. It is Cardew's first indeterminate score. It is often performed with larger ensembles, but also works well in a smaller format. It was premiered by a quartet consisting of the composer on guitar and John Cage on piano amongst others. <br><i>Autumn '60</i> is "for orchestra", but the identity of that orchestra is variable. Although most performances have probably been for chamber groups, the score is as usable, potentially, by a single soloist on a lonely woodblock as by an orchestra of late romantic scale and proportions.<br>The score, which all players receive, features a system with two staves, the upper consisting of one to seven conventional markings — clefs, notes (which are limited to f, gb, ab, bb, and db), articulations, ornaments, instrument names, dynamics, etc. — assigned to the quarter note beats of simple meters, from which individual players are to extract their own parts and enter into the lower staff.<br> The score provides the performers with a variety of possibilities - of pitch, timbre, and dynamics - on which the performers base an improvisation. This occurs in a variety of ways : not only do the performers use the given elements as the basis for their musical ideas, but also they have the option of « avoiding » the given material.<br><br> The process of part extraction appears, at first, to be rather open, but it gradually reveals itself to be in many ways quite constrained, in particular through the instruction to "ignore any two of the indications for any particular beat" as well as those combinations of notation which lead to an instruction to "play nothing", each of which might serve to create a kind of negative space around the material identity of the piece. The degree of cooperation in part preparation between the players is not specified; indeed, the parts may be extracted in complete independence, and further independence is introduced by the interventions of a conductor, who also uses the score to prepare a part, in which details of form, tempo, rubato, ensemble composition and texture, and even additional degrees of performer liberty may be introduced. The process Cardew stipulates for the making of performance decisions is perhaps arbitrarily complex - real-time improvisation is impossible, and in practice each performer needs to prepare a thought-out response to the indeterminate score. This perhaps is the essence of <i>Autumn ’60</i> - Cardew found new ways of enabling performers to bring their musical intelligence to the process of interpretation. Cardew’s work demands an active intelligence, one attuned to the aural reality of the musical product - in particular the activity of fellow performers - at least as much as the abstract compositional « intention ». Here is a critical distinction between such works of Cardew and contemporaneous works of Cage and others - while indeterminate, « chance » is not an issue in <i>Autumn ’60</i>. On the contrary, Cardew successfully found a vehicle for genuine collaborative composition, one in which the artificial (and historically short-lived) distinction between the « composer » and « performer » was abandoned. Cardew’s early work that empowers performers with the responsibility for the creative act certainly has resonance with his political ideas, that later were to come to the fore. <small> — (Jonathan Poles, Daniel Wolf)</small> <br><br> Cardew makes it clear that a very active participation is required with these pieces; the performer has to be an active interpreter, on a par, at times, with the composer: "Nobody" he says, "can be involved with this music in a merely professional capacity." Standing at the head of these compositions is <i>Autumn 60</i>. It is a brilliant exercise in persuading individual participation. It consists of a chain of various sections, in which each beat of every bar holds often contradictory performing instructions, potentially generating differing musical events. As Cardew explains: "The musical potentialities of Autumn 60 cannot be fully exploited in a single performance the number of possible solutions for even a single beat far exceeds the number of musicians that can be got together for a performance."<br>The implications of a piece like <i>Autumn 60</i> might parallel what Umberto Eco referred to as a 'work-in-movement' - work which is never 'closed', a performative event in which composer and performers unite in working within the piece's various limitations: "The 'work-in-movement' is the possibility of numerous different personal interventions, but it is not an amorphous invitation to indiscriminate participation. The invitation offers the performer the opportunity for an oriented insertion into something which always remains the world intended by the author." What was the world intended by Cardew for <i>Autumn '60</i> ? Generally, the generated sound world has a fragmented, pointillistic atmosphere. Tying in with Eco's description, Cardew reminds us: "The criterion of a good performance is not completeness (i.e. perfection) but rather the lucidity of its incompleteness." This holds true for <i>Autumn 60</i> and the other works in this set. Material, rather than exploring timbral discontinuities or interconnections, concentrates more on harmonic density and rhythmic flexibility.<br><br> These pieces, [like <i>Autumn '60, Solo with Accompaniment, Memories of You, and Material</i>], create a coherent and cohesive statement of Cardew's approach to indeterminacy. They set in motion his dual attention to extreme pragmatism and philosophical, even utopian, ideals. They are subtle essays in how one might initiate a skeletal framework to be fleshed out, to be made corporeal, by future generations. Cardew referred to this as 'growth mechanisms': i.e. how changing performance practice and musical outlooks can be accommodated by compositional activity. It is a balance between 'cogent explicitness' and 'sufficient flexibility' rather than a fully notated 'self contained' piece:<br>"The best guarantee for survival would be a completely self contained, closed logical system for each piece. Such systems might be rediscovered, even after a lapse of thousands of years, in a state of preservation comparable to Egyptian mummies. But however beautifully preserved they would nevertheless be dead, their language and meaning forgotten. So these little systems - these pieces - are not self contained; like seeds, they depend on the surrounding soil for nourishment, they are irremovably embedded in their environment which is the musical situation today."<br>In this work the conductor subverts his normal role: he can give clear beats or vague beats, increase or decrease tempi, change the order of sections and even stop conducting altogether. The players are also allowed the possibility of ignoring or observing the written music and signs, as well as introducing their own material into the performance. Cardew maintains a skeleton of his own pitch material which will, by chance, remain just in and out of focus. <small>— (<A HREF="http://www.matchlessrecordings.com/book/export/html/118" target="_blank">David Ryan 2001</A>)</small> </TD> <TD VALIGN="top" WIDTH="100">   </TD> <TD VALIGN="top"> <hr nosize> <IMG SRC="../files/articles/cardew/cardew34b.jpg"><br><hr nosize> <p style="font-size: x-small"> <font style="text-transform: uppercase;"> <br><i>(traduction française)</i><br> </font> </p> <hr nosize> <p style="font-size: x-small"> <font style="text-transform: uppercase;"> <i><b>Indications :</b><br>Chaque note constitue une indication. Si elle est jouée, elle devra sonner telle qu’elle a été écrite; si elle n’est pas jouée, elle devra être évitée dans tous les registres.<br> I, II , III, IV : tenir pendant un, deux, trois ou quatre temps.<br> Staccato : l’attaque et la coupure ne sont pas dissociées.<br> Durée minimale lorsque la coupure est dissociée.<br> Durée moyenne.<br> Durée longue, avec coupure nette.<br> Durée maximale (tenir jusqu’à désagrégation, durée d’une respiration, etc.). <br>}Glisser vers le haut; vers le bas; vers l’un ou l’autre. <br>Tremolo, papillonnage de langue, trille, etc. <br>Vibrato. <br>Harmonique. <br>Attaque exagérée (claquement de langue, pizzicato ricoché, etc.) <br>Appliquez conventionnellement.<br> Le nom d’un instrument ou d’un groupe d’instrument constitue une indication.</i> </font> </p> <br><br><hr nosize> <p style="font-size: x-small"> <font style="text-transform: uppercase;"> Three systems from the first of the five pages of Cardew’s ''Autumn ’60''.<br><br><IMG SRC="../files/articles/cardew/cardew34a.jpg"> </font> </p> <hr nosize> <br><br><br><br> <hr nosize> <b>AUDIO</b>          <img src="https://jeromejoy.org/files/img/icon_audio.gif"><br><hr nosize> <DIV style="background-color:#CCCCCC;"> <small><b>Cornelius Cardew — Autumn '60, for variable ensemble</b> — (ca 10mn)<br>John Tilbury (piano), Michael Duch (contrebasse), Rhodri Davies (harpe)<br>This version was arranged and conducted by John Tilbury.<br>Recorded live at Dokkhuset, Trondheim, 2010</small><br><br> <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="webs/dewplayer-vol.swf" width="350" height="20" id="dewplayer" name="dewplayer"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent" /> <param name="movie" value="webs/dewplayer-vol.swf" /> <param name="flashvars" value="mp3=https://jeromejoy.org/files/articles/cardew/cardew-Autumn-60.mp3&bgcolor=FFFFFF&showtime=1&autoplay=0&autoreplay=0&volume=100" /> </object> <br><br> </DIV> <br><small><i>Source : <A HREF="http://plus3db.net/releases/cornelius_cardew_works_19/" target="_blank">Plus3db Records</A></i></small> <br><br><br> <hr nosize> <b>VIDEO</b>          <img src="https://jeromejoy.org/files/img/icon_video.gif"><br><hr nosize> <b>Play for Today: Cornelius Cardew Conference, two-day symposium, ICA, London<br>21 November 2009 - 22 November 2009</b><br><br> <iframe width='500' height='281' id='' class='' src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/10805662?wmode=transparent&title=1&byline=1&portrait=1&color=d8a82c&autoplay=0&loop=0&api=0&player_id=" frameborder='0' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> {/html} ---- * Edward Venn — '''[Cornelius Cardew's ‘Autumn '60 For Orchestra’\|http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/23011/1/download3.pdf]''' — {br}{small}'''''- URL(s) (pdf)''''' : http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/23011/1/download3.pdf [https://jeromejoy.org/files/img/icon_pdf_round2.jpg]{/small}{br}{small}In Tempo / Volume 60 / Issue 238 / October 2006, pp 2-7. Cambridge University Press 2006. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0040298206000271{/small}{br}---- * Cornelius Cardew, '''[Towards an Ethic of Improvisation\|http://www.ubu.com/papers/cardew_ethics.html]''', — {br}{small}'''''- URL(s)''''' : http://www.ubu.com/papers/cardew_ethics.html [https://jeromejoy.org/files/img/icon_pdf_round2.jpg]{/small}{br}{small}Treatise Handbook (London, etc.: Peters, 1971), p. XIV. {/small}{br}---- {br}{br} {br}{br}{br} {html} <hr nosize><hr style="height: 6px; margin: -0.5em 0; padding: 0; color: grey; background-color: grey; border: 0;"><br> {/html} ---- '''Cornelius Cardew, About Autumn '60, January 1966''' ---- \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t Score : Four Works{br}Publisher : London : Universal Edition, ©1967{br}Publisher's no.: UE 14171.{br}Includes performance notes in English and German.{br}Content :{br}— Autumn '60 : for orchestra{br}— Material : for any ensemble of harmony instruments{br}— Solo with accompaniment{br}— Memories of you : piano solo.{br}{small}http://www.worldcat.org/title/four-works/oclc/1445193 {/small}\|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t {small}Source : Autumn '60 : for orchestra{br}Publisher : ^[London^] : Institute of Contemporary Arts, ©1963.{br}Universal Edition UE 14171 L{br}Published from the 1962 Hinrischen Edition publication.{br}Notes vary from those later printed with score as Universal Edition UE 14171 L in 1967.{/small}\| [../files/articles/cardew/cardew34_autumna_b.jpg\|../files/articles/cardew/cardew34_autumna_b.jpg]{br} [../files/articles/cardew/cardew34_autumnb_b.jpg\|../files/articles/cardew/cardew34_autumnb_b.jpg] {br}{br} {br}{br} ---- ----
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