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!!! Nov. 25, 1969 The fourth concert (Ealing) was a more clear cut affair—the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor, a number of single events each simultaneously stretched over an hour (producing some remarkable slow-motion effects) and an adequate performance of Terry Riley's In C (a work which proves Stravinsky's dictum that there is still a lot of good music to be written in C major).{br}What then is the Scratch Orchestra, this seemingly anarchic organisation, intensely proud of its written constitution, whose origins arc by the English tradition of amateur music-making out of John Cage? It might be called a democratic musical commune whose repertoire, in the form of improvisation rites, accompaniments of any kind, popular classics and composed works, is both communally added to and selected (each member has to keep his own Scratch Book in which he notates and stores his personal contributions). In a format which imaginatively combines freedom and prescription, diverse talents seem happy to flourish to the extent of their abilities and needs.{br}Such an approach takes music-making down from the tight-rope it walks on the South Bank where the qualities of stress, permanence, competitiveness, ambition, originality, the need for a 'good notice' can smother any genuine creative impulse. The Scratch Orchestra is not concerned with these things. Its members are mostly not trained musicians, yet professionals like Cardew and John Tilbury play happily and comfortably, and if some of the activities seem a little aimless perhaps, you should remember that the plant is very young and tender but its growth is already strong and purposeful. — {small}([Michael Nyman, "Music Scratch and Co.", In The Spectator, 12 DECEMBER 1969, p. 33\|http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/13th-december-1969/33/music-scratch-co]){/small} {br}{br}{br}{br} ''(in progress)'' {html} <!-- <TABLE BORDER="0"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="700"> Cardew helped form the Scratch Orchestra in 1969. The collective grew out of a composition class he taught at Morley College in London, and contained a large, rotating group of performers both professional and amateur, including members of AMM. "Anyone could join, provided they were enthusiastic," orchestra member Michael Parsons, a member of Cardew's Morley class, recalled in a 2002 interview with the Birmingham Post. "A lot were visual artists. The art schools were breaking down barriers, and they were often more receptive to new ideas." </TD> </TR> </TABLE> --> {/html} {html} <!-- {br}{br} {br}{br} Over the next few years, the Scratch Orchestra would blossom. Estimates differ, but at its height around 1970, there was a floating membership of between 100 and 200, clustered around a hardcore of 30-odd regulars. Concerts took place often – some 70 in that year alone – in venues like village halls, train stations, art schools, pubs, the London Underground, and the boating lake at Regent’s Park. One day at London’s National Gallery, the group performed a “collective shout” upon an agreed signal. Outside in Trafalgar Square, a performance of Orchestra member David Jackman’s “Pigeon Event” took place, in which drawings were made with birdseed to be transformed and, ultimately, consumed/erased by birds. One concert, fondly remembered by the members I spoke to, took place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the 23rd November 1970. This was to be a “Pilgrimage from Scattered Points on the Surface of the Body to the Brain, the Heart, the Stomach and the Inner Ear.” For research, they went to the cinema to watch Richard Fleischer’s 1966 film Fantastic Voyage. Along the way, the improvisation and spirited chanting (for a Michael Parsons piece, based on a 4th century Buddhist text) were interspersed with elements of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony (representing the brain), Eurovision winner “Boom-Bang-a-Bang” (the heart), and Terry Riley’s In C (middle ear). Following Napoleon’s dictum that an army marches on its stomach, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture was performed as a game of table tennis that ended when the score reached 18 -12.{br}If there were few rules about what Scratch music might consist of, Cardew did insist upon self-discipline and a lack of egocentricity. “The one thing that you couldn’t do,” Michael Parsons told, “was drown out other people. Anyone could play whatever they wanted, as long as it wasn’t too dominant.”{br}But as the decade progressed, the threads started to unravel. Bryn Harris recalls it all starting on a tour of the North-East of England. A gig outside Newcastle Civic Centre brought the group into conflict, first with a security guard, then a group of skinheads. No damage was caused and no one got hurt, but the invaders did create a mess with some toilet rolls that Cardew had been illustrating with pornographic pictures as part of an improvisation rite that demanded, “Act as obscenely as you can until the authorities intervene.” The event got picked up by the press as “Prof’s Toilet-roll Orchestra.” Gigs got cancelled, funding sources were put in jeopardy. By June 1971 (after the Notting Hill Carnival) there was total disillusionment with the Scratch Orchestra in its then present form (p.22), and it began to disintegrate. (p.23) “… performances of Cardew’s The Great Learning (a recording for Deutsche Grammophon and a performance at St Pancras Church) brought members back together”, but (p.24) audience reaction continued to be unfavourable. A section of the Scratch Orchestra was reduced to “shock tactics” – weird costumes and “raids” on school playgrounds – to maintain interest. An open air event took place on the Dorset coast in February 1971, but passed almost unnoticed (p.25) A low point was reached on a tour of the North East with Greg Bright’s piece Sweet FA , which consisted mainly of writing four-letter swear words on lavatory paper. Members of the Scratch Orchestra were devoting themselves more and more to political matters. Following the Discontents meeting in August 1971, John Tilbury presented “a Marxist analysis of the deterioration and vacuity of bourgeois cultural activity.” It is interesting that a couple of years later he was touring Eastern Europe with recitals of Classical music (p.29). Following a Summer School the Scratch Orchestra reformed to “practice music and encourage the flow of new pieces ^[presumably fully composed^] and to raise the level of public performance by proper rehearsal for concerts.” (p.30) The group splintered in 1971 due to disparate political views, with a faction led by Cardew, Tilbury, and Rowe maintaining the name and following Marxist-Leninist political theories. Cardew's work began to show a growing political consciousness, based on Communist fundamentals, during this time. Originally the Scratch Orchestra was seen as merely subversive, having the intention of opposing the established values of both “serious” and “popular” bourgeois music. Nevertheless it eventually became positively politicised. “John Tilbury gave a talk on Marxism ^[at a Summer School in 1971, which was^] the first open effort to raise the political consciousness of the Orchestra”. (p.29). Rod Eley’s chapter ends with a number of slogans: SMASH THE DECAYING IDEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL SUPERSTRUCTURE! SMASH THE BOURGEOIS CLASS AND ITS CORRUPT CAPITALIST SYSTEM! DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM! Even so, Eley continues to talk about “audience” – surely a bourgeois concept! The development of technology – recording, electronic generation, etc. – threatened the livelihood of “live” musicians, particularly in film and broadcasting. He also, rightly, attacks the “star” system, lamenting: (p.16) “… the domination of the entire capitalist world by a few British and American [pop] groups.” However, he doesn’t take into account the rise of interest in ‘world music’ and of, particularly, Indian popular culture. The ‘star system’ also applied to the world of “classical” music where a relatively few “star” performers and conductors dominate and even fewer living composers get fully professional performances in major concert venues. The recognised canon of regularly performed composers from the past was augmented by the “period performance” movement which began in earnest in the 1970s. This also gave rise to the growth of specialist vocal and instrumental performers, but very quickly the market was cornered by a select group of “experts” each with his or her particular theory of authentic practice which was as esoteric and exclusive as anything in the “contemporary classical” field, or indeed in the field of classical music in general. The Scratch Orchestra turned out to have very limited appeal. It started with a certain amount of optimism. (p.17) “… from November 1969 to July 1970 there were seven concerts between November and January, six during April-May, 1 in June, plus a BBC recording of Paragraph 2 of Cardew’s Confucian The Great Learning. There was also a two-week tour, 27 July-7 August, visiting village halls in Cornwall and Anglesea.” But he admits (p.18) that “… despite some television coverage in December 1969 in addition to the many concerts, the Scratch Orchestra did not catch on with the general public.” Cardew’s leadership vindicated the Marxist concept of natural leadership (pp19-20). (p.20) “The true potential strength of the Scratch Orchestra lies with its membership, and its future reflection of the militant, revolutionary aspirations and struggles of the proletariat in an artistic form.” In fact it did nothing of the kind. The Scratch Orchestra, like its successor CoMA (Contemporary Music for Amateurs), and indeed the erstwhile Workers’ Education Association for that matter, came to have nothing to do with any “proletarian struggle”, but came to be the exclusive province of the “liberal-intellectual” middle class. Cardew and his associates saw the “working class” as extending up through the professional middle class to include anyone who worked for as living, including professional musicians. In fact the “middle class”, as defined by home and car ownership, travel abroad, etc., has since the “Thatcher revolution” of the 1980s, been extended downwards to include the majority of the former “working class”. In 1974 the Scratch Orchestra formally changed its name to the Red Flame Proletarian Propaganda Team. They now mostly played transcriptions of Irish folk songs and revolutionary tunes from China. Not long after, they were discontinued altogether. Over the years that followed, Cardew got deeper and deeper into political organisation, never stinting in his urge to sacrifice artistry at the altar of the revolution. But when Szczelkun saw him performing a Songs of Resistance concert at St. Pancras Town Hall in 1976, he couldn’t help but feel their old Orchestra had represented something far more inclusive, more grassroots. “Please don’t reject lessons of Scratch,” he wrote to his old friend afterwards. {br}{br}---- --> {/html} {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}
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