Cornelius Cardew

Composer from United Kingdom
1936, May 7th in Winchcombe, United Kingdom - 1981, December 13th in London, United Kingdom

Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) was an English composer of experimental music, pianist, cellist and political activist. The son of the potter Michael Cardew, he was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral and studied piano, cello and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London (1953-1957). He then went to Cologne, where he worked as an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen, notably on the realisation of Carré. After hearing John Cage and David Tudor in 1958, he turned away from serialism towards indeterminate and graphic notation, producing his monumental 193-page graphic score Treatise (1963-1967). In 1966 he joined the free improvisation group AMM. His large-scale work The Great Learning, based on Ezra Pound's translations of Confucius, led him to found the Scratch Orchestra in 1968 with Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton, an ensemble open to trained and untrained musicians alike, which was active until 1972. In the 1970s Cardew embraced Marxism-Leninism, publicly criticised his former mentors in Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (1974), and turned to politically engaged songs and piano pieces in a more accessible idiom; in 1979 he co-founded the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain. He died in December 1981, aged 45, after being struck by a hit-and-run driver near his home in Leyton, London; the driver was never identified. Source: Rondo DB

Usual Name Cornelius Cardew
On Wikipedia Cornelius_Cardew
Ensembles The Scratch Orchestra from 1969 to 1974
Links Wikipedia

Images

Title Subname Catalogue Key Year Type

Cardew: The Great Learning (Avantgarde series)

2026-08-28

Deutsche Grammophon (DG)