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drawings on Writing
Cornelius Cardew (1936 —1981)
Treatise (1963-67),
a 192-page graphic score which allows for considerable freedom of interpretation.
Following the demise of the Orchestra, Cardew became more directly involved in left-wing politics and abandoned avant-garde music altogether, adopting a populist though post-romantic tonal style. He spent 1973 in West Berlin on an artist's grant from the City, where he was active in a campaign for a children's clinic. During the 1970s, he produced many songs, often drawing from traditional English folk music put at the service of lengthy Marxist-Maoist exhortations; representative examples are Smash the Social Contract and There Is Only One Lie, There Is Only One Truth. In 1974, he published a book entitled Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, which denounced, in Maoist self-critical style, his own involvement with Stockhausen and the Western avant-garde tradition.(wiki)
Cornelius Cardew was killed on the 13th December 1981, by a hit and run driver near his home in East London. There's been conspiracies about involvement from the British secret service.
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