Original Rockers by Richard King

Author:Richard King [Richard King]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571311811
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2015-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

The score for Treatise is a set of abstract graphic instructions that performers must interpret and adapt as they see fit. As he also occasionally worked as an illustrative designer, Cardew’s skills as a draughtsman ensured the score of Treatise was an artefact of great visual beauty and the original score took the form of a 134-page cloth-bound book. Its imagery was stimulating and its thick indented pages have the feeling of a divine text. In some passages the symbols in the composition are dense black circles of varying sizes, intersected by right angles. They have the appearance of illustrations in a textbook of advanced astronomy. Elsewhere the score is comprised of innocuous straight lines that suddenly bend and shift into opaque shapes that suggest hieroglyphics, or that mutate into complex matrices of endlessly repeating patterns.

At first glance Treatise seems incomprehensible. Cardew reinforces any uncertainty the reader might have by placing a blank stave along the bottom of every page.

The stave suggests formality and structure but lies empty; above it are Cardew’s diagrams and enjoinments. Between the blank stave and Cardew’s symbols, at some mid-point in the performer and the composer’s subconscious, lies the music of Treatise.

Musicians who have played Treatise often describe the need to resist attempts to decipher Cardew’s shapes and images. Instead they assimilate and internalise the composer’s drawings and graphic designs until a method of playing the work starts to reveal itself. Without the complete engagement of the musician, Treatise remains merely a ravishing sequence of imagery.

In the AMM workshops, Cardew had recognised a freedom and disregard for the conventions of structure along with a willingness to cede control to the animal spirits of improvisation that would allow him to explore and realise his ideas for Treatise.

While he worked on his composition, the original trio of AMM, Keith Rowe, Lou Gare and Eddie Prevost, along with Cardew and another musician, the cellist Lawrence Sheaff, recorded an album AMMMusic for Elektra Records in June 1966.

The sleeve for AMMMusic is striking. It features a yellow-and-white juggernaut rendered in the style of a comic-strip drawing. To the left of the articulated lorry, members of AMM are listed along with their instruments:

Cornelius Cardew: cello, piano, transistor radio

Keith Rowe: guitar, transistor radio

Lawrence Sheaff: cello, clarinet

Lou Gare: saxophone, violin

Eddie Prevost: drums, xylophone

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