Cornelius Cardew

Cornelius Cardew's influence over the development of experimental music and sound art in the last half of the 20th century is profound. As a member of AMM and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, he promoted free music and free interpretation of composed sound through the development of ambiguous graphic scores and indeterminate compositions.
This set of recordings documents the sonic environments in which Cardew grew, lived, worked and died, from the Cornwall background of his childhood to the institutions at which he studied and worked in London, Cologne and Berlin. The series closes with recordings of his residential street in Leyton, East London.
We hope that by immersing oneself into the sonic environments in which Cardew lived and worked, one can understand better how he experienced, reacted to and thought about sound. Some of the tracks are unedited recordings of a place, whilst others (such as Canterbury, London School of Economics and Cemaes Bay) stitch several recordings made in that location together to build a more panoramic view of the soundscapes discovered. In these instances, the recordings are only stitched end-to-end with a short overlap - they are never combined or layered, and hence remain true to their locations.
This collection would not have been possible without the assistance of Richard Ascough, John Tilbury, Carole Chant and Eddie Prevost, whose memories and directions formed our itinerary. Greater detail and context of the places and events which structured our search can be found in John Tilbury's book Cornelius Cardew (1936 - 1981) A Life Unfinished (Copula - an imprint of Matchless Recordings, 2008).