Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished

by John Tilbury

Genres: Music

1069 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

exhaustive and complete account of cardew's life from one of his closest friends (john tilbury). its quite a long book and i have to say i didn't finish it (it was on inter-library loan)

as far as i know its the only biography on this great composer, aside from connecting the dots and giving many great stories about cardew and the many friends, colleagues, musicians, composers and artists he was involved with was just a little to much. i skimmed the some of the big events (stockhausen, scratch orchestra, great learning, terry riley...) to get a better idea of his life and when i have the time would really like to own this book and finish it.

all in all its actually longer and more detailed than the bach and stravinsky biographies i have read which is its main drawback.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The English composer Cornelius Cardew’s odd life story now overshadows his actual output: after working as an assistant to Stockhausen when the latter was at the height of his powers, Cardew became a major figure in free improvisation in London with the Scratch Orchestra he founded. But then, in the early 1970s, Cardew denounced all his past work and began a career in political organizing with a tiny Maoist splinter party. He continued to write music, now of a strictly tonal nature, but it was laughably bad stuff (as can be heard online), something like musical theatre with risible political lyrics. This late phase of his career produced what is probably my all-time favourite quotation from a book, namely Tony Harris’ The Legacy of Cardew Cardew:

Lukoszevieze believes, however, that Cardew ultimately damaged his reputation irretrievably by ‘writing such terrible music in the ʼ70s’. He is damning and dismissive of this later music, believing Cardew to be entirely misguided in the belief that he could influence people by ‘playing an upright piano on a lorry with a bunch of saddos’.

The fact that we got a massive 1000-page biography, far larger than most biographies for composers who – let’s face it – are actually still listened to, is all down to the author John Tilbury’s closeness to the subject. Tilbury knew Cardew from the 1950s, was a member of the Scratch Orchestra, and continued to interact with him through his political era even after Cardew alienated almost everyone. Tilbury could interview others close to Cardew that any other biographers would miss, like his first wife to whom he was married for a single year in the Fifties.

On one hand, the detail here is impressive and really gives a sense of the man himself. Cardew was complex, contradictory, and ultimately not at all sympathetic. It is curious how such a difficult man could nevertheless energize people around him, especially during the 1960s. Tilbury’s description of the workings of Cardew’s Maoist splinter party is a good case study of the kind of cults that the Sixties counterculture often gave way to and their toxicity.

On the other hand, this book is far too long and ultimately it is exhausting to read. A good editor could have shaved a lot off this thousand-page tome without actually reducing the amount of information conveyed.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I rebel against the intentional world of pleasure
Solitude is my rebellious act
What is its power?
It disintegrates my capacity to enjoy.
What wd I be saying if I was at the Ritz, drunk, with a lovely black girl in a grass skirt?
The same