CODES Traditional and Avant-Garde Music Festival

Open call for the performance of three pieces by the English visionary composer Cornelius Cardew: Schooltime Compositions, Tiger's Mind and Treatise.
CODES Traditional and Avant-Garde Music Festival will open on the 13th of May 2015 with Polish premiere performance of Cornelius Cardew’s piece Schooltime Composition. The first performance of this work took place in March 1968 and lasted for 10 hours. In Lublin it will be prepared and performed by a group of professionals and amateurs conducted by John Tilbury, an outstanding interpreter of contemporary music. The compositions Treatise and Tiger’s Mind will be presented on 14th May 2015. Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) – English composer, visionary, artist who has extended the boundaries of music in the past century. Although he studied music in Europe’s leading academic centres, he predominantly angled towards amateur sensibilities and praxis. Instead of choosing the professional comfort zone of London’s Royal Albert Hall, he opted for urban streets and, in general, the periphery. Experiencing the hustle and bustle of London, he was attracted to the West, in particular to US avant-garde, and to the music of the Far East. He was also inspired by social thinkers and political philosophers, including Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Confucius. John Tilbury (1936) – musician, improviser, outstanding interpreter of contemporary music. Recipient of the scholarship of the Royal College of Music in London, student of James Gibb and Zbigniew Drzewiecki. He has worked with many composers - including Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, which resulted in his unparalleled interpretations of the most seminal works of contemporary music. Member of AMM, one of the most distinguished and influential free improvisation groups. Tilbury has also gained recognition as an actor, in particular, he is noted for his interpretations of the works of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Tilbury is also the author of the biography of the life and work of Cornelius Cardew - Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished (2008). SCHOOLTIME COMPOSITIONS In Schooltime Compositions, Cardew subtly defines the areas – emotional, physical, psychological, and historical – in which the performer operates, although there is no question of his controlling the interpretation, either directly or by some back-door ploy involving 'chance operations'. And yet, paradoxically, for all its intangibility, in Schooltime Compositions the ultimate 'authority' of the composer is still maintained, if tenuously; the composer provides the material for the 'opera' roles in the same way that Cardew had provided material for the performer in, say, Autumn 60. In Schooltime, as in all compositions, the composer presumes to harness the sensibilities, skill and ultimately the complicity of others to establish his, the artist's, priority. And it was his desire and intention that, irrational, intuitive and evanescent as these pieces appear to be, their performance was to be controlled by aesthetic judgement, taste and criticism; reflection, not indiscrimination, was to be the guiding principle. Nor were they necessarily improvisational; performances were usually measured and formal, although performers would often be provoked by the pieces to ignore Cardew's artistic preferences altogether. David Jackman recalls he could 'make neither head nor tail of the score' and simply used it as a prompt to do what he wanted; this was the 'permission' the score seemed to him to be granting. THE TIGER'S MIND Since becoming a composer 1966 was the first year, indeed the only year, in which Cardew did not complete a single composition. 1967 saw the publication of Treatise but this apart his sole contribution to the repertoire that year was The Tiger's Mind - a verbal, narrative 'score': such was the impact and consequence of his participation in AMM and the demanding schedule for the final drafting of his epic graphic score during that period. The text, The Tiger's Mind, reads beautifully and demonstrates Cardew's poetic flair, the characters etched with an economy of expression and felicitous turn of phrase. Cardew informed: “This is the first time I made a composition that expressly requires improvisation. Wind-music can be constructed, and so can circle-music, tree-music and mind-music, but Tiger-music has to be improvised”. TREATISE Treatise is a continuous weaving and combining of a host of graphic elements (of which only a few are recognisably related to musical symbols) into a long visual composition, the meaning of which in terms of sound is not specified in any way. 193 pages of lines and shapes clustered around a strong, almost continuous central line, which can be imagined as the life-line of the reader, his centre, around which all manner of activity takes place. Any number of musicians using any media are free to participate in a 'reading' of this score (it is written from left to right and 'treats' of its graphic subject matter in exhaustive 'arguments'), and each is free to interpret it in his own way. Any rigidity of interpretation is automatically thwarted by the confluence of different personalities. What I hope is that in playing this piece each musician will give of his 'own' music - he will give it as a response to 'my' music, which is the score itself. We look for both amateurs and professionals without age restrictions (musicians, singers, visual artists, dancers, actors and all those interested in arts). Rehearsals: 7-12 May 2015, Lublin Performances: 13 May – Schooltime Composition 14 May – Tritease, Tiger's Mind The deadline for the application is 19 April. Only applications with attached application forms will be considered as valid. Fill out the form and send it at: warsztaty@kody-festiwal.pl ATTENTION: The workshop is free of charge and the number of participants is strictly limited.