Treatise

who owns the history of sound? 

Notation is more important than sound. Sound should be an image of the score, not the other way around.”

Cornelius Cardew 

Cornelius Cardew was one of the most radical British composers of the second half of the twentieth century, yet he remains little known today. This new work is based on the creation of a new transdisciplinary version inspired by Treatise, the legendary 193-page graphic score that Cardew began in 1963 and left unfinished at the time of his death in 1981.

Treatise, a performance created and directed by Asier Puga from Cardew’s work, emerges from the exploration of the line of research that Puga has developed in recent years through the design of expansive programmes in which the intersection between disciplines and the search for new scenic–musical languages are explored. In these programmes, instrumental works are combined with recordings, films, spoken texts, performances, documentaries and even television fragments, forming an ecosystem that dialogues with contemporary reality: a collage of new, old or forgotten materials with which to shape our present.

Cardew, after studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen and while working as a typographer in London, began to create Treatise. During its development, he reflected on the nature of the musical score and on how graphic elements govern or guide interpretation and sound.

Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s investigations into language, Cardew wrote: “A musical score is an element inserted into the chaos of potential sounds that permeate this planet and its atmosphere. That really puts Beethoven and the rest into perspective!”. He concluded: “It is not an exclusive privilege of music to have a history: sound has one too”, expanded by industry and technology, with the noises of machines and electronic devices that “add themselves to the primordial sounds of nature,” as Cardew explained.

Treatise is a one-hour performance that explores, in a transdisciplinary way, the intersection between music, sound and the performing arts. Through a structure inspired by Cardew’s score and within a scenic space shared by both performers and audience, the performance includes —like echoes filtered through history— instrumental and electroacoustic compositions by Richard Wagner, Morton Feldman, Johann Sebastian Bach, Pierre Henry and Éliane Radigue, among others. These works dialogue with, overlap or intertwine with improvised or choreographed sections (could the conducting technique itself constitute a choreographic piece?), as well as with interventions closer to performance or installation, inspired by Oscar Wilde, Joseph Beuys and Llorenç Barber.

In this work, Treatise becomes a labyrinth in which everything intertwines: sound dialogues with the visual, and the score becomes gesture. Under the impulse of Cornelius Cardew, the boundaries between disciplines dissolve to offer a new interpretation of one of the most singular scores of the twentieth century. This is the purpose of this new Treatise: to explore the limits of a score through a shared imagination that articulates our contemporary history and reality. Because, as the essayist Ramón Andrés reminds us, all imagination begins with the ear.

The performance Treatise is conceived to take place in non-conventional spaces, both outdoors and in indoor venues that include open areas in which audience and performers can share the same space.

New creation
Duration: 70 minutes (approx.)

ARTISTIC AND TECHNICAL TEAM
Creation, stage and direction: Asier Puga (from Cardew’s philosophy)
Dance: La Merce
Performer: George Marinov
Grupo Enigma: Victor Parra (violin), Carlos Seco (viola), Zsolt G. Tottzer (cello), tbd (trombone).
Music: Richard Wagner, Morton Feldman, Pierre Henry, James Tenney, Johann S. Bach etc. 
Lighting design: George Marinov
Sound engineer: Juanan Ros
Technical direction: Javi Yond
Distribution: Juan Vacas
Produced by Grupo Enigma and Klang Company


The performance dates will be announced soon.