P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

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P.S.1 Newspaper

2007 Summer

Organizing Chaos: Tentacles Exploring the Mud

Luke Fowler

Pilgrimage from Scattered Points

Installation view at P.S.1, 2007

Photo by  Matthew Septimus

Courtesy P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

Organizing Chaos focuses on chance and determinism, especially how randomness is scripted into structured systems and how order is imposed upon the indeterminate. Presenting works from the 1950s to the present, the exhibition investigates notions of ambiance and how it can be scored musically.

The following excerpts are from inter­views with former members of Corne­lius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra and have been compiled and edited for the P.S.1 Newspaper by Luke Fowler, as part of the re­search for his film Pilgrimage from Scattered Points.

If you look at 20th century music, there were periods where the avant-garde had gotten so far and then took a step back to simplify their music for a wider appeal. Composers like Hans Eisler, Kurt Weill, even Aaron Copeland, all simplified their music. I think it’s just that thought: “Who is my music for? I’m not getting through to the majority of people.” It’s an attempt toward a more direct style.

Richard Ascough

Luke Fowler: How did The Scratch Orchestra start out?

John Tilbury: Cornelius Cardew taught an experimental music class in 1968 at Morley College in London. He had a group of students that performed the avant-garde classics of the period—La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Cornelius’ compositions, and their own music.

At one point Cornelius brought in “The Great Learning” which included singing and drumming, for some length of time. In order to swell the numbers he invited the class to bring their friends along. This group formed the nucleus of The Scratch Orchestra.

LF: Cardew’s ideas for The Scratch Orchestra were derived from political thought. Where did these concerns originate?

JT: There was a strong humanist thread running through his compositions. He was interested in the way human freedoms could be extended, like the performer’s freedom to contribute some­thing more to a piece of music and the freedom of musicians to do away with notation altogether. There was also the freedom of non-musicians—giving them permission to make serious music. If you see that concern through, you eventually end up with a political agenda—people freeing themselves, taking their destiny into their own hands.

LF: Why did he repudiate the great 20th century composers Stockhausen and Cage?

JT: It was based on his application of a philosophy, in this case Marxism and Leninism, through which he was trying to understand the world and how it worked. One of the conclusions he made was that avant-garde music was a reactionary weight; it was self-indulgent, very ivory tower like. It neglected many of the most important aspects of human commerce, of communication and of working together, and of course the question of class. Avant-garde music was written and intended for a class of privileged people. It was of no sig­nificance to the majority of people, even in his country. He felt people would be better off serving the poor and oppressed.

Music today is electronic but far from living up to the dreams of the originators of Electronic Music. It provides a general­ized musical soup of true insipidness. Is this analogous to the primeval oceans from which life is supposed to have evolved? After a long period of musical washing to and fro, will the seed of a new music cul­ture send out their tentacles exploring the mud? Extreme conditions—extreme ingredients.That’s what we need to fertil­ize our musical soup. It sounds like world revolution. The Scratch Orchestra is a microcosm of such a hypothetical condition. Some observers report that nothing is happening, others report un­differentiated chaos, and some see it as a bonfire in which all they hold sacred goes up in flames. Others see it as upholding threatened traditions of music making.

Cornelius Cardew in a BBC Broadcast

Everybody had to organize a concert, from youngest to the oldest. My concert intended to “break the catastrophic spell of Capitalist normalcy.” So we started by trying to disrupt the at­mosphere in Dickens and Jones, a de­partment store—it was amazing to see how brittle and easy it was to break the atmosphere of the happy shopper—just by being an unhappy shopper or an abnor­mal shopper. That was exciting because it was so easy to do—just by pop­ping balloons or rolling around the floor! Then we went up a hill, through a grave­yard and housing estates. The idea was to knock on doors on Richmond Hill but that didn’t work because no one had the courage.

Stefan Szczelkun

Christopher Hobbs: The Scratch Orchestra’s aims were to break down the barriers between professional and amateur, performer and audience, composer and performer. Certainly the idea of the composer was unimportant, seen as sort of a romantic super-man.

LF: You say that The Scratch Orchestra was ahead of its time. Then do you believe that it achieved its aims?

CH: The objectives were never achieved. It failed and tore itself apart because of the struggle—an impossible one—to set up a system where no one was in charge. Nowadays the knowledge of The Scratch Orchestra works like back­ground radiation, it’s still there but you can only pick it up if you have the proper sort of receiver.