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 Cornelius
Cardew—We
Sing For The Future!
Twenty years on, Cardew's music still provokes controversy.
Even amongst his many admirers, his later 'political' music
in particular creates unease and perhaps misgivings. The relation
of the music to its 'programme' and to the lofty aims it purports
to serve is problematic enough, so let us remind ourselves
what Cardew himself wrote about this music in the seventies:
"I have
discontinued composing music in an avant-garde idiom for a
number of reasons: the exclusiveness of the avant-garde, its
fragmentation, its indifference to the real situation in the
world today, its individualistic outlook and not least its
class character (the other characteristics are virtually products
of this).
"We Sing
For The Future is a composition based on a song. The song
is for youth, who face bleak prospects in a world dominated
by imperialism, and whose aspirations can only be realised
through the victory of revolution and socialism. In the framework
of a solo piano piece lasting about 12 minutes, something
of this great struggle is conveyed. The music is not programmatic,
but relies on the fact that music has meaning and can be understood
quite straightforwardly as part of the fabric of what is going
on in the world."
This recording
was made possible in part by Other Minds with support
from the Thendara Foundation.
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