Judgements about what is and what is not art are not easily made, of course, and they are seldom as clear-cut as this rubber stamp suggests. But the claim is made seriously from time to time that political art-art that overtly promotes a political message-is not art, or that it negates art.' Cornelius Cardew (1936-81) was a maker of radical political art, and the ways he negotiated the often obscure terrain of aesthetics and society are worth examining.2 Cardew wasn't always a composer on the Left. Born in Gloucestershire in 1936, he attended the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied composition with Howard Ferguson. He gravitated to Stockhausen and Cologne, and his study there eventually led to his realization of the score to Stockhausen's Carre (1959-60). 'Realization' is indeed the right word: as Stockhausen himself said, 'I left the independent working-out of composition plans to [Cardew]'.3 Cardew eventually became the central figure of the musical avant-garde in England, a position recognized by other members of it. In time, Cardew reacted against serialism, the most prestigious European method of composition in the 1950s and '60s. In a lecture delivered in 1967, he said:
[1]
G. Shapiro.
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (review)
,
2011
.
[2]
M. Berman.
All that is solid melts into air : the experience of modernity
,
1982
.
[3]
P. Bourdieu.
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste*
,
2018,
Food and Culture.
[4]
H. W. Henze,et al.
Music and politics: Collected writings, 1953-81
,
1982
.
[5]
Linda J. Dusman.
The individual as structure in Cornelius Cardew's the great learning: paragraph 7
,
1987
.
[6]
F. Howes.
The English musical renaissance
,
1966
.
[7]
D. Polan,et al.
Noise: The Political Economy of Music
,
1989
.