Treatise (music)
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Treatise, composed by Cornelius Cardew is a work comprising 193 pages of lines, symbols, and graphic music notation, with no explicit instruction to the performer(s) in how to perform the work.
Cardew suggested that performers devise their own rules and methods of interpreting the work in advance, however.
Subsequently Cardew embraced Maoism and wholeheartedly repudiated this and other works of his avant-garde period. A savage indictment of Treatise may be seen in a speech delivered by Cardew at the ‘International Symposium on the Problematic of Today’s Musical Notation’ held in Rome in October 1972 as transcribed in his highly polemical book Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (1974). Stockhausen Serves Imperialism is available in PDF format at UBUweb (http://www.ubu.com/historical/cardew/cardew.html).