Cornelius Andrew

Cornelius Cardew was central to the discussions surrounding Western avant-garde music, bringing aesthetic and political tensions into the field of art. In the 1960s, he embraced the concept of musical improvisation and began exploring the phenomenon of language, its notation, and the notion of code—strongly influenced by Wittgenstein’s philosophy, particularly the book Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus.
Marked by creative radicality, Cardew challenged the boundaries between composer and performer, conception and improvisation, with Treatise—initiated in 1963—standing as a milestone of his experimental production. Comprising 193 pages of hand-drawn abstract designs by the composer, Treatise unfolds as a visual system open to multiple interpretations, leaving it to musicians to decode the signs within the score. When performed, this graphic-sonic project gives rise to a polyphonic work: its pictorial and symbolic propositions require a process of translation both individual and collective—an invitation to autonomy and co-authorship.

Henrique Menezes