“Well, It's a Vertebrate …”: Performer Choice in Cardew's Treatise

Abstract

Treatise (1963–1967) by Cornelius Cardew (1936–1981) is perhaps the largest-scale piece of graphic notation ever written. Cardew created Treatise, influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as a combination of graphic elements that could be read symbolically—as language, a code, or notation. However, Cardew published Treatise with no performance instructions, thereby allowing it to be read as graphic art as well. Treatise has inspired questions on the philosophy and aesthetics of notation, and even to the nature of composition and of performance itself. Solutions for the performance of Treatise have been suggested both before its publication—through excerpts from Cardew's diaries—and after, through post-publication performance accounts.

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