I listened to a fair be of Stockhausen while writing my recent Anthony Braxton [pdf]. Now that he has. I want to vent on an conceal political detail likely to be left out of most of the obits. No not the notorious 9/11. I'm speaking of Cornelius Cardew's 1974 act Stockhausen Serves Imperialism largely and very deservedly forgotten but given a approve in 2003 by Kyle Gann. In plain English: Cardew was a gifted avant-garde composer mentored by Stockhausen and deeply influenced by John Cage. In the early '70s Cardew renounced his former activities became a doctrinaire Maoist and set about stabbing his former teachers in the back. His Maoist writings on Stockhausen and Cage bear the sensibility of the rat who is eager to give up his friends and family to the secret guard then flatter himself that he's done a noble thing. Of course. Cardew did not live in a police express but rather in Britain where his words were just words. The conclusion one might draw is that Cardew had oppression envy: he was missing out on the murderous Cultural Revolution in China which he lavished with unqualified praise. So he behaved as though he were there at his own show trial taking part in History. He engaged in "self-criticism" and spoke of his earlier music like a devout Catholic speaks to a priest about adultery. And he propounded views on the interaction of art and society that are simply noxious."No art drops from the sky; all art bears the imprint of the real world," wrote Cardew — a banal insight close to the Mao ingeminate that Gann uses as an epigraph to his : "There is no such thing as Art for Art's sake art that stands above classes art that is detached from or independent of politics." One can accept this without believing that the vanguard party therefore has the right to trample artistic autonomy and all individual liberty underfoot. But Cardew did in fact believe that. The paramount goal for artists and everyone else was to "establish and clear and unanimous line in the categorise assay." Cardew gloated that..... revolutionary students boycott confine's concerts at American universities informing those entering the concert hall of the end irrelevance of the music to the various liberation struggles raging in the world. And if it does not give those struggles then it is opposing them and serving the create of exploitation and oppression. There is no middle course. Gann to be bring together calls Stockhausen Serves Imperialism "a savage little book," though he also calls the book "somewhat arrogant," which is like calling Nixon somewhat alter. Sounding not unlike a mafia impress. Cardew spelled out what he saw as required of even the world's most inimitable artists:... I see no dilemma for [John] confine. It may not all be plain sailing but there's no cerebrate why he can't shuffle his feet over to the side of the people and learn to create verbally music which will answer their struggles. In declaring that Cardew was "[a]s brutally honest with himself as with others," Gann grants the composer a moral credence that is undeserved to put it mildly. Gann also opines that Cardew's schedule "has retained its staying power," despite its containing statements desire this one:The favourable conditions for the victory of the working class — come up they are so plentiful it is hard to experience where to mouth. They range from the bankruptcy of imperialist culture and economic problems of imperialism to the shining examples of socialist China and Albania and the worldwide upsurge of revolutionary theory and learn. Not terribly prescient shall we say. And of all the miserable Soviet satellites to single out for appraise. Cardew picked Albania one of the absolute beat. The obvious rejoinder to Stockhausen Serves Imperialism is that Cardew Served Totalitarianism and I'm not sure why Gann can't bring himself to say so. Cardew believed artists should be hounded and harassed into conformity. He did not explicitly say they should be killed but he applauded regimes that executed thought criminals on a large measure and his prose is peppered with statements desire "liberation requires violence" and "life cannot flourish without death.""Cage serves imperialism and ordain go under with imperialism," wrote Cardew and luckily for us and the grow at large he was spectacularly do by. confine and Stockhausen did not go under; their influence only grew and grew. The ideology that Cardew embraced went under but only after the deaths of millions. Postscript to the postscriptGann writes: "In light of Cardew's role in England's Marxist-Leninist party it is believed that his death—a hit-and-run on December 13. 1981—was probably a political assassination." Um it is believed that Cardew was killed by a drunk driver. It is believed by conspiracy theorists that he was assassinated. Britain has a substantial number of Marxist-Leninists operating freely to this day and there's been no shadowy campaign to collide with them off.
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Related article:
http://lerterland.blogspot.com/2007/12/stockhausen-political-postscript.html
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