"Every composer seems to go through periods of change. Sometimes this is a gradual change as was the case with both Mozart and Beethoven, or it appears as a sudden and abrupt turn as in the music of Boulez and Stockhausen. Cornelius Cardew is such composer. As a teenager he spent four years of traditional study at London's Royal Academy of Music. It's often said that student years are considered interesting for musical lineage, but rarely is it a time considered as a composers stylistic period. Only in later years are composers categorized, analyzed by musicologists, explained by performers, or anyone with an interest in the musical arts. Cardew appears to have been profoundly influenced by Stockhausen during his assistant/apprentice period at the ripe old age of 20. While working with Stockhausen in Cologne, it was only inevitable that Cardew would be exposed to the music of John Cage, explore graphic music, and finally give birth to the culmination of his first "period" in 1967 with the completion of his score Treatise, a score he would later in life dismiss with the greatest vitriolic fervor. Yet despite Cardew's later dismissive writing regarding Treatise, unlike Varese, Cardew never destroyed it. In fact, before changing styles Cardew managed to write what appears to be a somewhat eloquent and fond accompanying text, ( if such words can be used regarding Cardew); his Treatise Handbook. Cardew's inconsistencies come to the front when comparing the score with the handbook. For example, Cardew avoids having the performer bound to notation in his handbook but in the score the performer always confronts traditional notational instances. These disjointed fragments are there and despite what Cardew would have us think, they cannot be wished away. They empirically exist in his score. These instances are common in Cage and in fact much of what we encounter in Treatise, finds that Cage has already been there and done that. But Treatise is most definitely Cardews own. Where Cage prefers calculation, conversion, and translation into structured musical sound, Cardew does the opposite. Cardew presents his score and requires the performer not to reduce the score into a finalized musical set, rather his goal is to have the performer merely be inspired by what's presented. This is Cardew's Magnum Opus in graphic music and in this, being first and greatest, no one can touch him. With Treatise Cardew essentially dominates graphic scoring. Over the many years Cardew has been the unwitting victim of the cult of his personality brought about by his abrupt change of style to more divisive political ends. This is unfortunate. It falls short in any logical analysis to equate his final antagonistic oppressive political period with the free individualistic open period of Treatise in terms of the composers thinking. It was only later, years after the composition of Treatise, that Cardew diminished, insulted, manipulated it's meaning, and did everything he could to destroy the value of Treatise. But he never physically destroyed it, as Varese would have. It stands as Cardew's testament to individual freedom in direct opposition to the unfortunate praises of totalitarianism he would later embrace and advocate. And herein lies the tragedy of Cardew and one I have reflected on over the years; it's been 50 years after his ink was laid to its paper and long after the composer left this world. After some discussion with the engineer of this recording, it was decided to record outside of the soundproofed studio I've often used. Just a few words about this. Because of this, the recording is a bit more "live" but not in the usual sense; there isn't an audience nor a stage, live only in the sense that the usual studio "moles" manage to leak into the background and aren't filtered out. The microphones were placed at various locations across the sounding board to capture the numerous varied sonorities a good grand piano is capable of producing. Another thing I'd like to point out is that to this day I've never heard another recording of Treatise, not that I avoided it, but I've always been more interested in the score. I didn't practice Treatise prior to the session since I wanted to go into it fresh and open but I did read a great deal about Cardew, his writings, and analysis of his various pieces. By the time I recorded, I was pretty saturated with the man and his life. It was recorded in a good sized room on a Yamaha 7 foot grand piano that has great sonority in the engineers opinion. I have to agree after listening to playback. Originally I told the studio that I didn't think it would take any more than 20 minutes to play all 193 pages but that turned out to be a 15 minute underestimation once I dug into the piece. Once you pace yourself in Cardew's pit, it can require an effort to get out." - Saragoza