This nifty little book was actually edited by Cornelius Cardew. Cardew was a founding member of the Scratch Orchestra, a motely collection of musicians,non-professional instrumetalists,conceptual artists,writers,sheep farmers,philosphers,composers,improvisors,and those who fall somewhere usefully between/amongst all of the above. This was a time of the high libertarian avant-garde where conceptual excesses, performance art, happenings, improvised music and graphic notation was all well within the order,the excitement of the day. What you will find here are compositions, activities,graphics,idiosyncratic descriptions of activities,hearts,spirals,what looks like star maps and actually a classic Scratch work "1001 Activities" as well as the Scratch Draft Constitution from May 1969. What is Scratch Music? and who creates it? a textbook definition would be, it is halfway between composing and improvising, no artistic buttress should be placed between a human being and art,in other words, and at that time this was an incredibly usefull way to learn,to educate and to make music. The result lead many artists to find themselves and their work. And if you talk to any Scratchers,most will say they got more out than they put in. This was again the necessary credo of the day. Those who create Scratch music must affirm between themselves what should take place however not a strict narrative, a note-for-note scenario is not necessary, merely a brief sketch will do,verbal or written, much like this modest but exciting book. Where might one encounter Scratch music? Well around the early Seventies if you happen to be riding the London Subway System (The Tube) you might encounter some arrangements of Irish Songs at The Victoria train station or near the tracks of The Elephant & The Castle Tube stop, Trafalgar Square, or Leeds College or opposite a museum. Of the "1001 Activities" some you might try if you haven't already is #285 Groan, or #314 Sing a Lullaby or #451 Sink into oblivion,or #548 Drop a clanger. The Scratch credo didn't emigrate usefully, here in The United States there really was no equivalent except the FLuxus and they had a primary exclusive focus in New York City and never became political as a left of the Scratch became.Fluxus was more visually oriented,more toward purified performance art, and music was a by-product of their art. Whereas Scratch always promoted the public sphere with more social perspective.giving concerts, and playing at benefits and at worker meetings or student "duus". Fluxus and other like-minded groups in Europe, like those surrounding conceptual artist Joseph Beuys never developed an activist social sense, and theri primary field was the more upscale confines of a gallery or some similar art institution,even they they may have felt they did. Scratch by contrast is still alive today although on a reduced scale and energy levels given the aging population of its cadre.Scratch however has made a primary document to be remembered has recorded the one monolith work written,tailored for it "The Great Learning" by the late Cornelius Cardew. This is a seminal,innovative work of the avant-garde, and is a modest 9 Hour duration,With organ and stones and many human voices and whatever instruments happen to be around. The text is based on the "Analects" of Confucius, divided into paragraphs, and is available(the recording that is) from the British Counsel in London,or they can point you in the right direction in order to obtain it.

While returning home late on a cold night in December 1981, composer Cornelius Cardew was struck by a hit-n-run driver. The situation surrounding his death is indeed opaque, that he may have been murdered by the extreme right-wing working in London. Cardew led a dangerous life, as an activist Marxist. He was arrested for his activities in Camberwell and for a time was homeless,living in a train station in the north of London. The last year of his life he was learning various Asian languages, Pakistani,and Indian to work within those communities against a growing racism,where firebombings of homes was becoming a frequent occurence. He also had an innate gift for organizing rallies and demonstrations against the Right-Wing, and that may have been the cause of his demise. Still he was loved and admired by countless musicians,artists and activists. There were numerous memorial concerts after his death in London,Rome,New York,Toyko, Australia and Chicago, as well as specific pieces written for him in remembrance by Skempton,Curran,Lombardi. This work"Stockhausen serves Imperilaism" was like a cup of hot black coffee for sobering the musical avant-garde when it was written in the early Seventies and it is a shame it is now out-of-print. There is an Italian translation, although next to impossible to obtain.Although Cardew's demeanor, the tenor of his language was a bit extreme, against the avant-garde he once loved and became an important integral part of in England,he believed in the path he had chosen. And here he gives along with Rod Ely and John Tilbury a brief history of The Scratch Orchestra, an odd mixtures of professional and non-professional musicians,conceptual artists,composers from all walks of life. One Scratch credo was"to create music for those who need it". And they frequently did this playing Beethoven Symphonies with whatever means available, piano,two saxophones,one cello, one trumpet and accordeon. Morton Feldman once said of Cardew, that any advancements,any progressive strains for music in England will only come about because of Cardew's efforts. So you might ask "why does Stockhausen serve imperialism?" and not Cage, nor Berio,nor Boulez. Well they all do, and it was Cardew's function here to make known the growing elitism that was becoming part of the avant-garde. To make known the role of the artist. Stockhausen was an consummate example for Cardew's diatribe, a careerist composer(Stockhausen) who expolited the market and musical genres freely obsconding with concepts from Cage,and Cardew and whatever was the current buzz as his hippy=like "Stimmung" where six vocalists sit in a circle intoning the names of lost Indian and Asian gods, or his excursions into graphic notation holdovers from Cage, and more importantly Cardew, his 193 page "Treatise" written in with impeccable craftsmanship of a means toward a structured improvisation. But Cardew's relavance in retrospect of close to 30 years, is he tried to question what the avant-garde was doing and attempted to create a bridge between the advancements of culture and aesthetics and a politics that craved freedom unpretenciously. He began to set Irish and Chinese revolutionary songs for the piano, and made music the central means of his activism. No one to date has really appraised Cardew's political work in culture from within this context, and no one has seriously dealt with the set of problematics of an engaged musical artist. All see him as an ungifted extremist,as critics John Rockwell, Norman Lebrecht,Adrian Jack,Robert Morgan,or Samuel Lipman. In contrast perhaps the current work on Brecht by Frederic Jameson or the writings of Paolo Freire are more vigorous beginningsin attempting to identify the conceptual categories envolved for an engaged political artist. But the New Left today has ceased having an affinity for activism as Cardew espoused, he is like an ancient preserve of an old lost time that few would care to remember or rethink. The opposite theoretical realm of this work would be Derrida's "Spectres of Marx" where activism it seems only exists in the performative realm of thought within the safe confines of the four corners of the page.