— Richard Craig

  The work and thoughts of Cornelius Cardew remain some of the most provocative and distinctive in the context of contemporary music in the U.K. Although Cardew later denounced the TREATISE, a challenge remains to realise the hundreds of graphic scores in the collection and to attempt to assemble a sound and method which approaches the ideals that he held as a musician. It is an ongoing project with a flexible membership. Alongside the performance, the score is projected as we perform. Philosopher and musician Alex South and Richard Craig have since co-written an article for The Drouth. The article can be found here

29/09/2011 Alex South, Richard Craig and Daniel Padden. Pages 160-168.  City halls, Glasgow, Scotland

27/04/2012 Alex South, Richard Craig, Daniel Padden and Peter Nicholson. Pages 168-191. MediaCityUK, Sonic Fusion Festival Salford. Manchester, England

An extract from UBUWEB . Cardew in his own words: “The great merit of a traditional musical notation, like the traditional speech notation ie writing, is that it enables people to say things that are beyond their own understanding. A 12 year old can read Kant aloud; a gifted child can play late Beethoven. Obviously one can understand a notation without understanding everything that the notation is able to notate. To abandon notation is therefore a sacrifice; it deprives one of any system of formal guidelines leading you on into uncharted regions. On the other hand, the disadvantage of a traditional notation lies in its formality. Current experiments in mixed-media notations are an attempt to evade this empty formality. Over the past 15 years many special-purpose notation-systems have been devised with blurred areas in them that demand an improvised interpretation.