Cornelius Cardew's Camouflage and Bun No. 2

Abstract

ABSTRACTCornelius Cardew's Bun No. 2 (1964) provides a unique opportunity to reconcile the composer's indeterminate graphic score Treatise (1963–7) with a more determinately scored orchestral work which uses orthodox staff notation. It represents an amalgamation of Cardew's approach to two notational systems that, owing to their concurrence of use in his oeuvre, can inform our understanding of how graphic scores can be used in determinate compositional processes and vice versa. This article explores why Cardew decided to embark upon this experiment, using contextual information relating to Autumn ’60 (1960) and the influence of other composers, such as Morton Feldman (1926–1987). This is situated in Cardew's notion of ‘camouflage’, a socio‐musical construct relating to the situation and presentation of his widely varied compositional output in the changing musical environment of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The analysis itself covers a small portion of Bun No. 2, drawing extensively upon Cardew's Treatise Handbook (1971), identifying and extrapolating tendencies of musical‐graphical translation and focussing on the use of major and minor triads and their deformation using geometric concepts of ‘perfection’ and ‘imperfection’. Finally, the article considers the implications of this work both for Cardew and for the aesthetics and wider study of graphic score readings, briefly offering a reflection upon the concept of isomorphism in Ludwig Wittgenstein's picture theory (building upon Cline 2020) in relation to the rhetorical notion of ekphrasis (Bruhn 2000) as a means of explaining the uneasy position that this piece occupied for Cardew, read through the lens of camouflage.