02 Jun The Great Learning: Paragraph 7

Cardew, C. (1971) The Great Learning, Paragraph 7.  Deutsche Grammophon

Cardew’s The Great Learning, Paragraph 7, is a piece of choral music in which individual vocalists sing each line of Confucius’ Great Learning together at the same time. They begin with the pitch of their choice and sing a line on a single breath as they move around the performance space with the audience. For each subsequent line they borrow a pitch from another vocalist. In this imitation it is only the pitch that is reflected, the subsequent voice and words are different. The Great Learning, Paragraph 7 illustrates concepts of recursion as each loop is made, to specifications, however it is without a fixed boundary of possibility. Each vocalist can choose a pitch in which to sing, the choice has rules however within these the resultant song is unpredictable, and the sounds and length of the piece are dependent on the choices and breath of the vocalists. The underlying structure of the work is also the work itself. The work changes contingent upon the participant; on their breath, their proximity to another voice, on their position in the audience.

This work resonates with my project, with the process of dialogue with the landscape via reflected and refracted stories and memories. The passed-on pitch can be seen as an index. A trace from one voice onto another, the echo of a word moving out on a different breath. In each reflection part of the original is lost, however the accumulation of traces forms something new.