Jaka Berger here with Treatise (eff-012), on which he continues the task of interpreting the famed graphic score composed by Cornelius Cardew in the 1960s. We noted Berger’s Breakfast With Cardew item in 2023, recorded as BRGS, but he’s been engaged with the project since 2009. This time he appears on the Edition Friforma label which I think is a sub-label of Inexhaustible Editions in Slovenia.
Percussionist, he throws himself into this task using only his drumkit and assorted objects, delivering his interpretation of 11 segments of the score. As László Juhász reminds us in his sleeve note, Treatise has become known as something which propels and generates group collaborations, for ensembles of any size, but Berger has chosen to go it alone – and uses the score as a cue for solo inventions. I personally remain baffled and delighted by the Cardew score, although all I can do is admire it as a non-musician…the pages do look beautiful, and it’s interesting to know how they were designed using Letraset, rapidographs, and other tools not usually associated with composing on the stave in the traditional manner…mostly graphical shapes like circles and squares and lines moving in unexpected directions, with no prose instruction and only the occasional concession made to the past with the inclusion of a lone crotchet or minim sitting sadly in space. I say “the past” advisedly – Cardew was striving to make a radical break with all forms of musical convention, or as many as possible, in the name of his own brand of freedom – which we mustn’t forget did include a hefty slice of fundamentalist left-wing politics.
Part of Cardew’s plan was to remain silent on instruction; he hated the idea of telling musicians what to play, how to play it, or what the music “means”. Treatise thus does indeed open up the possibility of “absolute interpretive freedom”, as Juhász states here with maximum accuracy. Here on this record is the sound of Berger following that bird of freedom and seeing where it may lead him, and us, on the path to liberation. Beyond this, the specifics of how he chooses to play his very stripped-down kit is not known to me, but the range and extent of his choices and decisions are very much in evidence, employing a large number of techniques to produce exciting and strange sounds, sometimes barely recognisable as something generated by percussion. It’s probably possible to slot this work into the ongoing investigation into Treatise which Berger is making, and to see it as a parallel journey to his unusual and wonderful records which sit more-or-less in the free improvisation area, which raises interesting sidelines on how it all might connect to Cardew’s complex nexus of ideas about music, composition, and free playing. Today’s record may feel more like work-in-progress, or a report from an ongoing project, but it still has many moments of high interest. Using such terms makes me wonder if Treatise could be used in the workplace as a project management tool…it certainly looks nicer than the average Gannt chart.