Christian Wolff (b. 1934)

Anderson notes that the interview took place at an important point in Wolff’s life: the premiere of his piece Burdocks (1971)—the climax of his association with the English composer Cornelius Cardew—and his first year teaching music at Dartmouth College. Childs and Wolff discuss Wolff’s approach to notation, Edges, and performance situations. Wolff describes his Practical Introduction to Music course and plans for another course with Jon Appleton. He talks of working with Cage and Cunningham, Burdocks and Cardew’s The Great Learning. He talks of living in England, prose notation; the Scratch Orchestra and the London premiere of Burdocks. They discuss commissions, strategies for changing the concert tradition, the influence of Wolff’s classics education on his music, ethics in performance; finally Cardew’s Maoist attacks on Cage and Stockhausen, leading to a change in Wolff’s own political thinking.