As a young disciple of Karlheinz Stockhausen, a member of the seminal group AMM and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) was one of the most restless and decisive musicians and composers of the 20th century. Aware of the connections between art and life, art and politics, he defined his music as «people’s liberation music». In the 1960s, he approached the languages of musical improvisation and the thinking of Wittgenstein, whose treatise (about the relationship between language and reality and definition of the limits of science) inspired his masterpiece.

With AMM he helped to create free improvisation and avant-garde popular music in England. During the 1970s he became a Maoist militant and, with the Scratch Orchestra, broke with the avant-garde and composed hymns and intervention songs for the working class. It was as a result of this break that he published the controversial pamphlet "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism".

Considered the "Mount Everest" of the graphic scores, the "Treatise" by Cornelius Cardew was started in 1963 and completed in 1967. It consists of 193 pages combining an immense set of graphic elements that form a long visual composition (numbers, shapes and symbols, some of which are related to classical musical nomenclature, but without any hypothesis of absolute interpretation).

Cardew did not specify or instruct on the execution of "Treatise". There are no explanatory notes or doubts. Rather, it is configured as a landscape open to any number of musicians, instruments (acoustic, analog or digital). Encouraging improvisation. It is suggested that the interpreters define themselves previously the rules of (their) game.

In all its aesthetic scope and visual impact, the “Treatise” constantly puts (its) open performativity, sometimes even subduing it. By releasing music, historically tied to conventional notation, it is an inspiring landmark in the demand for new forms and sound languages.