Cornelius Cardew: The Great Learning, Paragraph 7 (1969)

The Great Learning sets the first 7 paragraphs of the Chinese Classic of Rites, written before 300 B.X. and attributed to Confucius. Paragraph 7 is scored for a large chorus of mainly untrained singers. The score consists of the text in English (Ezra Pound's translation) and a few rather simple instructions:

For the first line each singer sings the word "if" eight times on a pitch of his or her own choosing and taking the length of a breath for each repetition. After finishing the first line, each singer moves on to line 2 ("the root") and sings that 5 times on a pitch that he or she hears someone else singing at that moment. Line 3 is sung 13 times on another pitch the singer hears, and this time 3 of the repetitions (any three) should be sung loudly. And so on to the end of the text. For an account of how a performance is likely to sound and why, see Eno (1976).