Cornelius Cardew

Cornelius Cardew (7 May 1936 – 13 December 1981) was an English contemporary composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental and avant-garde music in favor of activity as a writer and pamphleteer in the Revolutionary Communist Party, declaring he had "discontinued composing in an avant-garde idiom" in his notes to his Piano Album 1973.