And just because I support A wholeheartedly doesn't mean I'm no longer left wanting a better explanation of what she finds so incredibly offensive about MLK and his ILK. This is something I need to find out more about myself.

I can't see how any of this is music. When I did some support teaching in primary schools I did exactly this sort of exercise with infants. We sat in silence for a minute and jotted down (in picture form if they couldn't write) anything they heard during that time... with gaps as the time moved across the page - eg a chair scraping, a cough, a bird, people talking outside... then we made SOUNDS ( not really music) to make a sort of picture of the time passed.

I can't see how you can say that YOU are composing something here Matthew, you are just sort of sitting somewhere and saying ... go and do things ... music??

John Paynter comes to mind in ' Sound and Silence' too, a very 'fashionable'  book in education in the '60s.
Sorry Matthew, welcome , but you have lost me here, I can't see any relevance whatsoever to your music degree or our musicianship... 'Emperor's New Clothes' also comes to mind.

Come on chaps this can't be real??

A 

Well, I hope Matthew's examiners know the history of the happenings movement well, and are able to constructively guide him away from repeating past experiments -- though even these may achieve different artistic results simply because our world is different from the world of the early seventies.

I was also distressed to read the dismissive and sometimes vituperative retorts to his initial thread, but those clearly come from an outlook very foreign to my own. It is an outlook which feels threatened, perhaps even on a personal level, by the project in question and its ilk. This is the kind of threat which, despite actually being harmless, can provoke quite strong reactions. That is perhaps part of its point.

I was first put off by Nam June Paik when I first learned about his work -- particularly his performance art consisting of the highly dramatic smashing of a violin. The ethos from which he comes, however, is one of detachment, choosing specific provocations designed to make us question exactly the things we hold dear, because that 'holding dear' implies a reciprocal hold that they have on us, and it is imperative to reject that hold for the cause of greater spiritual freedom. To then say, e.g., 'I'd prefer he plays a Bach chaconne' is entirely beside the point, or rather is the point. What's surely beside the point, though, is the composer's (or artist's, or what have you) degree of expended effort or the implication that he is too lazy to compose. Failing that, should he at least choreograph an elaborate ritual surrounding this violin smashing? That wouldn't be a more effective realization of a concept.

Thirty-five years later (approximately), music is a richer thing than ever: musicians are finding ever new ways to re-hear old repertoire, discover new repertoire, and think seriously about music that has no aspirations of becoming repertoire. NJP did not destroy that. When I think of his effect on me, I find that the provocation he initially provided has made me more receptive to the vividness of the traditional repertoire, its malleability, and my inalienable right to question dogmatic approaches to it. At worst, his work has done nothing for people's understanding of the past. It has NOT caused people to love things less, be less curious, or become cynical, at least not on the whole.

A, I feel your frustration about these conceptual approaches to art, but they do serve the good of music. Nobody 'makes' you listen, let alone participate, nor takes away your right to perform what you love and talk about it freely. If they do, refer them to me for a good upbraiding.

Finally, I have participated in a piece of conceptual art, the mother of all concepts in my opinion, and this might be of interest to MLK: a colleague in Stuttgart, Germany, once coordinated the first globally co-ordinated drink of water: at 1:55 in the morning (California time) my wife and I woke up to quaff one glass each of tap water right on the 2:00 hour, previously having coordinated our watches with an atomic clock in Colorado, then turned off the light again and went back to sleep. In the morning we were informed that several hundred people from Europe, Japan, Australia, and South Africa (I think) had participated. Being a part of that (which sounds like a gimmick) was actually very special and not at all trivial. The whole point of this 'performance' was that it was undocumented, unverifiable, and unable to rely on any other dimension than the spiritual. That is music, situated between the cracks of our facade and resonating us.

And that is the most new-agey thing I have said or will ever say on these boards.

Just to get yer wheels turning, MLK -- the composer (organizer) did NOT ask for a receipt, let alone a video conference feed to observe our actual participation. We just all drank some water. If you want to contact him, his name is Jan Kopp, and he too writes concert music.

Words to that effect have been used to describe all manner of compositions through the ages.  Riots have occurred!  Think Rite of Spring.

We live in an age of Turner Prize pickled cows, unmade beds and 4.33.  All in the name of art and music.  It's difficult to come to terms with it all - well I find it so.  I was discussing it with a colleague and he said that really nowadays there's nowhere else to go.  We've done all the best music and the old masters.....

I'm not sure I agree - in fact I don't.  Perhaps it is an age thing.