# La Monte Young's experimental works



## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

To be honest, some of these don't even seem to be music. For example, the score of "Piano Piece for David Tudor #3" consists of the sentence "Most of them were very old grasshoppers." _Compositions: 1960, #10_ is "Draw a straight line and follow it."

And then there's _Compositions: 1960, #13_, which says "The performer should prepare any composition and then perform it as well as he can."
It's hardly original, is it? Isn't that what people have been doing for hundreds of years?

If anyone could shed any light on these pieces, it would be much appreciated.


----------



## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

These works fall in line with the idea of "conceptual art."

And conceptual art has existed for a long time but however, the philosophical codification hasn't arrived until the 1950's especially with visual arts.


----------



## AnotherSpin (Apr 9, 2015)

La Monte Young creates his own sound world. To get an idea what he does and why one should probably refer to Eastern spiritual concepts. Beside conceptual works he created some other things. Well Tuned Piano is a great piano piece performed on just tuned instrument. He is experimenting with separate sounds and sine-waves. I believe La Monte Young has been creating his own musical parallel universe and it make no sense to approach or evaluate his work from conventional point of view. 

I would strongly recommend to visit his Dream House, located in Lower Manhattan, NY to get an aural and visual (from Marian Zazeela) glimpse of his art. I spent there couple of hours during one of my recent visits to New-York, it was an unique experience.


----------



## Guest (Apr 17, 2015)

Don't worry about categorization, just enjoy the ideas, the humor, the quirkiness.

These are all Fluxus pieces. The central tenet of Fluxus was to ignore boundaries between genres.


----------



## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

For anyone who is interested in hearing what Young's masterwork The Well-Tuned Piano sounds like, here is a sonic example for you guys.


----------



## AnotherSpin (Apr 9, 2015)

I would suggest to use good audio reproduction equipment for listening WTP.


----------



## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

some guy said:


> Don't worry about categorization, just enjoy the ideas, the humor, the quirkiness.
> 
> These are all Fluxus pieces. The central tenet of Fluxus was to ignore boundaries between genres.


Thank you for you advice. I will listen again.


----------

