People who listen to contemporary classical music don't expect to like everything, or even to understand it. They often merely endure it, and remind themselves that Wagner and Beethoven were considered far out in their day too. Just how much a listener will unquestioningly endure was acknowledged last week by the British Broadcasting Corporation. On its highbrow Third Program, it recently broadcast a musical "composition"' consisting of twelve minutes of random noise —and received no complaints.
Called Mobile for Tape and Percussion, the thing was identified to the audience as the work of one Piotr Zak, a young avant-garde Pole considered "one...
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