Composers who pushed back the boundaries of music took centre stage at a lively Sixth Form Symposium lecture by Music teacher Tom Taylor.

Pupils were treated to an unorthodox musical journey which began with Ockeghem's Mass in any Mode, published in 1539 and written without any clefs or key signatures, and went through to ground-breaking electronic music composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died in 2007.

Thrown into the mix were Mozart’s MusikalischesWürfelspiel (composing with dice), György Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique (100 metronomes performing simultaneously at different speeds) Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (swinging microphones suspended over speakers), and the avant-garde productions of John Cage.    

In the same convention-defying spirit, Mr Taylor finished with his own world premiere, the self-composed Memories of Us (Homage to Cornelius Cardew).

He described it as: “A crazy piece, scribbled down on the back of an envelope a day before the lecture, involving five performers talking to, shouting at and screaming into the piano, moving it around the room every now and then.”