1.2.  The identity of the work: object, process or performance?

But if the score ceases to be the ‘object’ of our work, what is the aim of composition? Of course, first the process. Bartok believed we might rebuild art music from the roots up – a true alternative to Schoenberg within the first wave of modernism, and one, which (ironically) hints at our truly postmodern condition. The process we need is one of education, learning and understanding.

But how can we distinguish this from, at best, tourism, at worst, plundering? Sampler technology has allowed and even encouraged this with often no regard for cultural practices (Cutler 2000). Music has been stolen for thousands of years without acknowledgement; but we live in a more global light. We want to preserve the variety of our planet; plundering today might be of the last Dodo egg, the last stages of an aural tradition as it westernises or ‘modernises’ – we have to take the agonising decision as to whether museum preservation is better than assimilation.

For me a performance, in its widest and most humanist sense, is always the aim. I wish to establish the conditions for a meaningful interaction of western and non-western (call them what you will) in the arena of live musical discourse. In this sense internet interaction is not applicable here. I maintain a belief in the ‘touch of the now’.

1.3.  The notion of the author: the nature of the collaboration between composer and performer

Our western world is obsessed with ownership; copyright and royalties are a central plank of our system of remuneration for composers.

We know the possible dangers when such a system confronts an aural (or even written traditional) music. From a commonly held pool of resources there emerges a fragmented and impoverished list with the performing rights organisations. Bob Dylan magically becomes the composer of an older traditional vernacular song. Even in emerging literary traditions we have great problems of ownership claims. We know of many cases from Jazz where the bandleader took the credit (and royalties) for something essentially composed by the group.

Further discussion is outside the context of this paper but cannot be avoided in our education and working environments. A new way of looking at ownership must evolve if we are to avoid wholesale destruction of oral cultures – or of any artefact that cannot prove its origins.

1.4.  The sounding result: what is important for the listener?

The kind of intercultural exchange I want to examine is ‘experimental’ in that it has no ready-made judgement criteria. There can be no ‘typical’ listener to this kind of experimental music.

In addition there is a specific problem with the ‘expert’. On the one hand an expert from the non-western tradition may feel ill at ease with modifications to traditional practice not previously sanctioned. The expert from a western tradition