Now here I am, in my mid-fifties, and about a year ago I got very upset. Terribly upset. I began to wonder if music was an art form altogether. Now that's something to get upset about. And I think the reason I got upset about it is perhaps maybe because of my PhD students. Because none of them approach it as if it's an art form. Yes, it's a music form, it's a memory form, it's a form that is allegedly supposed to do this and that, if you do this and that. And so here I am; after all Beethoven only lived a few years longer than I am now, talking to you here. So I'm at the end of my life, let's say I'm at the end of my life; working since I'm thirteen; I wake up one day and I say to myself "What the hell am I involved with? Memory forms? Musical forms? Various type of almost like, set Avedon poses? Now we take a walk in the Alps ... Now we go slumming with peasants ... Now we thank God that we got rid of venereal disease, or whatever? I mean what the hell is it all about, all the set poses, the set emotions? Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away, from some aspect of illusion and reality? Do we have anything like - Proust? Do we have anything comparable to Finnegan's Wake? I wonder.

- Morton Feldman, Toronoto lecture