The17 is a choir. It specialises in improvised music, and does not make recordings of its performances. The choir was founded by Bill Drummond as a development of his interest in choral music, after hearing the music of Arvo Pärt.[1]
Drummond states that he thought of the name immediately.[2] It has origins in his love of Prime numbers, and his idea of the seventeenth year as a stage of life between the "sweet, coy"[3] sixteen and the full adulthood of eighteen. It is also a play on the name of The Sixteen, a professional choir admired by him.[3]
The choir's ethos derives from Drummond's disillusionment with recorded music. He released a manifesto calling on people to "dispense with all previous forms of music and music-making and start again",[4]
Each performance has no audience and is never recorded.[5] Also, there is no sheet music; instead the choir performs according to a set of instructions written by Drummond. These instructions (called "scores," but bearing little relation to musical scores) are open to change over time, and exist in the public domain.[6]
The choir has a constantly shifting membership (the choir's website states that to join one need only turn up and sing [7]); as of April 2009 there have been 1,508 performers, mostly members of the public with little or no experience in professional music.
In 2006, Drummond was invited to help schoolchildren compose scores in a project sponsored by the Arts Council. Children from several primary and secondary schoolsinCounty Durham wrote scores that were eventually compiled in the book Scores 18–76. The children also performed their scores in the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle.[8]
