To Play To-Day Tania Ørum Abstract This essay examines the concert piece To Play To-Day (1964), by the Danish Fluxus pioneer Henning Christiansen. The concert has only been performed once on Danish radio, but although little known, it is a classic work of instrumental theatre which has a significant place among the international Fluxus compositions. The essay points out how the work succeeds in striking a balance between popular tastes and highbrow references, serious statements on art and playful high spirits. The composer Henning Christiansen (1932–2008) is one of the Danish Fluxus pioneers: he took part in the first Fluxus festival in Copenhagen in 1962 and is included under the heading “Fluxus” in Jürgen Becker and Wolf Vostell’s early anthology Happenings. Fluxus, Pop Art. Nouveau Réalisme, dated September 1965. In the short biography included in this anthology, Christiansen writes that he was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Music (1950–1955), then worked as a clarinettist and composer (1955–1960) but “gave up the clarinet and since 1960 has tried to learn more about people and about breathing and therefore performs many happenings”. He states that he has taken part in around twenty organised happenings and several more anonymous and unor- ganised ones in Copenhagen and other places, mostly in collaboration with the artist Arthur Køpcke and the composer Eric Andersen. Becker and Vostell also print six Fluxus compositions by Christiansen and a work by Dick Higgins dedicated to him. By the time Becker and Vostell’s anthology was published, however, Henning Christiansen had already left Fluxus, in 1964, after quarrelling with Køpcke and Andersen. Instead he joined the self-organised Experimental School of Art in order to engage in more “constructive” collaboration with the poet Hans-Jørgen Nielsen and the artists from the School. At the same time he took the opportunity to cross into other art forms such as visual poetry, performance, installation art and film. A few years later he began his close collaboration with another ex-Fluxus artist, Joseph Beuys, which lasted until Beuys’s death. Many years later, when all the internal feuds and divisions within the Fluxus movement had died down, Henning Christiansen, like many American artists (Dick Higgins, for instance), accepted the Fluxus label again, and today he is seen as one of the acknowledged Fluxus artists. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/97890043�0506_055 <UN> To Play To-day 509 Title page of Henning Christiansen’s handwritten score for to PLAY to DAY, 1964. A Fluxus Compositon Henning Christiansen’s To Play To-Day (opus 25, duration 46 minutes 3 sec- onds) is a typical Fluxus work. Its title is taken from a text by Gertrude Stein, and it was composed in 1964 (the original score is dated December 1964) but not performed until December 1966, when the composer had moved on to <UN>.