An orchestra with inept players sold out the Royal Albert Hall

In 1970, composer Gavin Bryars and a group of students at the Portsmouth School of Art formed the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra open to anyone regardless of talent. Trained musicians could join too, as long as they picked an instrument entirely new to them. The rules: show up for rehearsals, and try your best to get it right — nobody was allowed to play badly on purpose.

They stuck to warhorses like "The Blue Danube" and Also sprach Zarathustra, pieces the members at least knew the sound of. Brian Eno joined on clarinet and produced their first two albums. What started as a one-off art-school joke sold thousands of tickets at the Royal Albert Hall on May 28, 1974, and their 1981 single "Classical Muddly" — earlier recordings sped up and synced to a disco beat — reached No. 38 on the UK singles chart.

The group stopped performing in 1979, undone by a structural problem: the players kept practicing, got better at their instruments, and the sound that made them famous disappeared. Their mangled opening of Also sprach Zarathustra lives on as the "orchestra fail" meme.

Previously:
• Orchestra plays "Bohemian Rhapsody" at Burning Man