So my music nerds: most of you know the amazing composer John Cage. He’s the guy who has written some amazing works, but is most commonly known for his work 4’22” in which the pianist opens a piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds then closes it. This is not about that work.
This is about one of his lesser works which has a small celebration this weekend. John Cage wrote a piece called “Organ ²/ASLAP (As Slow As Possible)”. Now the thing about this piece is it specifically did not set any specific time for “as slow as possible” in fact he encouraged flexibility. Many performances of the relatively short piece have run for 20-70 minutes… while some famous performances have stretched 6, 8, and even 12 hours. I know’ it’s weird but awesome.
However the most famous performance is in St Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany and began in 2001 and is planned to run for 639 years finishing in 2640. No it’s not a person playing it obviously but an amazing specially designed instrument.
What’s really cool (cool in the “I’m a massive nerd and I think this is cool” sense) is that this Saturday a single chord that has been playing since 2013 will change. I know, you’re all truly excited and should listen in!
This has been today’s nerd talk.
Much more details about the fascinating instrument, the schedule, other details are available at the main page if you speak German here https://www.aslsp.org/de/ or at the wiki page on when it changes here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible