A small organ in eastern Germany is the headliner of the world’s slowest concert. It has been playing the same piece of music by composer John Cage at a glacial pace for nearly 25 years. Source: Crux.
A rare chord change on Wednesday – from seven notes to eight once an A4 pipe is added – represented the completion of about 4 per cent of the 639-year endeavour of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt.
While the project commenced in 2000, the performance began on September 5, 2001 – Cage’s 89th birthday – with a silent pause that lasted until February 5, 2003, when the first chords could actually be heard inside the medieval Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany.
The “ORGAN²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible)” composition is scheduled to finish on September 4, 2640.
An electric-powered blower system sends wind into the organ to create a continuous sound. A chord change, done manually, means that the sound of the organ pipes changes either because new sounds are added or existing sounds end.
On Tuesday, Jeffrey Lependorf, executive director of the John Cage Trust in New York, said he was looking forward to comparing the difference between the sounds before and after Wednesday’s chord change.
“You feel it through your whole body,” he told The Associated Press. “It resonates in this incredible way.”
Cage, an American avant-garde composer, was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and died in New York in 1992. He was also a renowned music theorist, artist and philosopher whose only direction for this piece was to play it as slowly and as softly as possible.
The interpretation of the composition in Halberstadt has resulted in the smallest unit being one month long. Other units – as well as silences – can last years.
The Halberstadt Cathedral was started in the 1200s, and was a Catholic church until the Protestant Reformation.
The piece will last 639 years, from 2001 to 2640. The time frame was chosen to be a tribute to a historic organ in Halberstadt that dates back to 1361, or 639 years before the project was initiated in 2000, according to Anneli Borgmann, chairwoman of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt’s board of trustees.
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This cathedral organ will play one composition until 2640 (By Stefanie Dazio, David Keyton, AP via Crux)
