(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

Question. Is this a "meaningful and artful expression of calm and peace in a hectic time," or is this a waste of a good pipe organ?

BERLIN - In an abandoned church in the German town of Halberstadt, the world's longest concert was coming two notes closer to its end Monday: Three years down, 636 to go.

The addition of an E and E-sharp complement the G-sharp, B and G-sharp that have been playing since February 2003 in composer John Cage's "Organ2/ASLSP" — or "Organ squared/As slow as possible." The five notes are the initial sounds played on a specially built organ — one in which keys are held down by weights, and new organ pipes will be added as needed as the piece is stretched out to last generations.

The concert is more than just an avant-garde riff on Cage's already avant-garde oeuvre, which includes a piece consisting of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence and one for a piano rejiggered with screws and wood stuck between the strings. "It has a philosophical background: in the hectic times in which we live, to find calm through this slowness," said Georg Bandarau, a businessman who helps run the private foundation behind the concert. "In 639 years, maybe they will only have peace." ...

After debates in Germany about what exactly "as slow as possible" could mean — anywhere from a day to stretching on infinitely — the group of German music experts and organ builder behind the project chose the concert's 639-year running time to commemorate to the creation of the city's historic Blockwerk organ in 1361.

from World's Longest Concert Adds Two Notes

Comments

[iamom.livejournal.com]

It's definitely art. I think it's a cool idea.

[beitlamed.livejournal.com]

> Is this a "meaningful and artful expression of calm and peace in a hectic time," or is this a waste of a good pipe organ?

i say it's both.

bl

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

"As slow as possible" means that the piece's length should stretch from the moment at which it first becomes possible to play the piece to the moment at which it is last possible to play the piece, with each beat being an equal division of that time.

The time at which it first became possible to play the piece was technically the moment Cage had the idea, but for the sake of logistics we can say instead that it's the time of the piece's publication.

Let's say that there are 1,000 beats total in the piece. Then each beat should have a length equal to 1/1,000th of the length of time between Cage's publication of Organ2/ASLSP (1987 in its current form) and the end of the universe.

I would recommend the diversion of funds currently allocated to nuclear and biological weapons research to the construction of a self-contained, indestructible engine, built around a pipe organ and powered by cosmic rays, that will play Organ2/ASLSP at the composer's intended speed for pretty much ever.

Since each beat will be about twenty billion years long, we've still got time to make this dream a reality by the time the second note needs to start. (Barely, if we have to get a government grant for it.)