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.A rare chord change yesterday — from seven notes to eight when an A4 pipe was added — represented the completion of about 4 percent of the 639-year endeavor of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt.While the project commenced in 2000, the performance began on Sept. 5, 2001 — Cage’s 89th birthday — with a silent pause that lasted until Feb. 5, 2003, when the first chords could actually be heard inside the medieval Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany.
Jeffrey Lependorf, executive director of the John Cage Trust in New York, poses for a photograph at the Buchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany, on Tuesday.
The ORGAN2/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) composition is scheduled to finish on Sept. 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 yesterday’s chord change.“You feel it through your whole body,” he told reporters. “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 project has transformed the Burchardi Church, which was left largely in ruins before money was raised for a new roof and other fixes to make the piece a reality. The sound there envelopes visitors throughout the church and gives them new experiences to hear as they move through the empty space.“I think it really is the organ playing the church and not the other way around,” Lependorf said. “You move two inches in any direction and it sounds not subtly different — very different.”The piece is scheduled to 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, said Anneli Borgmann, chairwoman of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt’s board of trustees.The time frame allows the project’s stewards and visitors to contemplate not only Cage’s legacy, but their own as guardians of the organ and its sounds.They also wonder what the world will look like by the end of the piece — will the church still be standing? Will the city of Halberstadt, which has already lived through two world wars, survive?The organ, at least, is built to last.Organ builder Johannes Hufken said the pipes he has crafted for this will last at least another 500 years.“This John Cage project is a good example of thinking ahead for the next generation — thinking outside the box, beyond the completely normal and traditional,” he said.Yesterday’s event marked the piece’s 17th chord change. The next is set for Oct. 5 next year, when the overall sound would be reduced by the E4 pipe.Inheritable “final tickets” for the Sept. 4, 2640, event are being sold for 2,640 euros (US$3,045).
