As Slow As Possible

A 600 Year Song Can Teach Us Connection

John Cage and the organ in Germany playing for 600 years

Let’s talk about connection today, specifically a 639-year long John Cage organ piece. A couple day ago, a chord of this piece changed for the first time in two years.

In the mid-1980s, the experimental avant-garde composer wrote Organ2/ASLSP, ‘As Slow as Possible’, a keyboard work that consists of eight pages of music, to be played very very slowly.

Over the years, various musicians have played the piece over the course of several hours, in one case over 14 hours! But inside St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany, a custom-built organ started playing the piece in 2001 with the intent of finishing in 2640. The chord change happened when a new pipe was added to the organ changing the sound.

I encourage you to click on the link here and read the story and watch a video of the chord change. Then come back and let’s talk about it. Click here: Chord Change

All set? Did you hear the tonal change? Barely, right? Like most art of this nature, I absolutely adore the IDEA of the piece, even though in practice, the application leaves a bit to be desired.

We talk about connection quite a bit right here on Day By Day, and in general in my work. I’m always on the lookout for those bridges, a way that art or family or history can touch us in the present. So, its delightful to think that one single eight page composition will connect dozens of generations, hundreds of years - and not symbolically.

Literally.

If you dig deeper though, we try to do stuff like this all the time. Class reunions. Genealogy. Exploring abandoned ruins. Writing about our babies, you know, when they were babies.

We are designed for connection, but seldom have the patience for real multi-generational connection - thinking in terms of our minuscule lives and not beyond. Who can even begin to understand what that piece will sound like in 500 years, to say nothing about what civilization in general will be in 500 years.

But I‘m heartened by this - St. Burchardi Church, where the organ plays, was completed in 1491. That means in 2001, when Cage’s piece began, the church was 510 years old; a 500 year old church playing a 600 song. That’s more than a millennium right there. One thousand years years of brick and music.

So, keep playing your notes, let them ring out for a long time. Recall where you came from, think about how to bring that into the future, live vigorously now. And every little while, change chords, just to mix things up and keep it fresh. Play on!