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Hey, do you guys want to hear an awesome new
song?
Trust me, it’s like, reaallly good.
Ready?
Here we go…
What do you think?
That was just the beginning, here let me play
you something from the middle, where it really
heats up….
Pretty awesome, right?
Now here’s the big finale…Aaand that’s
the end.
Did you like it?
I should mention, by the way, that there’s
nothing wrong with your speakers—I mean
maybe there is, I don’t know what your deal
is—but if you didn’t hear anything just
then, don’t worry: you weren’t supposed
to.
That’s because the song, entitled “4’33”,
consists entirely of a musician or musicians
“resting” for four minutes and thirty
three seconds.
It’s by the famed avant-garde composer John
Cage, and on the one hand, you could argue
that it isn’t music at all, but on the other
hand, it’s kind of the only famous song
we can use on HAI without infringing on copyright.
Either way, the point is, John Cage is a weird
dude with way more weird songs that I don’t
even have time to get into—some of which
involve toasters, blenders, bathtubs, Geiger
counters, and sometimes, rarely, when he wanted
to really get crazy, even musical instruments.
This is all to say that when the Maryland
Summer Institute for the Creative and Performing
Arts was having a piano competition in 1985
and they reached out to John Cage to compose
a new piece to serve as the contemporary requirement,
knowing full well who John Cage was, they
got exactly what they had coming.
What was coming was the possibly brilliant,
possibly insane, definitely weird ASLSP.
ASLSP is an abbreviation of As Slow as Possible,
because that’s totally how abbreviations
work, and it’s a simple, fun, easy-to-listen-to
piece of music—if by simple, fun, and easy-to-listen-to
you mean complicated, boring, and largely
unpleasant.
Don’t take my word for it, take the word
of Thomas Moore, the coordinator of the competition
that commissioned it, who said that the audience
and jury, “begrudgingly put up with” the
piece, which coincidentally is what commenters
say they do with most of these videos.
ASLSP consists of eight sections, which should
be played in order, but the player is instructed
to choose one to skip and one to repeat, which
they may do at any point regardless of order.
Make sense?
No?
Perfect.
Most importantly, though, ASLSP does not specify
a tempo.
It simply says it is to be played “As Slow
as Possible.”
Now, because of the limits of how long a piano
can hold a note, the piece would traditionally
last anywhere from 20-70 minutes, which is
a long time, but 70 minutes of boredom can
be handled—just ask the first third of The
Irishman.
But in 1987, Cage released a version of the
piece that adapted it for the organ, called
Organ2/ASLSP, which made things much, much
worse—and not just because Organ2 sounds
like an evil organ transplant harvesting program
from a dystopian sci-fi novel.
You see, unlike a piano, an organ can theoretically
hold a note forever.
Pianos are percussion instruments, whose sound
is produced by a hammer that hits a string,
causing it to vibrate, and eventually that
vibration will stop.
Organs, on the other hand, produce sound by
having air pushed through them, and so as
long as air is pushed through the pipes—which
electric pipe organs can do indefinitely using
motors—a note can play forever.
What followed, then, is exactly what you would
think would follow: a bunch of musicians started
playing the piece for increasingly ridiculous
lengths of time like they were the David Blaine
of extreme organ playing.
However, in 1997, things were taken to a whole
new level when a bunch of musicians and philosophers
at an organ conference—a thing that apparently
exists—in Trossingen, Germany, started debating
what it really means for the piece to be played
as slow as possible, because I mean… what
else are you going to talk about at an organ
conference?
Kidneys?
After a while, they found themselves unsatisfied
with theoretical answers, and so decided to
do what any reasonable person would do in
that situation—set up a 639 year-long rendition
of the piece in a German church.
Because, you know, culture, or something.
If you managed to do the math that 1997 was
less than 639 years ago, you’ll have realized
that that performance is still going on—and
indeed it is, in St Burchardi church in Halberstadt,
Germany.
A special organ was built for the occasion—which
is operated by sandbags that keep the keys
pressed and has a limited number of pipes
that can be switched out to achieve whatever
notes are currently necessary—and it began
playing ASLSP on September 5, 2001.
Well, sort of, because ASLSP actually begins
with a pause, so it was nearly two years until
the first chord was played, on February 5,
2003, a day when a few hundred people gathered
in St Burchardi church to experience the absolutely
thrilling, totally worth-the-two-year-wait
feeling of hearing a single chord being played
on an small-ish organ.
I don't know music stuff but according to
my audio editor Graham, the chord was an E
Major split over two beats, consisting of
a G sharp above middle C, the B above G sharp,
and the G sharp an octave above first G sharp.
I have no idea what that means, so if it's
wrong it's Graham's fault and if it's right
I think I should get credit for having the
good judgment to trust Graham, who should
be playing you that note… now.
To keep the precise temporal proportions of
the piece, the time between note changes varies
widely, from as few as 92 days to as many
as 2,527 days, or nearly seven years.
That longest wait is actually happening right
now, and will end on September 5, 2020, which
is two days from when this is being posted—timing
that I 100% totally planned and didn’t just
find out after I started writing.
The performance is scheduled to end in 2640,
or 639 years after it began—the same amount
of time between when the performance was scheduled
to start in 2000, and when the first organ
was installed in Halberstadt cathedral in
1361.
At least, that’s unless the world is destroyed
before then, but why would something like
that ever happen?
If want to learn more about musical genius
and certified mad-lad John Cage, you should
check out Kay Larson’s very good biography
of him, Where the Heart Beats, which is available
right now as an audiobook on Audible.
By the way, I don’t know if you’ve noticed,
but the whole world is kind of insane right
now—and that’s why Audible is helping
out by offering free access to hundreds of
great titles totally free, at stories.audible.com,
no strings attached, no signup, no ads.
If you do sign up for an Audible membership,
though, you’ll get a lot of great stuff:
one audiobook credit a month, plus total access
to audible originals, plus stuff like guided
meditations and daily news digests.
You could do what I did recently and listen
to the audiobook, The Boys in the Boat, the
fantastic non-fiction book about the 1936
American men’s rowing team, to help make
up for the fact that the Olympics didn’t
just happen.
You can get 30 days free, and get that free
audiobook, by going to audible.com/HAI, or
text HAI to 500-500.
