John Cage is famous for all kinds of creative, original takes on music composition.
This organ in Halberstadt, Germany was built specifically to play one of his pieces. The piece is called "Organ2/ASLSP" or "Organ squared/As slow as possible." They started to play the piece on September 5, 2001, and last Friday they played the first actual notes.
Y'see, the piece takes about 640 years to play. The silence that marked the first part was engineered, and so far the've worked out how the first 72 years of the piece wil be played.
The first notes consist of an E chord that will play through August 2005. Then they'll switch to playing the next notes, for which the actually organ pipes will be added in late 2004. You can see above how there are only the three pipes at the present time. They use weights to hold down the keys.
"This is a project that conveys optimism," said Michael Betzle, a businessman who helps run the private foundation behind the concert. "When you start something like that, you're counting on people's creativity 200, 300 years down the road."
I appreciate Cage but this work may not be amongst his best. Still, it's my goal to personally witness the final note, and to write the first complete critical review of the work. Wish me luck.
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