John Cage fans gather to witness chord change in 639-year-long performance

John Cage fans gather to witness chord change in 639-year-long performance


Hundreds of fans of the late avant-garde composer John Cage gathered in Halberstadt, Germany over the weekend to witness a chord change in Cage’s 639-year-long performance piece.
A performance of Cage’s 1987 work ‘ORGAN/ASLSP’, or ‘As Slow As Possible’, is currently taking place at St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt. The performance of the piece, which is being done on a special organ which emits a continuous sound thanks to an energy-generating compressor in the church basement, began in September 2001 and is scheduled to end in 2640.
On Saturday (September 5), hundreds of Cage fans and members of the John Cage Organ Project gathered in Halberstadt to hear the chord change, which is the piece’s first new sound in six years and 11 months, as it was made manually by soprano singer Johanna Vargas and organist Julian Lembke.
Each chord change has to be done manually, with two new organ pipes being added on Saturday.
You can hear the chord change here.
The next chord change is planned for February 5, 2022. Normally, a chord or sound change in ‘ORGAN/ASLSP’ would attract thousands of visitors to St. Burchardi Church, but the coronavirus pandemic meant that numbers were down this year on previous instances.


CAM

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

Image
Here’s what Russia’s 2020 disinformation operations look like, according to two experts on social media and propaganda. By   DARREN LINVILL   &   PATRICK WARREN Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t  “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,”  as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy. Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously. MORE: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/ P...
Read more

The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term

Image
The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term   (Photo: Photos: Getty Images) Americans will almost certainly go to bed on Nov. 3 without knowing who won the presidential election. Since millions of people will vote by mail, constraints on time and resources will slow ballot counting into potentially a weeks-long process. Voting patterns suggest it’s likely that President  Donald Trump  could end Election Day in the lead in certain key states, only to be overtaken by Democratic opponent  Joe Biden  when more votes are tallied.  This could create a nightmare scenario during the three months stretching from Election Day to the Jan. 20 inauguration: a battle on the state and congressional level over who is the legitimate winner. This could include Congress reconvening on Jan. 6, presided over by Vice President  Mike Pence , with no consensus over its potential role in choosing the next president. This...
Read more

When Life Hands You Lemons

Image
 It's like this folks: sometimes your mind goes blank. Happens more than usual with me of course. Take this forum for instance. I wanted to post something today and couldn't think of a topic. At least not a non-sexual one and we know sexual ones lately have been frowned upon.  Then along comes one of our regulars and complains about something. Well, they might not say it was a complaint, just an observation, but it was a complaint. A minor one. It has something to do about being able to make something out of nothing. Sort of like me this morning, how to make a thread out of an empty head? But they (notice I am using the correct pronoun, not saying he or she), by what they said got me thinking. What I thought was: Not sure if that is the actual saying, if I remember correctly, I remember the saying going something like this: Umm, no, I don't think the saying I am thinking of goes that way either, maybe ONE of you good folks can remind me how the saying goes. Either way, when...
Read more