Concert Will Take 639 YEARS To Complete - 2 More Notes Played

[matcom]

<snip>

A RELATIVE rush of activity broke out here this week in the world's slowest and longest lasting concert as two new notes sounded in a piece of music that is taking a total 639 years to perform in its entirety.

The abandoned Buchardi church in Halberstadt, eastern Germany, is the venue for a mind-boggling 639-year-long performance of a piece of music by US experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992).

Entitled "organ2/ASLSP" (or "As SLow aS Possible"), the performance began nearly three years ago on September 5, 2001 and is scheduled to last until 2639.

The first year and half of the performance was total silence, with the first chord - G-sharp, B and G-sharp - not sounding until February 2, 2003.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,10124170%255E13762,00.html

[Atlas Mugged]

1. Halberstadt

That's in the Harz Mountains. I try and go to Quedlingburg at least once every couple years - it's my favorite place in Europe (Well, besides Prague). For those who travel, Quedlingburg is where the bibles were returned after a Texan stole them during the WWII. A well publicized lawsuit in the 90's returned them to the Collegiate Church of St. Servatius (built 1017-1129). I recommend the Hotel Theophano highly - it's on the village square. Anyway, anytime something is missing the locals make a joke and shout "Texas!". If you go to see the bibles, take the tour and hear the stories of how the Nazis had orgies and wild banquets with truly bizarre ceromonies in the church since it is, quite literally, considered the birthplace of the Teutonic Knights. Also, after the church, which is situated on a high bluff of solid stone, you can have lunch in the attached ancient hunting lodge overlooking the city. The church, lodge and castle comprise a single complex. Truly an amazing spot. But the whole area is astonishing and overlooked.

Try googling 'Der Brocken' and 'Rostroppe'. You'll be amazed.

[Catch22Dem]

2. OMG

What a crock of shit!
"The first year and half of the performance was total silence, with the first chord - G-sharp, B and G-sharp - not sounding until February 2, 2003."

I love experimental music, but this is just nonsense. You have to MAKE music in order for it to be called music. It's like I'm watching Pootie Tang!

[TrogL]

3. Music is organized sound

or lack of it, in the case of rests.

Granted, he needs to pick up the tempo a bit.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. I remember this...

and when I first heard of it, wondered if the organist had to sit there between passages.

Cage, btw, was never much appreciated for his long bouts of silence on the concert stage and the resulting cacophony of coughs, sneezes, farts, and rustling in seats. And that was before cellphones.

Some people were rude enough to suggest he couldn't think of any notes to play.

[Squeech]

5. Some people appreciated it

There's a quote from Igor Stravinsky: when he heard about the famous silent piece 4'33", Stravinsky is supposed to have said, "I hope to hear longer works from Mr. Cage in the future!" :-)

Myself, I go back and forth about Cage. I think he deserves better than he usually gets from pop culture. But it's not like Mark Twain said about Wagner, that his music is better than it sounds. Rather, the genius of Cage is largely in the philosophical approach he took to music. In essence, he demonstrated how most of the rules we use to structure music are pretty arbitrary, and he tried to demonstrate how we could use other sets of rules that would produce music that, although obviously way different from what we're used to, would still be aesthetically satisfying.

And there are actual pieces that are quite beautiful. His String Quartet in Four Movements builds an eerie medieval space, and then there's a piece called "In a Landscape" (for piano or concert harp) that's this lovely arpeggio that keeps morphing. (Interestingly, both of these pieces were written in 1949, the year before he started using random factors in his scores.)

The problem I have with Cage is kinda complicated. On the one hand, he abdicated a lot of the responsibility of the composer, whose job it is to make artistic choices about music, and embody those choices in scores. When Cage started using the I Ching and other aleatoric methods, he was essentially saying that he didn't see any reason to choose any one note over any other. The sleight of hand involved here is that he *did* have an aesthetic and *was* making choices, just that they were higher level choices about what sorts of sounds he wanted (quiet and lingering ones), how they should be performed (slowly and reverentially), the role of rhythm (keeping time and lulling the audience), the role of harmony (none), etc.

This ASLSP is the logical consequence of all of the above. You may think it's boring, and I won't disagree. If you buy Cage's premises, then it's *transcendentally* boring :-)

But if we hadn't had Cage, we wouldn't have Steve Reich or Karlheinz Stockhausen or Brian Eno or...

[Screaming Lord Byron]

7. IIRC, Cage wanted people to pay attention to the ambient sounds

of their surroundings which are too easily drowned out by everyday activity. Hence the silence.
That and he was really, really high. ;-)

[Squeech]

9. That's right, but he was high on life

His aesthetic was that Zen acceptance of whatever there is.

Another Cage story I love involves a discussion of current events he was having with another composer, who said, "The problem is, there's too much pain in the world!" Cage disagreed, and the other composer was horrified, asking "You think there's *not enough* pain?"

Cage calmly answered, "No, there's exactly the right amount!"

The thing is, Cage was like that even before he'd begun practicing Zen. He was unbelievably optimistic and empathetic. He walked in to a radio station in LA at the age of 12 and convinced them he should do a boy scout radio show. The day he met Xenia, he knew she was the woman he was going to marry. He got Arnold Schoenberg to give him composition lessons, and when Schoenberg told him he had no feeling for harmony, he started composing for percussion ensemble, where harmony wouldn't be an issue (and where he could get people without conservatory training to perform the music).

The biography I recommend to the interested reader (if I haven't bored you to tears already) is The Roaring Silence: John Cage, A Life, by David Revill. It clarifies the thought processes that led Cage to write for percussion, to start using the I Ching, to get into electronics, to venerate silence, to prepare the piano, etc. Once you see his ideas in sequence, as solutions to specific musical and aesthetic problems, you realize that he wasn't just a practical joker out to sabotage the classical tradition, but quite a diligent and insightful thinker.

Albeit one who made a boatload of silly and/or annoying music.

[TreasonousBastard]

8. Curious that Stravinsky said that...

since there are a few of his works that might have benefitted from extended silence.

But, you're right that it is easy to trivialize Cage, or anyone else who gets too far outside the box. As in all the arts, there will be someone who will take a concept and try to find and express its essence. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

I have spent too much of my life already trying to figure out whether some artists are too brilliant for me to understand, or are just mad.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

6. He did it so people wouldn't share it on Kazaa! (nt)

[bif]

14. Too funny!

Good one JCCyC!

[curse10]

10. Eh. Not a Cage fan

ambient noise and all that bullshit.

I've played Cage and I think he just tries to be clever for his own ego's sake. It's less about the music and more about him. Which is fine, but I don't have to appreciate it.

[terrya]

11. So much for waiting for this to come out on cd.

:-)

[Liberal Veteran]

12. This is akin to calling a blank wall or empty room "art"....

This is more like a piece of performance art than a real concert.

[Endangered Specie]

13. And they are calling this art?

No wonder I love to bash arts so much.


fuel, meet fire.