Friday, January 20, 2006

as slow as possible

in honor of the piano that's newly arrived in my life...

a couple weeks ago a chord was struck in a church in halberstadt, germany, in the perhaps best described as leisurely performance of
john cage's "organ2/ASLSP" (As SLow aS Possible).

the piece was originally written to span 20 minutes on the piano but has been re-interpreted for the organ and stretched to last instead 639 years. The particular organ on which organ2/ASLSP is being played was built in 1361 and was the first with a 12 note fingering system (a quite important development in modern music...)

t
his lucky chord - A, C and F#, will have the pleasure of ringing out for a few years, aided in this by weights administered to the organ specially for this project.

keep your ears open for the next notes, two Es, scheduled for may 5th.


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