On NPR today, I learned a most beautiful and surreal thing. John Cage was an experimental composer. His most famous work, 4’33” consisted of a pianist approaching the instrument, sitting down, and not touching the piano, for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Another piece of his is called As Slow As Possible. It was originally written for piano, and then he adapted it for organ. An organ can sustain a note, whereas the percussive nature of a piano limits the length of the notes, and therefore of the piece. Apparently on piano, it took 20 minutes, played as slowly as possible.
A group of Cage scholars in Germany have decided to play the piece, truly, as slowly as possible. The oldest organ in Germany is 639 years old, so they decided that was the length of time they should aim for. They bought a disused church, had an organ built, and commenced the concert 2 years ago today, on Cage’s birthday. As the piece begins with a rest, there were no notes until February of this year.
At first, I just laughed. But as I listened to the organizers, I stopped to think. One man said it was a ‘monument’. An eternal flame, he said, commemorates the past, this is about the future. He said a couple could come to the church, which is open to the public, listen for a while; and then their grown children could come and listen to the same concert, the same piece.
It’s a little odd, but I find it beautiful, and comforting. He said it was about hope, belief in the future, and I agree. Not only our race, but our endeavors, our arts, continuing. It’s an exquisite idea. I smiled.
Comments
The only question I have is...
...how’d they find someone bored enough to play an organ for 639 years? Hell, how’d they find someone who’ll live for 639 years?
Re: The only question I have is...
So even if they did just have someone come in every three months and move the brick to a different note on the keyboard, many things could go wrong. Of course, being German, the people so persistently defining ingenuety and reliability, I’m sure they’ve thought of that, somehow.
Re: The only question I have is...
Organs aren’t that complicated. In this sort of application, they only really have one part that moves constantly, and that part (the bellows) could easily have a redundant backup. I think the big problem will likely be vibration damage to the active pipes. But again, you could probably have a redundant set of pipes, or simply service the pipes when they are not in use.
In the long term, they might see seals fail and such. This could be a bigger problem, but I imagine that there are probably occasional rests in the piece, so during those times, one could go in and replace any seals that are hardening or cracking.
Really, it’s an interesting engineering problem. How do you make a mechanical system operate with 100% reliability on a heavy duty cycle for 639 years? If I were asked to design such a system, I would probably just make sure that there was no single point of failure that could bring the system down. Build in appropriate redundancy, and service it frequently.
Re: The only question I have is...
Yeah, in my researches I didn’t find any mention of the servicing question—I assume they’ll do it during rests, et cetera. The people involved have a website, but it’s in German. If you know German, search for “Halberstadt” and “As slow as possible” I think. Or maybe that was a link from the BBC article on the subject.
I assumed at first that they must have a mechanical player, but I finally found a mention of an organist. I assume they have it set up so that he presses the chord and sets up a sustain function of some sort and goes away. They are putting together something like an endowment, I understand, for future organists’ fees, church upkeep, et cetera. I would imagine that the “monument” and “open to the public” aspects provide some money in the vein of donations.