John Cage's 1944 piano piece, ASLSP (As Slow As Possible), has been adapted to an organ version titled Organ2/ASLSP -- arranged to last for 639 years. The performance, in a former monastery in Halberstadt, Germany, began with a rest bar and the inflation of the bellows on September 5, 2001. The first notes finally sounded a couple of days ago, on February 5, 2003. A bravely optimistic foray into the extremities of music's time-bending capabilities -- I wish them luck keeping it going through the generations. While you imagine listening to the whole thing, perhaps read Cage's Indeterminacy texts, structurally adapted for the web.
(spotted via BoingBoing)
I played that one time.
Posted by Lulu at 09:53 PM, March 22, 2004.Excellent pieces on As Slow As Possible at this NPR site --
http://www.npr.org/programs/pt/features/2003/sep/aslsp.html
Posted by Harold Schneider at 04:59 PM, April 16, 2004.