639-Year Organ Performance Changes Chords for the First Time in Seven Years (theguardian.com) 105
"Fans have flocked to a church in Germany to hear a chord change in a musical composition that lasts for 639 years," reports the BBC. "It is the first change in the piece, As Slow As Possible, in seven years."
The Guardian reports: The performance of the composition began in September 2001 at the St Burchardi church in the eastern town of Halberstadt and is supposed to end in 2640 — if all goes well.
The music piece by the American composer John Cage is played on a special organ inside the medieval church... A compressor in the basement creates energy to blow air into the organ to create a continuous sound. When a chord change happens, it's done manually. On Saturday, soprano singer Johanna Vargas and organist Julian Lembke changed the chord.
The BBC notes the score for the 639-year composition is just eight pages long. But though the piece was written in the 1980s, it wasn't until nine years after the composer's death in 1992 that anyone dared to attempt playing it. That performance then began — with a pause that lasted nearly 18 months.
The next chord change is scheduled for February 5 of the year 2022.
The Guardian reports: The performance of the composition began in September 2001 at the St Burchardi church in the eastern town of Halberstadt and is supposed to end in 2640 — if all goes well.
The music piece by the American composer John Cage is played on a special organ inside the medieval church... A compressor in the basement creates energy to blow air into the organ to create a continuous sound. When a chord change happens, it's done manually. On Saturday, soprano singer Johanna Vargas and organist Julian Lembke changed the chord.
The BBC notes the score for the 639-year composition is just eight pages long. But though the piece was written in the 1980s, it wasn't until nine years after the composer's death in 1992 that anyone dared to attempt playing it. That performance then began — with a pause that lasted nearly 18 months.
The next chord change is scheduled for February 5 of the year 2022.
I want it NOW! (Score:1)
And in 192 kHz / 24 bit PCM... ...if possible.
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I would've thought someone would've done an up-tempo remix of this by now, but all I could find was this video on YouTube [youtube.com] of an extreme speed-up to 36 seconds. Listening to that sped-up version though, it becomes obvious why no one has bothered - as Hank Hill so famously said, "Mother of God, it's all toilet sounds!"
Yup, everyone listening to this song is being trolled.
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How do you think Beethoven's symphony would sound if sped up that way? Even worse than the speed up, they use sawtooth waves for the notes.
I'm not saying it's not a troll, just that the way it was sped up in that video isn't a good way to tell.
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How do you think Beethoven's symphony would sound if sped up that way?
It in no way sounds as bad as that. Contrary to whatever belief system you've delusioned yourself with, the harmonious properties of a piece survive tempo changes. But thats for making sure to rush to act like some sort of fucking expert.
Re: I want it NOW! (Score:2)
Haha, yes I learned physics and math too. Speed up Beethovenâ(TM)s symphony 10000x like that was and tell me you can even discern notes. It will sound like scratch.
Re:I want it NOW! (Score:4, Funny)
Fucking experts usually work in the porn industry.
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longplayer (Score:3)
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... Changes Chords for the First Time in Seven Years ... by the American composer John Cage
Oh. That explains it then. John Cage is an idiot. True, he's "pushing the envelope" with "1:39 of Audience Background Noise" and other almost interesting things, but still. It's almost as emotionally mature as this. [mutualart.com] At least the kid gets Brownie Points for trying; the "artiste" gets cash
Re:longplayer (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, if you actually like stuff like this, fine; more power to you. [...] I actually wish you would explain the attraction to me.
Well, since you asked, I'll have a go.
One of the main characteristics in many of John Cage's works was a challenge to the listener, to reconsider what music truly was. I think of his compositions not as cynical attempts to sound different, but as considered and sincere puzzles that challenge you to discover why they're different.
This piece, ASLSP (As Slow As Possible) strikes me as an illustration of how our experience of a piece changes according to its duration. Many performances have lasted hours (played usually on an organ, in order to keep the notes sustained) but I have heard much shorter performances played on a piano. A performance that lasts hours can, in theory, be experienced from beginning to end in one sitting, so the effects of the chord-progressions are experienced. What happens during a chord held for the better part of an hour is an experience within the listener, not within the piece. You will inevitably think about other things, your mind will wander, you may even get bored, and that's fine. The piece refreshes your perspective with each chord-change.
But a performance that lasts for 639 years is another thing altogether. Except for brief "events" when chords change, the piece is no longer a conventional performance, but more of a sonic statue that strikes certain poses for an extended period of time. Nobody will hear the performance from beginning to end, and nobody is intended to. Instead, you will experience it for a short period in your life, and like many things in nature, such as a cityscape, landscape, eroding bluffs, or similar, it will continue to evolve in time for many generations.
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One of the main characteristics in many of John Cage's works was a challenge to the listener, to reconsider what music truly was.
But a performance that lasts for 639 years is another thing altogether. Except for brief "events" when chords change, the piece is no longer a conventional performance, but more of a sonic statue that strikes certain poses for an extended period of time.
Well, I guess it may be a challenge to the listener to reconsider what John Cage's music really is ... :-)
Re: longplayer (Score:3)
Sigh, this is like the moronic crap that
passes off as wall art these days vs something
that took months or years to craft and
perfect, where many earlier revisions can found through the layers of paint.
Wow, somebody quickly banging off a generic ditty on a toy piano and wasting a church organ to play it back slowly for hundereds of years, Am I supposed to be impressed? Same with someone randomly hurling globs of paint at a canvas and calling it 'art'.
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Am I supposed to be impressed?
No. Mr Cage didn't write the piece just to impress you.
What you could have done, instead getting all whiney on the internet was just shrug and think to yourself "It's weird, and I don't understand it, so I guess it's not for me".
But thanks anyway.
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Wow, a true conaisseur de haute musique. However, can you please clarify this huble servant of yours how this sublime piece of music stirrs someone's emotions, and why should it monopolize that instrument for so long, instead of letting it play such lowly music as of those otherwise preferred by the burgeosie, by such insignificants as Bach, Pachelbel, Mozart, Brams...?
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However, can you please clarify this huble servant of yours...
Probably not, as you've missed my point entirely, but maybe I could give you some lessons on spelling and putting together a coherent sentence.
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Better would've been, "[...] and think to yourself, 'I guess it's not for me'."
Wait (Score:2)
Is anything else played on that organ in the intervening time?
Re:Wait (Score:5, Informative)
It's not an organ in the sense of the word most people think of. It appears to be useless except for this composition.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Informative)
Is anything else played on that organ in the intervening time?
It's not an organ in the sense of the word most people think of. It appears to be useless except for this composition.
More to the point, it was built specifically to perform this composition. [wikipedia.org] I'm not sure, but I think it may not even be complete, so pipes will be added as the performance proceeds.
Re:Wait (Score:4, Interesting)
The design of the organ is actually quite interesting and deviates notably from standard organs. For example, all critical components are redundant and hot-swapable - not unlike high-reliability server hardware. The performance shall not be interrupted because a valve get stuck, etc.
Re: Wait (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it hard to believe that this will be playing for the next several hundered years, or even next couple of decades. Somebody is bound to say "fuck it" and pull the plug, or some disaster will put an end to it early.
Re: Wait (Score:2)
I want to add that something that sounds like a regular organ with one of it's keys stuck is not going to be desirable for the long term.
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Just be glad John Cage did not compose it for the bagpipes.
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I'm more inclined to see a janitor thinking "Oh fuck, someone forgot to turn it off / left his junk on the keyboard"
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It's not an organ in the sense of the word most people think of. It appears to be useless.
FIFY
My guess (Score:3)
This "performance" will probably go on for as long as at least one of the principals behind it is alive. But, within a few years of their deaths, their children will announce they have decided to move on with their lives.
Re:My guess (Score:4, Funny)
No, there will be fans willing to take it on .. BUT .. the more likely scenario is there will be squabbles about ownership and monetization that ends with forking and cancellation.
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And not least, with the amount of server space the digital version will take up.
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Compression should be awesome on this.
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digital version will probably be an emulator that you can change the date on.
no point otherwise really.
also is this the same germany worried about frivolous energy usage?
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At one time, I might have agreed with you. But these days I could see something this frivolous becoming a cause célèbre, or even a minor religious devotion. This is an age that pedestalizes the frivolous. I could see this being milked for quite a few generations. If it's frivolous enough, we may even see it completed.
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Well, it's performed in a church. And if there's one thing churches are good at, it's long term stability.
Conceptual art (Score:2)
Amusing to think about, but so hostile to the listener that there are no listeners (except for a few minutes every decade or two).
If a piece of music is performed without listeners, does it really exist? Show your work.
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Related:
"The composer is arguably most famous for 4'33"."
Re: Conceptual art (Score:1)
Which is actually a nice idea.
It told me about the value of "air" (silence) in my music. About seeing pauses and empty harmonic bands as a key part of the composition too. About focusing on the variations of the dynamics, instead of stuffing the song with notes and interleaved grooves and harmonies and compression until your ears physically hurt.
I didn't need to actually listen to it though. Just "silence is music too" did it. So it's still kinda like editors tell you nobody will buy a book under 200 pages,
Re: Conceptual art (Score:2)
Re: Conceptual art (Score:2)
And yet, somebody has to be the first to make that type of art or else the status quo isnâ(TM)t challenged and the nature of art isnâ(TM)t questioned.
âoeUrinalâ is garbage by todayâ(TM)s standards for the reason you identify, but Deuchamp was still a genius for being the person to do it.
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Yeah, I thought it was a nice idea until they sued someone for copyright on a piece of music with zero notes.
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The lawsuit was also a piece of performance art, intended to highlight the insanity of modern copyright law.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-en... [bbc.com]
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Looking at various reports on this, it's a little hard to say exactly what was going on there. This seems to be the story of one participant at least. If the actual goal of all parties was to highlight the ridiculousness of current copyright law, I would say that they succeeded.
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That's a recurring theme in Cage's work. His most well-known piece is four and a half minutes of ambient sound while the performer(s) are still. Not silence, as many people think, but ambient sound. The audience is as much in control of the performance as is the designated performer.
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It matters as much as people care. By discussing it here, we're lending it [some almost immeasurably small amount of] importance.
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If a piece of music is performed without listeners, does it really exist? Show your work.
For what it's worth, John Cage very much wanted his music to be to have listeners in order to "exist". More specifically, he much preferred live performances to recordings.
And because of that, I'm not sure even Cage intended for this piece to be performed over 639 years. But I think he would have been amused by this project.
Stupid people see deep meaning in stupid things (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a prime example. I will not accuse the artist of stupidity, that person is probably laughing his ass off at the complete and utter dementia of the fans. Like Boys with the cubic meter of rotting toast bread or the rancid butter he threw at a wall for works or "art" (to be "destroyed" by an entirely sensible cleaning lady in the latter case).
Re:Stupid people see deep meaning in stupid things (Score:5, Funny)
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I will not accuse the artist of stupidity, that person is probably laughing his ass off at the complete and utter dementia of the fans.
That is the art.
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I will not accuse the artist of stupidity, that person is probably laughing his ass off at the complete and utter dementia of the fans.
That is the art.
Probably...
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Many years ago I visited the art gallery in Philadelphia Museum of Art. Loved much of it, especially the paintings. Then I saw it. It was very impressive, I was certainly impressed. Some artist, whose name escapes me, decided to remove a 6 in. wide strip of wall stucco from the ceiling (some 20-30 ft high) down to the base where there was a small roped off section to protect the stucco chips. Made my whole day. I didn't consider it art but it was still very impressive.
I can imagine the meetings that must ha
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John Cage merely stated that the piece was to be played "as long as possible". Most performances are about an hour, but a set of people decided to go for a much, much longer version. I can't find what Cage thought about the effort.
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Should have beamed it into the next available black-hole event horizon. That would essentially make it play almost forever...
John Cage, Brian Eno, etc. (Score:2)
John Cage took great pains to explain what he was thinking about, if you're interested in his style of thinking you could read up on it. You might start with the book "Silence".
He was a really interesting guy, but it's very important for a certain kind of dude to be dismissive of Cage ("Charlatan!").
More recently, by the way Brian Eno working with the Long Now has been working on the idea of long duration musical pieces. Just fo
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You know, I find a lot of pseudo-profound bullshit in there. And some people that make a good living off selling the same. But as I said, I do not blame them. The damage is minimal, compared what bullshit artists do in damage in politics or corporate management or other fields.
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"The damage" is making people think about the boundaries of what they consider art and what they expect from art. You can argue that's an old set of questions at this point, nevertheless there still seem to be people who haven't gotten there yet. And Cage started doing this stuff in the middle of the last century, and "modern art" in general is around 100 years old now (the anniversary of Duchamp's urinal was just a few years ago).
The Long Now version of this is a bit different where it's intended as a
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"The damage" is making people think about the boundaries
of what they consider art and what they expect from art.
So it is completely self-referent, i.e. has no purpose outside of itself? I would not go that far, some art actually has merit. But this thing here is basically dadaism pretending to be "serious" art.
The Long Now version of this is a bit different where
it's intended as a challenge to think on a longer scale
than usual-- as Eno points out, if you find yourself
thinking "it's crazy to think a clock can chime for
10,000 years, because of wars, disasters, etc" you're
already playing their game.
I do not think it is crazy do think that at all. There we are in the domain of philosophy (not art) and the idea has merit. But building a clock with a mission statement of having it "chime for 10'000 years" is not philosophy. It is pretty much pseudo-profound bullshit in that it implies the creation of such a
The Interminable Chord (Score:1)
Why the drummers kept drumming furiously (Score:2)
Wake me up after the bass solo.
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I've been on bass solo, take one, since 1983.
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Hey, I've been playing bass since before you were born!
Re: Why the drummers kept drumming furiously (Score:1)
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You know what the tourist guide in the jungle said. Drums good. As long as drums play, horrible fate is avoided.
For when drums stop, bass solo next!
Wasting resources for something pointless = Harmin (Score:1)
No, it is not art. Contrary to the "art scene" and their stunts of supreme snobbery, art is the form of education and communication, used for emotional wisdom. And never pointless. If it doesn't convey wisdom, is is either bad art, or not art at all.
Sure, that is a relative thing. And good art is always specific, and does not touch everyone. (Yes, dear media "industry".)
Call me cynical, but I highly doubt that this is touching anyone, let alone changing anyone's view of the world and life.
It's only a stunt.
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'Art is in the eye of the beholder'
Now having said that, the melody must be so bad that the artist didn't want to allow anyone the ability to sit through a few notes at a time.
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Art is anything you can get away with. -- Marshall McLuhan
"Modern" Art often is "Conceptual Bullsh*t" (Score:5, Insightful)
John Cage is no exception. This sort of thing is silly nonsense that IMHO deserves less attention that some 3rd rate graffiti street art. I seriously doubt people will keep playing that "piece" for 650 years. And why would they?
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Many of these things are nice ideas which I'd consider as just that but some people go all the way and make them into reality. That is fine with me. It can be fun. Someone threw a convertible into a trajectory around Mars lately.
The question is, why should I be interested. Because Cage is someone? I'm going to make a 213 year composition, hook up the organ to a plutonium battery , bury it 650m into the ground , press play and close everything up.
*shrug* I don't get it. (Score:2)
To me at least it seems more like an 'art installation' than anything else, especially since the 'pipe organ' used appears
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Re: *shrug* I don't get it. (Score:2)
Just listen to Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" on an LP with a locked groove.
Ah, the Benzo-Amine Ring!
My favorite!
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I'll tell you what that sounds like to me:
Back in the day, 40 years ago, when I was building my first 'computer', on perfboard, from a 1976 Popular Electronics article for a 'COSMAC Elf' microcomputer trainer, which had no ROM (to start with -- added some later, for a BASIC interpreter), you could just power it on and put it in 'run' mode with whatever random garbage was in the 256 bytes of RAM it was designed with. If you put an AM radio near it, tuned between stations, and turned the volume up? It sounded just like 'Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music'.
Find the article. Ebay the ancient, obsolete parts, get your soldering iron out, build it, and get an AM radio. You'll hear what I mean.
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CD's can't play it, yet again demonstrating the superiority of vinyl!
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It sounds like a single note from a pipe organ played for years on end, and then changing to another note. Because that's precisely what it is.
What is the point? I see it like a living time capsule; connecting the present to the past. If it's still going in a couple hundred years it will be pretty pretty neat to reflect back on what has happened while this single 'song' slowly played. To have a uniquely shared experience with the past. To have generations all be connected by having listened to a small piece
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In short, it's navel-gazing bullshit, then?
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If you think introspection and contemplation are 'bullshit' then I guess... "yes", but it also says more about you than about the art.
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Dude, even as crotchy old guy remarks go, that one is out-of-date. Do you think anyone under fifty even gets that reference any more?
Re: *shrug* I don't get it. (Score:2)
"gigantic underground mechanical clock that Jeff Bezos wants to build."
I'll be thrilled when he gets around to building the submarine with the screen door.
A compressor creates energy ... (Score:2)
Oh, wait
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Are you saying you, or me?
Calling the Long Now foundation (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's your chance to build a metronome.
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Yeah but how long is the note in beats?
The true definition of slow news day. (Score:2)
n/t
Power? (Score:1)
So what happens if the power to their blower goes off sometime during the 639 years? Do they have to start over?
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Germany has abandoned nuclear power, and fossil fuels will start experiencing serious shortages over the next few decades. I'd say it's fairly inevitable that blackouts will cut the performance short within a generation... by which point people will have more important matters to deal with.
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So what happens if the power to their blower goes off sometime during the 639 years? Do they have to start over?
In the spirit of many of John Cage's compositions -- and his own views -- I think we could just consider the interruption to be part of the performance.
Stupidity (Score:1)
How do you know if you're insane? (Score:2)
That's nothing (Score:1)
Flippy Discount Coupons and Promo Codes available (Score:1)
I tried to dance to it... (Score:2)
...but I couldn't quite catch the rhythm.
LOL Paint drying on wall? (Score:1)
Want something slower than paint drying on the wall or watching the grass grow?
An Organ "performance" that lasts 639 years or at least 10 times the normal life expectancy.
If the song is more than an hour long, it's not music any more.