A timeless Cage: the centenary performance in Halberstadt

John Cage knew nothing of half-measures. In 1950, for example, the American composer decided he wanted to write music without intervening directly through his own will and intention: he therefore obtained a copy of the I Ching and began composing, leaving the choice of notes, durations and pitches to chance. A certain element of chance also surrounds his music for the prepared piano – that is, a piano with pieces of wood, bolts, screws, glass, paper and various other materials placed amongst the strings, capable of distorting the sound and allowing each note to be not that note but something different and unpredictable each time. Then, having entrusted the sound to chance, the next step was to eliminate it entirely: Cage therefore wrote (so to speak) "4’33”", a piano piece in which the pianist sits at the instrument, lifts the keyboard lid, starts a stopwatch, remains silent for four minutes and 33 seconds, then closes the lid and leaves.

Cage’s study of these ontological aspects of music also led him to the opposite extreme, namely the negation of any sense of time and the extreme stretching of sound: for him, ‘the exact measurement and notation of durations are in fact mental’ and, therefore, ‘we could either aim for greater control over duration or relinquish control over duration altogether’. Needless to say, Cage opted for the latter: “It is incredible that music as an art form has continued to force musicians to keep time together as if they were a crowd of horsemen crammed onto the back of a single horse. It is time to let sounds unfold in time independently of the bar line.”

So, in 1987, he decided to stretch out time and write a piece to be performed ‘as slow as possible’. Which instrument is capable of sustaining a sound continuously? The organ. This gave rise to ‘Organ²/ASLSP’, where the squaring of the title signifies slowness itself. Now, whilst Italy is the land of the indefinite and the ‘rough-and-ready’, of ‘allegro ma non troppo’ and ‘larghetto’, in Germany everything is taken much more seriously, and Cage’s piece has been in progress for 25 years in a church in Halberstadt. On 5 September 2001, the performance began (in reality, the piece starts with a 17-month pause) and will conclude in 2640: 639 years to play eight pages. In the left transept of the church dedicated to St Burchardi, an organ has been installed that plays constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with weights pressing down on the keys and pedals: every change or addition of a note is an event. Today, 5 August, between 2.45 pm and 3 pm, the momentous change marking the 25th anniversary will take place: an A will be added to the current chord, which has been playing since 5 February 2024, and will remain there until 5 October 2027.

On the website dedicated to the project, aslsp.org, every change to the notes is scheduled, optimistically, right up to September 2072. For the next five and a half centuries, someone else will take care of it. At a leisurely pace, of course.