World's Longest Concert

Ever sit through something interminable? See you only think you have because you're no longer there. It finished, it just felt like forever. Then you can get to philosophy, what if it lasts longer than you live? Well not many things you sit through do, so it doesn't really come up.

In the small town of Halberstadt, Germany, right now, an interminable concert is going on. It's an organ concert. The piece is Organ2/ASLSP composed by John Cage. It started on September 5, 2001. It's not really interminable, it will finish in the year 2640. That's right it's a 639 year-long concert

Cage was known for composing odd works. 4'33" is a 4 and half minute long piano piece of silence. The ASLSP in Organ2 stands for "As SLow aS Possible". That has previously meant about 20 minutes, but some folks are taking it to the extreme. They picked the 639 year length since it had been that long since an historically significant organ was built in Halberstadt when this concert started.

And what a start it was. The concert began with a 17 month long rest. That means silence. On February 5, 2003 the first chord (3 notes) started sounding. Two more notes were added in July 2004 and released on May 5 this year. On January 5 of this year the second chord started (yes the 2 notes added in July 2004 overlapped two chords). The next new chord will be on July 5, 2008 and then another on November 5 of the same year. "Each movement lasts 71 years. The shortest notes last 6 or 7 months, the longest about 35 years. There's an intermission in 2319."

The organ is being assembled as the concert goes on. It has a solar-powered bellows. Notes are played by hanging "weighted sacks from the organ's bare, wooden levers."

Halberstadt, is a former East German city of 40,000 people which had a 20% unemployment rate, which might explain some of this. It also has "a collection of 18,000 stuffed birds and is the unheralded home of canned sausage, which was invented [there] in 1896." The concert is being performed in the St Burchardi church which "was built in the 11th century and turned into a barn around Napoleon's time. During the Cold War, it housed pigs. The city council agreed to turn over St Burchardi to a newly formed John Cage Foundation, as long as the project didn't cost the city anything."