Organ playing 639-YEAR-LONG piece of music changes chord for the first time in two years

An organ that plays a piece of music dating back 639 years has changed chords for the first time in two years.

The performance of the composition Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible) started in September 2001 in the St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt and, if all goes well, should end in 2640.

The piece of music by the American composer John Cage is played on a special organ in the medieval church.

So far, the chord has only changed sixteen times since then – the last time the sound changed was two years ago, in February 2022. The new pipe added ad’ to the previously six-note chord.

Hundreds of spectators – who reportedly book tickets for the concert years in advance – gathered around the mechanical organ as volunteers added a new pipe to the instrument to create a different sound, the BBC reports.

Hundreds of spectators – who reportedly book tickets for the concert years in advance – gathered around the mechanical organ as volunteers added a new pipe to the instrument to create a different sound (visitors pictured at the 2020 chord change)

A chord change means that the sound of the organ pipes changes because new sounds are added or existing sounds end.

The piece consists of eight pages of music by avant-garde composer John Cage, whose assignment was to play the 1985 composition as quickly as possible – although he never specified the exact tempo.

The first performance of the piece lasted approximately 30 minutes.

After Cage’s death in 1992, a group of philosophers and musicians who wanted to hold an organ concert that would last hundreds of years, found documents in 2000 that the Buchardi Church once housed the oldest organ, in 1361.

Since it was 639 years ago, they decided that the piece should be played for the same length of time.

While the organ currently plays the piece with seven pipes, Cage’s original composition required an organ with 89 pipes, which would have been too expensive to build. The mechanical organ can contain up to nine pipes.

After a chord change in 2020, organizers said the performance is ‘one of the slowest realizations of an organ musical piece’

Chord changes have since attracted several thousand visitors to Halberstadt, even during the pandemic, when the number of spectators allowed was limited (photo above)

A compressor in the church’s basement generates energy to blow air into the organ, while sandbags press down on the keys to create a continuous sound. When a chord change occurs, it is done manually.

After a chord change in 2020, organizers said the performance is “one of the slowest realizations of an organ piece of music.”

The next change in agreement is scheduled for August 5, 2026.

When the play officially opened on September 5, 2001, it started silently.

It was not until February 5, 2003, the day of the first chord change, that the first organ pipe chords could actually be heard in the church.

Chord changes have since attracted several thousand visitors to Halberstadt, even during the pandemic, when the number of spectators allowed was limited.

After the change in sound, visitors usually listen for five minutes of silence in silent awe before bursting into enthusiastic applause.

Visitors stand in front of the Burchardi Church to experience the change of sound of the John Cage Organ Foundation Halberstadt at the Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany, Saturday, September 5, 2020

“It is a concert that does not meet conventional expectations of what a concert should be,” Rainer Neugebauer, member of the foundation that organizes the performance and its de facto artistic director, told the Guardian.

‘There is a long-running discussion going on as to whether concert is the right word. There’s definitely a certain madness to it.”

St. Burchardi Church has a long, eventful history. It was built around 1050 and was used as a Cistercian monastery for over 600 years.

It was partially destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War, later rebuilt, at one point secularized and has also served as a barn, distillery and pigsty over the centuries, the John Cage Organ Project said on its website.

Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and died in New York in 1992. He is known not only as a composer, but also as a music theorist, artist and philosopher.