A 639-year-long John Cage organ performance strikes a new chord in Germany
The late American composer John Cage left it up to the performer to decide how long his work, Organ2/ASLSP, should take. A group in Germany is testing the limits.
HALBERSTADT, Germany — Before American avant-garde composer John Cage died in 1992, one of the only instructions he left for those performing his piece Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) was, as its title suggests, to play the piece as slowly as possible.
One might say "mission accomplished" for the folks with the John Cage Organ Foundation in Halberstadt, a small city in central Germany known as the gateway to the Harz mountains. But
