I am sorry, but this is just dumb to me!
Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
61–70 of 76 posts
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#62Fastest organ piece ever... https://youtu.be/yypr7J4any0 53 seconds !
That may be the fastest performance of The Flight of the Bumblebee on organ, but that's it. It is fast, but what's the fastest piece? In the context of this article, it is about length, so any organ piece under 53 seconds would be faster (and there are plenty). You could also look at notes per second, but I'm not sure this one would win. There are some crazy dense passages in the organ literature.
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#63> His most famous piece, 4'33", is designed to be played by any combination of instruments - but musicians are instructed not to play them. This is even better played back from a digital recording. You need those gold audio cables to truly appreciate the silence.
John Cage's 4'33" is probably one of the best jokes in music. I personally learned about 4'33" in a music class, where it was performed live -- basically it was 4'33" of ambient noise, but there was a lot of tension if you didn't know what to expect. During the final exam for the class, the professor would play some recording and we were supposed to identify the music, and all of us would start writing "John Cage's 4…
> I also heard a version of the story that they didn't settle at all, because John Cage's publishers couldn't prove which minute out of the 4'33" was copied.
This seems wrong on its face; If I steal the chorus out of a song where it's repeated multiple times and release it as my own, the artist might not be able to prove which instance of the chorus I used.
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#64One quip: this piece is not "as slow as possible". One could write a piece of "music" that is one note to be played at the heat death of the universe, or a piece that is silence forever. It's fun to play with the definition of "music" like John Cage did his whole career, but the title of his piece is technically incorrect, the worst kind of incorrect.
I mean, you could play his piece at a speed designed to spread it out evenly from the present until the (predicted) moment when the universe can no longer support the mechanism used to play it. That would literally be "as slow as possible", and seems technically fine.
It's technically fine, but tempo instructions such as this are often just rough guides, rather than an accurate BPM target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo#Basic_tempo_markings
If you check the Wikipedia article for the piece itself[0], it explains:
> Musicians and philosophers discussed Cage's instruction to play "as slow as possible" at a conference in 1997, because a properly maintained pipe organ could sound indefinitely. The John Cage Organ Foundation Halberstadt decided to play the piece for 639 years, to mark the time between the first documented permanent organ installation in Halberstadt Cathedral, in 1361, and the originally proposed start date of 2000.
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#65>> began in 2001. A little clickbaity. I could change chords on a million year long piece (that started 30 seconds ago).
How is that clickbaity? It's playing a 639-year-long piece. You could change chords on a million year long piece (that started 30 seconds ago), but no one would care. This has been playing for 23 years.
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#66The closest thing I can think of is the strange art of bell ringing in peals [1], aka change ringing, in which bells in church towers are rung in every possible order. One of the very longest takes 18 hours.
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#67> His most famous piece, 4'33", is designed to be played by any combination of instruments - but musicians are instructed not to play them. This is even better played back from a digital recording. You need those gold audio cables to truly appreciate the silence.
I thought the point was that they would intentionally seed the audience with one or a couple of people who would storm out in (apparent) anger (if none of the actual audience members got to it first), and thus the music is the experience of the audience reaction to the piece.
I watched a performance of it on YouTube. The performance is the little coughs and sighs and creaks etc that we don't normally hear. I don't think it has a theatral component which needs people to storm out.
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
John Cage's 4'33" is probably one of the best jokes in music. I personally learned about 4'33" in a music class, where it was performed live -- basically it was 4'33" of ambient noise, but there was a lot of tension if you didn't know what to expect. During the final exam for the class, the professor would play some recording and we were supposed to identify the music, and all of us would start writing "John Cage's 4…
Is there a test of originality for copyright? I wouldn’t call myself vehemently anti copyright but when the idea of “let’s just not play and the ambient sound of the orchestra sitting there is music instead” is the basis for the copyright it does make me question the validity of it. When someone who has done XYZ drug of choice and can come up with that idea in their drug addled state of mind as a pretty good first pa…
Seems the solution is the ambient near-silence.
Your performance in your location will have a different ambient near-silence, than mine, or any other performance and circumstance. Since the near-silence is the point of the piece, we have different expressions....?
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#69Clearly nonsense. But some in the art world give it attention? Do they mean to be ridiculed?
A 'piece' is fundamentally something to be played, or something to be heard. This silly exercise violates both of those. It's not music, it's a stunt, that's clear.
Appeals to some folks' sense of wonder, I suppose.
Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its fun! Why are people so excited about eclipses or cicadas? I don't think everyone is being performative or doing it for attention (what attention)
Total eclipses have no equal—on earth anyway. I've had the great privilege of having seen three over the course of my lifetime. They're not normal experiences, they're something else again.
Total eclipses are far more common than this event.