"As Slow as Possible" is both the title and the pianist's instruction of this John Cage piece, but the mandate is more like "as slow as you want". It was written as "ASLSP" for piano in 1985 and later adapted for organ so that the ability to sustain notes could take the idea even further.
Some of the longer piano performances exceed an hour; pieces of music as long as this are uncommon, but not unheard of. In 2011, The Flaming Lips recorded the six hour long "I Found a Star on the Ground". In 2015, Thom Yorke was commissioned by artist Stanley Donwood (the man responsible for all of Radiohead's artwork since The Bends) to write music for "The Panic Office", an exhibit of his art in Sydney, and wrote a piece that lasted 18 days, no two minutes being exactly the same. Erik Satie's "Vexations" from the late 19th Century is a precursor to Cage's piece which includes cryptic instructions that can be reasonably interpreted as "play 840 times" - no speed is given. Cage organised a performance of "Vexations" that lasted 18 hours using a large tag team of pianists that included his similarly named protegee John Cale. But in the late 90s, a group of musicians in Halberstadt, Germany conspired to take "As Slow as Possible" to absurd extremes - you have to remember that we didn't have smartphones back then and we had to make our own fun.
A performance of the piece using a purpose-built organ with the pedals held down by sandbags commenced in 2001 and is scheduled to end in 2640. The performance actually started what was effectively many performances of his better known "4:33" (minus the page-turning), as the piece starts with a rest which, for this performance, was interpreted as being two years in length. Right now it's most of the way through a rest which began in 2013 and will end after almost seven years in 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible
https://universes.art/en/magazine/articles/2012/john-cage-organ-project-halberstadt/
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/06/arts/music/06chor.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations
Some of the longer piano performances exceed an hour; pieces of music as long as this are uncommon, but not unheard of. In 2011, The Flaming Lips recorded the six hour long "I Found a Star on the Ground". In 2015, Thom Yorke was commissioned by artist Stanley Donwood (the man responsible for all of Radiohead's artwork since The Bends) to write music for "The Panic Office", an exhibit of his art in Sydney, and wrote a piece that lasted 18 days, no two minutes being exactly the same. Erik Satie's "Vexations" from the late 19th Century is a precursor to Cage's piece which includes cryptic instructions that can be reasonably interpreted as "play 840 times" - no speed is given. Cage organised a performance of "Vexations" that lasted 18 hours using a large tag team of pianists that included his similarly named protegee John Cale. But in the late 90s, a group of musicians in Halberstadt, Germany conspired to take "As Slow as Possible" to absurd extremes - you have to remember that we didn't have smartphones back then and we had to make our own fun.
A performance of the piece using a purpose-built organ with the pedals held down by sandbags commenced in 2001 and is scheduled to end in 2640. The performance actually started what was effectively many performances of his better known "4:33" (minus the page-turning), as the piece starts with a rest which, for this performance, was interpreted as being two years in length. Right now it's most of the way through a rest which began in 2013 and will end after almost seven years in 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible
https://universes.art/en/magazine/articles/2012/john-cage-organ-project-halberstadt/
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/06/arts/music/06chor.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations
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