636 Year Cage concert hits new note

World's Longest Concert Adds Two Notes By MATT SURMAN, AP BERLIN (July 5)
- In an abandoned church in the German town of Halberstadt, the world's
longest concert moved two notes closer to its end Monday: Three years
down, 636 to go.

The addition of an E and E-sharp complement the G-sharp, B and G-sharp
that have been playing since February 2003 in composer John Cage's
"Organ2/ASLSP" - or "Organ squared/As slow as possible." The five notes
are the initial sounds played on a specially built organ - one in which
keys are held down by weights, and new organ pipes will be added as needed
as the piece is stretched out to last generations.

The concert is more than just an avant-garde riff on Cage's already
avant-garde oeuvre, which includes a piece consisting of 4 minutes and 33
seconds of silence and one for a piano rejiggered with screws and wood
stuck between the strings. "It has a philosophical background: in the
hectic times in which we live, to find calm through this slowness," said
Georg Bandarau, a businessman who helps run the private foundation behind
the concert. "In 639 years, maybe they will only have peace."

The concert began Sept. 5, 2001 - the day Cage would have turned 89. The
composition, originally written to last 20 minutes, starts with a silence,
and the only sound for the first 1 1/2 years was air. The first notes were
played in February 2003. The two new notes rang out Monday evening. After
debates in Germany about what exactly "as slow as possible" could mean -
anywhere from a day to stretching on infinitely - the group of German
music experts and organ builder behind the project chose the concert's
639-year running time to commemorate the creation of the city's historic
Blockwerk organ in 1361. Halberstadt's disused Burchardi church, once a
monastery complex and now an appropriately simple and unadorned building,
was chosen as a concert hall. About 10,000 tourists visited the city, 60
miles southeast of Hanover, between April and September of last year to
hear the first three notes, Bandarau said.

Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912, and like his teacher, Arnold
Schoenberg, was influential both as a musician and a thinker.
"Organ2/ASLSP" was composed in 1985 for piano, but two years later was
rearranged for organ. Cage died in 1992.

The next change arrives in March 2006. The music then will become even
simpler: Two notes are being taken away, Bandarau said. The foundation is
now seeking sponsors to fund the organ's estimated $246,000 cost. "We need
to secure the future," Bandarau said.

07/05/04 13:47 EDT Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. The information
contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten
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Associated Press.