# A.Sl.S.P.



## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

What bothers me about As Slow As Possible is not the premise of a piece which takes 690 years to perform, but that the piece began with a 17-month rest. Why in the world would anyone begin a piece with a rest? They might as well simply start the piece a bar (or 17 months) later!


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Happens all the time in music when you begin a phrase partway through the measure, doesn't it? I guess they had to count off the beats of the rest.

I'm waiting for the recording of this piece.


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## notesetter (Mar 31, 2011)

What piece were you thinking of? Strictly speaking, "most" pieces [that begin this way] do not begin with a rest, but with an incomplete bar - a "pick-up". Some conductors "beat through" the silent beats so the pick-up is perfectly synchronized. I recently saw Edo de Waart do just such a thing for the 2nd movement of Mahler's 2nd.


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## Guest (Jul 30, 2011)

*Organ2/ASLSP*

To give the piece referred to its proper name.

Organ2/ASLSP does not take 690 years to play; it takes however long it takes. There are a number of recordings of both the original piano piece and the organ version, each fitting on a single CD.

The performance in Halberstadt was set to take 639 years because that was how long it had been from the first permanent organ in Halberstadt (1361) until the beginning of the performance of Organ2/ASLSP.

The silence of 17 months is not all that long considering how long the entire performance there will be. An hour's performance would start with only 8 seconds of silence.

As for why to start a piece with silence, that's just part of the whole idea of Cage's to open up music to all the sounds happening, not just the ones the composer intends to have sound. Before Cage, those sounds were considered interruptions of the music, annoyances. After Cage, those sounds could be listened to and appreciated on their own merits. _Could_ be.

Here's a clip from when I was there in 2009.






I haven't managed to get there at a chord change, yet. Apparently the place is jammed when those happen.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Oops, my mistake. 639 years instead of 690 years.


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