Chord change marks key moment in one of world’s longest songs

First chord change in seven years

One of the world’s lengthiest musical performances is not due to end for another 639 years until 2640 (Getty Images)

Hundreds of fans gathered at a church in Germany on Saturday to hear a chord change in an organ piece which lasts for a whopping 639 years.

The performance of the “ORGAN/ASLSP,” or As Slow As Possible, a piece of music penned by US composer John Cage, started back in September 2001 at the St Burchardi Church in the eastern town of Halberstadt.

One of the world’s lengthiest musical performances is not due to end for another 639 years until 2640.

Saturday's performance marks the first chord change in seven years in the song which is being played on a special organ inside the mediaeval church.

The last sound has been the same one for the last six years and 11 months so the chord change is a big event among fans of the John Cage Organ Project.

A chord change means that the sound of the organ pipes changes either because new sounds are added or existing sounds end. On Saturday, two new organ pipes were added.

Organisers say the performance is “one of the slowest realisations of an organ musical piece.”

A compressor in the basement creates energy to blow air into the organ to create a continuous sound. When a chord change happens, it’s done manually – with two people changing the chord on Saturday.

When the piece officially started on 5 September 2001, it began without any sound. It was only in February 2003, the day of the first chord change, that the first organ pipe chords could actually be heard inside the church.

Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and died in New York in 1992. He’s known not only as a composer but also as a music theorist, artist and philosopher.

Cage is arguably most famous for 4’33” which is simply made up of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

Chord changes usually draw more than 1,000 visitors to Halberstadt but the number of guests allowed into the church was limited this year due to the public health crisis.

People celebrated the momentous event on Twitter. Jonathan Bungard, a music teacher, said: “For the last eight years, whenever I have taught a lesson on Cage, we have listened to the sound from Halberstadt, where his “Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible)” has been being performed since 2001. Today, the sound will change for the first time since 2013!”

The Grand Anderson, a musician, tweeted: “Blink and you’ll miss it!”

Additional reporting by Associated Press