What is the longest piece of classical music ever performed?
To be honest, the answer gets weird pretty quickly. But there is, in fact, a clear winner. And it is currently being performed.
In 1987, American composer John Cage adapted one of his pieces, ASLSP, for organ. The title stands for “As Slow as Possible,” which is also a pretty good summary of the concept. There is no set duration for the piece. Instead, performers are invited to consider just how slowly it can be played.
At St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany, someone took that idea very seriously (like, very). In 2001, a performance of Cage’s Organ²/ASLSP began. The plan is for it to continue until the year 2640.
Yes, you read that correctly. 639 years. The duration matches the time elapsed from the first major organ installation in Halberstadt in 1361 until the start of the project.
The Halberstadt organ has a special setup that allows individual notes and chords to be sustained for extremely long periods: key are held down by weights (often sand bags) and the organ uses a continuous supply of air pumped through pipes to keep the notes sounding indefinitely. When the music changes, volunteers (and big crowds) gather at the church to help make the next note or chord change. These changes don’t happen often - there might be months or years in between note changes.
So is this the longest piece of music ever performed? If you mean the longest planned performance, it is certainly one of the most extreme examples. But Cage wasn't really trying to win a contest for world's longest concert. He was interested in what happens when we change our assumptions about music: How slowly can we listen? What counts as a musical event? And what happens when a piece of music is longer than a human lifetime?
Unfortunately, none of us will be around to hear the end of this piece (I can only imagine the party that will happen!). But the next time you hear a long pause in a piece of music, you might think of Cage and wonder: what if the pause lasted a year?
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