Comment by jfengel

> The slowest possible piece would have a fermata with an infinity sign over the first note, and that's it.

But then the piece would never be completely played, which seems like a requirement for Cage's musical game / art / philosophical statement.

Moreover, your hypothetical piece could still technically be played at a high tempo. It seems like the point of the Cage piece is to play it at the slowest possible tempo, not over the greatest length of time possible (and that's why the fermata idea doesn't fit). (So while you're correct that 639 years doesn't represent the slowest tempo possible (just play it over 640 years instead, right?) it's the idea of extreme slowness that's interesting. Or perhaps "as slow as possible" refers to the tempo that really was as slow as possible (at the time it was set up) because of technological constraints.

Without having deeply researched the piece, I wonder if 639 years was chosen with any relation to Tesla's 3–6–9 idea.

Edit: It looks like the 639 years comes from the "performer(s)" who set up the equipment, not from Cage himself. The composer only gave the instruction to play it as slowly as possible, which plays into the technological-limitations idea above, I think.

I think you may be misinterpreting “possible” here. I’m shocked that it’s possible to get funding and interest to make a 639 year piece happen. It is unclear if it will be possible to complete. I do not think it would be possible to make a 10,000 year piece happen.

As with all things, the contraption is not the hard part. It’s the supporting civilization, society, economic context, and will of generations of people.

Cage’s game here is to question the entire scaffolding of art, not the pigments of the paint.

> The piece is called "As Slow As Possible", but it's not as slow as possible.

In what way is it “possible” to play an infinitely long piece of music?

Adam Neely and his band Sungazer did an interesting live experiment with his audiences, to figure out the slowest beat or pulse that people would be able to "feel" and dance to. Slowest possible isn't really as interesting in my opinion as slowest practical, which I think Neely and co's experiment explored. The track was Threshold on the album Perihelion.

The whole album explored beat, pulse and timings as it relates to how people can actually feel and interact with music. Really interesting!

> How do you set up a contraption to play for hundreds of years? How do you maintain it without interrupting the performance?

You play it with an orchestra (or perhaps a quartet is enough). Players may take turns to eat, sleep, and even have work-life balance. They also may retire (or die) and be replaced by new musicians. (How much would it cost?)

No musical performance is ever a 100% literal translation of the score. That’s pretty much impossible for any work. A score is not a set of MIDI instructions and a performer is not a sound card.

This post is wild because “what is the point of this” seems to be complexly divorced from the human drive to create and express one’s self.

> The slowest possible piece would have a fermata with an infinity sign over the first note, and that's it.

That piece has already been written. It's called ॐ.

Sort of interesting that the Clock of the Long Now and Cage’s ORGAN2/ASLSP were conceived around the same time — 1989 and 1987, respectively.

Also worth noting the clock's name is from Brian Eno, who has expressed interest in developing chimes for the clock. So Cage's work was kinda presaging the clock.

> How do you set up a contraption to play for hundreds of years? How do you maintain it without interrupting the performance?

All you need is more than one source of sound and you can maintain each of them while they're not playing.