This past weekend we chanced upon a three day cultural festival in Waldkirch, a small town close to Freiburg-Munzingen where we're spending two weeks. One of the exhibitors was my sister-in-law Ulrike Schraeder, a professional sculptor whose art is quite appealing and thought-provoking.
We also heard about 15 minutes of a three-day excerpt of the longest piece of music known to humanity, composed by John Cage and lasting 639 years. The original score be can be heard in Halberstadt, a town committed to performing it in its entirety. The part we heard was just one tone which lasts several days (or weeks) of the "ORGAN2/ASLSP (As slow as possible). One of the local organ builders had helped with the installation in Halberstadt and decided that he wanted to present a tiny part to the public in Waldkirch. As you may know John Cage's music can be trying. Listeners either flee the premises, or they let the tone(s) flood over and thru them and find completely new ways of experiencing music, tonality, acoustics, rhythm, time, space and meaning.
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