Chord Of The Week

There was great excitement at the Buchardi Church in the German town of Halberstadt on Monday, February 5, 2024 when the organ playing John Cage’s Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) changed chord. The composition, being played on a specially built organ, is not set to finish until 2640 and for the first eighteen months of the performance, which began in 2001, there was total silence until the first note rang out. Since then there have been sixteen chord changes.

Volunteers had to add an extra pipe, the seventh, into the mechanical organ to allow the chord change to occur. The previous chord change occurred exactly two years earlier and the next is scheduled for August 5, 2026. A schedule of chord changes appears on the project’s website if you want to book a ticket to witness one of the strangest events in musical history.

I am not sure it will make the charts.