Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Hundreds assemble as John Cage piece changes chord for the first time in 7 years
UPI ^ | 09/05/2020 | Christen McCurdy

Posted on 09/07/2020 8:25:03 PM PDT by BenLurkin

Hundreds of people flocked to a German church Saturday to hear an organ change chords for the first time in nearly seven years.

The experimental piece, which consists of eight pages of music meant to be played very slowly, is intended to last for an entirety of 639 years -- meaning it will end in 2640 if all goes according to plan.

The organ had been playing the same chord for six years and 11 months before Saturday's chord change

Best known for a composition called 4'33" -- which is just four minutes and 33 seconds of silence -- Cage wrote Organ/ASLSP in the 1980s.

(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...


TOPICS: Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: chordchange; johncage; sevenyears
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-91 next last
To: BradyLS

Yeah, it must have hit something sharp.


21 posted on 09/07/2020 8:51:08 PM PDT by null and void (The Left weaponizes everything in the service of tyranny.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: BradyLS

They changed the chord.

Was it flat?

Winter is coming, Best to change to a lighter weight chord in cold weather for easier starting.


22 posted on 09/07/2020 8:56:10 PM PDT by Flick Lives (My work's illegal, but at least it's honest. - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

What time is it?

I’m going to go with cracra....


23 posted on 09/07/2020 8:56:50 PM PDT by Paladin2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dfwgator

Great song by the way.


24 posted on 09/07/2020 8:57:01 PM PDT by ConservativeInPA ("War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." - George Orwell, 1984)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Chengdu54

Who was worse Cage or Stockhausen with his experimental music?


25 posted on 09/07/2020 8:58:17 PM PDT by LukeL
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

I thought my computer was about to blue-screen....


26 posted on 09/07/2020 8:59:47 PM PDT by M1903A1 ("We shed all that is good and virtuous for that which is shoddy and sleazy...and call it progress")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Chengdu54
"I saw a Cage performance back around 1973 in Ann Arbor."

Is it over yet?

27 posted on 09/07/2020 9:00:44 PM PDT by Paladin2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

Give it a chance. You really don’t get to know a piece like this until you’ve heard it a few times.


28 posted on 09/07/2020 9:01:15 PM PDT by Billthedrill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin
I've got a CD of John Cage around here somewhere. [and now the punchline] I started playing it when I bought it 20 years ago, and it still hasn't ended.

29 posted on 09/07/2020 9:02:00 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin
John Cage was a mushroom enthusiast. He music was ethereal, crazy, random, and avant garde at the time, but he could not pick wild mushrooms according to his random notes. A stark incongruous repudiation of his music. Play all your discordant music you want, but you cannot pick wild mushrooms in the same manner, it will kill you.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/a-mushroom-related-brush-with-mortality-how-john-cage-fell-for-fungi/ar-BB189oE5

30 posted on 09/07/2020 9:02:01 PM PDT by Fungi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

Sort of like a Geico radio commercial. It repeats over and over and over and over ...


31 posted on 09/07/2020 9:08:27 PM PDT by TomGuy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

But did the bass drop?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUV7Q1C1SU


32 posted on 09/07/2020 9:10:35 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: LukeL; MinuteGal

I was a student worker in the Music Library of the UIUC (University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana) back in the 60’s. John Cage was a visiting Professor in the Music Dept. and would frequently come to the Music Library to check out books, etc. He was a short guy (kind of reminds me a bit of Elton John) sometimes wore a beret-like hat, very affected, and smoked cigarettes using a fancy cigarette holder. Very eccentric, but was very nice to the very young me who did many of his check-outs.

Went to a couple of his “concerts” in the Music Hall, and he and some famous French, I believe, harpsichordist created a “happening” (this was late beatnik and the beginning of the hippy years) on campus that was held in the UIUC all concrete Assembly Hall, shaped just like a flying saucer (still there on campus I might add).

In the upper far recesses of the Assembly Hall tape recorders were placed making strange sounds all around the circular bldg. And then there was the famous harsichordist (a woman) playing in the middle of all this, dressed like a harlequin if memory serves me, along with other various placed harpsichord players and it was all most strange. As you walked into the Assembly Hall, there was a kaleidoscope of lights flashing, kind of a wind tunnel you walked through with colored gauzy scarf-like thingies swirling around you; it was kind of like running a gauntlet of flashing colored lights and gauze cloth whipping at you as you entered the Hall.

It was surreal, but I must admit rather fun in a totally chaotic, nonsensical way. The harpsichordist was very good though. UIUC had a rather large experimental music department at that time which is why John Cage was there to collaborate with his fellow experimental music colleagues.

The Music Dept. was chock full of eccentrics, both students and professors. There was one guy who was literally dismantling a small organ (or was it a harpsichord) and hiding the parts in the Music Bldg basement, taking it apart and removing the pieces to heaven knows where, one by one. He also would swipe music manuscripts, but got caught.

Everyone knew he was nuts (he used to parade down the main campus drag wearing kilts and playing the bagpipes, going in and out of stores and bars along the way). I think he ended up in the clink for a while, if memory serves me, but not for long as he was a certifiable loony bird. An excellent and very intelligent musician though. Those were interesting days.


33 posted on 09/07/2020 9:28:37 PM PDT by flaglady47 (Donald Trump, President for Life (heh, heh))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin; null and void; SunkenCiv; Lazamataz

>>Hundreds of people flocked to a German church Saturday to hear an organ change chords for the first time in nearly seven years.

Starved for live entertainment they are yes yes


34 posted on 09/07/2020 9:29:38 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Joe Biden- "First thing I'd do is repeal those Trump tax cuts." (May 4th, 2019))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

Musicians make good mathematcians. Not generally the other way around. Somewhere in this guy’s history is a large- intergenerational trust set up for him by his wealthy parents. The nature of his work did not lend itself to “concerts” that a public audience might want to sit through. Certainly not the 639 year’s long silence with a changed chord every now and then— although can picture the kind of German audience would show up to hear... one chord.

And yet he had inspiration from melodic music composers, especially contrapuntal. In all this-— a non-professional diagnosis would at a minimum be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (which he would not like since he was all about ordering/organizing chance events and musical notes). An odd duck, in short. Give me Andre Segovia or Carlos Montoya.


35 posted on 09/07/2020 9:32:38 PM PDT by John S Mosby (Sic Semper Tyrannis)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DouglasKC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4


36 posted on 09/07/2020 9:32:43 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Joe Biden- "First thing I'd do is repeal those Trump tax cuts." (May 4th, 2019))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: DouglasKC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh-o3udImy8


37 posted on 09/07/2020 9:33:22 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Joe Biden- "First thing I'd do is repeal those Trump tax cuts." (May 4th, 2019))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: a fool in paradise

” to hear an organ change chords for the first time in nearly seven years. “

But the basis of that chord change is certainly of repute.


38 posted on 09/07/2020 9:33:47 PM PDT by mrsmith (`(US MEDIA: " Every 'White' cop is a criminal! And all the 'non-white' criminals saints!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: FirstFlaBn

it’ll be the new FREEBIRD


39 posted on 09/07/2020 9:34:35 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Joe Biden- "First thing I'd do is repeal those Trump tax cuts." (May 4th, 2019))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Fungi; MinuteGal

“John Cage was a mushroom enthusiast.”

He had a book he wrote which was in the Music Library I worked in when very young at UIUC, and I remember flipping through the book. I was about his musical life but interspersed throughout was mushroom lore, his second passion next to experimental music.


40 posted on 09/07/2020 9:35:12 PM PDT by flaglady47 (Donald Trump, President for Life (heh, heh))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-91 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson