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> 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.

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Svip 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2728595.stm

> They settled on 639 years because the Halberstadt organ was 639 years old in the year 2000.

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Retric 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Saying “As slow as possible” isn’t followable any more than putting an infinity sign next to a note. You can’t know how long a piece of equipment lasts unless you decide to break it at an arbitrary time.

These performers choose a completely arbitrary number independent of technical limitations, and then ran into technical limitations.

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dagw 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'd argue that "As slow as possible" is a note to the performer, not an absolute statement. Play it as slow as _you_ feel you possibly can. For some performers that's an hour, for some it's 8, for some it's 24 hours, and for this particular performance it's 639 years.

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mingus88 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

In other words “interpretation”

It’s so funny coming from a musical background and reading all these comments of people who have no idea what they are talking about criticizing one of the worlds most famous modern composers

Every performance ever done has been the performer interpreting the composer’s score and making it their own. Nobody want to hear a robotic perfectly accurate recreation of what is on the page, because even the act of transcription alters the composer’s intent. The score is not the art!

There is no perfection in art. It’s all subjective, by the literal definition of art.

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jacobgkau a day ago | parent | next [-]

> Every performance ever done has been the performer interpreting the composer’s score and making it their own.

To be fair, there are multiple lines of thought on that matter. Some conductors enjoy "making it their own," while other conductors attempt to discover and reproduce the composer's original intention as closely as possible. Toscanini comes to mind as a historical example of the latter, although I'm sure there are others.

At a certain point, a composer needs to provide information to compose a piece. What if someone wrote a "solo" that just said "improvise" and contained no notes at all? The argument being presented above is that Cage did the tempo equivalent of that. This is a philosophy argument at best, not "people who have no idea what they're talking about."

	▲	mingus88 a day ago \| parent [-]
		You are right, but the choice to attempt a historically accurate reproduction is also subject to interpretation. It simply can never be perfect. Down to the acoustics of the venue, there will always be aspects of a performance that are lost to time and can never be reproduced. And how can we even know, since no recordings exist (and if they did, that recording would introduce its own artifacts). How many people dance to a boureé today? Can any performance of one really be be accurate outside the context of dance? Sitting politely in a huge recital hall is no at all accurate And even then, the music falls on modern ears. We hear and understand music completely differently than ancient people did. Can we even consider anything to be accurate, since Art is experienced? I love renaissance music, and listen to as many recordings as I can where the performer uses a vihuela, theorbo, lute, etc. It's a totally nerdy pursuit. But it’s only “accurate” to a point The bottom line for me is that Art is subjective. Do it in the way that satisfies your urge to create. As soon as it leaves your body, it belongs to the rest of us to interpret and experience. There are no right or wrong ways to express yourself.

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Retric a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Nothing stops someone interpreting an infinity sign.

The point is both are impossible to achieve, not that nobody can make a related performance.