ASLSP = As Slow As Possible
On September 5, 2001, a performance of John Cage’s Organ²/ASLSP began in a small medieval church in Halberstadt, Germany. Nothing sounded. The opening stretch consisted of a planned pause that lasted 17 months, time measured not in notes but in waiting. For Cage, silence wasn’t an absence. It framed whatever came next. When the first tone finally emerged in February 2003, it didn’t mark the beginning. The piece had already started.
Cage wrote ASLSP in 1985 for piano. It’s a sparse, open-ended work with more suggestions than instructions. In 1987, he adapted it for organ and added one crucial note: the performer should play it “as slow as possible.” He didn’t define “possible.” That decision turned the piece into a question. What defines duration? Human limits, mechanical endurance, cultural attention span? In Halberstadt, that question became the score.
“If something is boring after two minutes,” Cage wrote, “try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” Repetition wears down familiarity. The Halberstadt version of ASLSP follows that logic. Chords change over months, sometimes years. There’s no melody to follow, just subtle shifts. The music is the waiting.
