Discover The Longest Song In The World

Longest and Slowest

In rock ‘n roll, the longest track clocks in at over forty minutes because Jethro Tull decided that their fifth studio album would be a continuous piece of music. But that’s nothing compared to the longest song in the world – the musical piece “Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible)” by avant-garde American composer John Cage.

Originally written in 1987, the performance began on Cage’s birthday on September 5, 2001 at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany with a pause that lasted for almost 18 months. The first chord change happened on February 2003 and the song is scheduled to last for 639 years thereby, ending in 2640.

After seven years, there’s been a chord change last September 5, 2020 to the musical composition which drew in fans of the John Cage Organ Project. The next one will be on February 5, 2020.

Cage didn’t specify its tempo, only that it should be played very, very slowly. A pipe organ was especially built for this particular task. A group of artists add new pipes manually every time a chord changes – last September, two new pipes were installed.

“Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible)” consists of eight pages of music. And while chord changes normally see over a thousand visitors, the most recent one had a significantly smaller crowd because of the ongoing pandemic. To date, there have been a total of 15 note changes since 2001.