Time Is the Instrument: John Cage’s Organ²/ASLSP

The slowest performance on Earth began in silence, and it’s still going.

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.

The first audible note arrived on February 5, 2003. On July 5, 2004, a second tone was added, forming the piece’s first chord. More changes followed: January 5, 2006; May 5, 2011; and October 5, 2013, when a tone that had lasted over seven years dropped out. The most recent change occurred on February 5, 2022. The next one is scheduled for February 5, 2026. Each shift draws a small crowd of listeners and observers who gather to witness something minor, precise and deliberate.

To make this work, organizers built a custom organ inside the church. Its pipes are added or adjusted as needed. A pneumatic system keeps air flowing through the tones. Weighted sandbags hold down the keys for months or years. Volunteers monitor the equipment, check the pressure, and protect the space from wear. The project depends on people showing up and continuing to care.

St. Burchardi Church is plain and functional. The organ sits at one end, its pipes exposed. Most of the time, a single tone sounds, steady and quiet. Visitors come and go. Some stay for a few minutes, others longer. They sit in folding chairs or stand against the wall. When a note change happens, a technician adjusts the setup and a new tone joins or replaces the old one. The shift is small, but people pay close attention. Then the new sound holds.

Cage didn’t treat silence as absence. He saw it as part of the environment, something to be noticed rather than ignored. “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time,” he wrote. “There is always something to see, something to hear.” ASLSP makes that idea concrete. A single tone, held for years, forces attention to settle. “Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise,” Cage wrote. “When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.” That’s the piece. Not the sound itself, but the listening.