John Cage: ASLSP

John Cage: ASLSP
How slow is "as slow as possible"?

John Cage composed ASLSP for piano solo in 1985. In July 1987, at the suggestion of organist Gerd Zacher, he undertook the legendary arrangement for organ with the title Organ 2/ASLSP. ASLSP stands for "as slow as possible". This playing instruction presented the performers with a great puzzle.

The opposite extreme demand for speed, with which Cage us in his Freeman Etudes encountered was »as fast as possible« (as soon as possible), which of course is extremely difficult to implement, but is absolutely clear to understand. "As fast as possible" is a technical requirement that pushes the performer to the limit of his physical possibilities. It is not an absolute tempo specification, but one that refers to the possibilities of the performer, and which, as is well known, goes back to Robert Schumann, who in 1838 in his Piano Sonata in G minor, Op. 22, initially specified the tempo "As quickly as possible" in order to shortly afterwards with an "even faster" ad absurdum.

This per se impossible possibility, which verbally expresses Schumann's expressive fever so directly, could have been a typical Cage invention - although what is inevitably serious with Schumann, with Cage is inwardly distanced play. In any case, every musician understands what »as soon as possible« means at the latest when they reach the limit of their manual or mental abilities. But what about “as slowly as possible”?

The great Danish symphonist Vagn Holmboe, the most important composer in his country between Carl Nielsen and his own student Per Nørgård, compiled his four string symphonies into a coherently intertwined, one-hour work cycle in the early XNUMXs Kairos called. Kairos here stands for "experienced (psychological) time," in contrast to chronos, "measured (physical) time."

In previous generations, this separation didn't really exist for musicians. Today it has become a fundamental question in interpretational debates. Is the measurable given physical value (the metronome) decisive for Beethoven or the realization of the musical structure and the resulting, vividly experienced connection?

So one can now ask Cage: Should "as slow as possible" refer to a physical duration that is independent of human ability - then the limit is only given where human calculation ends, i.e. in what the human being in his could take ratio for "nearly infinity" because it is simply beyond his imagination? Or does the indication of tempo refer to the ability of the musician to present a perceptibly coherent formation of the tonal sequences "as slowly as (him) possible"?

Only every musician can decide this question for themselves. Should he follow the latter track, the limit of what is possible, as in the fast tempo, is again identical to the limit of his possibilities, in this case his ability to correlate with the sounding continuum. However, this would presuppose that Cage's music would take account of the laws of dynamic musical context. Which she doesn't do on purpose.

When Cage studied with Arnold Schönberg, it quickly became clear to him that he had absolutely no sense and no interest in the connections and regularities of harmonics, which he openly confessed throughout his life. For his part, Schönberg said of his pupil, who hung on his every word with devotion and followed a completely different path, that although he was “not a composer”, he was a “genius inventor”.

Cage juxtaposes the sounds neutrally, so to speak, as appearances, like objects in a space intended to work on their own and in relation to the space, but not in an energetic flow or dynamic process as music had been understood up until then. If we take this image seriously and imagine how the rule "as slow as possible" would be translated, we involuntarily end up with the size of the room as the equivalent of the length of the piece: This music should be as slow as possible in the same sense be played like an exhibition space, in which certain objects are located, should be as large as possible.

Again, this analogy leads us to suggest that the orientation regarding slowness may relate to physical time. So the instruction is also to be understood "as simply as possible": Make a decision within the framework of the given conditions. For a CD recording, for example, the maximum time frame is 80 minutes for the whole or for each separate section (i.e. a maximum of 640 minutes); for a concert, until the hall staff closes, etc.

ASLSP consists of eight pieces, seven of which are selected in an invariable order (so, again a typical Cage idea, there will never be a full performance, no matter how long it may last). Nonetheless, each performance by ASLSP eight movements, because any piece has to be repeated. Apart from the eponymous provision, there is no verbal clue to the execution, nor are there any dynamic instructions.

In the notation, each piece is exactly two lines long. The relative durations within the pieces are fixed. What is missing is "only" the fixation of the absolute. This leads to extremely different interpretations. Steffen Schleiermacher, for example, gives each piece exactly two minutes, so it's finished after 16 minutes (and ASLSP seems much faster and more fleeting than many other Cage pieces that he also plays...).

On the Halberstadt organ, on the other hand, the work is calculated to last 639 years, and for each change of sound, Cageinans make a pilgrimage to the symbolic location (first sound: July 5, 2004; first sound change: May 5, 2006; finale: 2639) - that's it then »as slowly as possible«? Will the church stand that long? Is there anyone else who is interested? In any case, one thing that always accompanies him is the title letters ASLSP not: the question mark. On the other hand, an irrational literary allusion: »Soft morning city! Lsp!« – the opening exclamations of the finale of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

Christopher Schlüren