Sleepers Awake

Built Environment: By slowing sound, John Cage created a rousing music of shifting relations to space

- Carson Chan

IN 1987, COMPOSER JOHN CAGE wrote a four-page piece for organ called ORGAN2/ASLSP, an adaptation of Aslsp, As SLow aS Possible (1985), which he wrote for piano. Each note decays as soon as it’s been played on the piano but, on the organ, the note can be maintained for as long as the performer wishes or deems ‘possible’. Cage didn’t write a time signature, nor does his score adhere to conventional values. Thick horizontal bars follow each note, the length of which equate to a percentage of the pre-determined duration of the entire performance. Over the years, organists have competed to make their performance the longest: slow is always relative.