Testing the Parameters of Music: The Halberstadt Performance of John Cage’s ORGAN2/ASLSP as Experimental System

Abstract

In Halberstadt, a 639 year performance of John Cage's ORGAN 2 /ASLSP (1987) is taking place. With this performance, the initiators aim to investigate the direction 'as slow as possible' that John Cage gave for this musical piece in practice. ORGAN 2 /ASLSP invites people to reconsider what we understand as music: is something still music if the length of the performance extends the length of human lives? The boundaries of performing a musical piece, from the role of the performer to that of the listener and music's material settings, have to be questioned in order to formulate how slow 'as slow as possible' exactly is. In this article, I will examine how in Halberstadt a productive experimental situation has emerged to pose questions about the nature of musical performance. Recently, it has been argued that studies in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) on scientific laboratories may help to develop an understanding of the productivity of experimental arts practices. To research the performance in Halberstadt, I will employ the theoretical vocabulary that historian of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger developed to understand the experimental systems in which scientific experiments are embedded. According to Rheinberger, experimental systems exist of three elements: epistemic things, technical objects, and researchers. By using these elements as a lens, I will investigate how the Halberstadt performance of ORGAN 2 /ASLSP functions and how it brings into view questions that help us to reconsider the parameters of music.