As It Happens6:41Organ performing 639-year-long piece just changed chords for 1st time in years
About 500 people gathered inside an 11th-century church in Halberstadt, Germany, on Monday to listen to an organ switch from one chord to another.
The instrument — a makeshift device that uses sandbags to hold down the keys — is 23 years into a 639-year-long performance of a composition by the late avant garde musician John Cage.
Monday marked its first chord change in two years.
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“It was a magic moment,” Rainer Neugebauer told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
As slow as possible
Neugebauer is the head of the John Cage Organ