Headscratcher #2

[Starrmark]

What is (by far) the longest held single chord in a published work? This chord is held unaltered, tied for more than a hundred bars. Name the (famous) composer and the (famous) work.

MS

[Generoso]

It must be the piece for orchestra and choir by Yves Klein called "Symphonie monotone-silence". It was written in 1949 and consists of a single chord that is held for 20 minutes!!! Followed by 20 minutes of silence!!!

It proceded John Cages silent 4'33".

[ess42]

Not quite sure either composer or work would qualify "famous"

There is, of course, this:

http://www.john-cage.halberstadt.de/new ... dtoene&l=e

where lenghths are measure by pages of the calendar, but it does not meet the challange becuase the chords are not over 100 measures. However, it got me to thinking that the challange only implies, and perhaps purposefully so, that the chord has a lenghty duration in performance time. 100 measures of a Beethoven scherzo go by in under a minute.

[reinhold]

Othello (Verdi), Act 1, Organ, Cluster C2,C#2,D2 for 244 measures...

See Don Byrd's page "Extremes of Conventional Music Notation":
http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/donb ... tremes.htm
Section "Duration and Rhythm", Answer 2a.

[sbeckmesser]

Wagner: Das Rheingold has starts in E-flat. The 3-part harmony establishing E-flat major first appears with the G in the horn in m.18. This is held, with ties, over many instruments (mainly horns and brass) through m.136. A similar effect occurs at the beginning of Strauss' Alpine Symphony. There are also some extremely long held chords, mainly for strings, at the ends of some Shostakovich symphony movements. No doubt there are also extremely long chords in some minimalist pieces. Stockhausen's fascinating Stimmung, is about an hour long and is based on only B-flat and its overtones but there are no ties (I'm going by what it sounds like, not having seen a score).

--Sixtus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimmung

[Starrmark]

Verdi's Otello is the right answer. The unaltered chord is terminated after about 4-5 minutes, following the tempest when the chorus sings the clouds have vanished from the sky. Eric Leinsdorf once recounted that several bricks were places on the organ pedals for a performance he conducted at Tanglewood. Since this chord does not appear in the piano reduction but only in the orchestral score, and is only subliminally perceptible in the din that surrounds Otello's arrival, most musicians have never seen it.

As for Das Rheingold, the Alpine Symphony or anything by DSCH, none of that comes close. Never heard of Yves Klein -- nor does it sound like he is a composer whose music I want to investigate. As for the inimitable John Cage, I always felt he belonged in the categories of philosphers and aestheticians, but not composers.

Regards,
MS

[sbeckmesser]

The right phraseology should not be "the right answer" but instead "the answer I was looking for." There are undoubtedly other published pieces (including recordings as publications) that fulfill your comparatively vague criteria to the letter. Otello cannot be the only piece ever written that has held notes over such a notated span, especially when works more recent than 1950 are included.

I would take further issue with your use of the word chord, since the three notes in question, each a semitone apart, form a what is now called a tone cluster and are so low in pitch not to be heard even as a tone cluster. They are heard as a pitchless low-frequency presence, similar to a piano bass drum roll, as numerous live performances I have heard at the MET have proven. To quote Verdi expert Julian Budden: "it would be wrong to regard it as an instance of modern discordant harmony since it is not strictly speaking a harmonic device at all but rather an external colouring of the musical landscape, making its effect subliminally. [The Operas of Verdi, Vol.3, revised edition, p.334, Oxford UP, 1992]" This is why I didn't submit Otello in the first place, since I was looking for "functional" harmony. If you are allowing for non-functional harmony, all bets are off and Otello is probably not the only "right" answer.

--Sixtus

[Starrmark]

I should have learned from Die Meistersinger that one should not argue with Beckmesser, but Wiki defines a chord thus: In music and music theory a chord is a set of three or more different notes from a specific key that sound simultaneously -- and that is good enough for me.

I can think of one other piece that hold notes longer than Otello, but that is a consequence of tempo, not tying notes over bar lines -- and it is single notes, not necessarily chords that are held. Here is a news report from Deutsche Welle about this piece by Cage.

Deutsche Welle, July 5th, 2008

One Thousand Hear Change of Note in World’s Longest Concert

The next musical change in John Cage’s slow masterpiece will happen in November

More than 1,000 music-lovers showed up on Saturday, July 5, in a German town to hear a change of note in the longest-running and slowest piece of music ever composed. Eccentric US composer John Cage (1912-1992) planned his composition to last 639 years, meaning more than a dozen generations of musicians will be needed to play it on an automatic, as-yet unfinished organ at Halberstadt, Germany.

Entitled ORGAN2/ASLSP, it began in 2001 and has so far reached its sixth note. The second part of the name means "as slow as possible."

Neighbors have got used to the monotonous tone coming out of the former Church of St. Burchard, which was used as a pig-sty in the communist years of East Germany. At first the all-day-and-night tone sounded something like an air-raid siren.

One step at a time

The audience hushed on Saturday as two more organ pipes were added alongside the four installed so far and the tone became more complex at 3:33 p.m. local time. The second of the new pipes is set to kick in this November. A machine keeps the sound coming out.

Since some notes will not be needed for decades, pipes need only be added when donations suffice.

Organizers in Halberstadt rejected questions about what it all means.

"It doesn’t mean anything," one of them said. "It’s just there."

MS

[Starrmark]

Now, I know why I never heard of composer Yves Klein. He was primarily a painter and author of a book on Judo. The composition that consists of a single chord held for 20 minutes, plus 20 minutes of silence, was the only musical piece by Klein mention of which I was able to track down. Still, I feel embarassed not to have heard of his work as a painter. I was particularly fascinated by his sold blue rectangle. Klein's paintings have done rather well in the marketplace. Wiki reports:

Alongside works by Andy Warhol and Willem De Kooning, Yves Klein's painting RE 46 (1960) was among the top-five sellers at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art sale in May 2006. His monochromatic blue sponge painting sold for $4,720,000. Previously, his painting RE I (1958) had sold for $6,716,000 at Christie's New York in November 2000.[16] The Brisbane band Yves Klein Blue are also named after one of the artist's accomplishments. In 2008 MG 9 (1962), a monochromatic gold painting, sold for $21,000,000 at Christie's.[17]

Fittingly, Klein died in 1962, long before he could pocket the dough.

MS

[sbeckmesser]

Wiki defines a chord thus: In music and music theory a chord is a set of three or more different notes from a specific key

From this definition alone, the Verdi "chord" is not a chord, precisely because the notes are not from a specific key, as noted in the Budden quote I cited. In fact, any three notes a semitone apart at that low pitch level will produce the same acoustical effect as the notes Verdi specified. That effect is a type of pitchless and therefore keyless rumbling sound, much, as I said earlier, as a soft bass-drum roll. This is a quite different effect from the low-C pedal that opens Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra. Since it is only a C, it is heard as such, a result aided strongly by the plainly audible acoustical harmonics of the tremolo low strings and the contrabassoon (in the Verdi the organ tones are underneath some quite loud music, which serves to mask any harmonics in the organ semitones that might help the ear to determine their pitch. In the Strauss you get a rumble and a definite sense of pitch, though it doesn't actually turn into a chord (C-major), as per the Wiki definition, until the end of the 6th bar.

--Sixtus