Longest symphony in the world - standard repertoire

Originally Posted by Fredrik

Mahler's Symphony No. 3 is a unusual symphony not only because of it's length, but because it also has 6 movements!

bah, Dmitri Schostakovitch's Symphony no. 14 has 11 movements.

Well, it's not like records in length of music mean anything anyways. I could easily write a piece consisting of one note to be held until the end of time and break the record. And I could write "Symphony" above it. Maybe I already have? Who knows!

Originally Posted by jujimufu

Hi there Fredrik

If you want to talk about length... It's a piano piece, not even an orchestral piece, Satie's "Vexations", which was played on the 9th of September of 1963 by a few composers (such as John Cage and Christian Wolff) and performers (such as David Tudor, who was highly associated with John Cage). The performance actually lasted something like 19 hours. Oh, and the Ring is about 15 hours long and is usually spread out in 4 performances of 4 hours each, not played all at once

My "seminar on John Cage and Experimental Music" played Vexations for our final concert. We began at 6 in the morning, and ended at 8 at night.

I also participated in a Vexations performance one. We played the version where there's no fixed number of repetitions, but you just play it for 24 hours. (A lot easier to organise, and nobody has to bother with counting). We always played half an hour and then passed it on to someone else. I had to play three times (i.e. one and a half hours in total), once at 4 in the morning (no, I didn't have a large audience then ). It was a fantastic and unique experience! I've often thought about, one day, playing the whole thing by myself

Minimalist composer Terry Riley's 'In C' lasts however long the performers want it to. There are 53 'looped' musical figures that the ensemble repeats and repeats however long they feel necessary, slowly progressing through them. Although, a typical performance of this piece lasts about an hour and a half. BUT! It's specified that a performance could last a year if people really felt like it (moving forward to the next musical figure once a week!).

The longest piece ever written is John Cage's "As Slow as Possible" for Organ. The tempo marking literally says, "play as slow as possible". It is currently being played by a machine and is planned to continue to the year of 2640. But that's just ridiculous.

Originally Posted by nikolas

I bet that Cages 2 days 5 hours 4 minutes and 33 secs is the longest piece around...

I also bet that a lot of this music has to be about ambient music... hmmm...

Cage also composed (sort of) As Slow as Possible, which is 639 years long.

EDIT: Hrm, it looked like this was the end of the thread. . .

I was clearly beaten to this.

Originally Posted by Gardener

I also participated in a Vexations performance one. We played the version where there's no fixed number of repetitions, but you just play it for 24 hours. (A lot easier to organise, and nobody has to bother with counting). We always played half an hour and then passed it on to someone else. I had to play three times (i.e. one and a half hours in total), once at 4 in the morning (no, I didn't have a large audience then ). It was a fantastic and unique experience! I've often thought about, one day, playing the whole thing by myself

I hope your hands don't get blisters..lol, I practiced for almost 4 hours before and my hands hurt really bad, not sure if it's same for piano though...hmm...24 hour performance amazing

Originally Posted by Sir Violinist1

I hope your hands don't get blisters..lol, I practiced for almost 4 hours before and my hands hurt really bad, not sure if it's same for piano though...hmm...24 hour performance amazing

It's probably that kind of dream that you often think of, but likely never put into effect

It's definitely better on the piano than on string instruments though. You also don't get repetitive strain injury as quickly. I don't think I've ever managed to get any pain by playing the piano alone. (I had RSI once, but that was mostly because of the computer, not the piano). Oh, and the half piece of Vexations is just for one hand, so you can always rest the other a bit, or use it to drink some water or something (Or really strong coffee, if you really want to play for 24 hours...)

Originally Posted by Gardener

It's probably that kind of dream that you often think of, but likely never put into effect

It's definitely better on the piano than on string instruments though. You also don't get repetitive strain injury as quickly. I don't think I've ever managed to get any pain by playing the piano alone. (I had RSI once, but that was mostly because of the computer, not the piano). Oh, and the half piece of Vexations is just for one hand, so you can always rest the other a bit, or use it to drink some water or something

Now there's a sight, eating pizza while playing piano how funny