What is the slowest music you can think of? An old ballad or a molto largo movement of a symphony?

With the exception of John Cage’s organ piece, “As Slow As Possible”, a composition that has been in performance since 2001 and isn’t scheduled to be finished until the year 2640 (info here), most music that claims to be slow is actually still pretty fast. It has 60 beats per minute, or maybe 40, or perhaps even a metronome marking of 30. Compared with what’s possible, most “very slow music” is actually pretty zippy.

Enter “Very Slow Music”, a performance of two pieces that normally take about a minute to perform but have here been slowed down 10-15 times that amount.

According to the album notes, here’s what you can listen for:

Music played at a VERY slow tempo. I basically hold each chord until it feels like the right time to move on to the next one. Homophony is broken into rolled chords for more color.

I love the way the frequencies cause beats and intrigue once everything is slowed down.

There is a ton of interesting stuff going on when music is played at this tempo. The better your speakers, the more you can enjoy this.