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 “It’s an eight-hour lullaby,” Richter, one of Britain's
leading contemporary composers, said in a statement released on
Wednesday, which adds that the piece, which features electronic
sounds and a lulling cello line, is literally "intended to send
the listener to sleep".
"It's a piece of nighttime music and I'm hoping people will
actually sleep through it," Richter says in a trailer for the
piece released on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6aFKng8-sc)
"In a way it's a question about how everything is getting
faster, all our lives are accelerating and I think many of us
feel the need to rest, a point of repose. And that's what this
piece is -- an eight hour place to rest," he says.
"SLEEP" will have its world premiere in September in Berlin, in
a concert performance lasting from midnight to 8 a.m. for which
the audience will be given beds instead of seats, a press
statement from Richter's record label, Deutsche Grammophon,
said.
An eight-hour digital version that will be released on September
4 is said to be the longest piece of classical music ever
recorded.
Richter is quoted in a separate press release as saying that he
has long been fascinated by sleep and the amount of time people
spend sleeping.
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“Sleeping is one of the most important things we all do,” he said.
“We spend a third of our lives asleep and it’s always been one of my
favorite things, ever since I was a child.”
He says he consulted American neuroscientist David Eagleman while
composing the piece, to learn more about how the human brain
functions while sleeping.
“For me, 'SLEEP' is an attempt to see how that space when your
conscious mind is on holiday can be a place for music to live,” the
composer says.
Richter says he was inspired by extended works written by other
modern composers, including John Cage, Terry Riley and LaMonte
Young.
In that category, Cage probably holds the record with his "Organ2/ASLSP
(As SLow aS Possible) with a version that started at St Burchardi
Church in Halberstadt, Germany in 2001 scheduled to last for 639
years, ending in 2640, according to the website www.aslsp.org
(Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing by Louise Heavens)
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