HALBERSTADT 2 /ASLSP

This composition consists of a field recording made at Burchardi church in Halberstadt (Germany) in July 2024 and is the most recent note from the John Cage ORGAN2/ASLSP project.

As with Cage's instruction for the original ASLSP , I have produced eight interjecting pieces here with one ommited and another repeated,based upon Cage's prepared piano, although each interjection is in fact the original field recording manipulated.

I'm aiming to portray my impression of this beautiful City with the juxtaposition of Halberstadt's terrible history, much of it still visible today.

Halberstadt's synagogue was ransacked and burned in the 9 November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. The synagogue's Torah scrolls were removed and burned in the street. On 18 November 1938, the Nazi's ordered the demolition of the synagogue and required the Jewish community to pay the cost of the work.

Only 450 of 1600 timber framed houses survive in the city centre.In April 1945, US forces approached Halberstadt as they attacked the remaining Nazi troops in the Harz pocket. The US dropped leaflets instructing Halberstadt's Nazi ruler to fly a white flag on the town hall as a token of surrender.He refused, and on 8 April 1945, the US 8th Air Force, dropped 595 tons of bombs, killing 2,500 people and rendering most of the old town into some 1.5 million cubic meters of rubble.