The longest musical composition
In 1999, Longplayer started playing and it will continue, without repeating, until 2999
Witness History · BBC World Service
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Show Notes
On 31 December 1999, a piece of music started playing in a lighthouse on the River Thames in east London.
It’s called Longplayer, and it’s set to keep going, without repeating, until the year 2999.
It was created by Jem Finer from The Pogues, using 234 Tibetan singing bowls.
Megan Jones meets Jem to find out why he wanted to create a one thousand year long musical composition.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: The Longplayer listening post at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London. Credit: BBC)