British composer writes piece of classical music that lasts for eight hours

 
New piece: composer Max Richter (Picture: Rex Features)
Erik Pendzich/Rex/REX
Rachel Blundy17 June 2015

A British composer has written what is believed to be the longest single piece of classical music - and he expects audience members to fall asleep while it is performed.

Max Richter has described his new composition SLEEP as "an eight-hour lullaby".

The 49-year-old composer's epic instrumental piece will be premiered in Berlin in September and is due to be performed in London this autumn. Audience members are set to be offered beds rather than seats in order to allow them to fully appreciate the music.

Richter, who studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, plans to include a shorter version of the piece on his next album, according to reports.

Describing the composition, he said his music was a "personal lullaby for a frenetic world" and "a manifesto for a slower pace of existence".

He said: "It's really an experiment to try and understand how we experience music in different states of consciousness.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">soon... <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=9&amp;id=222025&amp;p=http://t.co/NSfW5iuoVo" class="body-link" data-vars-item-name="BL-25806-http://t.co/NSfW5iuoVo" data-vars-event-id="c23">pic.twitter.com/NSfW5iuoVo</a>— Max Richter (@maxrichtermusic) <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/maxrichtermusic/status/610797774326628352" class="body-link" data-vars-item-name="BL-25806-https://twitter.com/maxrichtermusic/status/610797774326628352" data-vars-event-id="c23">June 16, 2015</a>

"Sleeping is one of the most important things we all do. We spend a third of our lives asleep and it's always been one of my favourite things, ever since I was a child."

Commenting on his decision to create a longer and a shorter version of the piece, he said: "You could say that the short one is meant to be listened to and the long one is meant to be heard while sleeping."

In a cryptic post on his personal Twitter feed yesterday, Richter shared what is believed to be a short clip of his new composition.

He captioned the 30-second video, which features a clip of the moon, with one word; "soon."

Richter, a former student of experimental Italian composer Luciano Berio, worked with American neuroscientist David Eagleman while he composed SLEEP.

He said that through his new work, he was seeking to explore "our rigid rules that dictate how and what music we can appreciate."

He said: "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.

"Modernism gave us so many stunning works but we also lost our lullabies. We lost a shared communion in sound. Audiences have dwindled. [SLEEP] is a very deliberate political statement for me."

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