»School of Velocity«, 1995, by Rodney Graham, combines the piano exercise of the same name with Galileo’s equation of the acceleration of falling objects. The result is the piano piece progressively slowing down, with longer and longer pauses between notes. Based on a few bars of music cobbled together out of the score of Wagner’s Parsifal by Engelburt Humperdinck, Wagner’s assistant, to compensate for a problem the opera company was experiencing in synching up its music and scenery. Graham adds a progression of repetitions, whose durations are determined by the prime numbers between 3 and 47, for each of the fourteen instrumental sections that would be playing Humperdinck’s interpolation. The result is an opera that doesn’t end until the year 38,969, 364,735.