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You’ve all heard this bit of Beethoven before, likely more times than you’d care to given its cultural familiarity and prominence in the canon of Western music.

But this past Sunday, an old re-run of RadioLab’s episode on “Time” pointed me to a recent project that has re-imagined Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony, not with a re-instrumentation, or a re-arrangement, or even a re-recording, but with a revolution in the relationship between the music and time.

9 Beet Stretch is a recording of the Ninth Symphony that has been digitally slowed down to fit not into the space of a typical 70 minutes, but rather into an entire day! That’s right, in this recording, each of the notes, chords, and rests lasts approximately 24 times its normal length without pitch alteration. The whole symphony takes an entire day to be heard in this recording, and the result is not what you’d expect. I’ve been listening to this thing on and off for the past couple of days (the entire work is continually streamed across the internet), and I’ve got to say, I’m hooked.

Rather than simply dulling the magnificence of this work by the pace, 9 Beet Stretch allows the listener to hear things in the work that have never been heard before as he literally basks in the sonic landscape that is Beethoven. At every moment, you are fully aware that yes, this must be Beethoven’s Ninth, but you entirely find yourself lost in the time of it. As music played for ambient effect, there’s not much that begins to top this.

In short, turn the lights down low, turn the speakers way up, grab a glass of wine, and give a listen.