Work of the Month #2: Erik Satie - "Vexations"

cornbb

Right, lets make this a monthly thing instead and see if interest picks up.

This month's work is Erik Satie's "Vexations".

I can't seem to find a better synopsis of the piece so here is one from Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations wrote:

Vexations is a noted musical work by Erik Satie. It consists of a short chordal passage, and is intended to be repeated 840 times.

On the score, it is written that "In order to play this motif 840 times consecutively to oneself, it will be useful to prepare oneself beforehand, and in utter silence, by grave immobilities."

Here is a clip from a performance of one cycle of the piece (the first ever performance was over 18 hours long!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-GqicYb40k

There is a MIDI file available here if anyone is interested (zip format).

Vexations clearly ranks pretty highly on the avant-garde scale of things but I don't know a thing about it. John, would you like to kick off a discussion?

John

I don't know how familiar people are with Satie but I'd say this is pretty atypical of his usual style but typical of his view on music. He arguably came up with the concept of ambient music with his idea of "furniture music" (music that makes up part of the background of the room but not to be specifically attended to, not unlike Eno's ambient definition) and to me this piece is just an extension of that concept. Vexations goes nowhere over the course of 18-24 hours (depends on the tempo) and over the course of such severe repetition it fades into the background quite well, occassionally grabbing your attention.

The motif that is repeated only lasts around 45 seconds but it is quite complicated so it is hard to get bored of it because it takes so many repetitions to be sure of the sequence! John Cage was a huge fan of the piece (and it formed the basis for his famous quote: "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.") and he was the one who revived interest in the piece many years after Satie's death.

Because of the sheer intimidating nature of such a long piece, it was never played during Satie's life and it was only debuted in the sixties by Cage and some other performers (a relay piano marathon) and I don't think a full recording has ever been made. I think it's high time someone tried as now that there are formats available which can hold 18-24hrs of high quality audio (such as a hard drive or BluRay), it's a shame that this piece exists only as a segment or a story.

There is a nice recording on LTM records by Alan Marks of 70 repetitions available. I've toyed with the idea of putting it on repeat for the full time but I don't know if I'd be able for it!

Cianos

Why does he say that the piece should be played 840 times? I can't see anything special about it (I've just watched the embedded youtube vid), so I guess it's more about the idea of repetition and how that embeds in your mind and creates your own subsequent patterns and variances and rythmic responses based on how your mind fluctuates over such a long period of time?

John

To be honest, I've never thought (nor do I remember reading) about the significance of the number. Time to do some investigating!

thusspakeblixa

I have to say I only heard of the piece through this forum, and I really enjoyed it (what the youtube clip showed anyway)

Setun

Very interesting piece, have quite recently become obsessed with some of the furniture music, although I find it too beautiful to let it lie in the background most of the time.

This is actually the first time I've heard of Vexations, but the concept is intriguing. It would be interesting to know how significant 840 is, or if it is significant at all. Is there a set rhythm to the piece (with bar lines) or is it rubato and elaborated on by the pianist?

I think I mentioned it to John on another forum about Oliver Sacks book Musiciophilia, I'd imagine even the physiological aspect of listening to the full piece of music would be very interesting. I'd imagine after hearing it for so long, your brain would invent or imagine many different permutations of the motif. Interesting piece all the same will research more myself.