Erik Satie - Vexations

Vexations composed im 1893, at first seems to be a very short one page composition. It only contains 180 notes, but when one looks at the instructions Satie requests that this simple tune be played 840 times non-stop.

http://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/jpg/vexmanu+.jpg

A link to the original vexations written by Satie himself.

It normally takes around 12 to 24 hours to perform live, and is often completed by a large team of pianists.

I believe it was first perfomed in 1963 in New York, it took ten pianists 18 hours to complete.

I remember hearing a story about how Andy Warhol went to one of these Marathon concerts, and talking about how impressed he was.

I recommend everyone to download the basic piece, which happens to be only around 54 seconds long, than play it on repeat 840 times, and than you have Vexations, without having to have a very large disc to play it on ;)

but do you? aren't the tiny differences between each repetition an essential part of the piece? (I don't know, I'm just asking. what do you think, sundar?)

(I seem to recall I was offered the chance to take part in a performance of this piece in my university days. Why did I decline? I'd jump at it like a shot now!)

I wonder if it's the same recording Marks released on London in the 80's or if it's a new one

I like the 80's one though there's a long silence at the end, with nothing but room ambience... it sounds nice and contemplative but since it's a single track disc it makes it impossible to easily loop the disc (two tracks would have been helpful)

and to answer my own question; yes the Alan Marks 'Vexations' CD that came out last year is a re-release. it's good, it's so good, it's so incredibly good I envy anyone hearing it for the first time

and news:

http://ubu.com/sound/vexations.html

Pianoless Vexations (MP3): 8 hours of MP3s recorded live at The Sculpture Center, NYC on
June 11, 2006. Vexations was composed by Erik Satie in 1893 and consists of a short motif
repeated 840 times. Vexations was first performed publicly by John Cage and several other
pianists over the course of 19 hours in 1963. As the title conveys, artists performing in
Pianoless Vexations used any instrument except the piano to perform Satie's original
composition. Instruments included laptops, drums, guitar, French horn, violin, trumpet,
saxophone, viola, recorder, toy piano, harpsichord, mandolin, bass, film projectors,
voice, dulcimer and more. Artists include Randy Nordschow; Hay Sanders; Bruce Pearson and
Marco Navarette; Daphna Mor, Rachel Begley, and Nina Stern; Bruce Arnold Jazz Trio; Alan
Licht and Angela Jaeger; String Messengers; Rusty Santos; Amy Granat; Greg Kelley; Miguel
Frasconi; Bethany Ryker; D. Edward Davis and Erik Carlson; Zachary Seldess; Charles
Waters and Katie Pawluk; Andrew Lampert and Steve Dalachinsky; Margaret Leng Tan; Trudy
Chan; David Grubbs; Goddess; Matthew Ostrowski; Kenta Nagai; Stephin Merritt and Ethan
Cohen; Rick Moody, Hannah Marcus, and Tianna Kennedy.

John Cale on I've Got a Secret.

Link care of: http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/

Must see.

between that & the Cage appearence I'm definitely curious for a bio on the booking agent for "I've Got A Secret"

Erik Satie's Performance Indications

http://alexrossmusic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/05/12/img023.jpg

having raided ross' bandwidth I should politely link to source

the two things that kill me about that john cale clip: the fact that one of the contestants actually gets the answer, and the little scuttle of laughter on the second sub-iteration of the piece where it actually dawns on the entire room at once what it might sound like to hear it 840 times

WTF: did this really happen?

http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=4487

That was one of CT's annual April Fool's reviews. Usually pretty funny if a bit recondite.

I have the old Alan Marks CD but no idea where it is at the moment...

Also find Satie's performance instruction quite ambiguous; IMO one traversal of the score is just as legit a way to perform this piece.

A key element of this composition is the effect it has on the performer. Sure, there's something for listeners too but from what I've read it's the pianist who is most affected by a performance. There are some testimonials out there where the performers document the experience. And you really have to follow his instructions in order to get that - playing as slowly as possible, not playing from memory and doing 840 repetitions.

Yes but his instructions, iirc, say 'If this piece is to be performed 840 times in succession, then [etc etc etc].' First word, if. And Satie liked deadpan joeks.

Ah. I have never realized that the wording was open to such intepretation but now I see that it's actually not an instruction about performing it but an instruction about preparing yourself if you're going to play it 840 times. This makes me wonder how the 840 repetition thing became the accepted interpretation.

If you play piano I recommend trying this piece for fun. I find it quite confusing to play which is maybe something to do with the absence of a key or time signature.

http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco14/learning/score01op.jpg

Acutally, I now see that Satie also never specified which instrument this should be played on.

^ That could be common practice for him; he often eschewed bar lines as well, and other 'necessities' of printed music.

It's either a deliberate attempt to confuse the performer or else he's subverting the normal rules of musical notation for fun. On the second line he's got D#s bumping up against Ebs in a way that is not logical. There is probably some internal system which is only understandable if you are a musicologist geek.

>It's either a deliberate attempt to confuse the performer or else he's subverting the normal rules of musical notation for fun.

Erik Satie's Performance Indications

Satie's Performance Indications > Eno's Oblique Strategies

He's a funny guy all right!

The great thing is, almost every performance indication on that page can be actually applied to one's performance on some level.

Love the little prose poems he attached to the 3 Embyrons Desechees...

Trying to get hold of a relatively new recording of this by Stephane Ginsburgh, got a great review in Brainwashed a few months ago, but local stores (and, indeed, some classical music stores in a few cities in Europe) are letting me down.

Today is the day.

Entering hour 5 of @igorpianist's Vexations marathon... https://t.co/HJBHsqoyWM

— Alex Ross (@alexrossmusic) May 30, 2020