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Vexations is a noted 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 "Pour se jouer 840 fois de suite ce motif, il sera bon de se préparer au préalable, et dans le plus grand silence, par des immobilités sérieuses" - "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."
The work was first played in public the requisite 840 times, by a team of pianists: John Cage, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, Philip Corner, Viola Farber, Robert Wood, MacRae Cook, John Cale, David Del Tredici, James Tenney, Howard Klein (the New York Times reviewer, who coincidentally was asked to play in the course of the event) and Joshua Rifkin , with two reserves, on September 9, 1963, from 6 pm to 12.40 pm the following day. Although, doubtlessly, John Cage was instrumental for some misconceptions about Erik Satie's work in general, nonetheless his 4' 33" composition could maybe be seen as the perfect "prelude" to Erik Satie's Vexations - how otherwise to execute the prescribed "immobilités sérieuses"?
2 Meaning
The piece's title was not explained by Satie. The piece was first printed in 1949 (in facsimile form, by John Cage in Contrepoints N°6). The assertion that the Vexations would be the second piece in a 3-part "Pages mystiques" appears uncertain, and not going back further than the 1969For other uses, see Number 1969. For the movie, see 1969 (movie). Events January January 1 Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch purchases the largest selling British Sunday newspaper The News Of The World January 5 The Derry Riots leave over 100 people i edition of the work (by Max Eschig ), a period when Erik Satie's editorEditor has four major senses: # a person who obtains or improves material for a publication; # a film editor, a person responsible for the flow of a motion picture or television program from scene to scene # a sound editor, a person responsible for the fls seemed determined to publish any of his compositions in a three-part structure. Anyway, conjectures regarding the meaning of the Vexations (and their title) were construed long after Satie's death (in most cases supported by not more than minute indications), amongst others:
- The notation of the chords makes liberal use of enharmonic equivalents, making it difficult to immediately read.
- The Vexations could be interpreted as Satie's coming to terms with Wagnerism , which was riding high in musical life of those days: Satie definitely loathed all kinds of "Germanic" music (so not only Richard WagnerWilhelm Richard Wagner ( May 22, 1813 February 13, 1883) was an influential German composer, music theorist, and essayist, primarily known for his operas. His music is still widely performed, the best known pieces being the "Ride of the Valkyries" from Di's, but also the music of Wagner's German antipodes). He loathed even more the French contemporary composers emulating what he experienced as Wagner-like romanticism (e.g. Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck,...). In this interpretation the Vexations would be Satie's ( ironic?) defiance that he could outdo music as lengthy and intense as e.g. Wagner's Ring or Liszt's Années de Pèlerinage , using only the limited (one would be tempted to say " minimalist", but that would be an anachronism) resources that were compatible with his own views on the true nature of French music - and/or, corresponding to his then more than modest means. Note that it is all but clear that his ideas about the limpid nature of French music had fully developed in this early stage. Whatsoever, the Vexations can be seen as an attack on - or a parodic emulation of - what in Wagnerian music is known as "unendliche Melodie" (never-ending melody), which is a melody supported by a sheer endless progression of complex chords - which harmonically doesn't exactly lead anywhere. In mood and compositional technique this brings the Vexations near to the - certainly mocking - "Choral inappétissant" ("unsavoury Choral") [1], the first (introductory) piece of " Sports et divertissements ", which he composed more than 20 years later, after he had studied conventional harmony for several years.
- The Vexations were written in a period that Satie's approach to harmony was at least exotic, rather related to a modal line of thought than to conventional harmony. In order to understand what follows it should be appreciated that, in those days, the only two established harmonic system s in western music were either the (older) modal system - which was up for some kind of revival, by e.g. Gabriel Fauré -, at the one side, and the conventional harmonic system of tonal music, firmly instored since late baroque era, on the other (the - Germanic - twelve tone system being still more than a decade away, while also Claude Debussy - much nearer to Satie - appears not to have questioned classic tonality till shortly after the Vexations were written, see: [2]). Harmonically the Vexations appear to be an exercise in non- resolving tritones, one of the anathemata of conventional harmony (i.e.: in conventional harmony tritones are not forbidden as such, but they should be immediately resolved in the next chord, what doesn't happen in the Vexations). In historical modal music tritones were cursed as such, known as Devils in music (and thus totally anathema). It is not certain whether the various sects and cults frequented by Satie in those days would have had theological objections and/or sympathies towards these particular "Devils", and/or to the fact that the "motif" is subdivided in parts of 13 beats. Maybe Satie's intent was nothing more than to prove that any harmonic and rhytmic system was only a matter of habit for the hearer (and not resulting from innate or divine preconception, as his contemporaries would think): so that after listening 840 times to a chordal system that is at odds with any habitual one, and set in an odd metre, one would possibly start to experience this new system to be as natural as any other - an experiment he was likely to have taken serious, and maybe directly or indirectly influenced Debussy and/or Ravel. An intended reference to Rossini's piano pieces "Des tritons s’il vous plaït (Montée-descente)" (also exploring tritones) or "Un rien sur le mode enharmonique" is very unlikely, while not yet published at that time. A reference to Liszt's " Bagatelle ohne Tonart " (" bagatelles without a key", see: [3]), written a decade earlier, is maybe possible, but, apart from being uncertain that Satie ever heard about this music (and equally that he would have had more than incidental knowledge of its underlying " Zukunftsharmoniesystem " theory, which was rather the idea of making tonality wane by means of excessive consecutive modulations, extending the Wagnerian style), arguably the Vexations - lacking any form of conventional modulation - are written in a key of C (which would be something like "C tritonal", while neither Minor nor Major, nor any Modal key), I, V and IV being the bass-notes starting respectively 3 groups of 4 quarter-note beats from the start of every measure on, moving towards an unresolved III in the 13nd and final beat. Note that this clash of the Vexations with any prior harmonic system is rarely discussed, not even in public concert reviews: maybe after all Satie was right, habituation to some atonality would settle in one day or another - although it has to be said that a decade after composing the Vexations Satie would give himself considerable effort to conform to the tonal system (but that could have been intended partly as a reductio ad absurdum).
- Although the date of composition is uncertain (supposedly mid 1893), the Vexations appear to have been composed shortly after a brief, but intense, relation with Suzanne Valadon, the nearest Erik Satie ever got to a relation with a woman. One of the testimonies of this relation is, apart from pictures they drew of each other, Satie's optimistic composition "Bonjour Biqui" (April 1893), Biqui being a nick-name for his beloved, and the composition being an echo of how Satie was customary to greet her. This composition takes, on paper, almost as much room as the Vexations, but no indication that it should be played more than once, so, when executed, it is infinitely shorter than the Vexations. Still, both compositions could be seen to have a mantra-like quality, one gay - the other arid (remains the question how Satie would have appreciated the idea of a " mantra"). Whatsoever, it would not be all that surprising that Satie being "vexé" (angry, even: spiteful) for being rejected by his "Biqui", wanted to disenchant himself from what she had meant to him, by composing a piece that would help forget all frivolous feelings. Possibly he was relieving himself with a kind of musical curse (seen the implications of "Devils" and the unlucky number "13" described in the previous paragraph).
- Maybe Satie was spoofing the Perpetuum mobile genre: many 19th century composers had composed such - then very popular - separate pieces with an 'indefinite' number of repeats, mostly leaning on enthralling virtuosity: references like "immobilities"; a DEFINITE (but out of proportion high) number of repeats; an unconventional harmony; "very slow", instead of the usual very rapid movement of a Perpetuum mobile; etc..., all might indicate that Satie was making a parody of this genre, trying to get even with the cheap effects of content-less virtuosity in an uninspired harmonical and rhytmical scheme, that his contemporaries would use to suggest "rapture" to their public (... by writing a contrasting intimistic piece that could induce mystical trance of another kind).
- The deeply rooted idea (from its first publication on) that the Vexations might have been intended by Satie as an experiment regarding boredom appears to find few support in ideas expressed by Satie himself (condemning composers that bored their public in any way). But this might be an explanation why Satie never publicised the Vexations.
- Other (not less cumbersome, because at least anachronistic) explanations involve Dadaism (which was only invented by the end the 2nd decade of the 20th century); Musique d'ameublement (also not before the end of the 2nd decade of the 20th century, at which time Satie described it as a novelty); conceptual art (not before 1960s); etc... - In other words: one could as well, and less anachronistic, call the Vexations a "typical" fin de siècle product.
Why Satie chose 840 as the number of repetitions also has been subject to conjecture: no conclusive argument showed up why he would have preferred this number to any other. The fact that 840 is the product of the numbers from 4 to 7 does not shed much additional light on the meaning that the number 840 might have had to Satie, though it has to be noted that the esoteric sects or cults Satie had been involved in up till the moment that he wrote the Vexations could be supposed to have some interest in numerology. When Satie started his own sect, supposedly around the same time as (or shortly after) composing the Vexations, he showed a keen assuredness about numbers (e.g. in the printed pamphlet listing the numbers of each type of adherant the sect was supposed to have acquired, some of these numbers going back to biblical data).
Finally, considering the many questions that remain regarding the composition, it could be seen in a tradition of Riddle music, somewhere between the "riddle fugues" of Bach's Musikalische Opfer and Elgar's Enigma Variations.
