Vexations

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Vexations ( French for: torments ) is a piano piece by the French composer Erik Satie . It is one of the earliest examples of repetitive arrangement and atonality in art music and is widely regarded as one of the longest pieces in music history, even though the score is only one page. Vexations is probably part of Satie's Pages Mystique series , even if this is not certain.

The piece, which was probably composed in 1893, consists of a theme and two variations . Satie gave idiosyncratic advice on the manner of implementation:

In order to play this motif eight hundred and forty times, it will be good to prepare for it, and to do so in the greatest silence, with serious immobility.

Since there are hardly any references to the genesis of the work and Satie never mentioned it in his (received) letters, the musical classification is still controversial today, it is sometimes referred to as the composer's musical joke. Nevertheless, because of its unusualness, it is one of Satie's best-known works.

Structure and special features

The theme of the piece is a monophonic, simple melody that contains only quarter and eighth notes . The melody, which is only 13 beats long, harmoniously contains numerous jumps between different keys . There is no tonal melody, so there is no clear keynote, even if the melody can be divided into four different short sections with their own key. There are no bar lines or exact tempo indications, only an instruction Très lent (French: very slow). The musical instrument is also not specified, but it is considered certain that the piece was written for piano or harmonium .

The two variations each consist of two voices, which are added to the theme with the same note values ​​as double counterpoint ( homophony ). In this way, a chord is built on each note. With one exception (first eighth note of the second beat), Satie chose excessive fourths ( tritones ) for the distance between the two upper parts .

Satie uses numerous enharmonic mix-ups in the notation of vexations, for example certain tones are represented in multiple ways by different accidentals . According to the musicologist Robert Orledge, who analyzed the piece, this indicates the presence of a key scale, which also appears in a short piece called Bonjour, Biqui, Bonjour , written that same year , which Satie had composed as a gift for his then-beloved. Satie used such scales mainly in his later creative period after 1917.

The instruction to repeat the piece 840 times can be found in a short introductory text on the score. This means that if you intend to repeat this piece 840 times, you should prepare yourself for it in silence and immobility. It is therefore uncertain whether the number of repetitions is compulsory, even if this is always assumed in the performances of the piece. According to some analyzes that exist of Vexations , the meaning of this instruction is rather the effect of a seemingly endless repetition of the chord series.

Publication, performances and reception

Vexations was not published in print until 1949, long after the composer's death. The piece's fame is largely thanks to the interest that John Cage had in it, who pursued similar experiments with unusual arrangement structures in the mid-20th century. Also in the scene around the serial music was Vexations noted in part it is considered because of its tone rows as a precursor of this movement.

On September 9, 1963, the work was premiered by a team of several pianists, including Cage himself. Only one person was present from the beginning to the end of the play, which lasted 18 hours and 40 minutes (from 6 p.m. to 12:40 p.m. the day after).

After the premiere, numerous other pianists tried the challenge from Vexations . The duration of the performance was between 12 and 28 hours, depending on how Satie's instructions were interpreted. Many performances of the piece can only be achieved with the help of several pianists, but complete performances can also be achieved by individual players (including Nicolas Horvath ). In 2016 lecturers, students and friends of the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf performed the work on the composer's 150th birthday.

Since the 1970s, the performance of the piece received attention in music psychological research, especially in the field of performance research . In particular, the focus was on the effects of the extreme stress caused by the long duration of interpretation and the slow tempo for the pianists themselves. E. Clarke constructed a special computer wing in 1982 in order to be able to precisely measure the timing when playing the piece. The music psychologist Reinhard Kopiez addressed in 2003 in a research project with the piece during a 28-hour performance by the pianist Armin Fuchs .

From May 30 to 31, 2020, the pianist Igor Levit performed the work in a 15-hour live performance to draw attention to the plight of artists and cultural workers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic . The concert was broadcast live on the websites of The New Yorker , Der Spiegel and the Gilmore Foundation and streamed on its Twitter channel.

literature

  • Reinhardcopyz, Marc Bangert and Eckart Altenmüller : Tempo and loudness analysis of a continuous 28-hour performance of Erik Satie's composition 'Vexations'. In: Journal of New Music Research , 2003, 32 (3), pp. 243-258. ISSN  0929-8215
  • Christine Kohlmetz, Reinhard copyz, Eckart Altenmüller: Stability of motor programs during a state of meditation: electrocortical activity in a pianist playing 'Vexations' by Erik Satie continuously for 28 hours. In: Psychology of Music , 2003, 31 (2), pp. 173-186. ISSN  0305-7356
  • Reinhardcopyz: The performance of Erik Satie's 'Vexations' from a pianist's point of view. In: Reinhard copyz u. a. (Ed.), Musicology between art, aesthetics and experiment. (Festschrift for Helga de la Motte-Haber on her 60th birthday). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, ISBN 3-8260-1524-X , pp. 303-311. pdf (Hanover University of Music and Drama)

Influence on other music

  • The composer Moritz Eggert refers to Satie's "Vexations" in two pieces: "Vexations" for chamber orchestra (1993) and "Vexations II" for 2 pianos (2001)
  • The second album by the band Get Well Soon is called Vexations and refers directly to Satie's work

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Igor Levit: Eric Satie - Vexations. Accessed June 1, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Igor Levit starts piano marathon. In: Zeit Online . May 29, 2020, accessed May 31, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Alex Ross: A Pianist's Marathon of “Vexations”. Retrieved June 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Joshua Barone: 'I Just Let Myself Go': Igor Levit on Surviving a Satie Marathon . In: The New York Times . May 31, 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed June 1, 2020]).