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Erik Satie's Vexations—An Exercise in Immobility

2013; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.7202/1014483ar

2291-2436

Christopher Dawson,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Erik Satie's piano piece Vexations contains a Note de l’auteur in which the composer apparently instructs his interpreters to repeat the piece 840 times. Opinion among Satie's biographers is divided as to whether Satie intended a "full" performance of the piece. In this article I assess how a literary interpretation of the Note can throw light on Satie's intentions. My conclusion is that Vexations is not so much a performance piece as an exercise piece: a musical passage designed to pull his interpreters away from conventional Western notions of linear development and cumulative reception and towards his own non-developmental style of music, in preparation for a performance of a piece such as a Gymnopédie or a Gnossienne .