Two things, which may appear to be unrelated— but each has its April, so to speak— the first being Erik Satie’s “Vexations,” a composition that would influence John Cage . . .
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“Do not forget that the melody is the Idea, the outline; as much as it is the form and subject matter of a work. The harmony is an illumination, an exhibition of the object, its reflection.”
— Erik Satie
Half a sheet of musical notation scribbled in 1893 by Erik Satie, discovered after his death, would go on to change the course of modern composition. Written above the music, Satie scored the following instructions: “In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence and serious immobility.” Satie's Vexations parodied what is known in Wagnerian music as the "unendliche Melodie" (unending melody) with an unnervingly skewered piano line including instructions to be prepared for performance "in the deepest silence."
The story of origins for this tiny composition is as haunting as the piece itself.
Continual, unrelieved dissonance: this is what Erik Satie's Vexations brought to the world. First published in 1949, it is his longest composition–and the length is defined by repetition, or by the replaying of one page 840 times, exploring a single three-part diminished chord. Robert Olredge calls it “the first piece to explore the effects of boredom, even of hallucination, both on the performer and on the audience, as well as being the first piece to incorporate a period of silent meditation in its performance indication.”
The first known experiment in organized total chromaticism with no sense of direction and no tonal center, "Vexations" renders its notes completely homeless. There is nowhere to return—there is no center to conclude it. Musicologists suggest that if its theme contained the missing letters AN, then this might also be taken as the first experiment in serialism.
On March 21, 1893, Satie began comprising the nine Danses gothiques in an effort to regain "the greater quiet composure and the powerful tranquility of my soul during their tempestuous affair, which lasted from 14 January until 20 June 1893." What's unique about these dances is how they open into a 10-minute sequence of chords, punctuated by surprising harmonic juxtapositions.
Fast forward to April 2nd, a few weeks later, when Satie gave Suzanne Valadon an Easter gift, a composition for her titled Bonjour Biqui, Bonjour! It bears his hallmark whimsical signature—and a sketch of Valadon on staves—but there is nothing giddy or light in its shadows. The undertones reach for other pieces; it is written with the same mixture of full-strength and watered-down ink as Vexations.
The only element that stays constant is the bass theme—as Robert Oldredge explains, “when the chord sequence is repeated, the upper parts are inverted, and even if the inner part of the first statement remains at the same pitch the second, it now appears to the listener as an upper melody.” Oldredge again:
"Just as Vexations divides into two strains in which the upper parts are a mirror reflection of each other, so these upper parts also divide into two exactly symmetrical halves in which the same notes and intervals are variously re-notated enharmonically. Mirrors—in music and poetry.
Satie must have written them in the same time, cut from the same durations, since both pieces have the same tempo marking, and Vexations begins with the same chord with which Bonjour Biqui finishes, as if intended to be an extension of the other. These ambiguous diminished chords represent Suzanne, for they also occur as the first six chords of the nine Danses gothiques, which Satie designated clearly as attempts to work through the relationship.
Bonjour Biqui and Vexations are the only pieces entirely constructed from these chords. This is how we know Vexations also dates from early April 1893. This is how we know Valadon was the vexation. Satie mentioned the “icy loneliness” that descended after his split, and you can hear it in this piece– not as melodrama but in the plodding banality of repetition, where even the jagged steps that make heartbreak feel unique decline into more of the same. A pain is a pain is a pain is a platitude. There is a Kierkegaardian obsessiveness that winds up bound to repetition, and Satie, too, plays it as it lays in what Sam Sweet has called "the avant-garde's original break-up ballad."
It took decades for musicians to appreciate the anti-art gestures of Satie's vexations with its deliberate induction of boredom, and the way environmental noise became louder or more disruptive as the drone of repetition continued.
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If I do live again I would like it to be as a flower—no soul but perfectly beautiful.
— Oscar Wilde (in his Letters)
I keep returning to Giovanni Sollima’s Il Bell'Antonio, trying to find words for the way Sollima pushes the cello to its limits, beginning with that turn, exactly at 4:36, dissolving, unraveling, crawling along the edge of sonority, it takes my breath away.
But the shift, itself, is indicated by Kathryn Scott a bit earlier, on the piano, at 3:38—- just before Sollima pulls his left hand away from the cello briefly, holding it aloft, elbow curved, before reapproaching his instrument. Returning to it differently. And perhaps it is the nature of that return that also fascinates me. The way he prepares himself for what is to come.
* Tangent or tango: Sollima’s L'invenzione Del Nero opens with a few chords that sound similar to the ones following his “return” in Il Bell'Antonio. Since I am not a musician, I’m interested in how musicologists, musicians, or those who can read Sollima better than myself think or hear in Sollima’s (maybe) repetitions, particularly in pieces like Fandango (after L. Boccherini), and perhaps others in his Caravaggio. Are any chords being used symbolically? Is this conventional for or to him as a composer? Has he expressed distaste or skepticism about symbolic chords in interviews or text? Sincerely, the over-reader.