Erik satie born
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Erik Satie
French composer and pianist (1866–1925)
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie[n 1] (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached.
After a spell in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum, as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910 he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six. A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to the creation of the ballet Parade (1917) for Serge Di
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Serious Immobilities by Stephen Whittington
"To play this motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities."
This enigmatic instruction, on a single page of music bearing the title Vexations, has turned the strange piano piece by celebrated French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) into a legend in the annals of experimental music.
The work emerged from obscurity in 1949 when Henri Sauguet, a friend of Satie in his last years, drew it to the attention of John Cage. At first Cage found it interesting as a concept but dismissed the possibility of a performance: "True, one could not endure a performance of Vexations... but why give it a thought?" (1) Nevertheless, in September 1963 Cage organised the first 'complete' performance of Vexations at The Pocket Theatre, New York. Since that occasion, Vexations has been performed numerous times by individuals and groups.
The repetitive nature of the piece raises fundamental aesthetic questions, in particular about the function of boredom in art.
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Vexations
Composition by Erik Satie
Vexations is a musical work by Erik Satie. Apparently conceived for keyboard (although the single page of manuscript does not specify an instrument), it consists of a short theme in the bass whose four presentations are heard alternatingly unaccompanied and played with chords above. The theme and its accompanying chords are written using enharmonic notation. The piece is undated, but scholars usually assign a date around 1893–1894 on the basis of musical and biographical evidence.
The piece bears the inscription "In order to play the motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities." ("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.") From the 1960s onward, this text has mostly been interpreted as an instruction that the page of music should be played 840 times,[1][2] although this may not have been Satie's intention.
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