Transfiguration of Meaning Through Repetition

I’m sure everyone who’s reading has at one point or another taken a word and repeated it until it lost its meaning. Maybe when you were in elementary school, as a bet to see who could say “rural” or “squirrel” the most times in a row. After a certain point, maybe after 20-30 repetitions, your tongue or concentration fails you (because you are 5 and saw a butterfly or something), and you stop and laugh. But what if you keep going? For 10 minutes, 1 hour, a day? And what if you repeat something that is seemingly “meaningless” to begin with? Might it gain meaning?

The Bohemian portrait of Erik Satie in his studio in Montmartre, 1891. Santiago Rusiñol

Erik Satie (1866-1925) explored this idea of extreme repetition of a small amount of musical material in his enigmatic piece titled “Vexations” (1892-3), where the performer is instructed to sound the same motif 840 times in a row. The result is a page-long composition that lasts a staggering 14 to 28 hours, depending on the choice of tempo (which the score indicates only as “very slow”). Like the act of repeating a word until its meaning dissolves, the experience of playing or listening to the piece gradually erodes the familiar structures we impose on music—form, functional harmony, narrative— alienating both audience and performer through forced and prolonged introspection. (1)

The music is undeniably progressive for its time, with it having a strong argument of being the first experiment in organized total chromaticism and continual, unrelieved dissonance, with no obvious sense of direction or tonal center. (2) Furthermore, the peculiar instructions, whose exact meaning is still debatable, bring more questions than answers. "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." (3)  Why 840 times exactly? What does he mean exactly by silent immobility? The work was neither published nor performed in Satie’s lifetime. It begs the question: is it even meant for public performance? If so, what effect might such a piece have on a performer or an audience?

There are many potential readings of this piece, of which some are more compelling than others. The most obvious, yet least compelling one, is that it is just a joke. A practical joke gone too far. It would not be out of character for Satie to “pull a leg”, as much of his work is full of irony and Dadaist absurdities. It just as easily could be a direct jab at Richard Wagner, who is famous for the enormous length of his works, (4) with his signature "never-ending" melodies and continuous harmonic irresolution. (5) It could also be a parody of the classical “theme and variation” form (6) (theme and vexations) or even the perpetuum mobile genre. But the intricate, yet enigmatic, compositional method and the innate human need for deeper meaning make this answer lacking.

Another, slightly more compelling theory is that it was written as a way to cope with a tumultuous relationship and the feeling of emptiness it left after it ended. Satie wrote this piece not long after the end of his one and only documented romantic relationship. His affair with Suzanne Valadon was brief but intense and left him with “Nothing but an icy loneliness, that fills the head with emptiness.” (7) Additionally, a tiny four-bar piece, titled “Bonjour Biqui, Bonjour!” with a very similar harmonic language, was written during their relationship and was dedicated to her.

The third and most widely accepted interpretation comes from John Cage, organizer of the first and most influential public performance of the piece, which took place in 1963 at the Pocket Theater in New York, featuring a rotating team of pianists—including Cage himself—playing in shifts over nearly 18 hours. Audience members were allowed to come and go, and in a playful experiment on the value of endurance in art, those in attendance were given 5 cents back (from the $5 ticket) every 20 minutes they stayed, reinforcing the idea that consuming more art should cost less. (8) Cage, unlike many before him, took Satie’s instructions completely seriously, and in later performances he even incorporated 20-minute on-stage meditation as a prelude. Satie and Cage were equally fascinated by the “mysterious” and “profound” effects of boredom and silence, though one perceived it through the lens of surrealism and the other through Zen Buddhism. (9)

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” 

John Cage (10)

The fourth reading is that Vexations is not a performance piece at all. Rather, it is an exercise piece, or an "immobility exercise," a musical passage with neither beginning nor end, with neither direction nor destination, designed to prepare interpreters both mentally and physically before a performance of a piece such as a Gymnopédie or a Gnossienne. (11)

A particularly notable performance that should not go without mention was that of Peter Evans’s (1970). Evans attempted to play the piece in a solo performance, but after playing continuously for 15 hours, when he reached repetition 595, he suddenly stopped and left immediately. Evans said, 'He had to stop because his mind became full of evil thoughts, animals and "things" started peering out at him from the score.' He later wrote, ‘I would not play this piece again. I felt each repetition slowly wearing my mind away. I had to stop. If I hadn't stopped, I'd be a very different person today ... People who play it do so at their own great peril.' (12)

“The absence of thematic material—which is a function of memory, since thematic material must be memorable—leaves Vexations as a 'ground' with no 'figures.'. The performer and the audience become the figures; the 'dramatic action' is the transformation of consciousness effected by the music.” (13)

 Manuscript of Vexations: NB “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.”

The piece was meticulously and intentionally composed in a way that inhibits memorization (due to its asymmetrical phrase structure, notation, unorthodox system of harmony, contrary motion, etc.), which necessitates the performer to be completely focused through the entirety of the performance. These qualities also make the piece suitable for extreme repetition, since it is hard to get used to how the tune goes as a listener.(14) Many performers have reported not being able to remember the piece, even though they might have been playing and hearing it for more than half a day continuously. (15)

Regarding the question of why 840 repetitions exactly? It most likely is a result of Satie’s obsession with numerology and, in particular, the Lucas series (1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, etc.).  (16)

- 1 piece

- 3 musical strands

- 4 musical parts in each complete performance

- 7 notes on the piano covered by the tritone in the upper lines

- 11 different notes in the 'theme'

- 18 three-part chords

- 29 notes covered in the overall pitch range (f-a")

- 47 notes written in the treble clef (per bar; including the tied notes)

- 76 notes or chords 

- 123 letters in the title plus the directions

- Lucas series by multiplication

- 1 x 3 x 4 x 7 = 84 à 840 repetitions

Satie’s peculiar genius lay in his ability to blur the lines between absurdity and profundity. Vexations is at once a musical marathon, a parody, a meditation, and an existential riddle. But more than anything, it is a challenge—one that asks us to reconsider not only how we listen, but how we assign meaning in the first place. (17)

Manuscript of Bonjour Biqui, Bonjour! with sketch of Suzanne Valadon

Endnotes:

1. Whittington, 1993, revised 2003

2. Orledge, Robert. “Understanding Satie’s ‘Vexations.’” Music & Letters 79, no. 3 (1998): 386–95. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/855366.

3. Whittington, 1993, revised 2003

4. e.g. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a 3 act opera which takes 4 and a half hours to perform

5. Bryars, 1983, p. 12

6. A theme is presented and then altered in different ways (the variations) while retaining its core identity; e.g. Mozart: Variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je, maman” (the alphabet song)

7. Volta, 1989, p. 46

8. Gillmor, 1988, p. 103

9. Davis, 2007, p. 145

10. Auner, 2013, pp. 23–25

11. Whittington, 1993, revised 2003

12. Cage, Silence, 1961, p. 93

13. Cage, Silence, 1961, p. 93

14. Dawson 2001, 29–40

15. Bryars, 1983, pp. 15–16.

16. Whittington, 1993, revised 2003

17. Orledge, 1990, p. 144

    
    
    
    
    
    

Bibliography:

• Auner, Joseph. Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. First edition.

• Bryars, Gavin. “Vexations and Its Performers.” Contact: A Journal of Contemporary Music 26 (Spring 1983): 12–20.

• Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.

• Dawson, Christopher. “Erik Satie's Vexations—An Exercise in Immobility.” Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes 21, no. 2 (2001): 29–40. https://doi.org/10.7202/1014483ar.

• Davis, Mary E. Erik Satie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

• Gillmor, Alan M. Erik Satie. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1988.

• Orledge, Robert. “Understanding Satie’s ‘Vexations.’” Music & Letters 79, no. 3 (1998): 386–95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/855366.

• Orledge, Robert. Satie the Composer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

• Volta, Ornella. Satie Seen Through His Letters. London: Marion Boyars, 1989.

• Whittington, Stephen. Serious Immobilities: On the Centenary of Erik Satie’s Vexations. Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide, Australia, 1993. Revised 2003.