Эрик Сатидің «Жалықтырулар» шығармасы

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, although this may not have been Satie's intention.

Satie did not publish the work in his lifetime, and is not known ever to have performed or mentioned it. The piece was first printed in 1949 (in facsimile form, by John Cage in Contrepoints No. 6). The first American publication of the piece was in Art News Annual, vol. 27 (1958), again in facsimile. The first British publication was as an engraved example in an article by Peter Dickinson in Music Review, vol. 28 (1967). In 1969 the publisher Éditions Max Eschig produced the first commercial edition of the work, placing it second in a collection of three so called Pages mystiques. Since there is no musicological evidence linking Vexations to the other works in the volume, its appearance in that context indicates nothing more than an editor's desire to publish Satie's uncollected compositions in three part assemblages such as the Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes, etc.

Vexations appears to have had no performance history before the idea gained ground that the piece was required to be played 840 times. The first of the marathon performances of the work in this way was produced by John Cage and Lewis Lloyd at the Pocket Theatre at 100 Third Avenue in Manhattan by the Pocket Theatre Piano Relay Team, organized by Cage. Pianists included: John Cage, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, Philip Corner, Viola Farber, Robert Wood, MacRae Cook, John Cale, David Del Tredici, James Tenney, Howard Klein (the New York Times reviewer, who coincidentally was asked to play in the course of the event) and Joshua Rifkin, with two reserves, on 9 September 1963. Cage set the admission price at $5 and had a time clock installed in the lobby of the theatre. Each patron checked in with the clock and when leaving the concert, checked out again and received a refund of 5¢ for each 20 minutes attended. "In this way", he told Lloyd, "People will understand that the more art you consume, the less it should cost." But Cage had underestimated the length of time the concert would take. It lasted over 18 hours. One person, an actor with The Living Theatre, Karl Schenzer, was present for the entire performance.

Satie never explained the piece's title. Conjectures regarding the meaning of Vexations (and its title) were construed long after Satie's death and in most cases, supported by little evidence. The notation of the chords makes extensive use of enharmonic spellings, making it difficult to read immediately. Vexations could be interpreted as Satie's coming to terms with Wagnerism. In this interpretation, Vexations would be Satie's ironic act of defiance. He could outdo music as lengthy and intense as Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, using only the limited resources available to him; hence Gavin Bryars' description of it as 'a sort of Ring des Nibelungen des pauvres' ("poor man's Ring of the Nibelungen"). Vexations can also be seen as an attack on – or a parodic emulation of – what in Wagnerian music is known as the "unendliche Melodie" (unending melody), in which melody is supported by a continuously modulating progression of complex chords. In mood and compositional technique this brings Vexations near to the – certainly mocking – "Choral inappétissant" ("unsavoury Choral"), the first (introductory) piece of "Sports et divertissements", which he composed more than 20 years later, after he had studied conventional counterpoint for several years. Vexations was written in a period when Satie's approach to harmony was related rather to a modal line of thought than to conventional harmony. Harmonically, Vexations appears to be an exercise in non resolving tritones. Maybe Satie's intent was nothing more than to prove that any harmonic and rhythmic system was only a matter of habit for the hearer (and not resulting from innate or divine preconception, as his contemporaries would think): so that after listening 840 times to a chordal system that is at odds with any habitual one, and set in an odd metre, one would possibly start to experience this new system to be as natural as any other – an experiment he was likely to have taken seriously, and maybe directly or indirectly influenced Debussy and/or Ravel. Although the date of composition is uncertain, Vexations appears to have been composed shortly after a brief, but intense, affair with Suzanne Valadon, the nearest Erik Satie ever got to a relationship with a woman, as far as is known. One of the testaments to this relationship is Satie's optimistic composition "Bonjour Biqui" (April 1893), Biqui being a nickname for his beloved, and the composition being an echo of how Satie customarily greeted her. it can be conjectured that Satie – being "vexé" ("angry", or even "spiteful") about being rejected by his "Biqui"—wanted to disenchant himself from what she had meant to him, by composing a piece that would help him forget all such frivolous feelings. Finally, considering the many questions that remain regarding the composition, it could be seen in a tradition of riddle music, somewhere between the riddle canons of Bach's The Musical Offering and Elgar's Enigma Variations.