Vexations

Publication

First public performance

Meaning

• 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'. Vexations can also be seen as an attack on – or a parodic emulation of – what in Wagnerian music is known as the "unendliche Melodie", 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, the first 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 : 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 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, 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" 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.
• It is also possible that Satie was spoofing the perpetuum mobile genre: many 19th-century composers had composed such separate pieces, then very popular, with an 'indefinite' number of repeats, mostly leaning on dextrous virtuosity. References like "immobilities", a definite number of repeats, an unconventional harmony, and a "very slow" tempo, instead of the usual very rapid one of a perpetuum mobile, all might indicate that Satie was making a parody of this genre, spiting the cheap effects of content-less virtuosity in an uninspired harmonic and rhythmical scheme, that his contemporaries would use to suggest "rapture" to their public.
• The deeply rooted idea that Vexations might have been intended by Satie as an experiment regarding boredom appears to find little support in the ideas expressed by Satie himself, although he described boredom as 'profound and mysterious'.
• Other anachronistic explanations involve Dadaism ; Furniture music ; conceptual art ; etc. Satie is often described as a precursor, or in the spirit of Oulipo, an 'anticipatory plagiarist' of subsequent developments.
• Why Satie chose 840 as the number of repetitions has also been subject to conjecture: there is no conclusive evidence showing why he would have preferred this number to any other. The fact that 840 is the product of the numbers from 4 to 7 does not shed much additional light on the meaning that the number 840 might have had to Satie, though the esoteric sects or cults Satie had been involved in up till the moment that he wrote Vexations could be supposed to have some interest in numerology. When Satie started his own sect, the Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor, supposedly around the same time as composing Vexations, he appeared sure in his use of numbers. An article by Martha Curti on the numerology of 840 may shed more light on the subject.

Execution

• No metronomical tempo indication: the score mentions "Très lent", which could mean anything while the composition has not a melody that could be experienced as falling in one or another "natural" cadence – at least not at first sight: some argue there is a natural cadence nonetheless
• It is not clear whether Satie intended the bass-line to be repeated in between of half vexation: his precise instruction is "À ce signe il sera d'usage de présenter le thème de la Basse" – "At this sign customarily the theme of the Bass will be presented" : être d'usage not really being an obligation. There is more to be said about this sign: modern executions and editions of the score usually interpret that for every Vexation the thème de la Basse is to be played twice, while the original manuscript of Satie indicates the "sign" for playing this theme three times: once preceding the "motif", and once after every half of the "motif", which seems to indicate that the thème de la Basse has to be played before the "motif" is played the first time, but also that it is the thème de la Basse concluding the complete cycle. This would extend the total execution time with about half a minute.
• Even the 840 repeats have been questioned, for several reasons: in a "Mantra" or "habituation" approach there is not much sense in counting exactly how many times one repeats the "motif" to oneself. Also the indication Satie gives does not implicate it is mandatory to repeat 840 times: it is only a remark about the kind of preparation that is needed in the event that one wants to play it 840 times consecutively to oneself. There is no certainty Satie ever played the Vexations, either with or without repeats. Probably in most performances the imaginary natural is played. Likewise, the bass C on the sixth quarter-note and the bass B on the second half of the ninth quarter-note require naturals; the E on the fifth quarter-note is provided with a natural in the inverted version, but not in the original version. The score also presents us with two other fairly fundamental questions: Why is there one diminished fourth among the tritones? and Is the tied eighth-note chord at the end intended as a repetition of the previous chord or does the C-sharp revert to a C ?
• No indication whatsoever regarding at what volume it has to be played.
• It is not clear whether exactly the same speed and volume for every repetition is advised: in the "vexation"-anger comparison mentioned above, it would not be impossible to imagine moods swinging from "rage" to "dejection", and everything in between, all along the same sitting, in a sort of "Etudes d'execution transcendante"-style – while obviously the standard interpretation, which is a monotonous execution throughout, maximally avoiding romantic implication, is more than arguably correct too.
• While the bass-note ending the motif is a major third above the first bass-note of the motif, even an execution with a modulating progression for every repeat would not be unthinkable: Satie nowhere indicates that the "motif" or the "bass theme" is to be executed at the same pitch every time.