Recommended Reading
How the compositions of Erik Satie, with particular reference to Vexations, engages with the cultural and musical developments of the fin de siècle
The turn of the twentieth century brought about one of the most turbulent, yet fruitful, periods in the history of European classical music. Composers, artists, poets and writers alike, began to search for innovative and exciting ways in which to develop and diversify the Arts, and thus, bring European culture into a new era. This essay will discuss primarily the music of French composer, Erik Satie, whom many consider the most radical and innovative composer of this period. It aims to elucidate, with particular references to his 1893 composition, Vexations, the ways in which Satie’s music engages with the musical trends of the time – Nationalism, referencing the past, chromatisism and experimentation. It will also examine the innovations presented in his work – repetition, boredom and temporality.
Nationality in music, that is to say a music that consciously expresses national or nationalist ideas, is a relatively contemporary notion when contemplating the history of western classical music. Up until the late eighteenth century, music was generally considered an international lingua franca, which, throughout most of Europe, saw very little variation in style and philosophy. During the early 1900s however, composers such as Hector Berlioz and Bedřich Smetana began to recognise the all-pervading dominance of German music, and so, sought about developing a consciously national style of composition. Unfortunately, their efforts were somewhat overshadowed by the swift and hugely successful rise of German composer, Richard Wagner. It was not until the turn of the twentieth century therefore, that composers began to revolt more seriously against the Austro-Germanic reign over classical music. (Myers, 1971, p.5)
Unlike the Russian, Czech and Scandinavian composers of that period, who drew upon folk elements in order to express their national identities and the German and English composers who wrote music for their own satisfaction and emotional needs, the French had an altogether more different approach. From as early as the Baroque period, music making in France had been a purely intellectual pursuit. Rather than being concerned with emotion or sentiment, the value of French music, and indeed most of the French arts, was found in the refinement of form, economy of material, precision of craft and clarity of thought. (Myers, 1971, p.6-8) It is this national trait, which one might call stylistic nationalism, which best defines the work of Satie and is exemplified through his intensely rigorous preoccupation with the most basic musical components such as form, harmony and particularly melody. In 1917, during the composition of Mort de Socrate, Satie wrote that ‘the melody is the Idea, the outline; as much as it is the form and the subject matter of a work. The harmony is the illumination, and exhibition of the object, its reflection.’ (Orledge, 1990, p.89) This is demonstrative of Satie’s innately French interest in the material rather than the immaterial – the objective rather than the subjective.
Vexations is one of Satie’s early piano pieces which, like many of his other works from this period, is most plainly composed of a single melodic line accompanied by simple, non-diatonic chordal progression. Ogives, for example, written by Satie in 1989 and similarly his most famous work, Gymnopédies both possess an alike character to Vexations in that they are slow meditations on a simple melodic line, the contour of which is subtly accentuated by undulating harmonic structures. It is clear, after hearing these works, that even from such an early stage in his career, Satie rejected the fashionable romanticism of Austro-Germanic music and refuted particularly the music of Richard Wagner, whose labyrinths of interlacing melodies, complex harmonic structures, colossal orchestration and climactic discourse represented, for Satie, the rhetoric and self-indulgent. It could be argued that Satie’s interest in simplicity, elegance and clarity of expression, stylistically, relates more to works of Palestrina and Josquin des Prez than to those of his contemporaries.
The musicologist, Rollo Myers, suggests that the slow meditative nature of Satie’s melodies and the static, almost hypnotic effect of his harmonies are ‘evocative of, if not derived from, Plainsong’. Another critic suggests that the reason for Satie’s tendency towards plaintive characteristics might have been that ‘he saw the impersonality, aloofness and remoteness from all subjective dramatic stress of this music, qualities which might, with appropriate modifications, approximate to his own uniquely lonely mode of utterance’. (Myers, 1971, p.111)
It was not unusual during this period, especially in France, to draw upon the music of the past for inspiration. Because of the generous support offered by the seventeenth and eighteenth century Bourbon kings, music in France flourished, along with the rest of the arts. This became known as the ‘golden age’ in French culture and so, with the rise of Nationalism during the late nineteenth century, composers began referring back to this prosperous period.
Debussy, for example, experimented with baroque dance forms in his 1905 composition Suite bergamasque, particularly in the rather explicitly title movements, Menuet and Passepied. Ravel too utilised various baroque forms such as fugue and toccata in Le Tombeau de couperin and Satie himself in 1887, six years before writing Vexations, composed Trois Sarabandes.
What is unusual about Vextations however, in comparison to the majority of Satie’s other compositions, is its highly dissonant harmonic language. Unlike the rich, sweet and, in some ways, jazzy harmonic character that is often associated with Satie’s music, Vexations possesses a menacingly uneasy disposition, achieved not only through the use of extreme chromatisism in the theme itself but also in the series of diminished and augmented triads that are deployed throughout.
The reasons for Satie’s decision to write such a dissonant work are not entirely clear. It has been suggested that Vexations, because of its atonality, is in some ways an ironic parody of German chromatisism or perhaps Satie’s satirical way of poking fun at the celebrity status of Richard Wagner, for example.
Humour and parody are common features of Satie’s work, self-parody and self-mockery in particular. As much as this demonstrates Satie’s characteristic modesty, there have been many numerous suggestions as to why he deploys such lightheartedness in his work. Some suggest that it is used as ‘a smoke-screen for his own technical inadequacies, a Dadaist anti-Art gesture, the practical jokery of an incorrigible fumiste, or a means of maintaining a stance of ironic detachment from the spiritual crises of his time.’ (Whittington, 2003, p.8)
However, the specific way in which Satie notated Vexations – the use of enharmonic inconsistencies, the omission of bar lines and dynamics and of course the note stating that the performer should repeat the written music 840 times – suggests that his intentions were much more experimental.
During the fin de siècle period, experimentation played crucial role within all the arts. Visual artist such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began to experiment with form and abstraction, whereas the symbolists such as Gustave Moreau and Gustav Klimt experimented with metaphor, semantics and decadence. The Realist writers too began to deprecate the overly emotive romanticism of early the 19th century literature and returned to writing more simple depictions of everyday life. The so-called expressionist composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel experimented with ‘exotic’ musical forms and modalities, particularly those from Eastern Asia. However, what sets apart Satie from the other artists in his time, is that his efforts were not compelled by the desperate need to create something new nor to establish a new national identity. Rather, he was driven simply by his own eccentric intrigue and curiosity.
The most remarkable feature of Satie’s Vexations is undoubtedly the extraordinary level of repetition it exhibits. The performance note at the top of the score tells the performer ‘to play this motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities’. It is because of these incredible demands that Vexations has had so few major performances, the first of which was not until 1963, eighty years after its composition. Nevertheless, it does raise fundamental aesthetical questions regarding specifically the notions of boredom, memory and temporality in music. Although the composer never explicitly expressed his intentions for applying such an innovative technique, it can be assumed that they were more than whimsical. Despite the satirical flare attributed to many of Satie’s compositions his intentions and philosophy where altogether more serious.
It is clear from many of Satie’s later works that he was extremely interested in the ‘mysterious and profound’ effect boredom had upon him and others. He also saw boredom as a way of aggravating the bourgeoisie and academics who, more often than not, sought to be either intellectually indulged or lightly entertained by music. In 1914, regarding his Sports et divertissements, Satie explained that in to this composition ‘I have put all I know about boredom. I dedicate it to those who don’t like me’. (Whittington, 2003, p.1-2)
What is more significant however, is, as Whittington points out, ‘the relationship between the repetitive form of the piece and the forgettable nature of its material’. Due to the lack of any identifiable motivic features in the main theme and non-directional nature of the harmony Vexations, ‘lingers in the memory as a vague impression, the details effaced as soon as heard’. (Whittington, 2003, p.2-3) Because of the ambiguous, unchanging and unassuming nature of the work, Vexations might be better described as a musical object rather than a musical argument or statement. An object that has been liberated of the criteria ones intellect is so accustomed to seek in classical music – expression, meaning, development and resolution. As a result, it encourages listeners to rid themselves of all previous musical experience, or as Satie put it ‘a form of paralysis’, and listen in an entirely new and unprejudiced way. (Volta, 1990, p.173)
This concept might also explain the various notational obfuscations that are presented in the score. Bryars suggests the enharmonic discrepancies that appear throughout the composition make it very difficult for the performer to memorise, even though they may have played through the music many times. Again, experience is of no avail; one must approach each repetition with same level of alertness and focus as the last in order correctly realise the highly convoluted notation. Also the omission bar lines from the score suggests that music should flow sinuously through time and is not to be restrained by standard musical convention. (Whittington, 2003, p.4) This, plus the enharmonic confusion, has no effect upon the experience of the listener and so, demonstrates Satie’s equal concern for the interpretation and experience of both the performer and the audience.
Dick Higgins, from an audience’s point of view, observed that
the music first becomes so familiar that it seems extremely offensive and objectionable. But after that the mind slowly becomes incapable of taking further offence, and a very strange euphoric acceptance and enjoyment begin to set in... Is it boring? Only at first. After a while, the euphoria... begins to intensify. By the time the piece is over, the silence is absolutely numbing, so much of an environment has the piece become. (Higgins, 1990)
Musicologist, Reinhard Kopiez, analysed a twenty nine hour performance of Satie’s Vexations and reported that the pianist,
was rather alert at the beginning but went into trance, and towards the end, a tired state. After fourteen hours, at the beginning of the trance, the pianist experienced a confusion reality comparable to a dream; he lost control of his body, had extra-physical experiences, the musical piece dissociated into single tonal groups, errors occurred more frequently, sections we mixed up, and improvisations sprang up. For a two-hour period (19-21 hrs), he felt very tired. After 25 hours of performance, in a permanent slight trance, time seemed to pass more slowly, he varied themes and sequences of the piece freely and forgot what he wanted to play. (Aldridge & Facher, 2006, p.176)
The extraordinary level of innovation within Satie’s Vexations, was clearly way ahead of its time and was only fully appreciated during mid to late twentieth century, especially by composers such as John Cage and Christian Wolff. Still, it engages with some of the more common musical tends of its time. For example it exhibits the same clarity, elegance and simplicity that is synonymous with the French national style and is for this reason, despite its innovation, subtly tainted with a fin de siècle nostalgia. It refuses to conform to the rhetoric and overtly expressionistic style that had been laid down by the German romanticist and instead seeks to create and environment in which one may encounter uninfluenced, unprejudiced and profoundly mysterious human experiences. Like many composers, artist and writers of this period, Satie sought to discover new and exciting horizons for the Arts and Vexations, perhaps now his most enigmatic work, still questions the future direction of classical music.
Ryan Latimer 2011
Bibliography
Aldridge, D. & Jorg F (2006) Music and Altered States. London: Kingsley
Davis, M (2007) Eric Satie. London: Reaktion Books
Higgins, D. (1981) ‘Boredom and Danger’ in Gregory, B. (ed.) Breaking the Sound Barrier. A Critical Anthology of the New Music. New York E.P. Dutton
Myers, R. (1971) Modern French Music. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Olredge, R. (1990) Satie the Composer. Cambridge: CUP
Sadie, S. (ed.) (2001) The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition. London: Macmillan, Vol. 22, 313 – 319
Smith, R. & Caroline P. (ed.) (2006) French Music Since Berlioz. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Volta, O. (ed.) (1990) Erik Satie, Ecrits: Third Edition. Paris: Editions Champs Libre
Whittington, S. (2003) Eric Satie: Serious Immobilities. Australia: University of Adelaide
