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Underground > Radio & Music >

Vexations

RichT's boring old name

09:50 / 24.05.07

This weekend (from 27th-28th May) there's a complete performance of Eric Satie's Vexations on at The Tate Modern, and I'm debating about going to it.

Link

The piece is a short segment of piano music, repeated 'softly, 840 times' which, in this realisation is around 18 hours, and the first complete performance was realised in 1963, organised by John Cage.

It's one of those masocistic musical listening goals of mine to actually sit through a complete performance of this just to see what happens... I've been to long piano recitals before: Michael Finnissy's History of Photography in Sound and part of Frederick Rzewski's The Road, but they've both got loads of variety in and 'only' have 6-8hours of music in them. This should be different.

The other thing is that it costs £18. Normally, if I'm going to pay that much to go to a concert it's got to be something I really want to see. This will be PAIN, I'm not sure, whether I should be paying this much for something I may not enjoy. I'm sure most of this is going on the novelty factors of having Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman and Tania Chen playing- which, to be honest I don't think is going to be adding anything- for me it's much more about the piece rather than the performers.

There's also the film.. Warhol's Sleep is being shown at the same time, and, to be honest I don't really want to have anything else going on if I'm going to be a complete purist/masochist.

Come to think of it... anyone got a piano? Could do a home made version for free instead.

09:56 / 24.05.07

You are insane, but in a very interesting way. Are you really going to pay £18 for this?

You HAVE TO report back and let us know what happens. You might have some massive jump of consciousness around the seventeenth hour, or maybe your internal organs will leap up through your throat and suffocate your brain in order to put it out of it's misery.

Still sounds like more fun than a Travis gig though.......

10:48 / 24.05.07

Come to think of it... anyone got a piano? Could do a home made version for free instead.

This is the kind of idea I wholeheartedly endorse!

(Although I don't have a piano and can't play one, and even if I did and could, I'd like to think I'd probably have something better to do with it and/or my weekend.)

Nonetheless though, let's extend this admirable DIY notion to other over-priced arts council approved events; Free Noise? fuck that - I got me a couple of fuzz pedals and a saxomaphone! And so forth.

RichT's boring old name

11:04 / 24.05.07

I've decided I'm not going to pay £18 for this and have begun to make enquires into sorting something out (hmmm, may be worth moving to gathering?... lets see)

Another possiblilty is to get a cheap keyboard, lots of batteries and play it outside the Tate Modern for the entire duration.

I'm going to be at the Tate Modern on Saturday afternoon at least for some free stuff though, if anyone's about.

11:27 / 24.05.07

Re: that admission price: One cool thing about the 1963 Cage performance is that the longer you stayed, the less you paid. Each audience member literally punched in and out on a time clock, and if you sat through the whole thing, you got all your money back.

Music critic and blogger Alex Ross (no, not that Alex Ross) wrote a bit about the piece and has links to all kinds of interesting articles: here, here, and here.

Rock scholars take note: one of the pianists at the 1963 premiere was a pre-Velvets John Cale.

RichT's boring old name

12:40 / 24.05.07

Article by Gavin Bryars

including this quote from Richard Toop on a solo performance:

"after about 16 hours I asked for some kind of mild stimulant in addition to the strong coffee I had been getting (I was expecting some kind of vitamin pill); what actually materialised was another cup of coffee with (as I only discovered later) a whole phial of methedrine in it. The effect was hair-raising: my drooping eye-lids rolled up like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon (one of the newspaper reports remarked on my 'slightly glazed' appearance at the end of the performance). The trouble was that my field of vision became completely fixed; each time I got to the end of a page I had to lift my head up and realign my vision on to the beginning of the new page."

03:25 / 25.05.07

Another possiblilty is to get a cheap keyboard, lots of batteries and play it outside the Tate Modern for the entire duration.

This absolutely has to be done. For so many reasons.

RichT's boring old name

15:12 / 25.05.07

don't start saying things like that, TANK! You know what happened last time.

and I've got my trusty PSS-480:

15:05 / 28.05.07

I'll be very disappointed in you if you don't.

RichT's boring old name

11:25 / 29.05.07

sorry... it looks like I'm just a big sissy with no organizational skills

Excuse #1: Did you see what the weather was like on sunday night??

Excuse #2: Didn't manage to buy a big battery + leads (although have one on order from t'internet)

Excuse #3: I was still slightly hungover

Excuse #4: I can't actually play piano to any degree of skill so one cycle takes a Long Time

Although I'm by no means ruling this out in the future.. just may require a bit more planning and preparation.