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Vexations

Something different for a day: as part of the National Museum of Wales' Cerdd/Music 09 (year of music), on Saturday 20th June, the National Museum Cardiff showcased a performance of Erik Satie's 'Vexations'. The 'Vexations' consists of 840 repetitions of a short work, with 1 repetition composing of theme-variation1-theme-variation2, of which the score is below. Full details of the performance are on the museum's website here.



The performance also served as the anniversary of the first Welsh performance of the work in Bangor in 1969, with Saturday's rota of artists including 6 of the original performers. The full 840 repetitions lasts around 18 hours, but I stayed for around 45-50 minutes (until repetition 360). In that short time, I still found Vexations both very interesting and strangely hypnotic - it also fitted in well with the surroundings of Gallery 12 (the Realist and Impressionist part of the museum's collection). I may try and play 1 or 2 repetitions, but (according to the souvenir guide) as the piece contains 'every chromatic note apart from g sharp [and] all the chords except 1 are diminished or augmented', this may prove easier said than done!



The souvenir booklet also contained a brief synopsis of Satie's life, something of a tortured genius it seems! Try the Wikipedia bio here. Whilst I was listening, M wandered around the museum's Darwin exhibition, which also comes highly recommended.

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