Erik Satie: Vexations
(Original piano score)

21.36. (Visitor) A very sad piece, which to me feels like a flow rather than a series of repetitions. I get many pictures in my head – heavy steps.

21.39. (Visitor) The floor is creaking and now you felt your back as if to sooth a shooting pain, or perhaps you just corrected your suspenders. Yet many tones will flow out of your instruments, before this sound tape for a long-forgotten silent film turns silent. I don’t think Satie was quite sane, but a big thank you from me to you.

21.50. (Participant) Now it’s rolling! We have played 40 minutes and I’m on my first break to attend to all the practicalities. It was a bit stressy getting it on the way. There are five or six people in the audience, but they seem to listen and think.

21.52. (Participant) It is really irritating after having paginated 840 note sheets, the pen sliding outside of the music and thumb and forefinger must be forced to listen to “eight hundred and thirty two, eight hundred and thirty three” from the head that doesn’t…

21.55. (Visitor) I think about “the goat’s revenge”. You strap a person to a bed. Then you apply rough on the soles of his feet. And let a goat lick the salt off the feet. The tongue is so rough that the skin at last starts to come off. Then you apply more salt. This could be the soundtrack, I think to myself. I would like to know how you feel tomorrow at this time, and what you think. But now it starts getting meditative. Perhaps I should try sleeping over here. I wonder how the dreams would look.

22.22. (Participant) My first break… soprano saxophone… slightly hypnotized, but happy… uh, well… the Stockholm Marathon continues!

22.45. (Participant) Darn. I’m sitting here trying it out a little. Should work fine. On the way here; gasoline shortage for the second time this week… Yes, yes, now I’m here anyway.

22.49. (Visitor) Erik Satie. My first experience of Erik Satie was from SVT’s [Swedish television] test picture. Summer, tired day, myself in the intermediate level at school. I would like to do research into Satie’s music. Does it have anything to do with minimalism? You can’t listen to Satie on a low level. Interesting arrangements; not concerning the music, but concerning the behaviors of the people…

23.18. (Participant) A little sandwich break. Reading audience comments on the sly. Great that the audience writes so much, and thinks so much. A small, but evenly streaming, and highly qualified audience.

23.26. (Visitor) Time flies. I never thought we’d still be here, but the music has changed character, and it is beautiful. I start to wonder how flipped out it may get when there is no longer an audience, and when the orchestra is minimized, like about 03.20; what happens then. Will the musicians go berserk?

22.30. (Visitor) I’ve taken my first drink in an establishment. It was needed.

23.32. (Visitor) The music starts feeling like the weather – you look out the window, and small changes happen all the time.

00.05. (Participant) [Isn’t it strange] that the same phrase can be played in so many ways!

00.06. (Participant) Times passes fast under the influence of cosmic tones. We have not yet learned the piece.

00.20. (Participant) What film am I playing in? Something French, 1980s’ cult movie. But we need more ashtrays.

01.40 (Participant) Incredibly good… Some have gone, new ones have come, and it continues… It’s just the beginning. I am hypnotized… and I will put up more Vexations scores… 140… 161… 162…! Tired? No!

01.50. (Participant) I will never be able to play anything else…

01.52. (Participant) Really, it shouldn’t stop at 840; we should really keep on playing until anything else is impossible.

02.50. (Participant) It was strange to go home and sleep for two hours. It was the same tune, but still not. It was completely silent in the city.

02.54. (Visitor) It is amazing how one keeps on getting surprised.

03.15. (Participant) I’ve done my longest lap so far, and everything almost went black before my eyes sometimes. It was unbelievable. At around 2 AM we quarreled a bit with some Nalen personnel who wanted to have an after hours party, but the matter was resolved…

03.22. (Participant) Mind the tempo! Got to tune the stick, it’s warm on stage.

04.35. (Participant) Have been home and slept for a couple of hours. A completely fantastic feeling och collectivism, that the orchestra has kept playing here all the time, that it continues. I will elaborate some on this later, I think. Now I will have a cup of coffee to begin with, then adhere to the performance instructions; “the deepest possible silence and a serious immobility”

05.03. (Visitor) Man is a strange and particularly irrational being. I, the undersigned, have now listened to these repetitive patterns for more than 7 hours. When this lap is over and I leave this, previously so cozy and warm, now sickly and claustrophobic environment, one third of Satie’s horrifying day and night has passed. A whole working day! A good night’s sleep! Do I hate myself? Yes, at least some, in this very irritating moment. We’re all mad, but the craziest are I and the other one or two fools, of which the audience consists. The musicians are not quite as mad. For them you can at least feel some respect, and admiration for patience and concentration. Least crazy is Satie himself. His in his full right to laugh maliciously, in delight, at straying souls like us, and especially the audience deserves the most offending invectives. We have volunteered for a torture that prisoners of war may experience. Therefore we deserve to burn in hellish realms without any possibility for Vergil. Man, God’s image??? The though would scare me out of my wits, did I have any…

05.50. (Participant) Back after bad sleep. Ran into a hobo in the hallway, in cold sweat. The music is weird right now. Feels like a nervous breakdown is imminent.

05.55. (Participant) Bo-il cof-fee boil boil cof-fee bo-il boil coffee cof-fee.

07.15. (Participant) This remarkable music; I recall the first time I heard it, a few years ago, during my time as a musicologist on grants. I couldn’t figure out how it was written then, nor now. I only know it’s good, as a matter of fact very good. I don’t really know what I’m writing; I feel haunted by these damn fumbling chords. Why was this written?

07.40. (Participant) I forgot to mention that we traveled at a speed of 36.4 VEX/hour between 21.00 – 06.00.

07.58. (Participant) Empty in the auditorium, except for our personal bar tender. Men’s’ lavatory stinks badly from a day’s urine. 2 violoncellos and 1 electric bass on stage. Seriousness, reverence, mixed with playfulness and curious excursions in the fantastic world of sound and phraseology. Somewhere during the first three tones of every tutti-turn, you wonder where it will head this time. Very sensitive playing, while this also, simultaneously, has become something more than music, it’s a way of being, a world by itself. I wonder if the sun has risen out there.

08.40. (Security guard) Since 02.30 I’ve been guarding a completely empty and deserted entrance… Satie has managed to create a successful backdrop for my magazine reading and my crossword puzzle. …and all this time I’ve had the same vision inside my head; two people chasing each other in a black-and-white Vienna with a gigantic Pratern wheel in the background. What kind of inspiration did Orson Welles have for The Third Man? Maybe Satie…? This is sick, very sick! But, for sure, it has never been done before, and that is a reason good enough. Myself, I’m going home to be de-programmed by the luckily always broadcasting MTV…

08.48. (Visitor) Now in the morning the music feels more aggressive than sad – but what if it doesn’t stop after 24 hours? Music that just continues threatens order somehow…

09.00. (Participant) Speed 35 VEX/hour. 420; so right in the middle! Great.

09.38. (Participant) It is long, yes, but rather addictive, at least for people like me who lack character. I’m going to go out on town a while… but only one more, then I’ll leave… or one more maybe… I have forgotten time. I only know Satie. I tried, with all means, to get away from the friggin man. Sleeping bag, a bed in the dressing room, no clothes and a detective story. Shouldn’t have tried the detective story. The main character looked for and found his Satie CD already on the second page. He pursues us, all night and all day, wherever we are, whatever we do. By the way, I had a four and a half hour sit-in before. Too long? Well, who knows…

12.00. (Participant) No. 521 – It should be 507. Time to slow down!

12.45. (Participant) Lunch break. Intense rotation on stage, so that everybody gets to eat. We’ve had our worst reduction of players also during this time, but it will be solved, with some good will. A photographer from Dagens Nyheter [a major Swedish newspaper] is here. She says the journalists will be here later in the afternoon. I played between 100 and 120 Vexations, and it took in excess of three hours. Completely personality altering! However, the spotlights are probably the worst. It gets warm and very muggy on stage. Now I sit here, out on a break, but I keep thinking over and over that I ought to get up and play again and again and again…

Undetermined time. (Participant) I think I’ve played yet another hour. It’s starting to get spooky with all these score papers on the walls. This can become our sepulchral chamber!

13.05. (Participant) Correction: 105 x 8 = 840. This means we should have reached 525 at 12 noon. We hit 525 at 12.07, so we’re slightly slow.

13.20 (Visitor) Darn, how it swings! Iggy Pop, beat it!

13.35. (Participant) Tried to write my, Leif’s and Martin’s names and my telephone number just now. It didn’t work. I had to sit down and really concentrate to be able to formulate names and numbers in writing. The brain is only Satie.

14.12. (Participant) Messed up in my head from one billion Vexations. I can’t recall what part I played, I don’t know where we were, don’t know what instrument I played… I think I need a break now.

14.24. (Visitor) The cavalry attacks Erik Satie. The musical instruments are attacked by the mobile phones.

15.41. (Participant) Now I’ve played for maybe 11 hours straight, with some breaks. One or two billion Vexations to go. Tomorrow I’ll buy new lips and teeth, for I’ve ran out of the old.

16.55. (Participant) I just played three hours without a break. I don’t even have to piss. Perhaps the urine is transformed to Vexations? It’s worth taking note of that when we played Vexation no. 666 there were no extra tritonuses or especially diabolic at all, but rather a little nice, beautiful and sweet! Sympathy for the devil, maybe.

18.00. (Participant) The brain is empty. How the hell do you play the cello?

18.25. (Participant) I came here at 02.00 in the night. Directly from a gig at Gyllene Uttern by Lake Vättern [a motel establishment]. From one bizarre world to another… Played some piano until 05.30, which is when I went mad. I came back at 16.00 today and have had fun! Might that depend on the knowledge that it will soon be over?

19.03. (Visitor) This is one of the mightiest things I’ve experienced. Can I go when it’s over?

20.30. (Participant) There’s a full moon.

20.35. (Participant) I discovered that some of the guests from last night left movie tickets for Asterix & Obelix. Satielix?

20.45. (Participant) I was home collapsing a couple of hours, but now I’m back in line for the holy of the last days. Unfortunately, the subway collapsed synchronously with me, but I managed to grab a cab just in time. It would have been real bad if I’d been standing around in the sleet on Alvik Square during Vexation 840, instead of here. 828.

21.09:35. (Participant) 840.

Orchestral Vexations score
from Great Learning Orchestra's performance

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