Satie’s challenging Vexations

Some music pieces written by great composers in fact were not meant to be published during their lifetime. They had been composed either as a personal experiment or as a private gift to someone, not for public display. But the reputation of a good composer, even if appeared after his/her death, can’t leave anything undiscovered in the author’s manuscripts. For example, the controversial work “Vexations” by Eric Satie also belongs to not-to-be-published pieces. But look at what’s happening now: the longest piece in history (instructed to be repeated 840 times by Satie) has gathered a global community of musicians. In order to execute the ‘instruction’ musicians would have to spend over 18 hours playing non-stop. The first one to take the challenge 80 years after Satie’s death was John Cage. The piece was performed in Manhattan. The New York Times critic fell asleep by the end of it and there were only 6 people left out of the big original crowd of listeners.