The musical experience begins this Friday, November 14th at 8:30 p.m. Colon Theater Experimental Center (CETC) Overturning all conventional concepts of concertsContinuous interpretation of : humiliation Written by Erik Satie (Vexations) will be shown continuously for 24 hours.
In a room open to the public Pianists of different generations and backgrounds face each other at the keyboard, bringing this short and enigmatic score to life with a video projection that allows them to interact with the sound.. The public is free to come and go during the event, allowing listening to be extended, shared and, above all, turned into a meditative act.
This experience takes place within the framework of a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death.
it’s difficult to talk humiliation without relying on words like mystery, irony, radicality. Written around 1893, this piece consists of a minimal melody for piano that repeats between two different harmonies. A typical run takes less than 2 minutes. However, Sati left instructions that upset all temporal calculations. “If you want to play this song 840 times in a row, it would be wise to prepare in advance in extreme silence and without moving.” An almost poetic act, annotation turns the miniature into a physical and mental challenge..
For decades, humiliation It remained a curiosity in the composer’s manuscript. It wasn’t until 1963 that the American John Cage, a central figure in 20th century experimentalism, performed the piece in public for the first time, along with a team of pianists who devised a relay system to complete the 840 repetitions.
That concert at New York University lasted more than 18 hours and marked a milestone in the history of modern music.paving the way for the long-running works and repetitive structures that characterized Minimalism and subsequent performance art.
but Sati’s gesture was not just an omen, it was also deeply destructive.. In Paris at the end of the century, the composer Gymnopedie and Gnossienne He was an eccentric figure, far removed from romantic virtuosity and impressionist excesses. He lived in a world of his own, made of dry humor, parodic spirituality, and an almost ascetic relationship with sound.
His music was deliberately anti-rhetorical, seeking to remove hyperbole from art and bring it closer to everyday life, silence, and absurdity. in humiliation, Sati took that idea to the extreme. Repetition as a form of dispossession, listening as resistance to the saturated modernity..
In 2001, this piece was performed for one week at the former National Conservatory of Music. as a protest to protect public education in the face of budget cuts.
Today, 100 years after his death, his image resonates with new power. Satie anticipated the gestures that would later become central to conceptual art and Cage’s music. la monte youngand in contemporary performance and sound art practices. His accomplishment lies not so much in inventing a style as in redefining the act of listening itself.
Marathon interpretation humiliation The concert, to be held on November 14th this year, will not only be a tribute, but also a living reinterpretation of that radical gesture, with over 80 pianists taking part. With each repetition, and with each silence between repetitions, the question that runs through all of Satie’s work will be evoked again. “How long can an idea last?” What happens when music becomes pure time, a persistent presence, a space where performer and listener share the experience of duration?
It will be more than just a concert, it will be a collective meditation on healthy vigils, patience, boundaries, and listening.. In that vibrant immobility that Satie proposed more than a century ago, the elusive substance of time will once again become music.
construction site: Indignities, 24-hour continuous performance with various pianists start: November 14th 8:30pm place:CETC (Colon Theater) Entrance: Free and continuous during the event.
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