Igor Levit
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Vexations
BOOKLET TEXT | VEXATIONS | IGOR LEVIT | DANIEL FINKERNAGEL
Pourquois pas? thought the house pianist at the Parisian cabaret “Le Chat Noir.” Why not just go up to the woman he had been watching all evening out of the corner of his eye, and with whom he had fallen head over heels in love? So, on this Saturday, he stopped playing earlier than usual and headed straight for the table where she was sitting: Suzanne Valadon, a 28-year-old Montmartre celebrity. A former circus performer, model, muse, and mistress to some of the greatest artists of the time. She modelled for some of the most prominent painters like Renoir, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec. In the process, Suzanne Valadon learned a thing or two from them and became a self-taught painter.
Seated at the table with her was her lover, a certain Monsieur Paul Mousis, a fabulously wealthy banker and a welcome fixture in Parisian bohemian circles. The eccentric house pianist was known amongst the “Chat Noir” regulars as Monsieur Le Pauvre. He was indeed poor, 27 years old, with long hair, a top hat, pince-nez, rarely without a glass of absinthe in his hand, and his name was Erik Satie. Without further ado, on 14 January 1893, he sat down at the table with Suzanne and Paul. A few glasses of absinthe later, to everyone’s surprise, he proposed to her. They did not marry; instead, in true bohemian fashion, the three plunged into a ménage à trois. What followed was a cinematic trio of passions, jealousies, obsessions, and physical and emotional entanglements, from which only one would emerge unscathed: the autonomous and independent Suzanne.
Satie called her “Biqui” and the love of his life. On Easter Sunday 1893, he dedicated to her a four-bar piece for voice and piano: “Bonjour, Biqui, Bonjour.” This “Bonjour” hardly sounds like a “good day”; the disillusioned harmonies suggest that their time together was rife with resentments and anguish, or, in French: vexations. After just six months, Suzanne Valadon moved on, becoming one of the great figures of Post-Impressionism and a pioneer of Modernism.
As far as we know, she remained the only woman and love in Satie’s life. After the breakup, the agonising final chord from “Bonjour, Biqui, Bonjour” came to his mind once more. He reused it in a miniature that became world-famous at least in terms of its title. The number of pianists who have actually played the piece is quite small: “Vexations,” which can mean anguish, resentments, or insults.
No key signature, no bar lines, 17 notes slowly feeling their way into the unknown. The “theme” in the left hand, followed by two “variations” in which the right hand colours each note with new chords. The piece is to be played “Très lent.” This “very slowly” stretches to an agonising length, as the musical text is to be repeated 840 times. Depending on the chosen tempo, “Vexations” lasts between 13 and 20 hours.
Igor Levit: “I bet I could teach anyone this sequence of slow notes in a single day. It’s easy to play – and that’s still an exaggeration. The piece has no dramaturgy. It has no beginning. It has no end. It has no emotion. It provides no guidance. It makes absolutely no difference how I interpret it. Who cares?”
Instead, “Vexations” raises revolutionary questions: What is a piece of music? What is the role of the performer and that of the audience? The American composer John Cage would later take these questions to their logical extreme. In his classic “4’33” for piano, he has the pianist remain silent in all three movements. Not a single note is played. Unsurprisingly, it was precisely John Cage, who was an expert in “happenings,” that would first bring “Vexations” to the stage in 1963. However, he distributed the ordeal among 12 pianists who took turns over the course of 18 hours and 40 minutes. The first solo performance was given in 1967 by the British musicologist and pianist Richard Toop.
Igor Levit conceived the idea for this pianistic marathon at a time when creative minds were forced to think outside the box:
“Without Covid and the lockdown, I would never have found the time or the leisure to perform the piece. I had wanted to do it for many years, but Covid seemed like a welcome opportunity. It felt as though this piece had been written for that particular time.”
And so, Igor Levit headed into a Berlin studio, all alone with the grand piano and the seemingly endless repetitions, along with a few cameras that livestreamed the performance. To the right of the piano, a stack of 840 A4 sheets of paper was placed. After each repetition, the pianist would let a sheet of paper slide onto the floor beside him.
“I no longer remember the first hour and a half. I just remember seeing that stack of paper after about an hour and a half. It hadn’t got even a millimetre smaller. I was incredibly annoyed. That feeling of rage just wouldn’t go away while I was playing. The stack wasn’t getting any smaller. Why was I even doing this? What’s the point? The repetitions became faster, louder, more aggressive. The next thing I remember was looking to the right at the stack of paper, and suddenly there were only a few sheets left. I think that’s how people must feel when they cross the finish line after a marathon. The rush of happiness was overwhelming. I was wide awake. It was just before 6:00 a.m. I was in a great mood.”
Igor Levit reached the finish line after 15 hours and 29 minutes. Anyone listening to the stream on YouTube or to this audio recording will, like Igor Levit, ask themselves sooner rather than later: why am I subjecting myself to this ordeal? Satie would be pleased – because, as in almost all of his works, he shifts responsibility away from the composer and the performer and instead places it onto the audience. He is thus the anti-Romantic par excellence. His music doesn’t even try to emotionally move or shake us. It merely seeks to create a space, to establish an atmosphere, just as furniture does. Satie called it “musique d’ameublement.”
“It’s all about you, the listener. You enter this space. You don’t have to worry about anything. You don’t have to pay attention to the dramaturgy. There isn’t one. You don’t have to pay attention to the melody. There isn’t one. You won’t find any harmonic developments. There aren’t any. There is no content, and there are no climaxes and no low points. It’s essentially just an empty shell, and not a particularly beautiful one at that. And now you’re in this space, and all responsibility lies with you. What does this space do to you? What do sounds do to you when you take the time to listen to this thing? However long that may be. Whether it’s fifteen minutes, an hour, ten, or eighteen hours.”
The piece virtually invites us to decide for ourselves between hearing, listening, paying attention, tuning out, or stopping. It’s an easy exercise for ambient aficionados who aren’t necessarily preoccupied with questions of musical structure and meaning. Unlike, say, the Diabelli Variations, which is a musical cosmos that absolutely compels us to listen closely from the very first bar.
Of course, one can also approach “Vexations” with a keen ear and dissect the 90-second composition like a Beethoven work. Why not? British musicologist Robert Orledge has taken “Vexations” apart with the finest analytical tools. What emerges are enharmonic tricks, hexachords, numerical games, and even tonal areas extending from E-flat minor to E major.
“As so often with Satie, one can only speculate. And every speculation, every conversation ends with an open question – which is wonderful! It’s tremendous fun. It’s fun to talk about. It’s fun to play. It’s fun to analyse its meaninglessness. I wouldn’t want to give it too much weight. Conceptually, the piece is revolutionary.”
And one more speculation: resentments and anguish, repetitions and isolation – in short, everything that defines “Vexations” – Erik Satie had already experienced all of that throughout his life: at the age of six, he lost his mother; shortly thereafter, his younger sister; then his grandmother, who had cared for him; and finally, there was the separation from the only love of his life. Financial worries drove Monsieur Le Pauvre to the modest Parisian suburb of Arceuil. Decades of alcohol abuse lead to his death in 1925 at the age of 59.
After Satie’s death, his friends discovered in his tiny apartment two out-of-tune grand pianos stacked on top of each other, along with piles of old newspapers, over 100 umbrellas, and a dozen identical grey suits.
Hanging side by side on the wall were two portraits from that turbulent spring of 1893: one showed the young Satie, painted by Suzanne Valadon in her first oil painting. In the other, Satie had drawn his Biqui with sparse strokes, as minimalist as his piano pieces. The autograph manuscript of “Vexations” surfaced beneath piles of clutter. The piece was not published until 1949. In 2025, Igor Levit tackled Satie’s marathon piece before a live audience in London and now, a year later, has released a purely audio recording.
“The recording was the toughest hurdle so far. Unlike the first and second times, I didn’t feel like I was playing for an audience. The energy was directed inwards rather than outwards. For the first time, it really felt like an ordeal. It also annoyed and enraged me because, for the first time, it felt slow and monotonous. It was the most honest, most intense, and also the slowest performance so far.”
A purely audio recording of the 840 repetitions? Without the tangible ordeal of the audience and the pianist? Without a happening? Pure nonsense? Why?
“The most honest answer is: because I can, and because I felt like it. The other answer comes from a Jewish joke. Why do you always answer questions with counter-questions? Why not?”