Re: [microsound] memory and melody

[ross birdwise <rbirdwise@xxxxxxxxx>]

 dagmar,

I listened to the vexations link you sent me and I
sampled it.  I stopped listening to it half an hour
ago. I just have a fairly vague sense of it.  I could
probably figure out a few of its notes by ear, but
likely with a few mistakes.  

I found that vexations had a very unusual melodic
line, with very unusual rhythm, and that it moved
slowly,  and almost as if it were stumbling along....I
think these are definitely factors affecting my lack
of remembrance.

i'm not sure what satie's intentions are, but i don't
recall vexations very well.

have you heard of the artist Rober Racine?  He
performed vexations at least once.

Ross
--- dbuchwald <dagmar.buchwald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Hi Ross,
> 
> puzzling.  I don't know what the mechanism is but I
> don't think that
> tempo or unresolvedness alone is responsible. 
> Reminds me of a very weird
> experience with Erik Satie music.  He wrote a small
> piece for piano
> called "Vexations" and his wish was that it should
> be played 24 hours
> continuously.  It so happened that a small group of
> people staged it over
> here (Germany) according to his wishes (in the 80ies
> that was).  Now the
> whole night was quite memorable: a small bunch of
> interested people
> trying to stay in the small theater for 24 hours;
> everything was done in
> white, even the food served was exclusively white,
> several piano players
> taking shifts in playing the piece.  People walked
> about, talked, ate,
> slept, whatever.  Now although the whole setting was
> quite memorable and
> although I was much younger then and easier to
> impress and although I
> spent almost 20 hours of the 24 hours in this room
> continuously exposed
> to that piece of music -- I couldn't and cannot
> remember a thing of it.
> When I happen to hear it somewhere I know that it is
> *probably*
> "Vexations" by Erik Satie and that's it.  The weird
> thing is that equally
> small and unresolved piano pieces by Satie -- in a
> similar tempo and
> character -- such as "The Gymnopédies" stick to my
> memory very well
> although I heard them less often, certainly not for
> 20 hours on end
> (whether I could hum them is another question; the
> Gymnopédie I like best
> is in my head right now, I can hear it, I could try
> to indicate the
> whereabouts of the sounds somewhere in the air, I
> certainly remember the
> tempo, I can sort of hum it but only accompanied by
> gestures) .
> 
> I have a hunch that Satie wanted to achieve that
> effect (actually you
> could call many of his pieces "ambient" although the
> term didn't exist at
> his time) and called his piece "Vexations" precisely
> because he knew it
> would vex people not being able to remember it after
> 24 hours of
> exposure.  But how did he achieve the effect?  Do
> other people on this
> list happen to know the piece and can they remember
> it? I can't.
> 
> Dagmar
> 
> 
> ross birdwise wrote:
> 
> > This post relates to vladislav delay's anima:
> >
> > Anima seems to be full of small melodic flourishes
> > (some of which are unresolved) and long extended
> > sequences of tones that seem to form melody over a
> > longer period of time than the average pop song.
> > There is also a multitude of fragmented and richly
> > textured sounds occuring at almost all times, in
> > addition to frequent timbral changes.
> >
> > Perhaps the melody question also raises issues of
> > duration when we speak of anima (not to mention
> how
> > other elements might cause distraction from the
> > apprehension of melody) .  Perhaps extremely
> simple
> > and unresolved melodies are harder for some people
> to
> > remember, as are extremely slow drawn out
> melodies.  I
> > find Beethoven very melodic and memorable. perhaps
> > this is due to a lot of exposure to beethoven in
> pop
> > culture?  or perhaps it is because his melodies
> are
> > complex enough to create a 'good' hook (but not
> too
> > intricate) and occur fast enough to allow many
> people
> > to group sequences of tones together
> > into memorable fragments.  Maybe we are socialized
> to
> > listen in this way?
> >
> > ross
> >
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