Triple Entendre: Furniture Music, Muzak, Muzak-Plus

Chapter 1. Furniture Music: A Musical Irresolution by Erik Satie

chapter 1 Furniture Music A Musical Irresolution by Erik Satie Musical Analphabet That the French composer Erik Satie (1866–1925) could be considered—at least until the 1970s—as a “musical analphabet”1 certainly motivated John Cage’s respect for his art. If nothing else, his analphabetic status signaled the degree to which Satie had shaken the tradition of “serious music” and infuriated the guardians of its flame. Satie himself gladly upheld his reputation , introducing his 1912 Memoirs of an Amnesiac by saying, “Everybody will tell you that I am not a musician. This is correct.”2 Who else but such an analphabet could have posthumously received—more or less ironically— the questionable title of “father of muzak” for having coined, in the late 1910s, a genre that he called furniture music? By conceiving an unassuming music that would be “part of the noises of the environment,” Satie could only vex established conventions that required, as Michael Nyman puts it, a piece of music, or any work of art for that matter, to “be interesting and dominating at all costs.”3 It is true, however, that it may be difficult to take some of Satie’s music entirely seriously. William Austin summarized quite aptly the kind of critical perplexity that part of his work may (still) trigger. One may indeed conclude that “1) Satie was cynically joking in a ponderous way; 2) he was deeply committed to a fantastic ideal, which he abandoned by 1900; 3) he served a subtler ideal, to which he remained faithful while protecting it with a shell of irony; 4) he was uncertainly groping his lonely way amid conflicting ideals.”4 Is Vexations (1893), for instance—a short piece consisting of four repetitive phrases to be repeated 840 times—really meant to be performed? Figure 1.1. Erik Satie, Vexations (1893). Indication: Tempo: Very Slow / At this sign, it will be proper to introduce the Bass theme. “Pour se jouer 840 fois de suite ce motif, il sera bon de se préparer au préalable, et dans le plus grand silence, par des immobilités sérieuses” (In order to play this motif 840 times in succession, it is recommended to prepare oneself in advance, and in the deepest silence, by means of serious immobility). 12 chapter 1 Even John Cage, who eventually organized a full performance of Vexations in 1963, taking turns with a team of pianists for eighteen hours and forty minutes, had not always been convinced that the piece should ever be performed. As a matter of fact, Cage had written five years earlier, “one could not endure a performance of Vexations . . . but why give it a thought?”5 It seemed more reasonable not to give it any thought indeed, and at this point, at least, Cage considered the value of the piece to reside entirely in its concept. One could end up thinking of Vexations as a musical equivalent of some of Andy Warhol’s (painfully long) movies. After all, as Warhol himself suggested, these films may be “better talked about than seen.”6 As its very title intimates, Vexations would thwart any conventional expectations of variations and comforting resolution. Satie’s pieces of furniture music (often assimilated with Vexations in the 1960s, and still today7 ) are each fundamentally based on a short musical fragment, to be repeated ad lib (at one’s pleasure). As such, they are intrinsically monotonous and can retain the attention of the active listener for only a short span before boredom inevitably sets in. Vexations, as Robert Orledge noticed, was thus only one of Satie’s “numerous ways to cheat the passage of time” through an “absence of any climax or movement towards a goal.”8 Furniture music is grounded on such principles, forever eluding resolution. Repetition, of course, is not an uncommon musical feature and does not necessarily deprive the listener of a conventional sense of linear, passing time. Yet, to this effect, as Theodor Adorno insisted, repetition is meaningful only if it elucidates differences and develops nuances. To make his point, Adorno relies on the famous example of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. After the “short and precise motif” has been presented and once it starts to be repeated, “it remains clearly recognizable as the same” throughout the movement. Yet, Adorno continues, “there is no mere repetition, but development: the melodic content of the basic rhythm, that is...