Horvath’s Latest Long-Duration Release

Listening to the recordings of solo piano music that Nicolas Horvath has released through his Discoveries series has done a lot to condition me to listening to compositions of extended durations. Even before any of these albums had been released, Horvath had given recital performances of Erik Satie’s “Vexations.” This piece is based on a theme of thirteen beats alternating between quarter notes and eighth-note pairs,” which is then performed in parallel tritones. That, in itself, would do much to vex both performer and listener; but the kicker comes in a note by the composer, which, when translated into English, instructs the performer as follows: “In order to play the motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.”

Thus, this seemingly modest single page, whose composition has been assigned by scholars as between 1893 and 1894, confronts the performer with a seemingly impossible demand. As I have previously observed, the piece went unperformed until September 9, 1963. John Cage and Lewis Lloyd (both affiliated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company) prepared a “marathon” performance at the Pocket Theatre in Manhattan. Cage organized the Pocket Theatre Piano Relay Team, whose members included Cage himself, along with David Tudor, Christian Wolff, Philip Corner, Viola Farber, Robert Wood, MacRae Cook, John Cale, David Del Tredici, James Tenney, and Howard Klein (the last having been sent by The New York Times to cover the event, only to find himself recruited as a performer). The only other reviewer I know of was sent by Time, back in the days in which the names of the contributors were withheld. The Time article claimed that, at the conclusion of the eighteen hours it took to perform the piece, someone in the audience decided to should “Encore!”

Several years ago I encountered a similar “relay” approach to performance here in San Francisco. As I recall, the performance took place in a gallery. People chose to come and go as they pleased, which is how they tend to approach gallery viewing experiences. My own listening was guided by which pianists I was interested in hearing (as well as seeing how they managed the “passing of the baton”). Without having to worry about a sit-still-and-listen commitment, I found the affair to be both relaxing and occasionally amusing.

By the time I had experienced this approach to “Vexations,” I had been familiar with the release of LaMonte Young’s “The Well-Tuned Piano,” which filled four CDs, for several decades. Young’s performances tended to run as long as six hours, which seems like a walk in the park when compared with “Vexations.” Nevertheless, I was pleasantly amused at the idea that Satie’s initial venture into a long-duration experience was becoming more acceptable through performers such as Young.

Horvath is now one of those performers. He had been giving solo recital performances of “Vexations” when he first met Tom Johnson. His first recording of Johnson’s music  was an album devoted entirely to “An Hour For Piano, which was discussed on this site this past Tuesday. This was followed by a second Johnson release at the end of this past August entitled The Chord Catalogue.

This is very much a “truth in advertising” offering. The composition consists of twelve movements whose titles and durations are as follows:

1. The 78 two-note chords 02:18
2. The 286 three-note chords 07:29
3. The 715 four-note chords 18:12
4. The 1287 five-note chords 36:00
5. The 1716 six-note chords 43:08
6. The 1716 seven-note chords 40:28
7. The 1287 eight-note chords 27:48
8. The 715 nine-note chords 16:21
9. The 286 ten-note chords 07:44
10. The 78 eleven-note chords 02:05
11. The 13 twelve-note chords 00:26
12. The 1 thirteen-note chord 00:06

To spare readers the trouble of “doing the math,” I can observe that the total duration is three hours and 22 minutes. (Full disclosure: I did not “do the math;” I let an iTunes playlist do it for me!)

The booklet that accompanies this album includes a relatively lengthy essay by Bertrand Ferrier. This is divided into sections that amount to different perspectives on the nature of Johnson’s composition:

1. Musicality of the catalog
2. Musicality of the chord
3. Musicality of temporality
4. Musicality of listening
5. Musicality of the interpretation
6. Musicality of music

I have to confess that I feel that Ferrier’s perspectives may overload the listener. Personally, I would argue that the “marathon” approach taken by Cage and Lloyd, coupled with allowing anyone in the audience to come and go as (s)he pleases, tells us all we need to know about extended-duration experiences. In my own case I felt that I had been “pre-conditioned” for The Chord Catalog after having made my journey through the compositions by Jean Catoire, whose Opus 520 lasted for a little less than four and a quarter hours.

My own approach to The Chord Catalog is basically to take things as they come and decide on my own amount of listening time. One might call this a naive approach, but I advocate it because it frees one from the risk over overthinking while the music is being performed. Coupled with the come-and-go-as-you-please approach to listening to “Vexations,” I would say that simply attending to surface-structure features should be sufficient for a satisfying listening experience. Others may disagree; but, after all, from a biological point of view, sensory experiences cannot be anything other than simply subjective!