ciborgs

Erik Satie was possibly the most eccentric, innovative, and influential composer of the early 20th century. Of all his interesting works, two are of special interest here:

Musique d'Ameublement is often said to be the first piece of ambient music. Its first performance was given 1920 at a picture exhibition. The furnishing music, played on a piano, three clarinets, and a trombone, was performed in the gallery while people were looking at pictures.

"We beg you to take no notice of it and to behave (...) as if the music did not exist. This music ... claims to make its contribution to life in the same way as a private conversation, a picture, or the chair on which you may or may not be seated ..."

Vexations for piano was a forefather of Minimal music. The piece (embedded in Satie's Pages Mystiques) consists of two lines of chromatic, diminished triads. The resulting melody has to be played slowly and takes a minute or two to play. What makes it radical minimalist music is the performance instruction to play it 840 times which can easily result in a performance time of 24 hours. The first performance of Vexations which took the instruction seriously was given in 1963 by John Cage who had discovered the piece in Satie's heritage several years earlier.