TUNING SATIE'S VEXATIONS- TERUMI NARUSHIMA

A TUNING FOR SATIE'S VEXATIONS

An excerpt from the Microfest Performance

Here is the Program listing all the composers

Alternative tuning for Erik Satie’s Vexations Terumi Narushima

Scale Degree	Letter Name	Interval Size
0	C	0.000 unison
1	B#	188.253 cents
2	Db	206.133 cents
3	C#	224.012 cents
4	Ebb	241.892 cents
5	D	259.771 cents
6	Eb	295.530 cents
7	D#	483.783 cents
8	E	519.542 cents
9	F	555.301 cents
10	Gb	591.060 cents
11	F#	779.313 cents
12	G	815.072 cents
13	Ab	850.831 cents
14	G#	868.711 cents
15	Bbb	886.590 cents
16	A	1074.843 cents
17	Bb	1110.602 cents
18	A#	1128.482 cents
19	Cb	1146.361 cents
20	B	1164.241 cents
21	C	1200.000 octave

In an article titled “Understanding Satie’s Vexations”, Satie scholar Robert Orledge suggests that the structure of Vexations is based on numbers from the Lucas series (1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29, 47, 76, 123, 199, 322, 521, 843…). To accommodate the 21 different spellings of notes in Satie’s score, I decided to use a 21-tone subset of a 29-tone scale (29 being the closest Lucas number larger than 21). The fact that nearly all of the chords in Vexations are diminished triads gave me the idea of arranging the notes of the scale as three chains of minor thirds as shown below. The chains are a:linked by notes of the augmented triad (F-A-C#) found in the 2nd and 19th chords of the score.

aug

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Ebb

–

Bbb

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Three chains of minor thirds with brackets showing diminished triads found in Satie’s Vexations. Chains are a:linked by augmented triad F-A-C#.