Vexations at 50

John Cage's epic presentation of the Satie Vexations took place fifty years ago today. There has been fairly ample coverage of Vexations on the blog over the years: I've posted the lineup of the 1963 event, a Joshua Rifkin footnote, my 1993 Times review of Vexations at Roulette, and pictures and video of the Make Music vibraphone rendition last year (whence the video above). A search of Google News suggests that the only organization to mark the anniversary is the Musikschule Winsen, which deployed a forty-member piano team last Friday. A footnote to the original marathon: in the audience for part of the time was Andy Warhol, who, at the time, was working on his film Sleep. Warhol may have been emboldened by Cage's experiment.