Ever wonder how long you could sit through that less-than-enthralling lecture or a boring movie? Now you can have a chance to test how long you can sit through a piece of music. Beginning on the morning of Friday, April 18 in the Campus Center Atrium, student pianists and music department faculty members will perform Erik Satie's piano piece, "Vexations."

Wondering how long it could possibly take to perform a single piece? "Vexations" is a single sheet of music that takes roughly two minutes to play once through. However, Satie instructs the pianist to play it 840 times, which takes "a monumental 24 hours to perform in its entirety," explained performance coordinator Dylan Schneider '06. The piece is "dissonant, but certainly not harsh," he added. "It is really quite beautiful."

Schneider, who worked with Assistant Professor of Music David Schneider to organize the event, understands that it would be unreasonable to ask a College student to sit down in front of a piano and play for 24 hours. Instead, he has arranged for a number of pianists to take turns performing the piece in half-hour intervals.

In order to perform the piece in its entirety, Schneider and Schneider worked with administrators to determine a suitable location. The piece will be performed in the Campus Center atrium from the morning of the 18th to the morning of the 19th, and administrators agreed to keep the building open through the night. They are also working to arrange a location in the building where students can relax or sleep.

"Vexations" is an unusual piece of music. "There is much debate in the musical world as to whether or not 'Vexations' was just intended to be a joke," explained Dylan Schneider. "While I won't attempt to answer this question, I do think that it is an effective work. Having played in it twice before, it certainly puts me in a different mental space than my everyday life, especially after the 18th hour or so. One might think of it as a kind of musical meditation."

For Dylan Schneider, the performance is more than just the first time the piece will be performed here at the College. He sees it as an opportunity for the musicians to socialize. "I first had the idea to perform 'Vexations' here at Amherst when I realized that pianists, unlike other musicians, really don't get a chance to socialize with one another," he said. "I thought this would be a fun chance for us to spend some quality time together, a day and a night in fact."

Dylan Schneider stresses the importance of more unusual music. "I think it's important that we perform works of this kind here at Amherst," he said. "Unconventional performances such as 'Vexations' and those of the New Music Ensemble [a College group that plays modern classical music] can certainly serve to challenge and broaden the mindset of our community."