In a single performance of a piece of music split into two parts, the pianist plays through Eric Satie’s Gymnopedies (no. 1 - 3) three times consecutively, first using only one hand, and then the other, with the resulting recordings combined afterwards.  Although the pianist initially keeps her timing, eventually the impossibility of splitting her performance takes its toll; the music becomes mistimed, occasionally to the point of discordant plinking.  

A listener knows what to expect when hearing a familiar piece of music: projecting forward along the path the music will take and jarred if something unexpected happens to a single note.  Gymnopedies has a semi-ubiquitous quality: many people know the composition if they hear it, without knowing how they know it, who the composer is or when they first heard it. The spilt-recording of this strangely familiar piece of music unsettles the listener’s expectations as it weaves between being in-time and falling out of time.

Performance by Maria Mall