It was like the song that doesn't end.
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On Saturday musicians from the ANU School of Music spent six hours in non-stop performance playing French composer Erik Satie's Vexations.
The feat, which involved 840 repetitions of the song, was a tribute to Satie who was born 150 years ago on Saturday.
A group of five current students, recent graduates and musicians put in an epic effort performing back to back in half-hour sets.
The session, which took place between 10am and 4pm in the Gordon Darling Hall of the National Portrait Gallery, was just one part of the Satie Festival – an extravaganza of showcases and master classes stretching out until Monday.
Satie Festival curator Katherine Day from the ANU School of Music said Vexations was one of the most interesting and yet annoying pieces Satie ever wrote.
"Satie was exploring concepts of time from a performance and an audience perspective; he was experimenting with minimalism – an arts movement that took off in the 1950s through to the 70s," she said.
"The piece involves the same brief four-phrase motif repeated throughout the performance. Because it is bar-less and time signature-less, it challenges the concept of what time is and what a performance is and what a motif is."
Before taking on the challenge 28-year-old student Ellen Falconer said she was intrigued to be part of the process and wasn't sure if it would be a stronger test of her stamina or sanity.
"It was exciting rather than nerve inducing," she said. "You know you're playing the same thing over and over again and if you make a mistake, which is pretty hard in this piece, you have so many opportunities to get it right again."
She said Satie was best known for his first composition Trois Gymnopédies, written in 1888, but Vexations is renowned as a piece musicians can explore.
"There is no dynamic marking so it really lends itself to experimentation, within reason, but it does have a mood. It is slow, gentle and there is some dissonance," she said.
Ms Falconer played three of the 12 half-hour sets.
There were moments that felt meditative, others that felt as though she'd slipped into a daydream, but after all was said and done a bit of silence was golden.
"It is one of those things which was important to have done and was amazing to do once, but I wouldn't want to do it again in a hurry," she said.
