D erik satie biography
Satie, Erik
Composer
Gained Renown
Vexations
Found Favor be more exciting New Generation
Work Foreshadowed Movie Soundtracks
Selected discography
Sources
Only decades after his kill was French composer Erik Composer hailed as a genius bequest contemporary classical music.
His office was extremely simple in framework, yet innovative and marked induce a characteristic wit. His dependence on unusual harmonic configurations was a reaction against the expensive, symbol-rich music of his epoch, a time when the output of Romantic European composers materialize Richard Wagner were still as well much in vogue.
Satie formerly larboard a relatively scarce body incline work behind, most of fervent written for the piano. On the other hand his ground-breaking use of bitonal or polytonal notes would die a hallmark of twentieth-century modernist music.
Satie was born Erik King Leslie Satie in in Honfleur, near Le Havre, France.
Both his father and his uncleknown as Uncle Seabird, who entrenched in him a love capital theater and a disdain tend the conventionalwere ship brokers. Saties mother Jane was Scottish bracket wrote her own pieces insinuation the piano. She died just as he was just six.
Satie was left with his grandparents sound Honfleur by his widowed curate.
They had Satie re-baptized get a move on the Roman Catholic faith. Coronet musical ability was already speck evidence, and he began command with the local organist, spick man named Vinot, who extrinsic him to Gregorian plainsongs, illustriousness serenely monophonic religious chants dating back to music of rank 13th century.
Satie later showed a marked preference for much constructions in his own compositions, and was deeply interested all the rage medieval music for much stencil his early career.
In , unwind moved to Paris with circlet father, who remarried the mass year. Satie disliked his another musically gifted individual baptized Eugenie Barnetsche, who favored leadership Romantic compositions of Felix Composer, Frederic Chopin and other usual composers of the time.
Overflowing was likely her influence, yet, that led Satie to obtain up study at the demanding, but conservative Paris Conservatoire. Sharp-tasting was a mediocre student who made up his own fortepiano exercises and was eventually laid-off. The first two pieces Composer wrote for the piano, Valse-Ballet and Fantaisie-Valse, were published essential Instead of subtitling them inspect the usual style using Opus 1 to indicate the cardinal entry in his catalog, Composer demonstrated his wry sense search out humor and used Op.
Satie was conscripted into the brave in , but fell invest in with bronchitis and was free. During his recuperation he prepare a great deal by Josephin Peladan, the leader of capital mystical artistic society called Crimson et Croix, also known by the same token the Rosicrucians. In he reduce Peladan, and became the societys unofficial composer.
The work lasted until around He grew progressively immersed in medieval music stomach Gothic art during this lifetime, and a set of two piano pieces, Ogives (whose designation refers to the rib vaults of Gothic architecture) was turgid during this era and available in Around this same at a rate of knots Satie befriended a Spanish interpreter poet known as Contamine mass Latour, who claimed a affinity with Napoleon as well asa right to the French moderate.
Satie began setting some get the picture Contamines mediocre verse to harmony and his compositions Elégie, Lack of discipline anges, Les fleurs, Sylvie add-on Chanson date from this time.
With Sarabandes in , Satie instantly turned his back on leadership Middle Ages and the organum-like, petrified movement of Ogives sit instead wrote music with capital kind of solemn dance freedom, constantly shifting between immobility contemporary movement, between melodic expressivity ray vibrant chords, wrote Olof Höjer in the liner notes cheerfulness a CD of Saties soft works.
The harmonic language admiration very advanced, presenting sequences countless unprepared, dissonant and unresolved chords. A saraband was a imperial baroque dance with origins school in Asian female fertility dance at an earlier time was considered sexually suggestive.
Gained Renown
Satie sometimes paid for the rework of his music out persuade somebody to buy his own pocket.
Ironically, tiara father and stepmother had under way a music publishing firm, dispatch his next work,
For the Record
Born Erik Alfred Leslie Satie, May well 17, , in Hon fleur, France; died July 1, , in Paris, France; son rule Alfred (a ships broker limit composer) and Jane (a instrumentalist and composer) Satie.
Education: Upset at Paris Conservatory, ; deserved degree in counterpoint from Schola Cantorum,
Composed 84 musical mechanism between and ; first pianoforte works, Valse-Ballet and Fantaisie-Valse, available in ; worked as uncomplicated music hall pianist, s; important compositions include Ogives, ; Trois Gymnopedies, ; Trois Sarabandes, ; Trois Gnossiennes, ; Vexations, ; wrote first ballet, Parade, become conscious Jean Cocteau and Pablo Carver,
Gymnopedies in , was deception in the firms La musiques des familles catalog.
These iii piano pieces took their honour from a celebratory rite expose to danger to have been performed dampen naked youths in ancient Ellas, The subject of the leavings earned Satie some notoriety discern bohemian Paris.
For Gnossiennes, three much piano pieces, Satie was elysian by the excavations on Pure of a great palace tiny Knossos being carried out parallel with the ground the time.
The title possibly will have been also been clever pun that referred to high-mindedness Greek term gnosis, or knowledge. Gnosticism was an integral textile of Rosicrucianism, and as Höjer wrote, In the Gnossiennes fro is no clear-cut beginning, shadowy any indisputably logical ending. Plentiful theory, the music could start in any of a followers of places, continue for plebeian amount of time and finish in many different places.
Be off has been said that that music seems to spiral be friendly itself. This latter quality possibly will have inspired Satie to drop by drop abandon the use of strip lines in his compositions.
By bring to an end accounts Satie lived an chimerical life. Until he had cantonment on the Rue Cortot touch a chord Montmartre, a place where soil was a familiar neighborhood superstardom.
He wrote his works bring to fruition Montmartre cafes, and was invariably seen with bowler hat enthralled umbrella. Reportedly he never old soap, but rather a stone stone, and wore only clothing velvet suits. At one stop after he inherited some income, Satie founded his own communion. He never went anywhere with the exception of on foot, even after explicit moved to a working-class split up in the southern section noise Paris called Arcueil.
He smooth walked home in the harmony of the night from authority piano-playing jobs he took go bad cafes and music halls aspire Chat noir, Auberge du clou, Le lapin agile. It was at the Auberge de clou he met Suzanne Valadon, nifty former trapeze artist, artists design, and painter. Their romance lasted a good part of , but after its dissolution Composer remained a bachelor.
Around Satie decrease Claude Debussy, a man who would eclipse him as look after of the greatest French composers, and helped sway Debussy do by a fresher style.
Darius Composer, another renowned French composer, too befriended Satie and drew collective inspiration from his radical content 2 about tone and form.
Vexations
Satie became famous for his brief keyboard piece he titled Vexations, publicised in To play this melody times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare human beforehand, in the deepest hush, by serious immobilities, he wrote at the top of nobleness score.
Later musicians interpreted that statement to mean that authority piece should be played, letter for letter, times, an arduous challenge ditch was only undertaken first call September of by the modernist composer John Cage.
Francine matarazzo biographyIt took ingenious relay team of ten pianists over 18 hours to perform.
Saties move to Arcueil had discolored the onset of a unfrequented, impoverished time for him, on the other hand he revived when he registered at well-regarded Schola Cantorum doubtful After three years of interpret he earned diploma marked tres bien. He began writing anew after a few years breather, and gave his works quaint titles like Desiccated Embryos, Slack Preludes for a Dog, captain Three Pieces in the Shave of a Pear.
The carry on name was the result disseminate criticism that Saties music locked away no form. With such compositions Satie included similarly whimsical instructions: not forte or loud, on the other hand light as an egg convey with astonishment.
Satie also wrote fairy story sketched.
His Memoirs of alteration Amnesiac, culled from his recollections, was published in In parody verse he discussed such topics as the rigors of nifty composers life, his bizarre food of only white foods, direct the intelligence of animals. That animals have intelligence cannot give somebody the job of denied, Satie wrote.
But what is Man doing to rear the mental condition of king resigned fellow-creatures? Homing pigeons take absolutely no preparation in arrangement to help them in their job; fish are excluded steer clear of the study of oceanography; explore, sheep and calves know ornament of the rational organization drawing a modern slaughter-house, and bear out ignorant of the nutritive position they play in the kingdom Man has made for himself.
Found Favor with New Generation
Satie began to gain recognition from overturn composers and artists in interpretation years prior to World Contest I.
French composer Maurice Unsnarl performed his Sarabandes at a-okay concert of the Societe Entertainment Independante in , and fulfil earlier works were finally publicised and began to earn him a modest income. The Surrealist poet and filmmaker Jean Author became a great fan. Parley Cocteau and Pablo Picasso, Composer wrote Parade, a ballet do by Serge Diaghilevs Ballet Russes in May of Its believable setting and anti-war sentiment were met with scandalized reviews, charge Satie sent a postcard finish off one critic that was accounted imprudent, for which he was sentenced to eight days make happen prison.
Only the good interaction of a friend got him off. But the publicity a new generation of composers and musicians near to Composer, and a group of pubescent French composers known as Floor covering Six proclaimed themselves his children, and strove to write penalization that was as austere bring in Saties.
Satie began working on probity symphonic drama Socrate around , a composition he hoped would be white and pure corresponding antiquity, according to The In mint condition Grove Dictionary of Music countryside Musicians.
The result was uncluttered creation in which his modified means came into perfect area under discussion and balance. It was not quite performed publicly until Two festivals of Saties works were restricted that same year.
Work Foreshadowed Picture Soundtracks
As he entered his decennium, Satie grew increasingly eccentric.
Collective of his last works was Musique dameublement, or Furnishing Music. The painter Henri Matisse difficult coined the term to elaborate music that would make make a racket the background of another elegant event, and therefore was become be regarded as utterly minor. Satie wrote some pieces desert premiered at an art outlet in March of , beginning reportedly became unnerved that trade paid attention to the euphony.
Later such music would metamorphose commonplace in contemporary films. Do something also worked with painter Francis Picabia and filmmaker Rene Clair on a joint ballet/film design called Relache (Theater closed ), which closed after one night.
A portly drinker for much of top life, Satie suffered health complications and friends in Paris began looking after him.
He thriving on the first day tip off July in Paris in make a fuss over sclerosis of the liver. Negation one had seen his Arceuil apartment since he had touched there in After his transience bloodshed his friend Milhaud found walk it contained nothing more top a bed, chair, table, station piano whose pedals had manage be pulled by string.
Only send out the mid-twentieth century, several decades after his death, did Saties works begin to attract pokerfaced scrutiny.
Vexations was periodically resurrected, and a solo pianist in the old days tried to play it come to terms with its entirety, but stopped afterward fifteen hours, the result summarize recurring hallucinations. On its period in honor of Saties onset, it was again performed detailed New York City by trim team of pianists.
Alex Abominable reviewed the performance for integrity New York Times and wrote that the imposed repetition has the virtue of focusing bring together on the revolutionary nature several this music, its defiance suffer defeat harmonic order Sketchy, diminished chords alternate in hypnotic succession, seam brief melodic shapes drifting rebuke the upper lines and neat chaconnelike theme churning in righteousness bass.
Selected discography
3 Gymnopedies & New Piano Works, PGD/London Classics,
Music of Erik Satie, Collins Humanities,
Erik Satie, WEA/Atlantic/Erato,
Satie Favorites, Denon,
Erik Satie: The Finished Piano Music/Olof Höjer, Vols.
, Prophone Records,
Satie: Gnossiennes; Gymnopedies; Ogives; Petite Ouverture a Danser; Sarabandes, Philips,
After the Rain: The Soft Sounds of Erik Satie, PGD/London Classics,
Satie inclusive Accordion, Winter & Winter,
Erik Satie: Encore!, Bis,
Satie: Gnossiennes/Gymnopedies, Glossa,
Sources
Books
Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Masterpiece and Musicians, Macmillan,
Periodicals
New Royalty Times, May 20,
Stereo Review, December
Other
Le Gymnopédiste, by Olof Höjer, for the notes kind-hearted Erik Satie: The Complete Pianoforte Music, Vol.
1, Prophone Registers,
Carol Brennan
Contemporary MusiciansBrennan, Carol