Chill with Satie
Erik Satie (1866-1925)
The French composer Erik Satie earned himself a reputation
as an eccentric. Stravinsky described him as 'the oddest person he had ever
known' but at the same time 'the most rare and constantly witty'. His musical
innovations proved immensely influential on his nearer contemporaries Debussy
and Ravel, and on a younger generation of composers and artists in the years
after the Great War of 1914-18.
Satie was born in 1866 at Honfleur on the Normandy coast.
His father was a shipping broker at the time, and his mother was of Scottish
origin. The family moved to Paris but on the death of his mother in 1872 Satie
was sent back to Honfleur to the house of his grandparents. Six years later he
entered the Conservatoire in Paris where he proved an unsatisfactory pupil,
lingering on, it was alleged, to avoid the obligatory five years of military
service, reduced for students to one year.
After his discharge from the infantry Satie had his first
pieces published by his father, who now had a small publishing business. In the
early 1890s his preoccupation with the medieval age led him to establish his
own sub-religious movement, the Metropolitan Church of the Art of Jesus the
Conductor, of which he fancifully described himself as Parcier et Maître de
Chapelle, a title he had entirely invented. He started to publish Le
Cartulaire, a periodical in which he criticised those of whom he disapproved.
This period also brought him into contact with Debussy, to whom he became very
close.
In the early 1900s Satie earned a modest living as a cafe
pianist, after which he enrolled at the Schola Cantorum where for three years
he tried to remedy his technical difficulties as a composer, particularly by
the study of counterpoint. It was not until the 1911 performance, under Ravel,
of Satie's 1887 Sarabandes that the original nature of Satie's genius began to
be acknowledged. Further recognition came through his association with
Dyaghilev.
In the years after the Great War he became the centre of
attention of a group of young composers known as Les Six. The group changed its
name in 1923 to the École d'Arcueil,
after the remote district of Paris where Satie chose to live in stark
simplicity until his death in 1925.
Tracklisting
Track 1 - Gymnopedie No. 1 (guitar/orchestra)
Track 5 - Gymnopedie No. 3 (guitar/orchestra)
Track 13 - Gymnopedie No. 1 (harp)
Track 18 - Gymnopedie No. 1 (orchestral)
Track 19 - Gymnopedie No. 2 (orchestral)
Track 20 - Gymnopedie No. 3 (orchestral)
Satie's famous Gymnopedies derive their name from the
'Gymnopædia' which was an Apollonic celebration in ancient Sparta where men of
all ages danced unarmed.
Within his Gymnopedies, Satie found a thin, ascetic, "naked"
piano structure in which lonesome and singularly expressive melodies circle
like falling autumn leaves. There is a monotonous, low bass line accompaniment,
and against it softly dissonant chords in the middle register, constantly
repeating the same rhythm-pattern. Together this creates an atmosphere of vague
melancholy, of mysticism and exoticism. Perhaps there is also a fin-de-siècle
feeling, even some nostalgia. His Gymnopedies, originally for piano, have since
been arranged for orchestra, guitar and harp and they still evoke the same
feelings of sentimental yearning.
If
you would like to explore the arrangements of Satie's Gymnopedies further then
try:
8.550088 Gymnopedies
Nos. 1 & 2 (for Orchestra)
Slovak RSO
Ondrej Lenard
Keith Clark
8.550480 Gymnopedies
Nos. 1 & 2 (arranged for
Guitar and Orchestra)
Gerald Garcia (Guitar)
CSFR State Philharmonic Orchestra
(Ko˘ sice)
Peter Breiner
8.554166 Gymnopedies
Nos. 1-3 (arranged for Flute and Harp)
Nora
Shulman (Flute)
Judy Loman (Harp)
Track 2 - Première pensee rose + croix
Track 15 - Sonneries de la rose + croix: Air de l'ordre
Track 16 - Sonneries de la rose + croix: Air du grand maître
Track 17 - Sonneries de la rose + croix: Air du grand prieur
Satie's methods changed during the period of his involvement
with Sar Peladan's Rosicrucian sect. His interest in liturgical chant became
more apparent in his melodies, and the harmonies included more chords by
fourths. The Trois Sonneries de la Rose + Croix is an excellent example of the
application of Satie's interest in chant in his own religious work. Of the set
of three pieces, two of them open with a sequence of chords in crotchets. This
is followed by a melody in octaves which corresponds exactly to the number of
beats of the chordal section and uses only the notes of the chords which
correspond to each beat. The second piece of the set does this in reverse
(melody, then chords). The third section of all three pieces is a fusion of
melody and harmony and there is another repetition of each of the chordal
passages.
Track 3 - Avant-dernières pensees
I. Idylle - II. Aubade - III. Meditation
These three brief works were written in 1915 for Debussy,
Paul Dukas and Albert Roussel. From a purely musical point of view, these
pieces are written with detached clarity and clockwork precision. Each of the
three Avant-dernières Pensees (Fore and Afterthoughts) is built around an
ostinato: a 4-quaver figure in the 'Idylle'; a figure comprising three rolled
quaver chords, separated by quaver rests in the 'Aubade'; and a 6-quaver
rocking motif in the 'Meditation'. Over these constant bases Satie is very
innovative in his use of melody, which at times becomes quite chromatic.
If
you would like to explore more of Satie's piano works then try:
8.550696
Piano Works Vol. 1
8.550697
Piano Works Vol. 2
8.550698
Piano Works Vol. 3
8.550699
Piano Works Vol. 4
8.550305
Piano Works (Selection)
Track 4 - Caresse
This posthumously (1968) published sketch with title by
Robert Caby, is a softly sensual meditation distantly related to the
Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes, interrupted in the middle in an almost
surrealistic way by a sudden, ephemeral "quake".
Track 6 - Musiques intimes et secrètes: Nostalgie - Froide
songerie - Fâcheux exemple Track 12 - Pages mystiques: [Prière] fragment -
Vexations - Harmonies
In Musiques intimes et secretes ("Intimate and Secret
Music") and the famous Vexations, Satie describes the conceptual nature of
human mental activity and then requires the performers to experience and
scrutinize, simultaneously, the exact moments of shifting psychological states.
Vexations for piano is a forefather of Minimal music. The piece consists of two
lines of chromatic, diminished triads. The resulting melody has to be played
slowly and takes a minute or two to play. What makes it radical minimalist
music is the performance instruction to play it 840 times which can easily
result in a performance time of 24 hours.
Track 7 - Trois Gnossiennes: Lent
Track 8 - Trois Gnossiennes: Avec etonnement
Track 9 - Trois Gnossiennes: Lent
Track 10 - 4ième Gnossienne: Lent
In the Gnossiennes we see a further musical and pianistic
development of the style of the Gymnopedies. The structure is similar: lonely
melodies against an accompaniment of long bass notes in combination with chords
in the middle register. In the Gymnopedies this was often coloured by the
dissonance - here it is almost continuously based on simple triads. The refined
atmosphere of Greek antiquity of the Gymnopedies has been replaced by a kind of
plaintive exoticism. This is especially true of Gnossiennes Nos. 1-3. In the
fourth, dated January 22nd 1891, Satie found a different structure: against a
slow and monotonously undulating accompaniment of broken triads, a melody
filled with a long "Oriental" melisma is placed.
Track 11 - Mercure - Poses plastiques en trois tableaux
Satie collaborated with Cocteau, Picasso and Massine in 1924
for his second ballet. The adventures of Mercury are musically depicted by
cabaret-style tunes, brassy outbursts and some serene melodies.
If
you would like to explore Satie's orchestral works further then try:
8.554279 Orchestral Works
Orchestre
Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy, Jerôme Kaltenbach
Track 14 - IV. Nocturne
Satie's Nocturnes are the last of his compositions for the
piano. Their harmonies rely on fourths and fifths and each shows a
characteristic simplicity of texture. By this stage of his life, Satie's
compositional technique had altered somewhat and the Nocturnes, like most of
his works from the 1890s onwards, are made up of juxtaposed fragments of
themes.