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Erik Alfred Leslie Satie (May 17, 1866 - July 1, 1925) was a French composer.
Born in Honfleur, Basse-Normandie, France, Satie was a music composer, and a performing pianist, though
mainly for café and cabaret audiences. Satie wrote theatre and ballet music, as well as piano music. His compositions are original, humorous, often bizarre, and very minimalistic. His music is sometimes called furniture music, supposed to be in the background of
everyday life [musique d'ameublement]. It is evidently anti-romantic and also
anti-impressionistic. Satie eventually became a leading figure of the
French
avant-garde.
Today he is regarded as one of the important forebears of minimalism, and
John Cage cited him as a major influence (Cage organized and performed in the
premiere performance of Satie's 18 hour long Vexations). His work is
also considered a forerunner of ambient music, and dadaism as in his ballet Relâche.
He did not begin to be taken seriously as a composer by his contemporaries until he was in his forties. In 1917 the first
performance in Paris of the ballet Parade (the orchestration of which included parts for typewriter, foghorn and rattle) caused a
scandal, which established his name as a composer. Satie wrote this ballet together with Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso for the Russian
impresario Serge Diaghilev, leader of the Ballets Russes.
His other works include:
- Trois Gymnopédies (1888), piano
- Messe des Pauvres (1895)
- Trois morceaux en forme de poire (1901), piano four hands
- Descriptions Automatiques (1913), piano
- Sonatine Bureaucratique (1917), piano
- Socrate (1918), symphonic drama
- Relâche (1924), ballet
Recordings of his complete works have recently been published on Swedish Society
Discofil, performed by Olof
Hojer.
Satie gave his piano pieces names like (translated to english) Unpleasant Glimpses, Genuine Flabby Preludes (for
a dog), or Old Sequins and Old Breastplates. He accompanied the scores of these pieces with all kinds of written
remarks, through which he insisted that these should not be read out during performance.
Satie was known as an eccentric, and amongst other things he started his own church, Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus,
Leader (with himself as the only member). Every day of his working life Satie left his apartment in the Parisian suburb of
Arcueil to walk across the whole of Paris
to either Montmartre or Montparnasse before walking back again in the evening.
A penniless bohemian, Satie wore a top hat, a flowing lavaliere, and a pince-nez. His room at 6 rue Cortot was
next door to artist Suzanne Valadon. They began an affair in January
1893, and Satie proposed marriage that same night. The only relationship of his life, he became obsessed with the beautiful
artist, whom he called his "Biqui", writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet."
Valadon painted Satie's portrait and gave it to him but after six months, the beautiful Suzanne moved on, leaving Satie
brokenhearted. After his death, her portrait of him (shown here) was found in his room at Arcueil.
Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel were among Satie's friends. Although not hailed by the masses, he was admired by many young
composers and musicians and was a big influence on Debussy in particular.
Satie was the center of Les Six, a group of six French composers
(Georges Auric, Louis
Durey, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Darius Milhaud
and Francis Poulenc). The group advocated clear musical language, and
opposed impressionism (for example Debussy and Ravel), slavism (Stravinsky) and post-Wagnerism (Schoenberg) in music.
Satie died in Arcueil, Val-de-Marne, Île-de-France, and was interred there in the Cimetiere d'Arcueil.
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