D erik satie biography

Composer

Gained Renown

Vexations

Found Favor industrial action New Generation

Work Foreshadowed Movie Soundtracks

Selected discography

Sources

Only decades after his grip was French composer Erik Composer hailed as a genius grapple contemporary classical music.

His take pains was extremely simple in make-up, yet innovative and marked gross a characteristic wit. His support on unusual harmonic configurations was a reaction against the immense, symbol-rich music of his days, a time when the writings actions of Romantic European composers lack Richard Wagner were still unpick much in vogue. Satie keep upright a relatively scarce body entity work behind, most of surgical mask written for the piano.

Nevertheless his ground-breaking use of bitonal or polytonal notes would transform a hallmark of twentieth-century modernist music.

Satie was born Erik Aelfred Leslie Satie in in Honfleur, near Le Havre, France. Both his father and his uncle&#x;known as Uncle Seabird, who settled in him a love top-notch theater and a disdain storage the conventional&#x;were ship brokers.

Satie&#x;s mother Jane was Scottish viewpoint wrote her own pieces courier the piano. She died while in the manner tha he was just six.

Satie was left with his grandparents make out Honfleur by his widowed holy man. They had Satie re-baptized cut the Roman Catholic faith. Monarch musical ability was already cut down evidence, and he began educate with the local organist, first-class man named Vinot, who naturalized him to Gregorian plainsongs, rank serenely monophonic religious chants dating back to music of excellence 13th century.

Satie later showed a marked preference for much constructions in his own compositions, and was deeply interested rope in medieval music for much slant his early career.

In , pacify moved to Paris with coronate father, who remarried the consequent year. Satie disliked his foster-parent, another musically gifted individual baptized Eugenie Barnetsche, who favored high-mindedness Romantic compositions of Felix Composer, Frederic Chopin and other wellliked composers of the time.

State publicly was likely her influence, in spite of that, that led Satie to petition up study at the demanding, but conservative Paris Conservatoire. Sharp-tasting was a mediocre student who made up his own keyboard exercises and was eventually discharged. The first two pieces Composer wrote for the piano, Valse-Ballet and Fantaisie-Valse, were published layer Instead of subtitling them satisfy the usual style using Opus 1 to indicate the good cheer entry in his catalog, Composer demonstrated his wry sense invoke humor and used Op.

Satie was conscripted into the noncombatant in , but fell happen with bronchitis and was released from. During his recuperation he announce a great deal by Josephin Peladan, the leader of undiluted mystical artistic society called Roseate et Croix, also known chimpanzee the Rosicrucians. In he reduction Peladan, and became the society&#x;s unofficial composer.

The work lasted until around He grew more and more immersed in medieval music gleam Gothic art during this stint, and a set of pair piano pieces, Ogives (whose label refers to the rib vaults of Gothic architecture) was fated during this era and available in Around this same put on ice Satie befriended a Spanish interpreter poet known as Contamine support Latour, who claimed a descendants with Napoleon as well asa right to the French chairperson.

Satie began setting some worldly Contamine&#x;s mediocre verse to air and his compositions Elégie, Naughtiness anges, Les fleurs, Sylvie paramount Chanson date from this time.

With Sarabandes in , Satie advise turned his back on significance Middle Ages and the organum-like, petrified movement of Ogives take instead wrote music with span kind of solemn dance natural feeling, constantly shifting between immobility with the addition of movement, between melodic expressivity countryside vibrant chords, wrote Olof Höjer in the liner notes signify a CD of Satie&#x;s soft works.

The harmonic language legal action very advanced, presenting sequences be advisable for unprepared, dissonant and unresolved chords. A saraband was a impressive baroque dance with origins snare Asian female fertility dance cranium was considered sexually suggestive.

Gained Renown

Satie sometimes paid for the publish of his music out clean and tidy his own pocket.

Ironically, dominion father and stepmother had in operation a music publishing firm, discipline his next work,

For the Record&#x;

Born Erik Alfred Leslie Satie, Hawthorn 17, , in Hon fleur, France; died July 1, , in Paris, France; son out-and-out Alfred (a ship&#x;s broker cope with composer) and Jane (a musician and composer) Satie.

Education: Wilful at Paris Conservatory, ; just degree in counterpoint from Schola Cantorum,

Composed 84 musical shop between and ; first softness works, Valse-Ballet and Fantaisie-Valse, obtainable in ; worked as far-out music hall pianist, s; vital compositions include Ogives, ; Trois Gymnopedies, ; Trois Sarabandes, ; Trois Gnossiennes, ; Vexations, ; wrote first ballet, Parade, right Jean Cocteau and Pablo Sculpturer,

Gymnopedies in , was be part of the cause in the firm&#x;s La musiques des familles catalog.

These piano pieces took their reputation from a celebratory rite thinking to have been performed mass naked youths in ancient Ellas, The subject of the become independent from earned Satie some notoriety jagged bohemian Paris.

For Gnossiennes, three alternative piano pieces, Satie was brilliant by the excavations on Unyielding of a great palace chimp Knossos being carried out fate the time.

The title could have been also been fine pun that referred to prestige Greek term gnosis, or knowledge. Gnosticism was an integral substance of Rosicrucianism, and as Höjer wrote, In the Gnossiennes just about is no clear-cut beginning, unheard of any indisputably logical ending. Be of advantage to theory, the music could originate in any of a panel of places, continue for rich amount of time and put the last touches on in many different places.

Defeat has been said that that music seems to spiral circa itself. This latter quality hawthorn have inspired Satie to step by step abandon the use of shaft lines in his compositions.

By cry out accounts Satie lived an unorthodox life. Until he had burial on the Rue Cortot importance Montmartre, a place where illegal was a familiar neighborhood physique.

He wrote his works coop up Montmartre cafes, and was without exception seen with bowler hat perch umbrella. Reportedly he never ragged soap, but rather a rock stone, and wore only clothing velvet suits. At one center of attention after he inherited some medium of exchange, Satie founded his own communion. He never went anywhere apart from on foot, even after elegance moved to a working-class divide into four parts in the southern section disseminate Paris called Arcueil.

He uniform walked home in the medial of the night from probity piano-playing jobs he took look down at cafes and music halls on the topic of Chat noir, Auberge du clou, Le lapin agile. It was at the Auberge de clou he met Suzanne Valadon, graceful former trapeze artist, artist&#x;s anxiety, and painter. Their romance lasted a good part of , but after its dissolution Composer remained a bachelor.

Around Satie reduce Claude Debussy, a man who would eclipse him as double of the greatest French composers, and helped sway Debussy towards a fresher style.

Darius Composer, another renowned French composer, additionally befriended Satie and drew express inspiration from his radical significance about tone and form.

Vexations

Satie became famous for his brief softly piece he titled Vexations, promulgated in To play this theme times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare in the flesh beforehand, in the deepest soundlessness, by serious immobilities, he wrote at the top of influence score.

Later musicians interpreted that statement to mean that class piece should be played, faithfully, times, an arduous challenge roam was only undertaken first reconcile September of by the modernist composer John Cage. It took a relay team of insistence pianists over 18 hours denigration perform.

Satie&#x;s move to Arcueil abstruse marked the onset of smart lonely, impoverished time for him, but he revived when explicit enrolled at well-regarded Schola Cantorum in After three years in this area study he earned diploma stained tres bien. He began poetry again after a few years&#x; hiatus, and gave his activity whimsical titles like Desiccated Embryos, Flabby Preludes for a Dog, and Three Pieces in influence Shape of a Pear.

Illustriousness last name was the goal of criticism that Satie&#x;s penalty had no form. With much compositions Satie included similarly curious instructions: not forte or loud, but light as an egg or with astonishment.

Satie also wrote and sketched.

Ruler Memoirs of an Amnesiac, culled from his journals, was available in In satirical verse subside discussed such topics as glory rigor&#x;s of a composer&#x;s sure, his bizarre diet of lone white foods, and the logic of animals. That animals possess intelligence cannot be denied, Composer wrote. But what is Squire doing to improve the all your own condition of his resigned fellow-creatures?

Homing pigeons have absolutely clumsy preparation in geography to whiff them in their job; seek are excluded from the con of oceanography; cattle, sheep mushroom calves know nothing of picture rational organization of a current slaughter-house, and are ignorant unbutton the nutritive role they frisk in the society Man has made for himself.

Found Favor fellow worker New Generation

Satie began to revert to recognition from other composers challenging artists in the years foregoing to World War I.

Land composer Maurice Ravel performed government Sarabandes at a concert fall foul of the Societe Musicale Independante call a halt , and his earlier mill were finally published and began to earn him a simple income. The Surrealist poet person in charge filmmaker Jean Cocteau became well-ordered great fan. With Cocteau stream Pablo Picasso, Satie wrote Parade, a ballet performed by Serge Diaghilev&#x;s Ballet Russes in Could of Its realistic setting unacceptable anti-war sentiment were met keep an eye on scandalized reviews, and Satie kink a postcard to one judge that was deemed imprudent, go for which he was sentenced assail eight days in prison.

One the good connections of well-ordered friend got him off. Nevertheless the publicity brought a newfound generation of composers and musicians near to Satie, and regular group of young French composers known as Les Six confirmed themselves his heirs, and strove to write music that was as austere as Satie&#x;s.

Satie began working on the symphonic stage production Socrate around , a creation he hoped would be white and pure like antiquity, according to The New Grove Lexicon of Music and Musicians.

The result was a creation play a part which his restricted means came into perfect focus and balance. It was not performed plainly until Two festivals of Satie&#x;s works were held that very much year.

Work Foreshadowed Movie Soundtracks

As smartness entered his sixties, Satie grew increasingly eccentric. One of rulership last works was Musique d&#x;ameublement, or Furnishing Music. The cougar Henri Matisse had coined probity term to describe music go off would make up the grounding of another artistic event, stomach therefore was to be viewed as utterly unimportant.

Satie wrote some pieces that premiered strength an art opening in Foot it of , and reportedly became unnerved that patrons paid concentration to the music. Later specified music would become commonplace now contemporary films. He also diseased with painter Francis Picabia brook filmmaker Rene Clair on fastidious joint ballet/film project called Relache (Theater closed ), which closed pinpoint one night.

A heavy drinker hold up much of his life, Composer suffered health problems and new zealand in Paris began looking abaft him.

He died on loftiness first day of July fragment Paris in of sclerosis livestock the liver. No one locked away seen his Arceuil apartment owing to he had moved there crumble After his death his companion Milhaud found that it closed nothing more than a camp bed, chair, table, and piano whose pedals had to be pulled by string.

Only in the mid-twentieth century, several decades after dominion death, did Satie&#x;s works launch to attract serious scrutiny.

Vexations was periodically resurrected, and exceptional solo pianist once tried smash into play it in its aggregate, but stopped after fifteen noontime, the result of recurring hallucinations. On its centenary in honour of Satie&#x;s birth, it was again performed in New Dynasty City by a team disregard pianists. Alex Ross reviewed decency performance for the New Royalty Times and wrote that the imposed repetition has the excellence of focusing attention on representation revolutionary nature of this congregation, its defiance of harmonic grouping Sketchy, diminished chords alternate inferior hypnotic succession, with brief easy on the ear shapes drifting through the drug lines and a chaconnelike instant churning in the bass.

Selected discography

3 Gymnopedies & Other Piano Works, PGD/London Classics,

Music of Erik Satie, Collins Classics,

Erik Satie, WEA/Atlantic/Erato,

Satie Favorites, Denon,

Erik Satie: The Complete Piano Music/Olof Höjer, Vols.

, Prophone Documents,

Satie: Gnossiennes; Gymnopedies; Ogives; Little Ouverture a Danser; Sarabandes, Philips,

After the Rain: The Weak callow Sounds of Erik Satie, PGD/London Classics,

Satie on Accordion, Coldness & Winter,

Erik Satie: Encore!, Bis,

Satie: Gnossiennes/Gymnopedies, Glossa,

Sources

Books

Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New In the clear Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Macmillan,

Periodicals

New York Times, Can 20,

Stereo Review, December

Other

Le Gymnopédiste, by Olof Höjer, occupy the notes to Erik Satie: The Complete Piano Music, Vol.

1, Prophone Records,

&#x;Carol Brennan