Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (born Honfleur, 17 May 1866 - died Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French composer, performing pianist and publicist. He also described himself as a "gymnopedist" (in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies), and later as a "phonometrograph" or "phonometrician" (someone who measures and writes down sounds - preferring this definition of his profession to musician, after he had been called a "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers in 1911). Eventually, in the last year of his life, he would also become a cameo film actor ([1] - Entr'acte). He can also be seen as a serial precursor, stretches ahead of many 20th century avant-garde artistic ideas, see below.He is best known as Erik Satie (changing the "c" at the end of his first name to "k" as a kind of artist's name, from his first composition in 1884 on). Although in later life priding himself in always publishing his work under his own name, there appears to have been a brief period from the end of 1888 on that he published articles under the pseudonym of Virginie Lebeau.
Erik Satie spent his youth alternatively in Honfleur (Basse-Normandie) and Paris:
In 1887 he leaves home for a room at Montmartre. By this time he had started a long-lasting friendship with the romantic poet Patrice Contamine, and had his first compositions published by his father. He soon integrates with the artistic clientèle of the Le Chat Noir Café-cabaret, and starts publishing his Gymnopédies. Publication of compositions in the same vein (Ogives, Gnossiennes,...) follow. In this same period he gets to know Claude Debussy. He moves to a smaller room, still at Montmartre (rue Cortot N° 6) in 1890. By 1891 he is the official composer and chapelmaster of the rosicrucian "Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique, du Temple et du Graal", led by Sâr Joséphin Péladan, leading to compositions as Salut Drapeau, Le Fils des étoiles and the "Sonneries de la Rose+Croix".
By mid-1892 he has composed his first music in a compositional system of his own making (Fête donnée par des Chevaliers Normands en l'Honneur d'une jeune Demoiselle), has provided incidental music to a chivalric esoteric play (two Préludes du Nazaréen), has his first hoax published (announcing the premiere of Le Bâtard de Tristan, an anti-Wagnerian opera he probably never composed) and breaks with Sâr Péladan, starting that autumn with the Uspud project, a "Christian Ballet", in collaboration with Contamine de Latour. This project has something of a pamphlet for a new esoteric sect, the comrades from both the Chat Noir and Miguel Utrillo's Auberge du Clou sympathising.
Life
Early years
From the end of 1879 on Satie enters the Paris Conservatoire, where he is soon labelled as untalented by his teachers. After being sent home for two and a half years, he is re-accepted in the Conservatoire at the end of 1885 - without being able to make a much more favourable impression on his teachers than he did before, so he finally resolves to take up military service a year later. This doesn't last very long: within a few weeks he tries to escape the army with a trick, which eventually succeeds.
Portrait of Satie by Valadon
That same year he meets the young Maurice Ravel for the first time, Satie's style emerging in the first compositions of the youngster. One of his own compositions of that period, the Vexations will remain undisclosed till after his death. By the end of the year he instates the Eglise Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur (the Metropolitan Church of Art of the Leading Christ). As its only member, in the role of "Parcier et Maître de Chapelle" he starts to compose a "Grande Messe" (later to become known as the Messe des Pauvres), and writes a flood of letters, articles and pamphlets showing off his self-assuredness in religious and artistic matters - amongst others applying for membership of the Académie Française - not making himself more popular at the cultural establishment in the process. In 1895 he inherits some money, allowing him to further publicise, and to change his looks from a priest-like cloak to the "Velvet Gentleman".
By mid-1896 all his financial means have vanished, and he has to move to cheaper lodgings, first at Rue Cortot to a room not bigger than a cupboard, two years later (after having composed the two first sets of Pièces froides in 1897), to Arceuil, a suburb some 10 kilometers from the centre of Paris (in the Val-de-Marne district of the Île-de-France).
From now on he reverts to his brother Conrad much in the same way as Vincent Van Gogh had reverted to his brother Theo, for numerous practical (...and financial) matters, disclosing some of his inner feelings in the process. For example, from his letters to his brother Conrad becomes clear that religious thoughts had vanished by the end of the century (not to come back till the last months of his life), where Satie uses a process that would still come up often in his later life (as a kind of indicator of second thought about a subject about which he had first been adamant): HUMOUR.
Anyway, from the winter of 1898-1899 on Satie could be seen, as a daily routine, leaving 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.
From 1899 on he starts making money as a cabaret pianist (mostly accompanying Vincent Hyspa, later also Paulette Darty), adapting over a 100 compositions of then popular music for piano (or piano and voice), adding some of his own: the most popular of these are "Je te veux" (text by Henry Pacory), "Tendrement" (text by Vincent Hyspa), "Poudre d'or" (a waltz), "La Diva de l' 'Empire'" (text by Dominique Bonnaud/Numa Blès), "Le Picadilly" (A March), "Légende Californienne" (text by Contamine de Latour lost, but the music later reappears in La Belle Excentrique), and many more (probably even more lost). In his later years Satie would reject all his cabaret music as vile and against his nature, except that he revived some of the fun of it in his 1920 Belle excentrique. But for the time being, it was an income.
Few compositions that Satie took serious himself remain from this period, amongst others Jack-in-the-Box, music to a pantomime by Jules Dépaquit (but named a "clownerie" by Satie); Geneviève de Brabant, a short comic opera (?shadowy play) on a serious theme, text by Lord Cheminot; The Dreamy Fish, piano music to accompany a lost tale by Lord Cheminot; and a few other (mostly incomplete, nearly none of them staged, and none of them published in the same period).
Both Geneviève de Brabant and The Dreamy Fish have been analysed (e.g. by Ornella Volta) to contain elements of competition towards Claude Debussy, of which Debussy was probably not aware (Satie not disclosing this music). In the mean while Debussy was having one of his first major successes with Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, leading a few years later to who-was-precursor-to-whom discussions between the two composers (in which discussions also Maurice Ravel would get involved).
In October 1905 Satie enrolls in Vincent D'Indy's Schola Cantorum to study classic counterpoint (while still continuing his cabaret employments). Most of his friends were as dumbfounded as the professors at the Schola when they heard about his new plan to return to the classrooms (especially as D'Indy was an admiring pupil of Saint-Saëns, not particularly favoured by Satie). As for Satie's motivation for this step, probably two reasons played a major role: first of all he was tired of being reproached that the harmonisation of his compositions was erratic (a criticism he could not very well counter while not having completed any studies in music), and secondly he was developing the idea that one of the most typical characteristics of French music was clarity (which could better be achieved with a good background knowledge of how traditionally harmony was perceived). Satie would follow these courses at the Schola, as a respected pupil, for more than 5 years, receiving a first (intermediary) diploma in 1908.
Some of his classroom counterpoint exercises would, after his death, be published (e.g. the Désespoir agréable) but, to himself, he saw probably the En Habit de Cheval (published in 1911 as the result of "8 years hard work to come to a new, modern fugue") as the culmination of the Schola episode. Another summary, of the period prior to the Schola, also appeared in 1911: the Trois Morceaux en forme de poire, which was a kind of compilation of the best of what he had written up to 1903.
Something that becomes clear by now is that maybe he did not so much reject Romanticism (and its exponents like Wagner) as a whole (he has become more moderate in a way), as that he rejected certain aspects of it: musically the thing he rejected most consequently, from his very first composition to his very last, was the idea of development, certainly in the more strict definition of this term: the intertwining of different themes in a development section of a sonata form: naturally this makes his contrapuntal (and other works) very short: e.g. his Fugues do not extend further than the exposition of the theme(s). Generally he would say that he didn't think it permitted that a composer would take more time from his public than strictly necessary, certainly avoiding to be boring in any way.
Also Melodrama, in its historical meaning of the then popular genre of "spoken words to a background of music", was something Satie appears to have succeeded quite well to stay clear of (although his 1913 Piège de Méduse could be seen as an absurdistic spoof of that genre).
In the mean while some other changes had taken place too: he had become a member of a radical (socialist) party, had socialised in the Arceuil community (amongst other things involvement in the "Patronage Laïque" work for children) and he had changed his looks, now definitively, to the 'bourgeois functionary' (with bowler hat, umbrella, etc...). Also, instead of involving himself again in any kind of medievalistic sect, he channels these kinds of intrests in a peculiar secret hobby: in a filing cabinet he maintains a collection of imaginary buildings (most of them described as being built in some kind of metal) which he draws on little cards. Occasionally, extending the mind game, he would publicise anonymous small announcements in local journals of some of these buildings (e.g. a "castle in lead") being up for sale or rent.
Things start to go very fast for Satie from now on. First there is the success of his new short "funny" piano pieces from 1912 on: he would write and publish many of these in the next few years (most of them premiered by the pianist Ricardo Viñes): the Véritables Préludes flasques (pour un chien) (Genuine Flabby Preludes (for a dog)), the Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses (Old Sequins and Old Breastplates), the Embryons desséchés (Dried up Embryos), the Descriptions Automatiques and the Sonatine Bureaucratique (a Muzio Clementi spoof), etc... all date from this period. His habit of accompanying the scores of his compositions with all kinds of written remarks is now well established (so that a few years later he had to insist that these would not be read out during performance). Mostly there are no barlines any more. In some way these compositions are very reminiscent of Rossini's compositions of the last years of his life, grouped under the name Péchés de Vieillesse: also Rossini wrote short humorous piano pieces like "Mon prélude hygiénique du matin" or "Dried figs", etc, and would dedicate such pieces to his dog every year on its birthday. These pieces had been executed in the exclusive salon of the Rossini's in Paris some decades before. In all probability, however, Satie hadn't seen any of this music when he was composing his own piano music in the first decades of the 20th century, while the Rossini piano pieces had not yet been published at that time. It is said that Diaghilev discovered the manuscripts of these Rossini pieces around 1918 at Naples, before staging La boutique fantasque - this was about the same time when Satie stopped writing "funny" comments in his scores.
But the real acceleration in Satie's life comes not so much from the increasing success of his new piano pieces. In fact it is Ravel who (probably unknowingly) triggers something that would become a characteristic of Saties remaining years: being a part of every progressive movement that would manifest itself in Paris in the next years. These movements followed one another rapidly, while without doubt in these years Paris was the artistic capital of the world (long before London or New York would get much significance in this sense), and the beginning of the new century appeared to have set quite some minds on fire:
At the time of Satie's death in 1925, absolutely nobody except himself had ever entered his room in Arceuil since he had moved there 27 years earlier. What his friends would discover there, after Satie's burial at the Cimetière d'Arcueil, had the allure of the opening of the grave of Tutankhamun: apart from the dust and the cob-webs (which amongst others made clear that Satie never composed using his piano), they discovered numerous items:
Satie and furniture music: not all of Satie's music is furniture music: in strict sense it applies only to 5 of his compositions which he wrote in 1917, 1920 and 1923. For the first public performance of furniture music see Entr'acte.
Satie as precursor: the only "precursor" discussion Satie was involved in during his lifetime was whether or not he was a precursor to Claude Debussy, but many would follow: throughout history Satie would be described as precursor to movements and styles as far from each other as Impressionism, Neo-classicism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Atonal music, Minimalism, Conceptual art, Theatre of the Absurd, Muzak, Ambient music, Multimedia art, etc... and taking the first steps towards techniques as prepared piano and music-to-film synchronisation ... (not to mention performing the first cameo appearance ever) - On his own he appears to have been the avant-garde to half of the avant-garde movements of the 20th century. Many of these "precursorisms" are maybe based on quite superficial resemblances only, while, on the other hand, being an inspiration and/or influence for many later artists (and their ideas) is undeniable.
Satie as humorist: many would be surprised how many of his seemingly "joking" compositions were at heart taken very serious by Satie. When he forbids commentaries written in his partitionss to be read aloud, he probably saw this himself as a means to guard the seriousness of his intentions. When at the first public performance of Socrate there was laughter, he was smitten. Many other examples of his serious attitude can be found. But doubtlessly, Satie was a witty guy, certainly not void of funny eccentricities.
Satie and compositions in three parts: although many of his compositions (e.g. most of the pre-war piano pieces) are indeed in three parts, there is no general rule in this respect: after his death publishers would force more of them in an artificial 3-part structure, while Satie had actually already made a joke of such proceedings with his 7-part Trois Morceaux en forme de poire.
Satie and (lack of) money: although Satie certainly knew periods of dire poverty, and maybe was a bit uncontrollable in spending money, in large periods of his life he had few worries in this sense. Although maybe not having much money in his pockets, he was (certainly from the second decade of the new century on) easily invited to posh restaurants, to all sort of events and given financial means, by all sort of people.
Satie as opponent to other musical styles: The musical styles Satie opposed to were allegedly numerous: Wagnerism, Romanticism (Saint-Saëns, Franck,...), Impressionism (Debussy and Ravel), Expressionism (later Ravel), Slavism (Stravinsky), post-Wagnerism (Schoenberg), cabaretesque music, etc...: apart from some animosities on the personal level (which can be observed as symptomatic between most adherents of avant-garde movements of those days), Satie's ideas on other music of his days generally had more nuance, e.g. about César Franck, he could not be brought to write sharp statements, but would get himself out with some jokes ("César Franck's music shows surprisingly much Franckism; Some even say César Frank was lazy, which is not a commendable property in a hard working guy"). Maybe the same can be said as above regarding "Satie as precursor": much empty discussion, e.g. the discussion with Debussy appeared to be rather whether Satie was yes or no a precursor to Impressionism, which would not have made much sense if he would have been opposed to Impressionism as such.
Satie and boredom: Lacking any form of development, Satie's compositions tend to be very short: a typical movement in a Satie composition would take less than two minutes to play, while also compositions counting above five movementss are to be considered as exceptions. Even his larger-scale works conforming to the genres known in his time would be two to five times shorter than the usual duration such compositions were expected to have (... Socrate, a secular oratorio with a total execution time of about half an hour being the longest). In general Satie thought it to be a great fault for a composer to bore his audience in any way (for himself he thought a then common technique as development particularily boring). Also the number of his compositions using repetition as a compositional technique to multiply the total execution time by two or more (compared to an execution without repeats) are limited to following 7 examples:
First years in Arceuil, Cabaret compositions, Schola Cantorum
Riding the waves
Other works and episodes in this last period of Satie's life:
Epilogue: the shrine of Arceuil
But most importantly there were compositions nobody had ever heard of (or that were thought to be lost) everywhere: behind the piano, in the pockets of the velvet suits, etc...: these included the Vexations, Geneviève de Brabant and other unpublished or unfinished stage works, The Dreamy Fish, many Schola Cantorum exercises, an unseen set of "canine" piano pieces, several other piano works, often without a title (which would be published later as more Gnossiennes, Pièces Froides, Enfantines, Furniture music, etc...)."Petit dictionnaire d'idées reçus" (short dictionary of preconceived ideas)
"idée reçu" is a word game: in French it is the normal term for "prejudice", but Satie used it as the non-material equivalent of Found object (as in Ready-Made), e.g. when he incorporated odd bits of music of Camille Saint-Saëns and Ambroise Thomas in his furniture music. This section treats some popular (mis)conceptions regarding Satie and his music:See also
Recordings
External links