Tshe composer Erik Alfred-Leslie Satie is remembered as a writer of fairly modest music, and also for the considerable influence he had on composers such as RAVEL, DEBUSSY, and CAGE.
Satie was born in Honfleur, France, on May 17, 1866, to a French father and a Scottish mother. The family moved to Paris in 1870, and when Satie ’s mother died, he went to live with his grandmother until she too died. He returned to Paris and in 1879 attended the Paris Conservatory to study harmony and piano.
The records show that he was talented, although lazy, and given to truancy, and he was dismissed in 1882. However, he managed to write a few songs and other pieces, and in 1884 published a piano piece that he called Opus 62. He gave other piano pieces extraordinary titles that poked fun at both classical and modern compositions.
In 1887 Satie produced his first major work, the triptychs of Sarabandes for piano. The following year, at the age of 22, he wrote the piano suite Gymnopédies. The economical style of these pieces reflects his earlier interest in Gregorian chant, mystical religion, and Gothic art. They were also a reaction to the complex music of Wagner and the post-Romantic composers.
In the early 1890s Satie took lodgings in Montmartre, where he joined, and wrote music for, the Rosicrucians, an organisation founded in the 17th century and devoted to spiritual enlightenment. He met Claude Debussy, who was to be his friend and supporter for the next 25 years. At this time, Satie was a rather eccentric, bohemian character. He wore his hair long, and bought 12 identical gray velvet suits. In 1898, he dropped his bohemian lifestyle and moved to a suburb of Paris. There followed many unhappy years, in which the only high point was the composition of cabaret melodies to which he gave the bizarre name, “Trois morceaux en forme de poire.”
In 1905 he entered the Schola Cantorum as a student and studied orchestration and counterpoint. He wrote various pieces of piano, ballet, symphonic, and chamber music, but his fortunes did not change until 1911, when Maurice Ravel performed the Sarabandes at a concert, and Debussy conducted a performance of two numbers from Gymnopédies that Debussy had orchestrated. Both performances were well received, and from this time Satie’s music gradually began to be performed and published.
The poet Jean Cocteau heard some of Satie’s music in 1915, and this led to a commission to write the music for a new ballet Parade for the impresario Diaghilev. The opening night of Parade in 1917 caused a sensation, and at last Satie was established. The scenario was by Cocteau, the sets and costumes by Picasso, and Satie’s eccentric score called for sirens and typewriters.
Satie’s masterpiece was perhaps the cantata Socrates (I92O), for four sopranos with orchestra; the soprano parts were mostly recitative as opposed to arias, and the orchestral parts often seemed unrelated to the voices. This was music stripped of all embellishments, reminiscent of plainsong (the unaccompanied chants of the medieval church).
Many younger French composers claimed to be following Satie’s lead. A 1920 newspaper article by Henri Collet in Gomoedia described a group of modern composers whose spiritual leader was Satie, as “Les Six.” They were Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius MILHAUD, Francis POULENC, and Germaine Tailleferre. Satie’s musical innovations also helped pave the way for composers of ALEATORY MUSIC such as John CAGE, making Satie ahead of his time.
Satie died in Paris on July 1, 1925, in a small bare room that contained a few pieces of furniture, his music, and his velvet suits piled on top of a cupboard.
Jim Whipple
SEE ALSO:
IMPRESSIONISM IN MUSIC; MINIMALISM; SIX, LES.
Orledge, Robert. Satie Remembered (London: Faber, 1995);
Whiting, Steven Moore. Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Gnossiennes; Gymnopédies; Parade-, Socrate; Trois morceaux en forme de poire.