Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

 ERIK SATIE

       Erik Satie was born in Honfleur (Normandy) in 1866. He came from musical parents as both his mother (Scottish) and his father were composers. Satie started playing the piano at age 7. At 17 he spent a year at the Paris Conservatory. He was an exponent of several important trends in the 20th century composition including bitonality, polytonality, Jazz, minimalism and non-triadic harmony.
       Satie was one of music's great originals, an eccentric both personally and artistically.
From his one-room flat in a working class suburb of Paris, he exercised a remarkable influence over a generation of composers who were seeking to escape the dominance of Richard Wagner. His simplicity, innovative harmonies, freedom of form and mastery of musical understatement made a strong impression on composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and later younger composers such as Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud and John Cage.
       His strange sparse scores, often written without bar lines in red ink, were peppered with whimsical instructions : "Light as an egg", "Here comes the lantern", "Open your head", "Muffle the sound", "With astonishment", "Work it out yourself", etc. Satie's early interest in medieval music shows in the simple harmonies of Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. In the 1890s he was introduced (possibly by Debussy) to the mystical sect of Rosicrusianism which also had a strong medieval leaning. He composed music to accompany their rituals, but he soon split from them, becoming the high priest of a church he founded before abandoning his links with religion.
       During World War I, Satie befriended Jean Cocteau, Diaghilev and Pablo Picasso. This association with the cubists resulted in the ballet Parade which he wrote in collaboration with Cocteau and Picasso. He was not well accepted by the general public of his time despite efforts by Debussy and Ravel to promote his works. Satie gave many of his music pieces odd titles that seem derisive and ridiculous: Chilled Pieces, Drivelling Preludes (for a Dog), Dried Up Embryos. Many believe that this was not only a result of his bizarre wit but also a way of offending the music critics. Satie didn't like music critics and their feelings were mutual.
       He was also associated with the dadaist movement in literature.
       Satie was considered an outsider and lone wolf. He valued his privacy very highly and never let anyone see his apartment in Arceuil, where he lived for the last 27 years of his life. He only had one known relationship in his life -- an intense six-month love affair with the model, painter and former trapeze artist Suzanne Valadon. At age 27 Satie wore a top hat, a flowing lavaliere and a pince-nez. His room was next door to Valadon's and Satie proposed marriage the same night the affair began. He became obsessed with the artist, whom he called his "Biqui," writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet." Valadon did Satie's portrait and gave it to him while the musician did hers and kept it. The two works hung together and were found after Satie's death.The fickle Valadon eventually ended the romance with Satie, leaving him with "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness".
       Satie was an artist who lived for his music and his ideals. He had no respect for money and lived in poverty as a bohemian. Never afraid of expressing his opinions, he made it perfectly clear if he didn't like someone and accepted the consequences.
       After 1915 he wrote very little music, turning instead to his other talents of writing magazine articles, calligraphy and sketching. He died in 1925 at the age of 59. In the past 30 years his work has received the worldwide appreciation and recognition that it deserves. His most famous works are the serene lilting Gymnopédies*, three similar piano pieces composed when he was only 22; the mystical Vexations, a short piano piece repeated 840 times; the popular piano suite Trois Morceaux en forme de Poire; the ballet Parade with some very odd instruments; and the ballet Relâche with film sequences included. 

* When Satie was introduced to the famous Chat Noir cabaret in 1887, he did not want to be classified as a musician, so he declared himself to be a Gymnopediste, though nobody was sure what it meant. It is thought he got the name from a poem which describes naked Spartan dancing girls. He relished the confusion that his title caused.

WRITINGS BY ERIK SATIE

Autobiographical Description

       Before writing a work, I walk around it several times accompanied by myself. For a long time I have subscribed to a fashion magazine. I wear white socks and white vest, along with a velvet coat, soft felt hat and flowing tie (which is partially hidden by my beard), and on my nose I wear my pince-nez of course. My expression is very serious. When I laugh, it is unintentional and I always apologize very politely. I breath carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When walking, I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me. My only nourishment consists of food that is white (I spare you the details for it sounds revolting.) My doctor has always told me to smoke (cigarettes of course). He even explains himself : "Smoke, my friend. Otherwise someone else will smoke in your place."

The True Musician

       He grows in wisdom...He is brilliant...He learns to do without and is prepared to make great sacrifices...enormous sacrifices...if I may say...His energy is tremendous...
In other words he is prepared for the struggle...and with honesty he shall fight it...
The performance of an Art demands complete self-denial.
The Music makes heavy demands upon those who want to devote themselves to it.
A true musician must subordinate himself to his Art.
He must place himself above human suffering; ...
He must draw courage from within...and only from within.

Idea For A Dream Play

       I have always had it in mind to write a lyric play on the following specific subject:
At that time I was taken up with alchemy. One day I was having a rest, alone in my laboratory. Outside the sky was leaden, livid and sinister -- really ghastly!
I was feeling sad without knowing why; almost afraid without knowing the cause. Into my head came the idea of amusing myself by counting on my fingers slowly from 1 to 260,000.
       This I did and very boring it was. I stood up, took hold of a magic nut and gently placed it in a casket of alpaca bone studded with seven diamonds.
Straightaway a stuffed bird took flight; a monkey's skeleton ran off; a sow's skin climbed along the wall. Then night descended, covering up objects, destroying shapes.
       But someone is knocking on the far door, the one near the Median talismans, the talismans a Polynesian madman sold me.
       What is it? Oh god! Do not forsake thy servant. He is indeed a sinner, but is repentant. Have mercy on him, I beseech Thee.
       Now the door opens, opens, opens like an eye; a silent and shapeless being comes nearer, nearer, nearer. Not a drop of perspiration remains on my quaking skin; moreover I am very thirsty, very thirsty.
In the shadows a voice is heard:
       - Sir, I think I have second sight.
       I do not recognize this voice. It says:
       - Sir, it is I, it is only I.
       - Who? comes my terrified reply.
       - I, your servant. I think I have a second sight. Did you not just place a magic nut gently in a casket of alpaca bone studded with seven diamonds?
Suffocated, I can only reply:
       - Yes, my friend. How do you know?
He draws near me, a gliding shadow in the darkness of the night. I feel him trembling. He is probably afraid that I may take a shot at him.
With a sob, like a little child, he murmurs:
       - I saw you through the keyhole.

Odd Corners Of My Life

       The origins of the Saties probably go back to ancient times. Oh yes... I can't confirm anything on this point - but neither can I unconfirm it. However, I presume that the family was not part of the nobility (nor even the papacy); that its members were good and humble serfs, and that was once an honour and a pleasure (for the serf's overlord, of course). Oh yes...
       I don't know what the Saties did in the Hundred Years War; nor have I any information on their attitude and the part they played in the Thirty Years War (one of our loveliest wars). Let the memory of my ancient ancestors rest in peace. Oh yes...
Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.
       As for me, I was born in Honfleur (Calvados), in the Pont-l'Evêque district, on 17 May 1866... So that makes me a quinquagenarian, and I might as well be called that as anything else. Honfleur is a small town watered by the poetic waves of the Seine and - in complicity - the tumultous ones of the Channel. Its inhabitants (honfleurais) are very polite and very agreeable. Oh yes...
       I remained in that city until I was twelve (1878) and then moved to Paris.... My childhood and adolescence were undistinguished - nothing happened worth recording in serious writings. So I shall say nothing of them. Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.
        I'm burning to give you my description here (enumeration of my physical particulars - the ones I can mention decently, that is):... Hair and eyebrowns dark auburn; eyes grey (probably clouded); hair covering forehead; nose long; mouth medium; chin wide; face oval. Height 1 metre 67 centimetres.
       The description on this document dates from 1887, the time when I did military service in the 33rd Infantry Regiment at Arras (pas-de-Calais). It would not fit me today.
I'm sorry I can't give you my digital (finger) prints. Oh yes. I don't have them on me, and these special reproductions are not good to look at (they look like Vuillermoz and Laloy combined). Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.
       Following a rather short adolescence, I became an ordinary young man, tolerable but no more. At that moment in my life I began to think and to write music. Oh yes.
Wretched idea!... very wretched idea! It certainly was, for I lost no time in developing an unpleasant (original) originality, irrelevant, anti-French, unnatural, etc...
Then life became so impossible for me that I resolved to retire to my estates and pass the rest of my days in an ivory tower - or one of some other (metallic) metal.
       That is why I acquired a taste for misanthropy; why I nurtured hypochondria; why I became the most (leaden-like) miserable of men. It distressed people to look at me - even through hall-marked gold eye-glasses. Oh yes.
       And all this happened to me because of music. That art has done me more harm that good, really: it has made me quarrel with people of quality, most honourable, more-than-distinguished, terribly genteel people. Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.
       As a person, I am neither good nor bad. I waver between the two, so to speak. So I have never really done harm to anyone - nor good, come to that. All the same, I have plenty of enemies - loyal enemies, of course. Why? For the most part, it is because they don't know me - or only know me second-hand, in short, through hearsay (lies worse than death).
       Man can never be perfect. I bear no grudge against them: they are the main victims of their ignorance and short-sightedness.... Poor folk!...So I am sorry for them.