Valse-ballet & Fantaisie-valse
Among the first works by young Satie to be published were two salon-waltzes printed as supplements in his father's publication La musiques des familles on March 17th and July 28th of 1887. The first appended with the curious numbering "Opus 62" (!), and the second with the following introduction:
"Today we publish a charming Fantaisie-valse for piano by Erik Satie. This work by a very young musician is elegant in structure and gracious in rhythm, without dryness. All the author's works, amongst which we will mention Three Melodies, indicate a propensity for reverie and a tendency to move away from the strict laws of symmetrical rhythm."
The rather trivial, frequently-repeated phrases and the bassnotes around the basic
chords are typical of the style of the simple salon music of the day.
At the same time, it can be noted that Satie - conciously or not - managed to avoid the sentimentality to the style. Instead, both waltzes have traits of timeless simplicity. Perhaps, even, something of the starkness one usually associates with the Gymnopédies.
Ogives
In 1886 Satie met the poet José Maria Vicente Ferrer Francisco de Paula Patricio Manuel Contaime, born in Tarragon in Spain and ten months his junior. Their friendship, which at the start almost took the form of an artistic symbiosis, was to last into the twentieth century. They seem to have been kindred spirits to the point where they even shared a suit. Contaime de Latour, as he called himself, wrote short stories and symbolist poems that would certainly have been long-forgotten had Satie not put them to music. It was probably he who introduced Satie to the writings of the esoteric Joséphin Péladan; and also maybe one of the sources of inspiration for Satie's devotion to medieval
mysticism, though it must be said that this was typical of the period.
Instead of practising at the piano Satie now spent his time daydreaming in the darkness under the arches of Notre Dame or at the library, poring over books on Gothic art. He deepend his studies in Gregorian chant and dressed shabbily - his friends came to call him "Monsieur le pauvre". The musical result of all this was four piano pieces he called Ogives, "rib vaults". This structurally lean music must have been, by and large, incomprehensive to those who heard it. In Satie's family home, where the piano students' repertoir echoed by day and Eugénies's salon pieces and Alfred's cabaret
songs filled the evenings, confusion and shock must have reigned.
The Ogives can be described as a kind of paraphrase on the antiphonal, liturgical song. The pieces are confusingly alike, as though Satie had composed the same piece in different ways (a technique to which he later returned). All follow the same pattern: a quasi-Gregorian melody is intoned, piano, and then repeated three times, first in sonorous parallel fortissimo chords, then in pianissimo in another harmonic guise (reminiscent of an organ's action), after which the fortissimo version concludes the piece. The pattern could also be described: choir leader - choir - organ (action) - choir.
All time-honoured musical dialectics have disappeared and been replaced by church-mode-sounding static blocks without any connection whatsoever to normal piano music (though the piano remains its only sensible tonal medium). This music seems to lean two ways: on the one hand it echoes the medieval parallel organum, on the other it points the direction to Debussy, for instance the prelude La cathédrale engloutie of 1911.
There was certainly no question of printing the Ogives in La musique des familles. They weren't published until 1889, by which time Satie had left home for Montmartre. Admittedly it was published through his father's firm, but at Satie's own cost. He then announced their arrival in the press organ of Chat Noir in the following manner,
characteristic of both Satiean self-irony and Montmartre high spirits:
"At last! Lovers of cheerful music may be given joy of their hearts. The indefatigable Erik Satie, sphinx-man, lunkhead composer, announces the arrival of a new musical opus, which, he says, is the greatest of all time. It is a suite of melodies created in the mystico-liturgic vein so loved by the author, bearing the suggestive title Ogives. We wish Erik Satie a success as great as that he has already reached with his third Gymnopédie, now playing on all pianos. On sale at 66, bd. Magenta."*
* The music shop of Erik Satie's father.
In September 1887, after composing the Ogives and a series of songs to lyrics by Contaime de Latour (Elégie, Les anges, Les fleurs, Sylvie and Chanson), Satie composed three Sarabandes. As unexpected as the Ogives must have seemed in relation to the two salon waltzes, Satie now turned his back on the Middle Ages and the organum-like, petrified movement of Ogives and instead wrote music with a kind of solemn dance character, constantly shifting between immobility and movement, between melodic expressivity and vibrant chords. The harmonic language is very advanced, presenting sequences of unprepared, dissonant and unresolved chords. It has often been suggested that this new harmonic palette should have been inspired by the unconventional composer Emmanuel Chabrier and his opera Le roi malgré lui, that Satie heard with great fascination in May of 1887. But there are clear tendencies to a similar advanced harmony in the above-mentioned songs from the previous year, for instance Sylvie and Les fleurs.
In these Sarabandes one can also perceive, more clearly than in the Ogives, the growth of that curious method of composing which was to develop into a singular complexity in certain works from his so-called Rosicrucian period. The phrasings shrink in the Sarabandes, short sections are set against each other, with sometimes abrupt shifts between different registers. They are repeated, mirrored, and so forth. A mosaic-like structure is created rather than a continous development. Satie is finding his way into his own musical time, his own musical space, where everything already exists, circling around itself. Originally, the manuscript of Sarabande No. 1 contained a stanza from Latour's poem The Damnation (La Perdition), rendered below in free translation:
Then did the damned fall from the heavenly seam
Shrieking, jostling in a whirl as they were thrown;
And when in starless night they found themselves alone
They thought each other black, so began to blaspheme.
This dramatic picture appears totally unmotivated and without connection to the music (and was moreover deleted upon publication), but it may still provide a key to Satie's frame of mind when he wrote the Sarabandes. The saraband, a dignified baroque dance, originated in an Oriental female fertility dance, which in bygone days was considered morally offensive, lustful and lascivious, due to its execution with enticing hip and pelvic movements. In some countries it was forbidden. Perhaps this forms the background for the unmistakable hint of decadent sensuality beneath the surface of the music.
The Sarabandes did not go the galleys in Alfred Satie's printing-office, either. They were left dormant and were first published in 1911, when Maurice Ravel and Les Jeunes showed a newly-awakened interest in Satie's early music. In this context, the young composer Roland-Manuel wrote about them:
Valse-ballet Op. 62 (1885)
1 Valse-ballet Op. 621:42
Fantasie-valse (1885)
2 Fantasie-valse 2:17
Ogives (1886)
3 Les Anges 2:03
4 Élégie 2:49
5 Sylvie 2:08
6 Les Fleurs 2:56
Trois Sarabandes (1887)
7 Trois Sarabandes 11:22
Trois Gymnopédies (1888)
8 Lent Et Douloureux 3:46
9 Lent Et Triste 3:02
10 Lent Et Grave 2:40
Gnossienne (No. 5) (1889)
11 Gnossienne (No. 5) 2:48
Gnossienne (No. 1) (1890)
12 Gnossienne (No. 1) 3:49
Gnossienne (No. 2) (1890)
13 Gnossienne (No. 2) 1:56
Gnossienne (No. 3) (1890)
14 Gnossienne (No. 3) 2:45
Gnossienne (No. 4) (1891)
15 Gnossienne (No. 4) 2:44
Première Pensée Rose + Croix (1891)
16 Première Pensée Rose + Croix 0:54
Le Fils Des Étoiles (Préludes ) (1892)
17 Le Fils Des Étoiles (Préludes ) 9:28
Credits
Piano – Bojan Gorišek
ERIC SATIE (1808-1925)
Complete Piano Works Vol. 1
Piano – Bojan Gorišek
[1994] Audiophile / CBR320 / scans
O Púbis da Rosa
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