After a spell in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum, as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910, he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six. A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to the creation of the ballet Parade (1917) for Serge Diaghilev, with music by Satie, sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso, and choreography by Léonide Massine.
Satie's example guided a new generation of French composers away from post-Wagnerian impressionism towards a sparer, terser style of neoclassicism. Among those influenced by him during his lifetime were Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc, and he is seen as an influence on more recent, minimalist composers such as John Cage and John Adams. His harmony is often characterised by unresolved chords, he sometimes dispensed with bar-lines, as in his Gnossiennes, and his melodies are generally simple and often reflect his love of old church music. He gave some of his later works absurd titles, such as Veritables Preludes flasques (pour un chien) ("True Flabby Preludes (for a Dog)", 1912), Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois ("Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Man", 1913) and Sonatine bureaucratique ("Bureaucratic Sonata", 1917). Most of his works are brief, and the majority are for solo piano. Exceptions include his "symphonic drama" Socrate (1919) and two late ballets Mercure and Relâche (1924).
Satie never married, and his home for most of his adult life was a single small room, first in Montmartre and, from 1898 to his death, in Arcueil, a suburb of Paris. He adopted various images over the years, including a period in quasi-priestly dress and another in which he always wore identically-coloured velvet suits, and is known for his last persona, in neat bourgeois costume, with bowler hat, wing collar, and umbrella. He was a lifelong heavy drinker and died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 59. wiki
Tracklist:
CD 1: Orchestral Works & Ballets
CD 2: Ballets
CD 3: Piano Works
CD 4: Piano Works
CD 5: Piano Works
CD 6: Piano Works
CD 7: Piano Works
CD 8: Piano Works & Chamber Music
CD 9: Songs
CD 10: Choral Works
All tracks & credits
Mostrando postagens com marcador Satie. E (1866-1925). Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Satie. E (1866-1925). Mostrar todas as postagens
20.1.22
ERIK SATIE - Tout Satie! : Erik Satie Complete Edition (2015) 10xCD Box-Set / FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless
18.8.20
JACQUES LOUSSIER TRIO - Satie : Gymnopédies • Gnossiennes (1998) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless
Tracklist:
1 Gymnopédie No.1 / Var.1 4:35
2 Gymnopédie No.1 / Var. 2 4:32
3 Gnossienne No.3 4:25
4 Gnossienne No.6 5:22
5 Gnossienne No.2 4:16
6 Gymnopédie No.1 / Var. 3 5:03
7 Gnossienne No.4 7:08
8 Gnossienne No.5 4:12
9 Gymnopédie No.1 / Var. 4 3:42
10 Gnossienne No.1 3:52
11 Pas À Pas 3:44
Credits:
Bass – Benoit Dunoyer de Segonzac
Drums – André Arpino
Piano – Jacques Loussier
23.9.18
ERIC SATIE - Complete Piano Works Vol. 10 And Songs [Manning-Gorišek]
Socrate is a work for voice and small orchestra (or piano) by Erik Satie. The text is composed of excerpts of Victor Cousin's translation of works by Plato, all of the chosen texts referring to Socrates.
The work was commissioned by Princess Edmond de Polignac in October 1916. The Princess had specified that female voices should be used: originally the idea had been that Satie would write incidental music to a performance where the Princess and/or some of her (female) friends would read aloud texts of the ancient Greek philosophers. As Satie, after all, was not so much in favour of melodrama-like settings, that idea was abandoned, and the text would be sung — be it in a more or less reciting way. However, the specification remained that only female voices could be used (for texts of dialogues that were supposed to have taken place between men). Satie, at the time, probably did not understand why the Princess was so attached to female voices: it was not until 5 years later that a first (and all in all minor) press scandal would reveal the Princess's lesbian nature.
Satie composed Socrate between January 1917 and the spring of 1918, with a revision of the orchestral score in October of that same year. During the first months he was working on the composition, he called it Vie de Socrate. In 1917 Satie was hampered by a lawsuit over an insulting postcard he had sent, which nearly resulted in prison time. The Princess diverted this danger by her financial intercession in the first months of 1918, after which Satie could work free of fear.
The piece is written for voice and orchestra, but also exists in a version for voice and piano. This reduction had been produced by Satie, concurrently with the orchestral version.
Each speaker in the various sections is meant to be represented by a different singer (Alcibiades, Socrates, Phaedrus, Phaedo), according to Satie's indication two of these voices soprano, the two other mezzo soprano.
Nonetheless all parts are more or less in the same range, and the work can easily be sung by a single voice, and has often been performed and recorded by a single vocalist, female as well as male. Such single vocalist performances diminish however the effect of dialogue (at least in the two first parts of the symphonic drama - in the third part there is only Phaedo telling the story of Socrates' death).
The music is characterised by simple repetitive rhythms, parallel cadences, and long ostinati.
The first (private) performance of parts of the work had taken place in April 1918 with the composer at the piano and Jane Bathori singing (all the parts), in the salons of the Princess de Polignac.
Several more performances of the piano version were held, public as well as private, amongst others André Gide, James Joyce and Paul Valéry attending.
The vocal score (this is the piano version) was available in print from the end of 1919 on. It is said Gertrude Stein became an admirer of Satie hearing Virgil Thomson perform the Socrate music on his piano.
In June 1920 the first public performance of the orchestral version was presented. The public thinks to hear a new musical joke by Satie, and laughs - Satie feels misunderstood by that behavior.
The orchestral version was not printed until several decades after Satie's death.
GENEVIEVE DE BRABANT (OEUVRE POSTHUME)
"Genevieve de Brabant," Satie's miniature opera for marionettes. Written for a pantomime destined for the Comedie Parisienne, the manuscript was discovered after Satie's death, behind one of the pianos in his tiny room in Arcueil.
In his witty article "Erik Satie, the Velvet Gentleman", George Auriol explains that this "English lord" called himself "Condamine (sic) de Latour" when he arrived in Paris incognito. According to the code of in-jokes in force at the Chat Noir (of which Auriol was one of the pillars), this information should be read backwards. Because it was in fact J.P. Contamine de Latour, or rather Patrice Contamine, who signed the name Lord Cheminot to his literary output around 1900. Satie had carried on a very intense friendship with him, from the time of his first songs (1887) until Uspud (1892) at least.
In his memoirs, Contamine said that at any given time, circumstances would separate them, only to reunite them temporarily a bit later, even though Satie had already left Montmartre for Arcueil. We have seen the name "J. P. Contamine de Latour" attached to works which Satie composed, as we have just seen, between 1887 and 1892, then again for two songs in 190510. In 1900 and 1901, Satie collaborated with "Lord Cheminot" instead
Geneviève de Brabant premiered on May 17, 1926, for the sixtieth anniversary of Erik Satie's birth, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, which had just become an "Opera/Music Hall", conducted by Daven and directed by Rolf de Maré. This performance took place, a year after the death of the composer, during a Festival organized, in tribute to Satie's memory, by the Comte Etienne de Beaumont.
On that evening, the name of Lord Cheminot didn't figure in the program or the posters. Looking for all the world like Patrice Contamine, he would disappear forever from the scene only a week later - and not just figuratively.
The original text of Genevieve of the Brabant was recently rediscovered after a long time of forgetfulness. In 1983 the first performance of the complete version reconstructed by Ornello Volta was given at the Teator la Fenice in Venice.
The French text was published by Universal as an annex to its latest edition of the piano score, in 1986.
ERIC SATIE (1808-1925)
Complete Piano Works Vol. 10
Piano – Bojan Gorišek
Soprano – Jane Manning
[1995] Audiophile / CBR320 / scans
O Púbis da Rosa
ERIC SATIE - Complete Piano Works Vol. 9 And Songs [Manning-Gorišek]
For the songs and the piano solos, this is the most complete Satie collection. The performances and recordings are of a high quality. Then why is this unique collection so unknown. The biggest problem is that the (excellent quality) label Audiophile Classics is a bit obscure. you just can't get it everywhere even on the Internet it is almost unknown. You can find some of the volumes at the Amazon catalogue and even these are withouth reviews.
TROIS MELODIES DE 1886
1. Les anges
Authorship
* by J. P. (José María Vicente Ferrer Francisco de Paola Patricio Manuel) Contamine de Latour
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1886
Vêtus de blancs, dans l'azur clair,
Laissant déployer leurs longs voiles,
Les anges planent dans l'éther,
Lys flottants parmi les étoiles.
Les luths frissonnent sous leurs doigts,
Luths à la divine harmonie.
Comme un encens montent leurs voix,
Calmes, sous la voûte infinie.
En bas, gronde le flot amer;
La nuit partout étend ses voiles,
Les anges planent dans l'éther,
Lys flottants parmi les étoiles.
2. Élégie
Authorship
* by J. P. (José María Vicente Ferrer Francisco de Paola Patricio Manuel) Contamine de Latour
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1886
* ENG English (Chelsea Green)
J'ai vu décliner comme un songe,
Cruel mensonge,
Tout mon bonheur.
Au lieu de la douce espérance,
J'ai la souffrance
Et la douleur.
Autrefois ma folle jeunesse
Chantait sans cesse
L'hymne d'amour.
Mais la chimère caressée
S'est effacée
En un seul jour.
J'ai dû souffrir mon long martyre,
Sans le maudire,
Sans soupirer.
Le seul remède sur la terre
À ma misère
Est de pleurer.
3. Sylvie
Authorship
* by J. P. (José María Vicente Ferrer Francisco de Paola Patricio Manuel) Contamine de Latour
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1886
Elle est si belle, ma Sylvie,
Que les anges en sont jaloux.
L'amour sur sa lèvre ravie
Laissa son baiser le plus doux.
Ses yeux sont de grandes étoiles,
Sa bouche est faite de rubis,
Son âme est un zénith sans voiles,
Et son coeur est mon paradis.
Ses cheveux sont noirs comme l'ombre,
Sa voix plus douce que le miel,
Sa tristesse est une pénombre
Et son sourire un arc-en-ciel.
TROIS POEMES D'AMOUR (1914)
Between Nov. 20 and Dec. 2, 1914, Erik Satie penned Trois Poèmes d'Amour, a trio of brief love songs to poems of his own. One notices right away that the voice sings the same rhythm in all eight measures: six 8th-notes and a quarter-note. This is also true of the other two songs: not only that they use the same rhythm in all eight measures, but that they all use this particular rhythm, six 8th-notes and a quarter-note. Thus not only did Satie write three songs each devoid of rhythmic variety, he wrote three songs with no rhythmic variety among them (save for some peculiar chromatic grace notes in the piano in the third, which the sketches indicate were added as an afterthought just before publication).
TROIS AUTRES MELODIEs
Chanson
Bien courte, hélas! est l'espérance
Et bien court aussi le plaisir
Et jamais en nous leur présence,
Ne dura tant que le désir.
Bien courte hélas! est la jeunesse
Bien court est le temps de l'amour
Et le serment d'une maîtresse
Ne dura jamais plus d'un jour.
Celui qui met toute sa joie
Et son espoir en la beauté,
Souvent y laissant sa gaité.
D'un dur souci devient la proie.
Chanson médiévale
Comme je m'em retournais de la fontaine avec ma servante
Un chevalier avec son écuyer passa par le chemin
Je ne sais si l'écuyer s'inquiéta de ma servante,
Mais le chevalier s'arrêta pour me regarder à l'aise
Et il me regarda d'une telle ardeur que je crus dans ses yeux
voir briller son coeur.
Les fleurs
Que j'aime à vous voir, belles fleurs
À l'aube entr'ouvrir vos corolles
Quand Iris vous fait de ses pleurs
De transparentes auréoles
vous savez seules dans nos coeurs
évoquer une tendre image
Et par vos suaves couleurs
Vous nous partez un doux langage
Aussi messagères d'amour
Je vous demande avec tristesse
Pourquoi le sort en un seul jour
Vous arrache à notre tendresse.
TROIS MELODIES DE 1919
1. La statue de bronze
Authorship
* by Léon-Paul Fargue (1878-1947)
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1916
La grenouille
Du jeu de tonneau
S'ennuie, le soir, sous la tonnelle...
Elle en a assez!
D'être la statue
Qui va prononcer un grand mot: Le Mot!
Elle aimerait mieux être avec les autres
Qui font des bulles de musique
Avec le savon de la lune
Au bord du lavoir mordoré
Qu'on voit, là-bas, luire entre les branches...
On lui lance à coeur de journée
Une pâture de pistoles
Qui la traversent sans lui profiter
Et s'en vont sonner
Dans les cabinets
De son piédestal numéroté!
Et le soir, les insectes couchent
Dans sa bouche...
2. Daphénéo
Authorship
* by Mimi Godebska
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1916
Dis-moi, Daphénéo, quel est donc cet arbre
Dont les fruits sont des oiseaux qui pleurent?
Cet arbre, Chrysaline, est un oisetier.
Ah! Je croyais que les noisetiers
Donnaient des noisettes, Daphénéo.
Oui, Chrysaline, les noisetiers donnent des noisettes,
Mais les oisetiers donnent des oiseaux qui pleurent.
Ah!...
3. Le chapelier
Authorship
* by René Chalupt (1885-1957)
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1916
Le chapelier s'étonne de constater
Que sa montre retarde de trois jours,
Bien qu'il ait eu soin de la graisser
Toujours avec du beurre de première qualité.
Mais il a laissé tomber des miettes
De pain dans les rouages,
Et il a beau plonger sa montre dans le thé,
Ça ne le fera pas avancer davantage.
QUATRE PETITES MELODIES (1920)
1. Élégie
Authorship
* by Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine (1790-1869)
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1920
Que me font ces vallons, ces palais, ces chaumières?
Vains objets dont pour moi le charme est envolé;
Fleuves, rochers, forêts, solitudes si chères,
Un seul être vous manque, et tout est dépeuplé.
2. Danseuse
Authorship
* by Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1920
Le crabe sort sur ses pointes
Avec ses bras en corbeille;
Il sourit jusqu'aux oreilles.
La danseuse d'Opéra,
Au crabe toute pareille,
Sort dans la coulisse peinte
En arrondissant les bras.
3. Chanson
Authorship
* by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist , 18th century.
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1920
C'est mon trésor, c'est mon bijou,
Le joli trou par où
Ma vigueur se réveille...
Oui, je suis fou, fou, fou
Du trou de ma bouteille.
4. Adieu
Authorship
* by Raymond Radiguet (1903-1923)
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1920
Amiral, ne crois pas déchoir
En agitant ton vieux mouchoir.
C'est la coutume de chasser
Ainsi les mouches du passé.
LUDIONS (1923)
This short cycle of five songs for voice and piano was completed in May of 1923, and received its private premier at the end of that month. The five songs-"Air du Rat," "Spleen," La Grenouille americaine," "Air du Poete," and "Chanson du chat"-are all settings of humorous poems by Leon-Paul Fargue. Fargue was an old friend of Satie's, who had previously set one of Fargue's poems, "Statue de Bronze," in 1916. Like Satie, Fargue delighted in the sights and sounds of the city of Paris, and the whimsical cabaret flavor of Satie's music was well suited to Fargue's lyrics.
The first piece in the cycle, "Air du Rat," is a setting of a text written by Fargue at the age of ten, memorializing his pet rat. Satie uses a pentatonic melody and repetitive diatonic chords to capture what Eric Gillmor calls Fargue's "childlike vision." "Spleen" is a funny little song in which an atmosphere of reflection and nostalgia is created, only to be destroyed as the poet is suddenly revealed as longing not for an ideal woman, but for "a cute, worthless blonde in this cabaret of Nothingness which is our life." Satie juxtaposed major and minor keys to represent this dualism. "Air du Poete," the fourth song in the cycle, is the shortest at a mere ten measures. Once again, a pentatonic melody is heard, accompanied by a static chord progression. "La Grenouille americaine" and "Chanson du chat" are, as Gillmor notes, "straight out of the cabaret," spiced-up with some Satiean harmonies.
As is often the case with Satie's music, Ludions did not escape scandal. At one of its premiers (either private or public), the songs were announced as Satie's creations, and the poet Fargue was not mentioned. Fargue was incensed, and began a campaign of insulting letter writing against Satie, allegedly culminating in a letter whose contents were so foul and unrepeatable that Satie could only laugh. Thus, the dispute was ended.
1. Air du rat
Authorship
* by Léon-Paul Fargue (1878-1947) , nonsense poems
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1923
Abi Abirounère
Qui que tu n'étais don?
Une blanche monère
Un jo
Un joli goulifon
Un oeil
Un oeil à son pépère
Un jo
Un joli goulifon.
2. Spleen
Authorship
* by Léon-Paul Fargue (1878-1947)
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1923
Dans un vieux square où l'océan
Du mauvais temps met son séant
Sur un banc triste aux yeux de pluie
C'est d'une blonde
Rosse et gironde
Que je m'ennuie
Dans ce cabaret du Néant
Qu'est notre vie.
3. La grenouille américaine
Authorship
* by Léon-Paul Fargue (1878-1947)
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1923
La grenouille américaine
Me regarde par-dessus
Ses bésicles du futaine.
Ses yeux sont des grogs massus
Dépourvus de jolitaine.
Je pense à Casadesus
Qui n'a pas fait de musique
Sur cette scène d'amour
Dont le parfum nostalgique
Sort d'une boîte d'Armour.
Argus de table tu gardes
L'âme du crapaud Vanglor
Ô bouillon qui me regardes
Avec tes lunettes d'or.
4. Air du poète
Authorship
* by Léon-Paul Fargue (1878-1947)
Au pays de Papouasie
J'ai caressé la Pouasie...
La grâce que je vous souhaite
C'est de n'être pas Papouète.
5. Chanson du chat
Authorship
* by Léon-Paul Fargue (1878-1947)
Set by by Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866-1925) , 1923
Il est une bebête
Ti Li petit nenfant
Tirelan
C'est une byronette
La beste à sa moman
Tirelan
Le peu Tinan faon
C'est un ti blanc-blanc
Un petit potasson?
C'est mon goret
C'est mon pourçon
Mon petit potasson.
Il saut' sur la fenêtre
Et groume du museau
Pasqu'il voit sur la crête
S'découper les oiseaux
Tirelo
Le petit n'en faut
C'est un ti bloblo
Un petit Potaçao
C'est mon goret
C'est mon pourceau
Mon petit potasseau.
CHANSONS DE CAF'CONC'
Various CAFE-CONCERT SONGS
Je te veux (I Want You) is a setting of a text by Henry Pacory. The song may be connected, according to Satie scholars, to Paulette Darty, a Parisian burlesque chanteuse. It is a valse chantée, a waltz song, well-suited to Darty's reputation as "Queen of the Slow Waltz." Satie composed a number of songs with her in mind and actually performed this piece with her in 1909, some 12 years after it was composed.
Like his other cabaret songs, Je te veux was rearranged both for solo piano and for a number of instrumental combinations, including voice with a small orchestra, full orchestra, and solo voice.
Je te veux
J'ai compris ta détresse,
Cher amoureux,
Et je cède à tes voeux:
Fais de moi ta maîtresse.
Loin de nous la sagesse,
Plus de [détresse]1,
J'aspire à l'instant précieux
Où nous serons heureux:
Je te veux.
Je n'ai pas de regrets,
Et je n'ai qu'une envie:
Près de toi, là, tout près,
Vivre toute ma vie.
Que mon coeur soit le tien
Et ta lèvre la mienne,
Que ton corps soit le mien,
Et que toute ma chair soit tienne.
J'ai compris ta détresse, etc.
Oui, je vois dans tes yeux
La divine promesse
Que ton coeur amoureux
Vient chercher ma caresse.
Enlacés pour toujours,
Brûlés des mêmes flammes,
Dans des rêves d'amours,
Nous échangerons nos deux âmes.
Tendrement
D'un amour tendre et pur
afin qu'il vous souvienne,
Voici mon coeur, mon coeur tremblant,
Mon pauvre coeur d'enfant
Et voici, pâle fleur
que vous fites éclore,
Mon âme qui ce meurt de vous
Et de vos yeux si doux.
Mon âme est la chapelle,
Où la nuit et le jour
Devant votre grâce immortelle,
Prie à deux genoux mon fidèle amour.
Dans l'ombre et le mystère
Chante amoureusement
Un douce prière,
Païenne si légère,
C'est votre nom charmant.
D'un amour tendre et pur... etc
Des roses sont écloses
Au jardin de mon coeur,
Ces roses d'amour sont moins roses
Que vos adorables lèvres en fleur.
De vos main si cruelles
Et dont je suis jaloux,
Effeuilles les plus belles,
Vous pouvez les cueillir,
le jardin est à vous.
D'un amour tendre et pur... etc
L'omnibus automobile
Authorship
* by Vincent Hyspa
C'était pendant l'horreur du Quatorze Juillet,
Il faisait chaud, très chaud, sur la place Pigalle.
Un gros ballon, sans bruit, gravement ambulait
Par la route céleste unique et nationale.
Il faisait soif, très soif et le petit jet d'eau,
Esclave du destin, montait de bas en haut.
Il était environ neuf heures trente-cinq,
La douce nuit venait de tomber avec grâce.
Et le petit jet d'eau pleurait sur le bassin,
Lorsque je vis passer au milieu de la place
Un omnibus, automobile, entendez-vous,
Avec de grands yeux verts et rouges de hibou.
L'omnibus était vide et l'écriteau "Complet"
Détachait sur fond bleu ses sept lettres de flamme.
Je suivis au galop le monstre qui passait
En écrasant avec des airs d'hippopotame
Des femmes, des enfants, des chiens et des sergots.
Des députés et des tas d'autres animaux.
Enfin il s'arrêta place de l'Opéra
Et je vis qu'il était chargé de sacs de plâtre.
Ces sacs, me dit le conducteur, ces sacs sont là
Pour remplacer le voyageur acariâtre;
Nous faisons des essais depuis plus de vingt mois
Et ces sacs sont pour nous autant de gens de poids.
Mais pourquoi, dis-je au bon conducteur de l'auto
Qui venait d'écraser ces piétons anonnymes,
Pourquoi des sacs plutôt que ce cher populo?
C'est, me répondit-il, sur un ton de maxime,
C'est, voyez-vous, pour éviter des accidents
De personnes qui pourraient bien être dedans.
C'était pendant l'horreur du Quatorze Juillet,
Il faisait chaud, très chaud, sur la place Pigalle.
Un gros ballon, sans bruit, gravement ambulait
Par la route céleste unique et nationale.
Il faisait soif, très soif et le petit jet d'eau,
Prisonnier du destin, montait de bas en haut.
La Diva de l'Empire was originally written for voice and piano, but it was the transcription for solo piano by Hans Ourdine that made the work famous. La Diva was not a "waltz chantee," Darty's typical repertoire, but a cakewalk song, with a strutting rhythm. Using a moderate march tempo, the music depicts a diva of Napoleon's time; however, Satie later gave it the humorous subtitle, "American intermezzo." Although La Diva de l'Empire was probably quite popular in its original form in the cabaret clubs, Satie chose to later create a version for beer-hall orchestra.
La Diva de l'Empire
Sous le grand chapeau Greenaway,
Mettant l'éclat d'un sourire,
D'un rire charmant et frais
De baby étonné qui soupire,
Little girl aux yeux veloutés,
C'est la Diva de l'Empire.
C'est la rein' dont s'éprennent
Les gentlemen
Et tous les dandys
De Piccadilly.
Dans un seul "yes" elle met tant de douceur
Que tous les snobs en gilet à coeur,
L'accueillant de hourras frénétiques,
Sur la scène lancent des gerbes de fleurs,
Sans remarquer le rire narquois
De son joli minois.
Elle danse presque automatiquement
Et soulève, oh très pudiquement,
Ses jolis dessous de fanfreluches,
De ses jambes montrant le frétillement.
C'est à la fois très très innocent
Et très très excitant.
TROIS MELODIES SANS PAROLES (1905)
The title is the french translation of the German "Lieder ohne Worte". But unlike Mendelssohn's piano pieces the works by Satie are actualy written for voice and piano only there is no text to sing.. Realy fun to listen to, anyway enough written now about songs withouth text, go hear it yourself.
ALLONS-Y CHOCHOTTE (1906)
This is another entertaining Cafe-concert piece.
ERIC SATIE (1808-1925)
Complete Piano Works Vol. 9
Piano – Bojan Gorišek
Soprano – Jane Manning
[1995] Audiophile / CBR320 / scans
O Púbis da Rosa
ERIC SATIE - Complete Piano Works Vol. 8 [Bojan Gorišek]
Mercure is a ballet in three tableaux, with a text by Pablo Picasso. It was first performed at the theatre de la Cigale in June of 1924, along with Darius Milhaud's ballet Salade. Satie and Picasso collaborated with the Russian-born dancer Léonide Massine on Mercure; the end result was a falling out between Massine and Satie, who felt rushed and undermined by Massine during the production of the ballet. Satie's play Le Piege de Medusa (Medusa's Trap), of more than a decade earlier, is said to be one of the first Surrealist dramas, and Mercure likewise pointed the way to what was coming next: it is an early Cubist creation, as can most obviously be seen in the abstract collages of tableau three.
The ballet was commissioned for one of Comte Étienne de Beaumont's Soirées de Paris, in Robert Orledge's words, "a series of chic, but ill-organized spectacles." The work as originally conceived by Picasso was a mere eight minutes long, but after Satie began composing the music, the result was a fifteen-minute-long ballet. There is little musical repetition in this work, for Satie sought to make the music fit Picasso's series of changing "poses plastiques." Some of the music in the ballet is borrowed from Satie's early years at the Scuola Cantorum, in particular from a "Fugue-Valse" from 1906. As Orledges notes, this self-borrowing shows that Satie was indeed pressed for time by Massine.
Just before the premiere of Mercure, Satie noted that "[t]hough it has a subject, this ballet has no plot. It is a purely decorative spectacle." While Mercure represented a collaboration between composer and visual artist, the work was first and foremost a visual production, a spectacle, as Satie indicated. Satie's contribution consisted of music to fit Picasso's images and the movements of the dancers. The composer was drawn to this collaboration for several reasons, the most important being the abstract nature of the piece, with its posed figures and plotless structure. There is also the importance of calligraphy: the ballet scenery consisted largely of calligraphy superimposed upon cutout images, and Satie, as is well known, loved calligraphy.
RELACHE (1924)
Relâche is French for "cancellation", "theater dark", or "no performance today".
Relâche (1924) was the name Erik Satie and his surrealist (former Dada) friends gave to the ultimate ballet production in which Satie was involved as composer.
A one-time flavour of surrealism was invented for the production, which was named "instantanéisme." The name of the ballet was a kind of practical joke: "Relâche" was the usual word to be found on posters announcing performances, in the case of a last minute cancellation of such performance - which was bizarre for a production that was not cancelled.
Relache was Satie's last work. It is a ballet in two acts, with a film, Entr'acte, intended to be shown after the overture and then again between acts. Satie also provided the music for Entr'acte. Shot by film critic Rene Clair, the experimental film is full of humorous, surrealistic images, and outrageous scenes. Filmed in Paris, Entr'acte includes scenes in which a ballerina with a beard and moustache dances, a hunter shoots a large egg with a shotgun, only to be shot in turn by Picabia, and a mock funeral procession with a camel-drawn hearse causes havoc in the streets. The music for the film, which Robert Orledge describes as "revolutionary," consists of yet another example of Satie's forward-looking style. The score for Entr'acte includes ad lib. repetitions of discrete, "self-contained segments," perhaps an early manifestation of indeterminant music. It is also an excellent early example of film music, as the different segments of the music reflect and support, as Gillmor notes, "the rhythm of the action," serving as "a kind of neutral rhythmic counterpoint to the visual action." The film score consists largely of juxtaposed units of ostinati, and is scored for small orchestra.
Satie referred to Relache, as a pornographic or obscene ballet, and indeed, some of the staging, which included large silver breasts with light bulb nipples along with a coterie of half-naked dancers, certainly supports this designation. The work is essentially plotless, with a central female character dancing with changing numbers of male characters--including a paraplegic in a wheelchair--all of whom wander in and out of the audience while images are projected onto a screen, balloons are released, and clothes are removed. Throughout the ballet, a man dressed as a fireman wanders about on the stage, passing water from on bucket to another. Musically, the ballet proved shocking to audiences and critics, perhaps even more so than the provocative staging and choreography, but, this kind of music was nothing new to Satie. Most of the music for Relache was adapted from popular, generally bawdy tunes, including a number of very raunchy army songs. While the ballet seems by all accounts to have been a nonsensical, fragmented spectacle, the music is much more unified and symmetrical, using reoccurring motives which are overlapped, transformed, and recontextualixed to connect the twenty-two numbers of the work. As expected, the work provoked scandal, and was only performed about a dozen times. It was despised by critics, who attacked the stupidity of the staging, and the paucity of the score.
CINEMA (1924)
The film score Cinéma, written to accompany René Clair's film Entr'acte which was made to be shown in the interval of the Satie-Picabia ballet instantanéiste of 1924, Relâche. The score is really nothing at all without the film: it lacks any kind of melodic development and there is not logic to it in musical terms. After seeing the film, however, it becomes apparent why Satie created this particular score for Clair's film. The main function of film music - both in the ear of the silent film and today - is 'to underline and interpret the narrtives, with careful reflections of a film's settings, characters, actions and moods.' Entr'acte, however, has no real narratives, no fully developed characters, and certainly no 'moods'. The whole film is a celebration of the beauties of the visual - shape, line, form and movement - and of the effects obtainable with the cinecamera - slow motion, vanishing figures, decaying letters on the screen. There is barely a single shot in the whole film which has not some sort of notable movement, whether of the camera or of the actors. Satie's music responds to this visual movement with aural stasis. For the main part of the film, the music lends continuity to the rapid and disconnected series of images, mainly through the composer's use of closely related motifs. At some point, however, the film is attending to its own continuity and providing a transitional section to the ballerina-dominated Section 4, so the music need not reinforce that, but instead start the new secion and introduce the new musical material which will be associated with the ballerina. This retains the smoothness of the visual transition into Section 4.
The nature of the visual part of the film, being non-narrative, is essentially objective in itself, and this helps to promote detachment in the score too. As a result, Satie was able to allow himself the liberty of including a satirical paraphrase of the opening of Chopin's famous funeral march from the Piano Sonata no. 2 in B-flat minor, op. 35 in the March funèbre section of the score.
The reference is immediately identifiable, but the humorous use of the quotation, underlined by the visuals, prevents the usual emotional connotations of the piece from taking effect. The quotation of othr composers' music in his own pieces was another technique Satie frequently employed to maintain objectivity in his music, usually by parodying the quoted composer, but occasionally by writing serious pastiche or appropriating an historical musical genre and reinterpreting it by using his own harmonic idiom and techniqeus of development.
JACK IN THE BOX (1899)
Satie composed Jack in the Box in 1899. It was only after Satie's death in 1925 that the manuscript of the piano piece Jack in the Box was recovered. Satie himself thought he had lost the manuscript in a bus. When his flat in Arceuil was cleaned out, a small notebook was discovered behind his piano and it contained the manuscript which was assumed to be lost forever. Milhaud orchestrated the piano score and the work was first performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris with choreography by George Balanchine.
Neither Satie's music for Jack in the Box nor Depaquit's scenario represents high drama—Satie said it merely satirizes “the evil men who live in the world.” The music comprises three very short movements, each with a bit of the music hall about them: they bring to mind a vaudeville pit band that has collectively gone slightly mad. It has that delectable combination we expect from Satie—apparent simplicity laced with a wry edge.
This little three-movement "suite anglaise", a kind of stylized circus music, is in its way a curious work in Satie's career. The sometimes hectic forced gaiety in the jig-like rhythms and the often rather garish tones, with dissonant and sometimes bitonal colouring, make Jack-in-the-Box appear as a sudden flash of blinding light from a grey sky. There is nothing like it in his earlier production of almost constant slow tempo and introvert, melancholy atmosphere. The music presages the works from his last years, like La belle Excentrique or Relâche. Yet it is written with the same sort of montage technique as his Rosicrucian pieces.
ALLEGRO (OEUVRE POSTHUME) (1884)
Erik Satie's very first work, composed in the happy atmosphere of his home town, Honfleur, on 9 September 1884, while on holiday with his grandfather, far from the hated National Music Conservatoire. It is distinguished, of the refrain of the famous Norman romance Ma Normandie, a quotation that bears witness to Satie's interest in popular music from the start of his composing career, and which also in an astounding way foreshadows the choice of a ready made, which Dada was to make fashionable many years later. This work was discovered together with Jack in the Box after Satie's death.
ERIC SATIE (1808-1925)
Complete Piano Works Vol. 8
Piano – Bojan Gorišek
[1995] Audiophile / CBR320 / scans
O Púbis da Rosa
ERIC SATIE - Complete Piano Works Vol. 7 [Bojan Gorišek]
With Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, and Germaine Tailleferre he formed the Nouveaux Jeunes, shortly after writing Parade. Later the group was joined by Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud. In September 1918, Satie – giving little or no explanation – withdrew from the Nouveaux Jeunes. Jean Cocteau gathered the six remaining members, forming the Groupe des Six (to which Satie would later have access, but later again would fall out with most of its members).
From 1919 he was in contact with Tristan Tzara, the initiator of the Dada movement. He got to know the other Dadaists, such as Francis Picabia (later to become a Surrealist), André Derain, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, etc.
CHOSES VUES A DROITE ET A GAUCHE (SANS LUNETTES) pour Violon et Piano
(Things seen right-to-left; without glasses), for violin & piano
Erik Satie's ONLY work for violin and piano, a mini-suite written in 1912 entitled "Things Seen to Right and Left - without glasses," is a singulaly appropriate example of Satie's bourgeois attitude toward and irreverent treatment of conventional 20th Century mores and practices which were then intrinsic to music composition. Furthermore, obvious clues such as the titling of each movement, --Hypocritical Chorale --The Feeling One's Way Fugue --Muscular Fantasy....are clues that indeed lend additional credence to the existing firmament's abhorant distaste for Satie's brash, absolute commitment to utter disdain for convention.
PARADE (FOR PIANO 4 HANDS) (1917)
Satie collaborated with the Cubists Jean Cocteau and Picasso on the ballet 'Parade'. Most of Satie's compositions consist of three pieces, representing three different viewpoints of a single musical concept. This is very similar to the approach used by the Cubist painters. Parade created a scandal which propelled Satie finally to centre stage and stardom. From here on he was regarded as one of the instigators of neoclassicism. He became the godfather of Les Six and later the School of Arcueil. Of the one-act ballet Parade, first presented at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on May 18, 1917, Richard Buckle, biographer of Diaghilev, has written, "it opened the gates of the twenties, during which Diaghilev's company would be identified not only with the painters of the School of Paris, but with a group of young composers who revered Satie and were to become known as 'Les Six.'" Extraordinary minds collaborated with the impresario to show that the Russian Ballet was capable of heading in new directions - librettist Jean Cocteau, choreographer Léonide Massine, designer Pablo Picasso and composer Erik Satie, whose contribution has proved the most durable of the three. The consensus of public and critical opinion was that it was a failure, though not without interest. Just as Picasso's naïve curtain, which resembled the decoration of a nineteenth-century fairground, gave no hint of the Cubist novelties to be revealed behind it, the music owed nothing to Debussy and introduced jazz to the typically French idiom. In 1918, the year after Diaghilev's Russian Ballet staged Satie's Parade in Paris, Poulenc wrote that "to me, Satie's Parade is to Paris what Petrushka is to St. Petersburg." (André Gide, however, commented on its poverty-stricken pretentiousness.) Satie was thenceforth adopted as the spiritual father of 'Les Six', whose ideal was the marriage of serious music with jazz, vaudeville, and the circus. Those who only know Satie from his early Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes - take heed: Parade shuffles along its apparently aimless, deadpan and wicked way with interjections from typewriters, lottery wheels, pistols and sirens.
RAG-TIME PARADE (1917)
The Ragtime contained in Parade would later be adapted for piano solo, and attained considerable success as a separate piano piece.
SONATINE BUROCRATIQUE (1917)
Dragged into court at the height of this battle by the critic Jean Poueigh who accused him of slander, Satie feared the seizure of his modest royalties as agreed by his publishers. Faced with the risk of losing all possibility of financial help (he was never exactly spoiled in this sense, anyway), he simply switched allegiances and offered his subsequent work - a Sonatine bureaucratique - to a fly-by-night publisher named Stéphane Chapelier. This Chapelier had shown a great admiration for the ballet then under fire by arranging several excerpts himself, under the pseudonymn Hans Ourdine ("en sourdine" translates as "muted") with a totally Satiean modesty.
5 NOCTURNES (1919)
The war finally over with (at roughly the same time as his run-in with the law), five Nocturnes came to haunt the composer's mind. The first three made up a "complete work" in his opinion, so he was careful to distinguish them from the remaining two by not submitting the two groups to the same publisher. They were, in fact, his "parting gifts" to Rouart, Lerolle and E. Demets, because his friend Blaise Cendrars - who had just founded La Sirène with the financier Paul Laffitte - managed to score an exclusive contract.
TROIS PETITES PIECES MONTEES (FOR PIANO 4 HANDS) (1919)
Erik Satie completed Trois petites pieces montées in February 1920. Though they were originally orchestral miniatures, they are better known in the piano, four hands format. This work comes not long after the composer had recovered from a terrible depression that came with exhaustion following the end of World War I. By the time the war was over he was destitute and hated art. He also seemed to have been abandoned by his friends and supporters, but it turned out that they had been simply too distracted by their own post-war problems to notice Satie's poverty and misery. Eventually many of the best minds and artists of France coaxed him onto a train to tour through Western and Central Europe, and for a while it seemed as though the man was back, if somewhat more insular.
On the occasion of this work, he was an honored guest among many artists invited to contribute to Cocteau's Le Boeuf sur le toit, a variety show with a carnival atmosphere financed by Etienne du Beaumont. The Six, a group of composers who, like Debussy, had been influenced by Satie, contributed as well. There was ballet with music by Milhaud and an overture by Poulenc. Cocteau included clowns, ideas from American silent films, and whatever else seemed worth exploring at the time. Satie's own Trois petites pieces montées were an illustration of the characters of the French writer Rabelais. The first two movements do not have a very festive atmosphere in the traditional sense. They are introspective and seem more suited to an upscale salon. There is still the ghost of the prankster among the angular phrases and transitions, but there is no celebration in the sound. The third movement, on the other hand, is a spectacular testimony to the hackneyed barroom polka. The first two movements sound similar to certain Neo-Classical works by Stravinsky, with a detached, cerebral pace. It is clear to any listener that this work was not meant to sit well with the other participants, that the composer was obviously making it known that he did not want to be among these sorts of festivities anymore. Trois petites pieces montées is the product of a cranky and tired genius.
REVERIE DE L'ENFANCE DE PANTAGRUEL (1919)
The Rêverie (De l'Enfance de Pantagruel) is an extract from Trois petites pièces montées adapted for piano solo, originally composed for small symphony orchestra. In this suite it is meant as a restful intermezzo.
PREMIER MENUET (1920)
The Première Menuet (before writing which, we are told, he had studied a Mozart minuet - little effect as this seems to have had on him). This is an introvert piece.
LA BELLE EXCENTRIQUE (1920)
The score of La Belle Excentrique for piano four hands, published by La Sirène in 19221, is composed of four parts, listed on the cover in no particular order. Inside, however, they have seen fit to number the parts as follows:
Grande Ritournelle / I
Marche franco-lunaire / II
Valse du Mystérieux Baiser dans l'Oeil / III
Cancan Grand-Mondain2 / IV.
As a result, these four pieces have been performed - and necessarily danced - in the above order for decades
Analysis of Satie's sketchbooks, his copyright declaration to SACEM and his correspondance has established that La Belle Excentrique really has only three parts:
1. Marche franco-lunaire
2. Valse du Mystérieux Baiser dans l'Oeil
3. Cancan Grand-Mondain
The fourth ("Grande Ritournelle") being only an intermezzo designed, as the name indicates, to "return" (at least twice) between the other three. Despite Satie's indications, admittedly somewhat terse, a comfortable conclusion wouldn't be possible without lending an ear to details of a somewhat anecdotal nature. For example, the fact that (in Le Coq parisien), it was announced that Mademoiselle Caryathis had worn, for this dance composed especially for her, "three" costumes designed by Nicole Groult. Also the tale of "Jean Hugo's first failure in his costume-making career," which had to do with "three" costumes he'd imagined for La Belle Excentrique, and that Satie had categorically refused. All this plainly shows that this work, rather than a dance, should be considered as a series of dances, which explains all the costume changes. The "Grande Ritournelle," written to fill the gaps left by these costume changes, is the only piece not to be danced.
One can find the original running order in Bojan Gorisek's recording, Aldo Ciccolini's lastest recording of Erik Satie's complete piano works and Max Eschig has also prepared a corrected edition.
ERIC SATIE (1808-1925)
Complete Piano Works Vol. 7
Piano – Bojan Gorišek
[1995] Audiophile / CBR320 / scans
O Púbis da Rosa
ERIC SATIE - Complete Piano Works Vol. 6 [Bojan Gorišek]
In the series of "humourous" piano pieces of the years 1912-1915, one find illuminating little "sign-posts" as well as complete prose poems that sometimes seem completely screened off from the music. Here, he swings back and forth over the un-clear borders between imaginative indications to the pianist and texts that may be of interest in the execution of the music but that might also just as well be left out. The audience itself is not expected to be aware of them - they are a matter exclusively between the composer and his interpreter. This piano music leans two ways: the interpreter has his own private poetic and musical whole to face, and the audience gets the tonal structures that are partly condition to the pianist's interpretation of Satie's ravings. Between the two are the strange, "mad" titles, which always seem to require either explanations or apologies. In that sense the audience inescapably becomes part of the poetic whole, but is at the same time not privy to the inspiration that certainly lies in the curious texts.
EMBRYONS DESSECHES (1913)
Embryons desséchés ("Dried up embryos") is a piano composition by Erik Satie, composed in the summer of 1913. The composition consists of three little "movements", each taking about two to three minutes to play.
The parts of the composition are:
1. (Desiccated embryo) of a Holothurian (30 June 1913), dedicated to Suzanne Roux:
* See: sea cucumber. Note that this type of animal has no eyes.
* The music of this first part of the composition concentrates on the so-called "purring" of the holothurian, besides making fun of Loïsa Puget's song Mon rocher de Saint-Malo ("My rock of Saint-Malo" - a then popular salon composition, which Satie had probably played numerous times in his cabaret pianist career). That this song is intended is already clear from the introduction Satie writes above the score: "[...] I observed a Holothurian in the bay of Saint-Malo." Further he writes following remarks in the score, when "quoting" the melody of the song: "What a nice rock!" and the second time: "That was a nice rock! How sticky!". Going submarine in a bay in Brittany, might also have been a wink from Satie to his (former) friend Debussy: three years earlier this composer had published the piano piece La cathédrale engloutie (Préludes, book I, No. 10), alluding to the legendary city of Ys, submersed in a bay in Britanny. There's even a reproach implied: as friends, they had renounced romanticism in the late 19th century: since, Debussy apparently had turned to romanticised myths about submersed cities and the like, as a subject for his compositions. Satie's statement is clear: he had remained true to himself, taking as subject for his composition something "he had seen with his own eyes".
2. (Desiccated embryo) of an Edriophthalma (1 July 1913), dedicated to Edouard Dreyfus:
* Edriophthalmata, also known as Arthrostraca, are crustaceans with immobile eyes. In more modern taxonomies they belong to sub-groups of the Tetradecapoda (i.e. fourteen-legged crustaceans), e.g. Amphipoda (several kinds of usually small shrimp), and isopoda (see e.g. this giant isopod or these woodlice).
* It is not clear whether Satie had in mind any of these animals in particular, or that he just wanted to make reference to this group of crustaceans in general, for their "underdog"-like qualities (which he describes as subdue and morose in the score). Anyway, in this part of the composition he makes fun of Frédéric Chopin's funeral march (by the way calling it a "famous" mazurka by Schubert - now, there is no "famous" mazurka by Schubert: Schubert composed many dances, but no mazurkas - mazurkas are Polish dances: Chopin had been the most famous Polish composer that ever lived in Paris, and he had particularly favoured the composition of mazurkas... there's the link Satie makes with a curb).
3. (Desiccated embryo) of a Podophthalma (4 July 1913), dedicated to Jane Mortier:
* Podophthalmia are stalk-eyed crustaceans, like crabs and lobsters (and various types of mostly larger shrimp), now grouped as Decapoda (i.e. ten-legged crustaceans).
* In the score, Satie mentions the "hunter"-like qualities of podophthalmia, so the music is conceived as a miniature hunt. Note that hunts have quite a tradition in classical music, from early baroque keyboard music, over Vivaldi, several classical era composers and romantic opera composers to César Franck. Nonetheless, in music a hunting sea animal can be considered a one-of-a-kind.
* Satie also points out that podophthalmia are delicious nourriture: he was particularly fond of this kind of sea-food himself.
* Satie concludes his triptych with a coda marked, "Obligatory cadenza (by the composer.)" Consisting, as it does, of more than half a page of fortissimo F-major chords and arpeggios, this grandiose flourish is hilariously incongruous with the modest proportions of the piece as a whole (there is, however, a similar, but shorter passage at the end of movement 1.) The superficial brilliance of this coda, together with its mock-virtuosity and pretensious label, are clearly intended as jibes at the empty bombast of certain passages in the piano works of Liszt and his imitators.
CROQUIES ET AGACERIES D'UN GROS BONHOMME EN BOIS (1913)
(3 sketches and exasperations of a big wooden fellow)
Erik Satie completed Croquis et agaceries d'un bonhomme en bois for solo piano in the summer of 1913. This is a brief work in three movements and filled with typical Satiean, humorous twists. Like most of his other piano works containing comedic elements, these movements were composed quickly, in about a week each. The title refers to Allais, who wrote strange articles for Parisian papers, involving bizarre wordplay. He did all of his work from cafes, and he and Satie were good friends. This piece's title suits the music and spirit of the times, at least in the composer's corner of the world. In English, the title translates to "Sketches and Flirtation of a Fat and Wooden Bloke." In the proto-surrealist atmosphere of the cabaret culture of Paris during these years, clarity and obscurity were combined with religious irreverence. It is among other things, an attempt to make the logic of dreams a reality. The mystery of life in fin-de-siècle Paris was in some ways more pointedly modern then in Vienna, where Expressionism and atonality were at war with a saccharine waltz culture. In Paris, middle and upper-class industrialists attempted to rub shoulders with the bohemian, avant-garde arts community. There was no division between the conservatives and the progressives that was clear enough to forge a martial identity in either. The divisions that did exist, such as Debussy vs. the academics, was not important enough to make a difference because the moneyed patrons were not supporting the academics. This was not the case for the Second Viennese School; talents such as Allais and Satie could enjoy a relaxed relationship with their own creative processes. This is not to say that the music of Satie is self-indulgent but rather that it sometimes sounds indulged.
Croquis et agaceries d'un bonhomme en bois is not much different from his successful, earlier compositions. Bonhomme en bois no doubt refers to a street in the composer's hometown of Honfleur called rue de l'Homme-de-bois. When Satie's Ogives was performed at Chat Noir--the first cabaret to exist--in 1889, it was advertised as a work by a composer with a wooden head. No doubt the man in the title of his 1913 work is the composer himself. The humour of the music pervades each separate movement. The first movement is a Turkish yodeling song. There is little evidence of a Turkish yodeling tradition, extinct or otherwise. However, there is a Turkish rondo in Mozart's keyboard Sonata KV. 331 worth considering, and the central section of Satie's first movement is a parody version of it. The following two movements feature somewhat icy retorts at a growing trend among Parisian tastes: Spanish flavorings in French music. These movements are insults directed towards offending composers and the academics that encouraged them. It was a trend that was obviously suspect when Spanish composers such as Falla and Albéniz came to Paris to write Spanish music for French money. Fortunately, Satie's work is more brilliantly intertextual than poisonous.
CHAPITRES TOURNES EN TOUS SENS (1913)
The aptly named Chapitres tournés en tous sens (Chapters Turned Every Which Way) consists of three distinct, and entirely unrelated, pieces: "Celle qui parle trop" ("She who talks too much"), "Le Porteur de grosses pierres" ("The hauler of big stones"), and "Regrets des Enfermés" (Lament of the confined). These pieces are typical of Satie's later style -- humorous, dry, and unsentimental. The ceaseless chatter of the woman in the first piece is represented by a wandering melody made up of consistent, repeating triplets. The piece is actually a dialogue between the woman and her husband, whose feeble interjections are heard as a diatonic theme (in G major) two octaves above the wife's motoric melody. The husband is never able to get a word in edgewise, and as the piece ends, the wife's chatter ceases, and the husband' s theme is heard, as Satie scholar Alan M. Gillmor observed, "dissonantly harmonized and chromatically distorted," testifying to the husband's exhaustion. Excepts from Aimé Maillart's operetta Les Dragons de Villars may be heard in this short piece. Satie borrows tunes from another operetta, Robert Planquette's Rip, in the second piece, "Le Porteur de grosses pierres." This piece tells the story of a man hauling stones, using excepts from the operetta to narrate the man' s painful labors. By the end of the piece, after struggling with a heavy rock, the man can no longer carry it, and drops it. In the third and final piece, Satie offers a musical tale of the biblical Jonah and the eighteenth-century plotter and convict Jean-Henri Masers de Latude, in which they dream of escape together: Jonah from the whale, Latude from prison. As with many of his piano pieces from this time, Satie borrows from children's songs -- in this case, "Nous n'irons plus au bois" ("we will go to the woods no more"). As a result, his melodies are consistently simple, diatonic, and narrow in range. These melodies are heard against Satie's idiomatic, eccentric, and often experimental harmony, which includes bitonal structures, modality, and chromatically altered chords.
VIEUX SEQUINS ET VIEILLES CUIRASSES (1913)
Variously translated as "Old Sequins and Armor" and "Antique Gold and Ancient Armor", the piano suite Vieux séquins et vieilles cuirasses is one of a series that Satie composed from 1912 - 1915. The "sequin" in question was a Venetian gold coin in use from the end of the thirteenth century until the fall of the Venetian Republic under Napoleon, 500 years later. Satie satirizes those dealing either in precious metals or the military both in this suite's music and in commentaries printed among the staves.
The first piece is "Chez le Marchand d'or (Venise, XIIIe Siècle)" (At the Gold Merchant's) [Venice, thirteenth Century]. With a sighing figure, Satie slowly builds to a quote from the "Song of the Golden Calf" from Gounod's opera Faust. The patterns alternate between modal, whole-tone, and chromatic writing, as the merchant continues to goes wild over his merchandise.
The second piece is the "Danse cuirassée (Période grecque)", variously translated as the "Armored dance" and "Armor-plated dance". This piece makes continuous variations on a famous bugle tune, "Aux champs (en marchant)." The tempo is marked "Pas noble et militaire" (Noble and military step). The bugle melody uses only the pitches of a G-major chord, but it is subjected to interesting chromatic harmonies in the lower voices. Satie humorously imagines the dance "in two rows": "The first row does not move" (the lower harmonization produces low chords in semi-ponderous open fifths). "The second row is motionless" (the lower line moves more melodically in thirds). On the slowly diminishing coda, Satie adds the image, "Each of the dancers receives a sabre blow that cuts off his head" -- a sort of nothing-war, where everybody just dies and gets it over with.
In the third and last piece, "La Défaite des Cimbres (Cauchemar)" (The Defeat of the Cimbri [Nightmare]), Satie combines several historical battles and commanders; they merge in the surreal nightmare of a young boy who has been given "a kind of strange, short course in General History" drawn from the vague memories of his aged grandfather. Satie quotes two tunes that are not only respectively associated with commanders Dagobert and John Churchill, but also by way of Satie's commentaries with Boïorix and Marius. A mention of "Les Dragons de Villars" refers to Aimé Maillart's operetta, but there is no musical quote -- just an eerie ascending passage with a chromatic bass and white-keyed triplets. This is a mirror to an descending triplet passage earlier in the piece with the notation "Pluie de javelots" (Rain of javelins). The skipping and smooth triplet rhythms throughout the piece are like those of hunting calls and martial drum rhythms.
There is a final cryptic notation that appears at the head of the tuneful coda, marked "Grandiose". The text refers to "Le Sacre de Charles X (267 bis)" (The coronation of Charles X [No. 267a]). Musicologist Alan Gillmor suggests that this is the "reactionary, ultraroyalist Comte d"Artois, crowned King of France as Charles X in 1825 ... the musical reference to the dissolute and by most accounts intellectually rather undernourished monarch takes on a deliciously satirical overtone in the context of the song's ["Le bon roi Dagobert"] opening verse: ' The good king Dagobert had his pants on inside out, The great Saint Eloi said to him: O my king, Your majesty is badly trousered. It's true, replied the king, I'm going to put them on again right side out'."
ENFANTINES (1913)
TROIS NOUVELLES INFANTINES (1913)
In 1913 Satie wrote many children pieces; in October alone, he composed the Trois Nouvelles Enfantines, and the three sets of "Enfantines": Menus propos enfantins, Enfantillages pittoresques, and the Peccadilles importunes. Satie's interest in the number three is clearly manifested with these pieces: there are three works comprising the Enfantines, and each work consists of three small pieces. As musicologist and Satie scholar Robert Orledge has noted, the introduction to the piano for children that rivals Satie's Enfantines is Bela Bartok's Mikrokosmos, which similarly captures and maintains children's interest, "both visually and aurally."
LES PANTINS DANSENT (1913)
(The puppets dance)
This little chamber piece-a "poeme dansee"-was originally scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, and strings, before a piano reduction was created. It was composed for the dancer, poet, and painter Valentine de Saint-Point, and was intended to be performed at a festival as the accompaniment to the poem of the same name. The festival, a "Metachoric" festival, was devised by Saint-Point, who sought a closer union between music and dance. Saint-Points' "Metachory" describes a poetic work which incorporates music and dance; however, neither music nor dance are subordinate, but are instead equally dependent upon the poetic idea. Satie was drawn to this esthetic position, and eagerly participated in the creation of Les Pantins dansent.
Les Pantins dansent is a very short piece, with a duration of only a minute and a half. Its most prominent feature is its staccato, march-like rhythm. There are actually two differently composed versions of this work: the first, reconstructed from Satie's sketches, was, according to musicologist Robert Orledge, "too jaunty, expressive, and harmonically unambiguous" to adequately reflect the poem it was to accompany; however, he also notes that neither version of Satie's music fits the poems phrase scheme, and so the poem and music were likely not performed simultaneously. The second version of this piece is the published score.
SPORTS ET DIVERTISEMENTS (1914)
"Sports and Entertainments", which served as a musical-poetic "illumination" to drawings by the illustrator Charles Martin (1884-1934), is quintessential of Satie's different creative attitudes and has become one of his most famous piano compositions. This is a multimedial work of art in which picture, music, text and notation are meant to work together. The story of its orgin is often retold. The publisher first asked Igor Stravinskij to compose these pieces, but Stravinskij declined, finding the fee too low. Someone then suggested Satie, who was offered the same amount. However, the hypermoral and radical leftist Satie found the fee unconscionably high and refused indignantly. It was only when the publisher had agreed to cut the fee to half the original amount that Satie accepted.
HEURES SECULAIRES ET INSTANTANEES (1914)
Heures séculaires et instantanées (Age-old and instantaneous hours), pieces (3) for piano
Between about 1911 and 1917, Satie turned his attention from the sometimes dour music he'd written during his late studies of counterpoint at the Schola Cantorum and the repetitive, mystical style of his earlier Rosicrucian period, to quirky miniatures composed especially for pianist Ricardo Viñes, who introduced and promulgated many works by the likes of Ravel and Falla. Satie dedicated one such suite of three pieces, Heures séculaires et instantanées, to the imaginary figure Sir William Grant-Plumot, and laced the score with a surreal commentary he insisted should not be read aloud during performance. Whether the text has any direct bearing on the music is debatable, but it does reinforce the music's absurdist nature. The suite's first movement, "Obstacles venimeux" (Venemous Obstacles), begins with a limping, comically discordant figure that soon receives a more flowing treatment that is interrupted by quickly shifting march-like fragments. The limping version of the theme closes the piece. "Crépuscule matinal (de midi)," which translates as Morningtime Twilight (at Noon), begins with another fragmentary march that is constantly interrupted by a nattering motif and soon collapses in volleys of hiccups. "Affolements granitiques" (Granitic Panic) begins with an urgent little phrase repeated several times, which becomes the basis of several upward-rising gestures that abruptly end.
LES TROIS VALSES DISTINGUES DU PRECIEUX DEGOUTE (1914)
These "three distinguished waltzes of the disgusted snob" have traditionally come to be seen as an ironic comment on Ravel, a renowned fashion snob, and his Valses nobles et sentimentales. In this second waltz, "His lorgnette", Satie seems to be quoting his own gymnopédies, perhaps in reference to Ravel's bold contention that he had written the fourth gymnopédie in his Entretiens de la Belle et la Boite (from the suite Ma mère at l'oye). Here too he provides the piece with an ambivalent motto, this time from Cicero's De Republica, on how the old custom of forbidding nubile young people to show themselves naked in their minds (perhaps this was an allusion to the naked dance in the gymnopédie?).
CINQ GRIMACES POUR "LE SONGE D'UNE NUIT D'ETE" (1915)
The war would follow its course for several years, but artists did not keep silent quite as long, because the smallest pretext must have been good for a performance of any kind. There was still talk in the cafés of Montparnasse, for example, of the sumptuous production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Max Reinhardt in Berlin, in 1910. Edgard Varèse, who contributed to the musical portion, encouraged his friends to prove that the French could do even better. After all, as Jean Cocteau observed when he nominated himself to adapt the play, the Englishman Shakespeare is an "Ally;"; he couldn't be on the side of the Huns!12 Theatres being dark for the duration, they planned to use the grounds of the Cirque Médrano, which led to the idea of, among other things, mixing clowns with actors. As for the incidental music, they would replace Mendelssohn (traditional for the play at that time) with a "pot-pourri of French music", composed especially for the occasion. Among the composers solicited, Satie was the only one to answer the call. His Cinq Grimaces were destined from the beginning to be unplayed and unpublished until much later, as a posthumous work13, since the Midsummer project came to naught.
AVANT-DERNIERES PENSEES (1915)
Even if the title of these "penultimate" pieces themselves sounds like cheerful irony, there is not much pleasantry in evidence, either in the strictly neutral sub-headings (unusual for Satie), the guiding prose poems or the music. From a purely musical point of view, these pieces are written with detached clarity and clockwork precision. In the not very meditative Méditation, the right hand whisks up a mechanical, constantly-repeated pianissimo triplet and the left hand contributes melodic interjections in other keys with an occasional flavour of "tonepainting".
ERIC SATIE (1808-1925)
Complete Piano Works Vol. 6
Piano – Bojan Gorišek
[2006] Audiophile / CBR320 / scans
O Púbis da Rosa
ERIC SATIE - Complete Piano Works Vol. 5 [Bojan Gorišek]
In 1910 the "Jeunes Ravêlites", a group of young musicians around Ravel, proclaimed their preference for Satie's earlier work (from before the Schola period), reinforcing the idea that Satie had been a precursor of Debussy. At first Satie was pleased that at least some of his works were receiving public attention, but when he realised that this meant that his more recent work was overlooked or dismissed, he looked for other young artists who related better to his more recent ideas, so as to have better mutual support in creative activity. Thus young artists such as Roland-Manuel, and later Georges Auric and Jean Cocteau, started to receive more of his attention than the "Jeunes". Since 1911 he had been on friendly terms with Igor Stravinsky, about whom he would later write articles.
MUSIQUES INTIMES ET SECRETES (1906-1913)
In Musiques intimes et secretes ("Intimate and Secret Music") and the famous "Vexations" (from Pages mystiques, 1892-1895), Satie describes the conceptual nature of human mental activity and then requires the performers to experience and scrutinize, simultaneously, the exact moments of shifting psychological states.
SIX PIECES DE LA PERIODE (1906-1913)
The six pieces collected under the name Pièces de la période should be regarded as exercises and most are very short.
APERCUS DESAGREABLES (1908-1912)
(Unpleasant glimpses)
Aperçus désagréables is a set of three piano duets, composed immediately following Satie's late return to formal education at the Paris Schola Cantorum (he entered at the age of forty!). They represent the beginnings of the composer's mature style, and foreshadow the economical counterpoint of his later works for the piano. Immediately denounced by critics, who called them "pretentious and boring," they also underline the often ironic twists in Satie's public reception; having originally been dismissed as an undisciplined amateur, he saw his newly-rigorous style rejected for precisely the opposite reasons. However, it is precisely this new compositional aesthetic -- marked by irony, wit, and reticence -- that would eventually form his legacy and exert a great influence on fellow French composers.
"Fugue" was the first of the three Aperçus composed, completed in August of 1908, followed in September of that same year by "Choral." The "Fugue" -- essentially a dialogue between two pianists -- was written with Satie's friend Claude Debussy in mind as the second pianist -- and the two did play the piece together in September of 1908. It is possible that the other two duets were also conceived with Debussy in mind. The "Pastorale" was not written until October of 1912, and is decidedly melancholy in character. "Pastorale" was completed around the same time as En Habit de cheval, another collection of fugues and chorales.
NOUVELLES PIECES FROIDES (1910-1911)
More than ten years separate these fromthe first sets of pieces, sharing the same title of “Cold Pieces”. Each contains Satie’s ‘holy trinity’ of three miniatures, related in many ways, but thrown off-balance in typically original ways. The first two pieces of the Nouvelles are actually the same piece composed twice over. In each, the same eight-bar theme is stated three times but with different harmonies. The textures are different: the block chords of On a Wall are smoothed into the arpeggios of On a Tree. The third piece, On a Bridge, bears little resemblance to its predecessors and is a demonstration of the invertible counterpoint Satie studied at the Schola Cantorum. It ends with a whole-tone passage, either an hommage or coup at Debussy!
DEUX REVERIES NOCTURNES (1910-1911)
Two nice short pieces. These were also studies.
CARNET D'ESQUISSES ET DE CROQUIS (1897-1914)
THe pieces Satie wrote as a the results of his contrapuntal training at the Schola Cantorum are valuable, just as painters sketchbooks are, to understanding his further development. And in among them there are pleasant surprises, like in the Carnet d'esquisses et de croquis, consisting of 21 small sketches, where the beautiful 32-seconds-long No. XVII Exercises and the somewhat longer can-can-like No XIX Gambades stand out.
Tracklist
1. Satie - Musiques Intimes Et Secretes - Nostalgie 1:00
2. Satie - Musiques Intimes Et Secretes - Froide Songerie 0:57
3. Satie - Musiques Intimes Et Secretes - Facheux Exemple 1:11
4. Satie - 6 Pieces De La Periode - Desespoir Agreable 1:13
5. Satie - 6 Pieces De La Periode - Effronterie 2:42
6. Satie - 6 Pieces De La Periode - Poesie 1:01
7. Satie - 6 Pieces De La Periode - Prelude Canin 1:16
8. Satie - 6 Pieces De La Periode - Profondeur 1:42
9. Satie - 6 Pieces De La Periode - Songe-Creux 1:59
10. Satie - Apercus Desagreables - Pastorale 1:29
11. Satie - Apercus Desagreables - Choral 0:58
12. Satie - Apercus Desagreables - Fugue 2:29
13. Satie - Nouvelles Pieces Froides - Sur Un Mur 2:25
14. Satie - Nouvelles Pieces Froides - Sur Un Arbre 2:25
15. Satie - Nouvelles Pieces Froides - Sur Un Pont 2:45
16. Satie - Deux Reveries Nocturnes - Pas Vite 1:20
17. Satie - Deux Reveries Nocturnes - Tres Moderement 2:22
18. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Air 0:19
19. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Essais 0:52
20. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Notes 0:30
21. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Le Prisonnier Maussade 0:47
22. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Esquisses 'Le Grand Singe' 0:33
23. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Exercices 0:49
24. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Notes 0:22
25. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Harmonies 1:03
26. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Songerie Vers 'Jack' 1:23
27. Satie - Carnet D'Esquisses Et De Croquis - Bribes 0:36
ERIC SATIE (1808-1925)
Complete Piano Works Vol. 5
Piano – Bojan Gorišek
[2006] Audiophile / CBR320 / scans
O Púbis da Rosa
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