Four Centuries of Great Music June 29, 2025 Commemorating the Centennial of the Death of Eric Satie

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music     we are commemorating the Centennial of the Death of Eric Satie which is in two days on July 1st.

Erik Satie was born on May 17, 1866, in Honfleur in Northwestern France the son of a maritime agent who later moved to Paris to become a publisher.  His mother died when he was just six years old. His father remarried, but his stepmother also died when he was just 14.

Satie moved to Paris to be with his father and at thirteen, Satie enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire in November 1879.  In 1880 Satie took his first examinations as a pianist when he was described as "gifted but indolent". The following year his piano professor called him "the laziest student in the Conservatoire” and in 1882 he was expelled from the Conservatoire for his unsatisfactory performance. He was readmitted in 1885 but again professor deplored his playing as "insignificant and laborious" and Satie himself as "worthless. Three months just to learn the piece. Cannot sight-read properly.” He was expelled again in 1886.

He began playing piano and conducting the bands at venous cabarets in the Montmartre area of Paris and composed probably his most famous works the three Gymnopédies in 1888 and the first Gnossiennes in 1889.  While living and working in the Montmartre, he became a close friend of Claude Debussy, who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition. Both were bohemians, enjoying the same café society and struggling to survive financially.

From 1898, Satie lived alone in Arcueil (arc-keh-lee), a Parisian suburb, leading an incredibly reclusive and eccentric lifestyle. He rarely invited anyone to his small room, which he referred to as his “prehistoric cave”. Around this time, he adopted a very peculiar lifestyle, which involved an exact routine of meals (only consuming food that was white) and always  wearing the same style of dun colored (grayish-brown) velvet suits.

Satie’s music has had a profound impact on 20th-century music, despite the composer remaining relatively unknown during his lifetime. His innovative, minimalist approach to composition was a departure from the dominant Germanic style, and his works anticipated developments in musical modernism.  Most of his music was incidental music to plays and ballets, cabaret and art songs and his numerous series’ of piano works.

He had a particular influence on the group of composers known as Les Six, who admired his irreverence towards established musical norms. His ideas also resonated with figures in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, and he collaborated with several of them, including Jean Cocteau and Man Ray.
Satie died on July 1, 1925, in Paris. Though his funeral was attended by only a handful of friends, his influence has grown significantly in the decades following his death. 

Today, Satie is remembered not just for his music, but also for his unique personality, his witty musical annotations, and his innovative ideas about music and art. His compositions continue to be performed and recorded widely, testifying to the enduring power of his unique musical vision.


Let’s open our exploration of the music of Eric Satie with one of his most famous works, his six  Gnossiennes  (no’ see en) written in 1889-1890 although the Gnossiennes 4-6 were premiered and published posthumously.

Bruce Liu 
Waves - Music by Satie
Deutsche Grammophon

Satie: Gnossiennes
1. Satie: Gnossiennes No. 1, Lent [Gnossiennes]      
2. Satie: Gnossiennes No. 2, Avec étonnement [Gnossiennes]   
3. Satie: Gnossiennes No. 3, Lent        
4. Satie: Gnossiennes No. 4, Lent      
5. Satie: Gnossiennes No. 5, Modéré   
6. Satie: Gnossiennes No. 6, Avec conviction et avec une tristesse rigoureuse  

Parade, the ballet, was composed in 1916–17 for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes to a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau.  The ballet premiered on Friday, May 18, 1917,  with costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso, choreography by Léonide Massine (who danced), and the orchestra conducted by Ernest Ansermet.

Satie: Parade  I. Choral
Satie: Parade   II. Prélude du rideau rouge
Satie: Parade   III. Prestidigitateur chinois
Satie: Parade   IV. Petite fille américaine
Satie: Parade   V. Acrobates
Satie: Parade   VI. Final

THE NEW LONDON ORCHESTRA conducted by RONALD CORP
Satie: Parade .Relâche, Mercure Gymnopédies . Gnossiennes
Hyperion Records 


La belle excentrique is a dance suite for small orchestra which is a parody of music hall clichés.  It was conceived as a choreographic stage work which Satie gave the subtitle "A Serious Fantasy”.  It was premiered in Paris on June 14, 1921. 

Satie: La belle excentrique_ I. Grande ritournelle
Satie: La belle excentrique_ II. Marche franco-lunaire
Satie: La belle excentrique_ III. Valse des mystérieux baiser dans l’oeil
Satie: La belle excentrique_ IV. Cancan grand mondian

Ensemble Die Reihe & Friedrich Cerha
Eric Satie - Essential Works
Menuetto Classics


Lets close this first hour of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music     commemorating the Centennial of the Death of Eric Satie which is in two days on July 1st with Satie’s Gymnopedies No. 1 and 3 orchestrated by Claude Debussy as performed by Jerome Kaltenbach conducting the Nancy Symphony Orchestra from the album The Best of Satie



Socrate
Satie described Socrate as a "symphonic drama in three parts". "Symphonic drama" appears to allude to Romeo et Juliette, a "dramatic symphony" that Hector Berlioz had written nearly eighty years earlier: and as usual, when Satie makes such allusions, the result is about the complete reversal of the former example. Where Berlioz's symphony is more than an hour and a half of expressionistic, heavily orchestrated drama, an opera forced into the form of a symphony, Satie's thirty-minute composition reveals little drama in the music: the drama is entirely concentrated in the text, which is presented in the form of recitativo-style singing to a background of sparsely orchestrated, nearly repetitive music, picturing some aspects of Socrates' life, including his final moments.
The three parts of the composition are:
Pt. I   "Portrait of Socrates", text taken from Plato's Symposium
Pt. 2  "The banks of the Ilissus", text taken from Plato's dialog Phaedrus
Pt. 3  "Death of Socrates", text taken from Plato's book Phaedo

Ensemble Die Reihe conduced by Friedrich Cerha, Emiko Iiyama & Marie-Thérèse Escribano
Eric Satie - Essential Works
Menuetto Classics

Relâche  (rule-lahsh) composed by Erik Satie in 1924 to the "ballet obscène" by Francis Picabia. The title was thought to be a Dadaist practical joke, as relâche is the French word used on posters to indicate that a show is canceled, or the theater is closed. Ironically,  first performance was indeed canceled, due to the illness of Jean Börlin, the principal dancer and choreographer.  During many of the performances of this work a film by Francis Picabia was shown before the ballet and between acts.

This was Satie last major composition 

PART 1 
Ouverturette ]
Projectionnette 
Entrée de la femme 
Musique 
Entrée de Borlin 
Danse de la porte tournante 
Entrée des hommes 
Danse des hommes 
Danse de la femme 
Final 

PART 2 
Musique de rentrée 
Rentrée des hommes 
Rentrée de la femme 
Les hommes se dévêtissent 
Danse de Borlin et de la femme 
Les hommes 
Danse de la brouette 
Danse de la couronne 
Le danseur repose la couronne 
Sur la tête d’une spectatrice —La femme rejoint son fauteuil 
Sur la tête d’une spectatrice —La queue du chien (chanson mimée) 

THE NEW LONDON ORCHESTRA
RONALD CORP
Satie: Parade . Relâche . Mercure Gymnopédies . Gnossiennes
Hyperion Records