Erik satie composer biography paper

His legacy, however, lives on in his music, continuing to inspire musicians and audiences alike. His impact on music extends far beyond his lifetime, influencing many subsequent movements and styles. His life serves as a testament to the power of individuality and the importance of challenging conventions. While Satie may have been a controversial figure in his time, his influence on subsequent generations of composers is undeniable.

His works, characterized by their simplicity, originality, and wit, continue to be performed and appreciated by audiences worldwide. In the world of classical music, Erik Satie stands out as a unique figure who dared to challenge the status quo and paved the way for future generations of composers. His legacy serves as a reminder of the power of creativity and individuality in the world of music, and his influence continues to be felt today.

At the age of forty, Satie went back to school for three years to study classical counterpoint. Satie deliberately contracted bronchitis to obtain a medical discharge from the military. The publisher Demets asked for new works from Satie, who was finally able to give up his cabaret work and devote himself to composition. Works such as the cycle Sports et divertissements were published in de luxe editions.

Satie became the focus of successive groups of young composers, whom he first encouraged and then distanced himself from, sometimes rancorously, when their popularity threatened to eclipse his or they otherwise displeased him. It firmly established Satie's name before the public, and thereafter his career centred on the theatre, writing mainly to commission.

In October Satie received a commission from the Princesse de Polignac that resulted in what Orledge rates as the composer's masterpiece, Socratetwo years later. Satie set translations from Plato 's Dialogues as a "symphonic drama". Its composition was interrupted in by a libel suit brought against him by a music critic, Jean Poueigh, which nearly resulted in a jail sentence for Satie.

When Socrate was premiered, Satie called it "a return to classical simplicity with a modern sensibility", and among those who admired the work was Igor Stravinskya composer whom Satie regarded with awe. In his later years Satie became known for his prose. He was in demand as a journalist, making contributions to the Revue musicaleActionL'Esprit nouveauthe Paris-Journal [ 53 ] and other publications from the Dadaist [ 54 ] to the English-language magazines Vanity Fair and The Transatlantic Review.

In there was a festival of Satie's music at the Salle Erard in Paris. Despite being a musical iconoclast, and encourager of modernism, Satie was uninterested to the point of antipathy about innovations such as the telephone, the gramophone and the radio. He made no recordings, and as far as is known heard only a single radio broadcast of Milhaud's music and made only one telephone call.

Having depended to a considerable extent on the generosity of friends in his early years, he was little better off when he began to earn a good income from his compositions, as he spent or gave away money as soon as he received it. One of his last collaborators, Picabia, said of him:. Satie's case is extraordinary. He's a mischievous and cunning old artist.

At least, that's how he thinks of himself. Myself, I think the opposite! He's a very susceptible man, arrogant, a real sad child, but one who is sometimes made optimistic by alcohol. But he's a good friend, and I like him a lot. Throughout his adult life Satie was a heavy drinker, and in his health collapsed. He died there at 8. To have a erik satie composer biography paper for harmony is to have a feeling for tonality… the melody is the Idea, the outline; as much as it is the form and the subject matter of a work.

The harmony is an illumination, an exhibition of the object, its reflection. They evoke the ancient world by what the critics Roger Nichols and Paul Griffiths describe as "pure simplicity, monotonous repetition, and highly original modal harmonies". After concluding his studies at the Schola Cantorum in Satie composed with greater confidence and more prolifically.

Orchestration, despite his studies with d'Indy, was never his strongest suit, [ 64 ] but his grasp of counterpoint is evident in the opening bars of Parade[ 65 ] and from the outset of his composing career he had original and distinctive ideas about harmony. In his neat, calligraphic hand, [ 67 ] Satie would write extensive instructions for his performers, and although his words appear at first sight to be humorous and deliberately nonsensical, Nichols and Griffiths comment, "a sensitive pianist can make much of injunctions such as 'arm yourself with clairvoyance' and 'with the end of your thought'".

Satie invented what he called Musique d'ameublement — "furniture music" — a kind of background not to be listened to consciously. Satie is regarded by some writers as an influence on minimalismwhich developed in the s and later. Satie's mother died during his childhood and he and his siblings were sent to live wit their father's parents. His musicality was recognized by his family during his childhood and his grandmother became his first music teacher.

When he outgrew her tutelage, he studied organ with the local organist, Gustave Vinot, who encouraged Satie's study of old church music, especially modal compositions and Gregorian chant, which proved highly influential on Satie's later harmonic language which was not major or minor but modal. He in turn wrote that the school was like a prison to him.

Inhe was expelled from the institution due to his poor performance. Satie then joined the military but his career was cut short due to poor health. The Parisian Bohemian. At the age of 21, Satie moved to Montmartre in Paris and became a part of the "Bohemians," a community of creatives, artists, and revolutionaries. His sparse style contrasted greatly with the harmoniously rich and lush music of the previous generation of Romantic composers.

While living in Montemartre, he fell in love for the only time with painter Suzanne Valadon September 23, — April 7, Although Valadon moved into the apartment next to Satie, she turned down his proposal of marriage. When she left after only six months, Satie was devastated and went to live alone in Arcueil and became increasingly eccentric. It was also around this time that Satie began dressing in gray velvet suits as seen the painting by Ramon Casas belowgaining him the nickname "the velvet gentleman," as well as taking to unusual dietary restrictions such as only eating white foods.

Erik Satie was an eccentric but important French composer. His works and his attitude toward music anticipated developments of the next generation of composers. Erik Satie was born in Honfleur to a French father and a Scottish mother. From the beginning Satie had a flair for novel musical ideas, and his first serious compositions reveal this originality.

His Three Sarabandes for piano include some very interesting parallel ninth chords that later became an important feature of the styles of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. In some of his compositions of the next few years Satie used Gregorian modes as well as chords built in fourths, again anticipating musical idioms that would be extensively developed in the next 25 years.

In Satie "withdrew" to Arcueil, a erik satie composer biography paper of Paris, where he spent the rest of his life. He gave the piano pieces he wrote at this time ridiculous, almost surrealistically humorous titles, such as Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear, Three Flabby Preludes for a Dog, and Desicated Embryos —perhaps parodying the elaborately evocative titles Debussy sometimes gave his compositions.

Satie also included in his scores such puzzling directions as "play like a nightingale with a toothache," "with astonishment," "from the top of the teeth," and "sheepishly. Satie's tendency to underplay the importance of his compositions reached its climax in the music he wrote in for the opening of an art gallery. The score, for piano, three clarinets, and a trombone, consists of fragments of well-known tunes and isolated phrases repeated over and over, like the pattern of wallpaper.

In the program he stated, "We beg you to take no notice of the music and behave as if it did not exist. This music … claims to make its contribution to life in the same way as a private conversation, a picture, or the chair on which you may or may not be seated. This violently antiromantic attitude toward music attracted the attention of the group of young French composers who were to become known as " Les Six " and of Jean Cocteautheir poet-artist-publicity agent.

Another group acclaimed Satie as the leader of the "School of Arcueil. Cocteau wrote the libretto, and Pablo Picasso designed the cubist sets and costumes. A surrealist movie, part of the ballet, is accompanied by music that alternates between two neutral, "wallpaper" compositions. Socratefor four solo sopranos and chamber orchestra, is a serious work.

The words are fragments from three Platonic dialogues, one having to do with the death of Socrates. Socrate is distinguished by its atmosphere of calm and gentle repose.

Erik satie composer biography paper

It is completely nondramatic, for one of the sopranos sings Socrates's words. The music consists of simple melodic lines and repetitive accompaniment figures. It is this simplicity, this avoidance of the big gesture that made Satie's music important and prophetic of an important branch of 20th-century musical developments. Myers, Eric Satie Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Yearscontains an interesting chapter on Satie in the context of Paris in the early years of the century.

Satie, Erik gale. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. Satie the Composer. Cambridge, U. Steven M. Satie, Erik Alfred Leslie oxford. Moved to Paris Worked as pianist in at Montmartre cabaret. Met Debussy in In joined Catholic Rosicrucian sect and comp. Shortly afterwards seemed almost to have retired from comp.

In entered Schola Cantorum as pupil of d' Indy and Roussel, leaving in From about became something of a cult among young composers attracted by the eccentric, humorous titles of some of his works, e. Trois Morceaux en forme de poire Three Pear-shaped Pieces. Strongly influenced group of young composers known as Les Six. Meeting with Cocteau in led to Diaghilev ballet Paradein which jazz rhythms are used and the instrumentation incl.

Later, was assoc. Satie's importance lay in directing a new generation of Fr. His harmony is often characterized by unresolved chords, which may have influenced Debussy or he may have learned the device from Debussy—nobody knows. Melody is simple, sometimes slightly archaic, and scoring economical, with few tutti passages. Socrate is the most ambitious of his works, most of which are comparatively short, the majority being for solo pf.

He anticipated many later avant-garde trends; e. But beware—behind the clown's mask is a serious composer. Milhaud