Satie, anyone?

[Jemmers]

Does anyone like any of Satie's pieces, especially pieces aside from the gymnopedies and gnossienes?

I've recently been looking at some of his works, and I sort of enjoy Pieces Froides and Embryons Desseches.

[joell12068]

I like the "Sonatina Bureaucritique"; especially interesting if you were brought up with Clementi's Sonatina Op. 36 no. 1.  Satie's piece makes quotations from all 3 movements of the Clementi Sonatina.

[trunks]

Just wondering - anybody got vexed on listening to his Vexations?
Played how many times? 840 or something?
It sounds eerie and a bit sick enough just after listening to the first cycle!

[Hazim]

Of course! I simply love and I am completely obsessed with Satie. Besides the melodies already mentioned in the thread so far, I think "The Dreamy Fish" is a beautiful and an energetic piece.  Also, I LOVE his "Le Picadilly" and "Je Te Veux". The "Ogives" are also great.


I believe that most of today's pianists just masacre his music. It sounds as if his music does not require "piano virtuoso" skills, which is logical taking into account the fact that he himself was not a virtuoso on piano. However, his music is so strong and emotional, it requires a real understanding and feeling. IMHO, the timelessness (rhythmwise) of his music requires a musician to, in order to be able to perform it correctly, forget a metronome or any simmilar time-bar-device, which must be completely eliminated, even from the thaughts. Instead, one must be able to catch up with the rhythm of Satie's heart, which I think still beats somewhere in the corridors of time-space continuum. But then we enter the "Magic" issue.

Satie lived a very excentric life, both privately and carrier-wise. He never completed the Music Academy, although he had two tries. After he left his parents, he was so poor that, in the beginning, he did not even have a piano at home. It was in this period that he composed Gnossiennes and Gymnopedies (took him like 7 years for them!). He would compose music in his head and then write it down on paper. He used to say that, when he composes, he likes to "take it and put it in front of himself, and then, walk around and carefully look at it from all sides and angles". He used to carry a pensil with him and, at any time and in any moment, write down any intersting thaughts (or music) that might come up.

At the later stage of his carrier, he moved outside the center of Paris to subburbs, and somehow obtained two old and totally un-tunable grand pianos and installed them on top of each other in the middle of his room. He never allowed anyone to come inside and nobody ever new what sorts of experiments was he conducting there.

In his letters and in his articles, he used to say he likes to "measure" the sound, and that "cleaning the notes is quite a dirty business". He also used to say that "in order to be able to make music, one must extinguish himself". He is considered a father of today's ambiental music, and in that time, he called it "the furniture music".

I think Satie was close to finding the "ultimate formula", but then he got lost for some reason. Or, the formula that he found got lost somewhere. But then we enter the "Matrix" issue.

Anyway, Satie's music does not have an expiry date, that 's for sure.

Salute!

regards,

Hazim.