It's a lovely little vignette of Satie's work and life. If you haven't already, give a listen to his Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies. Beautiful melodies with a lot of harmonic variation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x6nuiNN3JI&list=RD9x6nuiNN3...
Pamela Zarubica, Art Laboe, Hal Zeiger, Jim Guercio, Henry Vestine, Alice Stewart, Lillian Rudolph, Mark Cheka, Herb Cohen, Tom Wilson, Fyllis, Lucille, Jack Tillar, Don Cerveris, Vic Mortenson, Terry Kirkman, Frankie Lee Simms, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Little Walter, Maurice Ravel, Joe Polly, Don & Dewey, Lee Zagon, Steve Mann, Skip Diamond, Silvestre Revueltas, Arnold Schoenberg, Joe Perrino, Jerry Hillberg, Donna #1, Donna #2, Loeb & Leopold, Sacco & Vanzetti, Gene & Eunice, Robert Craft, Carl Greenhouse, Dave Aerni, Bob Keene, Nick Venet, Jim Economides, Alvis Haba, Leo Ornstein, Elvis Presley, Barry McGuire, Don Julian, Tiny Tim, Cordwainer Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Scheckley, Randy De Wees, Dick Barber, Eberhard Kronhausen, Yves Tanguy, Lenny Bruce, Ravi Shankar, Chatur Lal, N.C. Mullick, Jules Feiffer, The Bokelmans, Floyd, Ernie Tosi, Shirley Eiler, Mr. Ballard, Brian Epstein, David Crosby, Herman Rudin, Joe De Santis, Bruce Gordon, Frank DeCova, Roland Kirk, Wolfman Jack, Snuff Garrett, Molly Bee, Ernie Freeman, Lew Irwin, Fred C. Dobbs, John Tasker Howard, Cecil Forsythe, Charles Brown, James Joyce, George Di Carl, Diane Baker, Melvin Belli, Bulent Arel, Maurice Kagel, Leonard Allen, Dr. Brossman, Jerry Murnane, Uncle Ed, The Hypnotist, Animal Huxley, Salvador Dali, Vincent Persichetti, Carol, Sabicas, Charles Middleton, Lance Reardon, Sabu, J. Arthur Rank, Luigi Nono, Sylvia Brigham, Steffie, Avedis Zildjian, Little Arthur Matthews, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bill Stulla, Rosemarie De Camp, Bobby Jamieson, B. Mitchell Reed, Cordy, Ruthie, Joyce, Jesse Kaye, Phil Spector, Evy, Lynn Johnson, Pete, Leonard Gorrzyca, Don Vliet, Pepper, Lauren, Charles Mingus, Pierre Boulez, Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Willie Dixon, Guitar Slim, Edgar Varese, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmer Valentine, Phil Tanzini, John Beck, Mario, Bob Reiner, Eric Dolphy, Bram Stoker, Cecil Taylor, Bill Evans, Johnny Otis, Preston Love, Slim Harpo, Karl Kohn, Bob Narciso, Johnny Guitar Watson, Tim Sullivan, Sonny Tufts, John Wayne, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Junior Madeo, Jeff Harris, Bobby Atler, Daddy-O Curtis Crump, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Joe Huston, Chuck Higgins, Big Jay McNeely, Jim Sherwood, Sandy Schwanekamp, Nadine Reyes, Kaye Sherman, Donald Woods, Richard Berry, Huggy Boy, Vernon Greene, Hunter Hancock, Willie Mae Thornton, Lightnin’ Slim, Roger Huntington Sessions, Charles Ives, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Terry Wimberly, Johnny Franklin, Teddy Bunn, Jeepers, Paul Buff.
I think this mostly applies to his "furniture music".) Works like "Socrate" or "Sports et Divertissements" are certainly not background music.
) In these concerts, he actually told the audience members not to listen :)For me, it's as if the hauntological presence of David Foster Wallace showed up to match the known and yet unknowable genius that is Satie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnopédies#Legacy
I had arranged variations on a theme by Erik Satie when I was in music school so my experience is indeed a wormhole through pop to Satie - very old pop, but pop nonetheless. The involvement of John Cage just makes it more unique and special to me since we had played him too at the time.
Thanks again. Love the writing here. The author met his subject's match!
"It would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by staying very still"
I recently listened to a Sati recital by a Dutch pianist. The pianist told us the story, and said, "now I'm going to play this to you". Then played us a compressed recording of it that plays the whole thing in one second.
This image: “Gnossienne #1” radiates a mood of … what, exactly? Lightly anxious contemplation? Oddly contented melancholy? An icy but heartwarming breeze? ...Slightly bruised, but not down and out.
This sentence: In some ways, Satie feels like a long-ago ornament; at the same time, more playfully modern than our own increasingly doctrinaire era.
These recommendations: Dip a toe into the Satie rock pool and you soon discover a cove, a coastline, an entire horizon. As well as his solo-piano works, he wrote a riotous avant-pop ballet (Parade); a comical Christian allegory (Uspud); an intimate drama with samplings of Greek philosophy (Socrate); and his final work was a groundbreaking movie soundtrack (Cinema).
This reference: There is copious testimony as to the utter shambles of his living space — yet the moment he steps outside this tiny cell he is a smiling dandy, spick and span, his own ambulant branch of Yohji Yamamoto.
Just, great.
I was hooked.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Kitano 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Cop
At one point he would like wear exact copies of the same clothes every day, and only eat white food (?).
I believe part of his clothing was because he was totally broke. A broke surrealist eccentric alcoholic who's music was largely rejected for being overly simplistic during his lifetime is the picture I get of him.
Don't confuse eccentricity for being "a complete loser".
>In 1911, when he was in his mid-forties, Satie came to the notice of the musical public in general. That January Maurice Ravel played some early Satie works at a concert by the Société musicale indépendante, a forward-looking group set up by Ravel and others as a rival to the conservative Société nationale de musique.[44][n 8] Satie was suddenly seen as "the precursor and apostle of the musical revolution now taking place";[46] he became a focus for young composers. Debussy, having orchestrated the first and third Gymnopédies, conducted them in concert. 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 (1914) were published in de luxe editions. The press began to write about Satie's music, and a leading pianist, Ricardo Viñes, took him up, giving celebrated first performances of some Satie pieces.
Doesn't sound like a "complete loser" to me.
I can tell you as a musician, that sometimes the music comes before all else, including feeding and clothing yourself, and even basic hygeine. It's an addiction like no other and if you really give your life to it, then nothing else really matters. That isn't being "a complete loser".
I don't know if you can characterize them as friends. Satie's music definitely influenced Poulenc's, a lot.
Satie was broke as hell too, that part is true. Idk if being broke makes you a loser, but it might explain his choice of clothes.
> An artist must regulate his life. Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.7 pm. ... My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coco-nuts, chicken cooked in white water, mouldy fruit, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). [1]
[1] Mémoires d'un amnésique (1912). An english translation of the excerpt: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Day_in_the_Life_of_a_Musici....
sherdil2022•8mo ago
https://aeon.co/videos/background-music-was-the-radical-inve...
andrepd•7mo ago
jb1991•7mo ago