Erik Satie

Started by Michel, May 31, 2007, 02:14:26 PM

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George

Quote from: Philoctetes on June 15, 2007, 11:03:49 AM
Of course. I love her. Have her in some Bach and Beethoven.

Me too.  8)

Just got Ciccolini's early 2CD set of Satie today on sale.  :)

Philoctetes

Quote from: George on June 15, 2007, 01:25:33 PM
Me too.  8)

Just got Ciccolini's early 2CD set of Satie today on sale.  :)

Splendid, though at times I find his apprach a bit too percussive.

George

Quote from: Philoctetes on June 18, 2007, 08:15:43 AM
Splendid, though at times I find his apprach a bit too percussive.

IIRC, you have the later recordings, right?

Philoctetes

Quote from: George on June 18, 2007, 11:04:35 AM
IIRC, you have the later recordings, right?

No idea of the date.

Mark

Been listening to some Satie this evening.

Laying aside his famous Gnossiennes and Gymnopedies, I found his output bewildering. I couldn't decide if, through his music, he was laughing at his listeners, or genuinely engaged in loving acts of artistic creation. 'Was he mad?', I asked myself?

I couldn't answer ... so I'm asking you lot instead.

Satie. What do you make of him?

Catison

In a word, I think he was John Cage before John Cage.
-Brett

Mark

Quote from: Catison on September 17, 2007, 01:47:19 PM
In a word, I think he was John Cage before John Cage.

That's nine words. You're as bad as Satie.

orbital

There is lots of humor in his piano works, but the only piece of joke I've encountered with him is Socrate. Perhaps I have to listen to it a few hundred times in order to laugh with him, but for now I don't get the joke  ::)

Catison

Quote from: Mark on September 17, 2007, 01:48:16 PM
That's nine words. You're as bad as Satie.

Oh come on, can't I use some Britishisms.  It depends what the meaning of 'a' is.
-Brett

Mark

Quote from: Catison on September 17, 2007, 02:26:44 PM
Oh come on, can't I use some Britishisms.  It depends what the meaning of 'a' is.

Feel free to use all the English turns of phrase you wish, my friend. :)

Don

I find Satie's music very interesting in an off-the-wall manner.  I have about 30 Satie recordings; just one would not be sufficient.

BachQ

I find some of Satie's music to be vexatious ........

lukeottevanger

I find Satie enormously fascinating and one of the most rewarding and to-my-mind aesthetically sound of composers - 'la musique pauvre': a tenet which I wish more composers would follow, personally. He's one of those composer I have a peculiar penchant for - full of musical imperfections, to extreme degrees in his case - but so humble and human. The jokes and eccentricities are important, but are surface manifestations of something more profound, which is what Cage sensed in him.

Quote from: orbital on September 17, 2007, 01:54:11 PM
There is lots of humor in his piano works, but the only piece of joke I've encountered with him is Socrate. Perhaps I have to listen to it a few hundred times in order to laugh with him, but for now I don't get the joke  ::)

I really couldn't disagree more with this statement. Socrate is, by far, Satie's most serious work, generally and rightly held o be his masterpiece. I see no humour in it, just utterly original (and obviously, still shocking) music of great and refined beauty. On another thread I see that Mark has put Satie down as a 'you only need one CD' composer. I'd respectfully disagree - the essential Satie, as I see it, comprises at the very least

Gymnopedies (and not in Debussy's travesty of an orchestration)
Gnossiennes
Sarabandes
Trois Morceaux en forme de poire
Messe des Pauvres
Sports et divertissements
Airs a faire fuir + Danses de travers
Parade (though it's not really for me)

and above all

Nocturnes
Socrate.

That is more than a disc's worth, by my reckoning!

Holden

Satie was both 'mad' and a humorist IMO and I love his piano music. He had a tendency to take the piss out of the more pompous side of classical piano music while producing some telling works of his own.

Probably the most revealing comments I've ever heard about Satie came from a 12 year old boy at one of the schools I taught at. Chris, who was definitely autistic spectrum disorder affected, just loved Satie. He became emotionally animated about something intangible when we discussed Satie's music. Apart from that his (probably Aspergers) psyche ruled. Erik Satie's music spoke directly to this boy and considering Satie's life this is no surprise.
Cheers

Holden

Scriptavolant

There are artists which I tend to admire beyond their artistical achievements (not despite their artistical achievements). Satie is one of those, along with Debussy, Cage, Malipiero and others; each artist who has the guts to challenge fruitfully, of course, the Academy and the conception of Art as a blessed Sacrament that can't be enjoyed but with stately seriousness deserves all my appreciation.

orbital

#55
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 17, 2007, 03:36:19 PM

I really couldn't disagree more with this statement. Socrate is, by far, Satie's most serious work, generally and rightly held o be his masterpiece. I see no humour in it, just utterly original (and obviously, still shocking) music of great and refined beauty.

That's the premiseon which  I got the recording pretty recently. All the comments pointed this piece to be his best. It failed to impress me yet, but I may need to listen to it more. It is very different from his piano music, perhaps that's why I could not connect.

lukeottevanger

Quote from: orbital on September 18, 2007, 12:19:23 PM
That's the premiseon which  I got the recording pretty recently. All the comments pointed this piece to be his best. It failed to impress me yet, but I may need to listen to it more. It is very different from his piano music, perhaps that's why I could not connect.

It isn't that different from his piano Nocturnes, though, which are contemporaneous with it (both Socrate and the Nocturnes are practically Satie's last music). The Nocturnes are generally thought to be among Satie's very finest pieces too - absolute serious, totally abstract music, with a straightforward title and no textual allusions, mystical or comical. The new thing for Satie, in these pieces, is the coolness of the harmony - lots of parallel fourths etc, harking back to his interest in Medieval music, and few of the sensuous sevenths etc. which characterise the Sarabandes, Gymnopedies, Gnossiennes and other early piano pieces, nor the seemingly random streams of harmony which make up some of his Rose+Croix works. The gestural language, though, is similar in some respects to the earlier pieces. In both Socrate and the Nocturnes there is this very appealing distancing - the music floats by, undemonstrative but never less than beautiful. In Socrate, even the most dramatic moments are narrated gently, not pointed up at all, and that, of course, makes them all the more touching.

lukeottevanger

#57
The much misunderstood and underestimated Satie is one of my very favourite composers, even if only for a very small number of works. But I'd never seen this before - it's at Ubuweb, but there is no link from their Satie folder to this one, or I'd missed it if there was, so I'd hadn't seen this until yesterday.

The link takes you to a page where you can view or download Entr'acte, the Rene Clair film which formed part of the ballet Relache, for which Satie wrote the music. At the beginning of the film (not part of Entr'acte itself, actually) you can see Satie and Picabia bouncing around the roof of the theatre and firing a cannon.... ;D

karlhenning

You don't see many composers these days with such bounce.

lukeottevanger

Not so much Gymnopedist as gymnast, obviously.

The rest of the film contains quite a few visual treats, too. Worth sticking around for, maybe.