Erik Satie
1866 – 1925
This witty and quizzical composer
began his life ironically, by being born at No 90 Rue Haute (High Street), the
lowest street of Honfleur! His music is
admired for its harmonic innovation, revolutionary simplicity and lack of
romantic excesses, but in his early career, he was considered an obscure
eccentric and was ridiculed as a musician.
His father was a ship broker and
his mother was English of Scottish descent. After the 1870 War, the Satie
family moved to Paris, but when his mother died in 1872 Erik was sent to live
with his grandparents in Honfleur. His early life was further disrupted when
his grandmother died in 1878, and he was returned to his father in Paris. He
was given a very informal education until his father remarried. His new wife
Eugénie Barnetsche, a pianist and amateur composer forced her musical tastes on
young Satie. He disliked her and her tastes intensely. He found the concerts
and academic music she loved, boring and intolerable. This reaction against his
step-mother and her partiality for romantic music would later define him and
his music.
In 1879 Satie entered Paris
Conservatoire, which he found depressing, gloomy and dilapidated. His tutors
recognized his talents and considered him gifted, but were dismayed at his lazy
attitude and frequent truancy. He was eventually dismissed in 1882, for failing
to achieve the required standard. He attended harmony class for a further year
and was accepted into Matthias’ piano class in 1885. His new tutor assessed him
as “useless…takes three months to learn a piece…incapable of sight-reading!”
Satie continued his studies to
try to avoid 5 years military service, but in 1886 he joined 33rd
Infantry. By April he had severe bronchitis and spent several months in
convalescence; he had made himself ill by taking his shirt off in cold weather,
because he was bored! Confined to his bed, he enjoyed reading the mystical
stories of Péladan, which developed his interest in mystical religion,
Gregorian chant and Gothic art. Péladan seems to have been France’s Alistair
Crowley, obsessed with Wagnerian mythology and Holy Grail mysticism. This
decadent fascination with the occult was part of the popular culture of the fin
de Siècle and was linked to the mythological ideas of racial purity that would
spread across Europe.
His father by this time was
establishing a music publishing business and published Satie’s first songs,
which have unfortunately been lost. They were settings of poems by his close
friend Contamine de Latour. His father was also the first publisher of his
‘Sarabandes’, ‘Gymnopédies’ and ‘Gnossiennes’ between 1887 and 1889.
Satie began to frequent
Montmartre and play the piano at the Café ‘Le Chat Noir’. This environment was
a revelation to the shy, reserved and well-mannered young man. He enjoyed the
camaraderie, the escapades and the revolutionary artistic debates and decided
to move to Montmartre. As his funds depleted he moved to smaller and smaller
lodgings. His house at No 6 Rue Cortot is the smallest museum in the world,
known as ‘Le Placard’ (the cupboard), and it has a small collection of his
portraits, manuscripts and personal items.
The bohemian life turned him into
an alcoholic and when his drinking habits became severe, it began to affect his
playing and punctuality. He got the sack from “Le Chat Noir” but found work at
the ‘Auberge du Clou’ tavern on the Rue Lepic. Here he met Debussy and began a
long friendship. Two of his ‘Gymnopédies’ were published in 1895, on Debussy’s
recommendation and although Debussy was rather superior with him, Satie laughed
off any humiliation he felt, using his dry sense of humour and puns as a smoke
screen. This protective cloak hid a deeply disturbed personality; he was
short-tempered and ultra-sensitive and exasperated his friends with his violent
rages. He mocked the decadent bourgeois romantics and impressionists; and of
Debussy’s La Mer, described as a day at sea, he said, “there was a little bit
in particular, between half past ten and a quarter to eleven that I thought was
terrific.”
In Montmartre he met the painter
and former circus performer Suzanne Valadon. For two years they had a stormy
love affair. For Satie it would be his last. He found he preferred to look at
women from a distance, not liking to get closer because he was afraid of being
horribly cuckolded. He believed he was “a man that women cannot understand”.
During a period of fashionable
exhibitionism, Satie joined Péladan’s flamboyant Rosicrucian movement and
became their official composer. At first his involvement was sincere but soon
his sense of the ridiculous and his anti-romanticism led to a mocking letter of
resignation from the group. Satie then formed his own movement, the ‘Eglise
Métropolitaine d’Art de Jésus Conducteur’ and published a broadsheet, which was
a mixture of ecclesiastical fantasy and Pélandan style polemics against famous
people. Colette’s husband Willy had been using the name ‘Satie’ to describe
music he considered stupid or inane. Satie called Willy a repulsive oppressor
of the Arts and the unresolved argument lead to fisticuffs in public at a
concert. His outrageous and provocative behaviour went further when with his
friend Latour, he wrote ‘Uspud’, a Christian ballet and presented it to the
director of the Opera, after gaining an appointment by challenging the director
to a duel!
Most of his life he was poor, but
he was very philosophical about his poverty. When he was left a legacy, he
ended up poor again, having spent it on 12 identical grey velvet suits and by
being very generous to his friends. Even when he was famous, he refused a
commission because he considered the fee to be too high. He only agreed to
compose ‘Sports et Divertissements’ after he had talked the fee down to where
he felt comfortable.
A new generation was changing Montmartre and its rustic
village character was disappearing. In 1898 Satie left and moved to his last
home in the southern suburb of Arcueil-Cachan. The drab melancholy austerity of
factory chimneys attracted Satie, and he enjoyed the atmosphere of the working
class café downstairs. He cut off his long hair, dropped his bohemian style and
developed into a conservative looking gentleman with a bowler hat, pince-nez,
dark formal suit and umbrella. He tenaciously defended his privacy and no one
ever entered his new home.
It was the beginning of years of unhappiness. Now forced
to earn his living as a café-concert pianist, he felt humiliated and degraded
by composing musical hall songs, which did not even give him much money. This
also meant a 12-mile round trip walk to work in Montmartre every day, crossing
Paris again in the early hours to return home. On Fridays he would call on
Debussy for lunch and play his piano. He loved playing with Debussy’s daughter
and was like an elder brother to her. Debussy described Satie as “a gentle
medieval musician who turned up in our century”.
Although he felt ashamed of his Café-concert songs, he
wrote a slow waltz, ‘Je te veux’ with saucy lyrics by Henri Pacory, for
his dear friend Paulette Darty in 1897. Darty was a music hall singer, billed
as the ‘Queen of the Slow Waltz’. She became a great success all over Paris by
singing Satie’s ‘Je te veux’, ‘La Diva de l’Empire’ and ‘Tendrement’. She had
dazzling blonde hair and statuesque presence that dominated the most unruly
Saturday night audience. She was famous for her sweet voice and clarity of
diction, essential to singers before the invention of amplification. In between
the verses and at the end, she would waltz around the stage in graceful
circles. She remained friends with Satie for many years and was one of the few
women with whom he felt comfortable.
The new cinema pianists inspired Satie to write his
‘Jack-in-the-Box’ music, with which he intended to mock the “wicked men who
populate our world”. It was never performed in his lifetime, because he
couldn’t find it in his cluttered room and assumed he had lost it on a bus.
After his death Milhaud found it behind a piano and he later orchestrated it.
With it was an opera score “Genevieve de Brabant” based on Schumann’s Genoveva.
It was a puppet opera, condensed to 20 minutes with spoken narration.
It is suggested that Satie wished to silence critics that
called him a “blageur” when he became a student at the Schola Cantorum, in 1905
aged 40. He studied counterpoint, fugue and orchestration with D’Indy and
Roussel who respected him and his work and enjoyed working with him. Satie
worked hard and diligently and in 1908 he graduated with distinction, but it
didn’t create any new opportunities for him.
He was now well known in Arcueil and was accepted for his
harmless eccentricities. He joined the local branch of the Socialist Party and
developed an interest in politics. He discarded his velvet suits and began to
dress in sober garments, which actually made more of an eccentric impression.
His beard and ironical look didn’t change! He was closely involved in local
life and started a youth club for the local children. He gave music lessons at
9am on Sunday and organised trips out and gave lectures in the playground. He
was inspired by the poetic simplicity of children and set pieces for them and
“people with small hands”. He received an award for his civic services but
suddenly gave up his commitment after an incident of rumour mongering. For the
older residents of Arcueil he put up an advert “No more bald heads!”
encouraging them to join the ‘Aqueduct Savings Company’ and to buy hair lotion
with the money they saved!
In his tiny room, he had two grand pianos, which he stored
one on top of the other, using the top one to store junk mail. A narrow passage
led from his room to the fountain in a square, where he had to get his water
supply. It became increasing difficult as the corridor became cluttered with
his gymnastic equipment. He wrote a mock timetable for himself which included
“3.12pm to 4.07pm Inspiration” and “do not talk while eating in case of self
strangulation.” All his life he delighted in the ironic and the surreal.
Ravel was impressed by Satie’s extraordinary techniques
and great sensitivity, which gave his music an individual charm. They met at
the ‘Nouvelle Athènes’ Café and after Ravel played his ‘Sarabandes’ at a
concert for the Société Musicale Indépendente in 1911, Satie’s works grew in
popularity and articles about them were published. Two months later Debussy conducted a
performance of ‘Gymnopédies2’ and in 1913, the pianist Ricardo Viñes included
Satie’s new ‘Quatre Préludes Flasques’ in his recital. It was a huge success
and publishers began to demand his works.
He was made an Officier de l’Academie Française and
composed a series of humorous piano pieces with eccentric titles and bizarre
commentaries. The elaborate titles were in direct and purposeful contrast to
the simplicity he used in his compositions. It is believed that many pieces
were named after places from his childhood in Honfleur and his bizarre comments
reflected his views on his own life. Some pieces asked the pianist to smile
during page turns and were written without bar-lines, time or key signatures.
He was very serious about his music and deliberately set out to parody the
somewhat precious titles favoured by Debussyists and the Impressionists. “ I
never criticise Debussy. It’s only the Debussyistes who annoy me. There is no
school of Satie. There could never be Satisme; I should be opposed to it.”
Satie’s harmonic innovations and unusual progressions of
simplicity appealed to the sophisticated connoisseurs, who preferred finely
wrought nuances, precision, restraint and purity of style. Cocteau believed
that “true tears are not shed over a sad page, but over the miracle of a word
in exactly the right place. “ Satie’s vocal works are few but his original way
of treating the human voice showed a revolutionary disregard for flashy vocal
effects. His priority was to render the meaning and spirit of the text, rather
than the prettiness of a melody. In this he was similar to Ravel.
By this time, Satie had
joined the new Bohemian set in Montparnasse. At a salon, he met the artist
Valentine Hugo, who proved a good friend to him. She had a great admiration for
his sense of ironic humour and she arranged for the publication of three of his
songs in a magazine called ‘La Gazette du bon ton’. This commission in 1914
brought Satie fabulous wealth: 3,000 Francs, an amount that he had never seen
before.
These songs were probably the ‘Trois Poèmes d’Amour’.
They are settings of his own poems and use obvious rhyming to emphasise his
scorn of the convention of vocalizing the mute “e” in sung French. Singers who
tried to minimise its effect infuriated him. The melodies are like plainsong,
giving them a Gregorian atmosphere. The first song actually reproduces with
little alteration the ‘Victimae paschali laudes’ sung at the Easter service.
The outbreak of World War One
interrupted performances of Satie’s works and in 1914, he enrolled in the
Arcueil Socialist Militia. Every night he would lead his troop of men through
the suburb, armed to the teeth, until the authorities asked him to stop, as
they were keeping people awake. The war years were difficult for Satie. He
became depressed hearing of the loss of life and his sense of humour did not
compensate for the absence of his friends. He would enter air raid shelters and
announce “Good evening. I have come to die with you”.
In April 1915 he gave a
performance of the ‘Trois Morceaux’ with Viñes and was heard by the young
Cocteau. Cocteau used his elite and wealthy connections to win commissions for
Satie and collaborated with him on his ballet ‘Parade’. This ballet provoked a
scandal but was a great avant-garde success and Satie became famous permanently
when he called the critics “boches”. It was illegal to use this word at the
time and one of the critics sued him for libel. Satie took the argument further
and sent the critic a rude postcard: “Vous n’êtes qu’un cul, mais un cul sans
musique.” He was sentenced to 8 days in prison but it was suspended after the
intervention of his wealthy friends. Instead he received a fine of 100 Francs
and had to pay damages of 1,000 Francs. Unable to pay, Satie had to forfeit his
possessions including his music. He appealed and the decision was reversed.
Satie deeply influenced aesthetics in the music of the
early C20th and a group of composers formed around him, ‘Les Nouveaux Jeunes’.
Following the performance of the six composers’ works together, organised by
the singer Jane Bathori, the journalist Henri Collet dubbed them ’les Six’. By
1917, Satie had begun work on his masterpiece cantata ‘Socrate’, commissioned
by the Princess de Polignac and with ‘Les Six’ and their entourage, he went to
Belgium to see the first performance of his work. It was a lively and raucous
trip.
His outrageous comedic parody made him a legend in Paris,
but when he wrote ‘Socrate’, it was difficult to get audiences to take him
seriously. At the moment of the hero’s
horrific death, the audience expecting a joke, roared with laughter.
Fortunately in subsequent private performances to elite Parisian literary
circles, ‘Socrate’ was appreciated as serious drama. Stravinski declared after
a performance in 1919 “French music is Bizet, Chabrier and Satie.”
The 1920’s brought him fame, success and the high life.
There were festivals of his music and he wrote various compositions with
Milhaud. Their ‘Musique d’ameublement’ or furnishing music, left their
audiences rather baffled. They were asked to pay it no attention and to carry
on socialising around it: “What ever you do don’t listen”. It was intended to
be like a picture on a wall. Satie had created musically what Matisse had
attempted to paint: neutral, unobtrusive art. Satie had invented ‘muzak’. If only
he had known of the tremendous impact it would have on the C20th and C21st; it
surrounds us from cradle to grave: children are born to it, people are buried
to it and astronauts fly to the moon to it!
Satie collaborated with Cocteau on ‘La Belle Eccentrique’
in 1920. Cocteau choreographed this parody of music hall dance routines for the
popular music hall dancer ‘La Cariatice’. He told her to base her moves on “the
body language of animals at the zoo”. Satie fell out with Cocteau in 1924, when
his new ballet ‘Mercure’ was severely criticised by Cocteau’s friends. They
thought the ballet was an insult to Cocteau; poking fun at him because he
always attended parties dressed as Mercury and was called ‘Mercure’ by his
friends. By collaborating with Picasso and not Cocteau, Satie had offended him
further and Cocteau’s supporters tried to put an end to the show before it even
opened. To their dismay the show was a huge success, but Satie felt that
Picasso had controlled the whole thing and that the music had been mere
theatrical wallpaper for the scenes and costumes.
‘Les Six’ were beginning to argue and irritate each other
and by 1924, they had split up. This upset Satie and he decided to form
‘l’Ecole d’Arcueil’, with Milhaud and others, including the film music composer
Cliquet-Pleyel and conductor Roger Desormière. Satie composed a new ballet
‘Relâche’. The title means postponed and Satie declared it would be advertised
at every theatre for free. The first night was actually postponed as a
publicity stunt. This avant-garde show had spectacular stunts and staging. The
opening scene began in total darkness, then a spotlight appeared on the roof of
the auditorium and a man was seen firing a canon at the audience. This was
immediately followed by black out, and then blazing lights were pointed at the
audience from the stage. The show ended with Satie and the designer Picaria
driving round the stage in a miniature Citroën car. The audience loved it.
Satie’s health was deteriorating as 40 years of alcoholism
were taking their toll. His friends got him a private room at the Hôpital
Saint-Joseph, but he couldn’t bear being in hospital, so he returned to his
cold, austere lodgings. He died of sclerosis of the liver in 1925,
disillusioned and believing he had gained fame for the wrong reasons. © H Kean
My Translations of Trois Poèmes d’Amour & Je Te Veux
Trois Poèmes d’Amour
1. I am but a grain of sand,
Always
constant and loving you
Who drinks,
laughs
And sings to
please his lover.
My dear
beauty,
Love your
fragile lover gently.
He is but a
grain of sand,
Always
constant and loving you.
2. I am bald since birth
Out of propriety.
I no longer trust in my valour.
Why such arrogance
From the fair Hortence?
Very bald since birth,
I am so out of propriety.
3. Your finery is hidden,
O sweet jolly lass.My lovely, spirited miss
Smokes a cigarette.
Will I make my conquest of her
Completely as I would wish?
Your finery is hidden,
O sweet jolly lass.
Je Te Veux
Refrain:
I understand your anguish,
Dear lover
And I surrender
To your
desires,
Make me your mistress.
Throw caution to the wind,
Forget our sorrows.
I long for the precious moment
When we find happiness.
I desire you.
Verse:
I have no
regrets
And only one
desire
To live my
whole life by your side,
So very close
to you.
May my heart
be yours
And your lips
be mine.
May your body
be mine
And all my
flesh yours.
Verse:
Yes, I see in
your eyes
The divine
promise.
May your
loving heart
Seek my
caress.
Entwined
forever,
Burning in the
same flames,
In dreams of
love,
We will
exchange our two souls.
Comments
Post a Comment