[HN Gopher] The Many Sides of Erik Satie
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The Many Sides of Erik Satie
Author : anarbadalov
Score : 121 points
Date : 2025-06-08 13:36 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
| sherdil2022 wrote:
| I am surprised the article didn't touch upon 'furniture music' -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furniture_music
|
| https://aeon.co/videos/background-music-was-the-radical-inve...
| andrepd wrote:
| Indeed. He came up with the concept of "background music" 100
| years ago, it's impressive!
| kashyapc wrote:
| Thanks for sharing; I didn't expect to see Erik Satie on HN :-)
|
| It's a lovely little vignette of Satie's work and life. If you
| haven't already, give a listen to his _Gnossiennes_ and
| _Gymnopedies_. Beautiful melodies with a lot of harmonic
| variation.
| windowshopping wrote:
| I think his most underrated and unknown piece is _Danses de
| travers_.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x6nuiNN3JI&list=RD9x6nuiNN3...
| mvkel wrote:
| What a beautiful piece. For me it evokes a river: not knowing
| where it's going, but sounding exactly right in the moment
| FerretFred wrote:
| I was going to ask what (a) Gnossienne is, but "a completely
| new and made up word, in this case, "gnossienne."
| asdfasdfasdf33 wrote:
| He was an influence on Zappa, no?
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I think Zappa was mostly influenced by Varese. I can't see much
| Satie in his work. However, Satie's music and ideas had a big
| impact on John Cage, who in turn was obviously a very
| influential figure in experimental music.
| Rendello wrote:
| Aphex Twin's Avril 14th [1] reminds me a bit of Satie. A
| bunch of songs in the same album, Drukqs, use John Cage's
| prepared piano technique [2]. A lot of Aphex Twin's music is
| ambient like Satie's, but I prefer his more in-your-face
| stuff.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxTdTaNIUxo
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc2HCxUQ12s
| user3939382 wrote:
| It's funny because apparently he expected his work to be listened
| to passively in the background but I've listened to it actively
| pretty much exclusively.
| Daub wrote:
| I having trouble activity listening to music, but I remember as
| a teen listening to it with a freind and laughing together at
| its musical wit. Both of us were deep into punk at the time
| (the Clash), and we had stumbled across this by accident.
| Rarely have I felt such empathy with a composer.... At once
| sad, funny and erudite.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > It's funny because apparently he expected his work to be
| listened to passively in the background
|
| 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 :)
| davidthewatson wrote:
| Thanks so much for this splendid writing about Satie!
|
| 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/Gymnopedies#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!
| tengwar2 wrote:
| Satie is fascinating, and I don't know of any composer who had so
| much variety in what he attempted. The Gymnopedies and
| Gnossiennes are by far his best known pieces, but once you get
| away from that it gets strange and wonderful. He threw off ideas
| which seem to have led to different musical movements years
| later. Minimalism, for instance, was a term first coined in 1968,
| but some people point to Satie's Vexations of 1893
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKKxt4KacRo&list=RDsKKxt4Kac...)
| - to be played 840 times. One puzzle (at least for me) is to work
| out whether he had the piano or organ in mind for some pieces.
| While the instruments look similar, some of the held notes will
| fade away on the piano, losing harmonies which would otherwise be
| present.
| rendall wrote:
| There is so much that I love about this article that it makes me
| shy.
|
| 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.
| trgn wrote:
| Satie heard music where others didn't and found a way to write it
| down. So fresh still too.
| aag wrote:
| His music appears in the soundtrack for the beautiful comedy
| movie Being There, with Peter Sellers, along with some lovely
| matching pieces by Stephen Edwards.
| thereticent wrote:
| One of the _Gnossiennes_ was in _Spider Forest_ as well --
| great Korean psychological horror.
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| My introduction to Erik Satie was through the Piano theme played
| in Beat Takeshi's [1] directorial debut Violent Cop[2].
|
| I was hooked.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Kitano 2.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Cop
| frereubu wrote:
| In the spirit of recommending favourite pieces, one of his that I
| love is Je Te Veux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1J_lxbaQxQ
| It's perhaps more obvious in terms of its tunefulness than some
| of his pieces, but I think it's like a perfectly-cut jewel and
| somehow quintessentially French.
| FerretFred wrote:
| Satie's my favourite composer so I was pleased to read this
| article. If I had to compare him with another composer (and if it
| was possible), I'd say Basil Kirchin
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Kirchin): I can imagine
| Satie listening to Kirchin and nodding in that knowing fashion...
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm so glad I discovered Satie. His music gives me a dopamine
| rush every time.
| dmoy wrote:
| Satie was a really weird dude. I really like his style of music
| (also Poulenc). But he was very strange.
|
| At one point he would like wear exact copies of the same clothes
| every day, and only eat white food (?).
| leptons wrote:
| Not just exact copies, he wore copies of _velvet_ clothes every
| day. It was kind of his brand, "The Velvet Gentleman", walking
| around Paris daily, being seen always in velvet. I have no
| doubt it had some kind of an effect. Apparently he knew what he
| was doing because people still know him for it today.
| barkcloth wrote:
| In addition to writing the music and drama mentioned in the
| article, Satie also wrote about his own (rather eccentric) life.
| An excerpt about optimizing that stood out to me:
|
| > 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] Memoires d'un amnesique (1912). An english translation of the
| excerpt:
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Day_in_the_Life_of_a_Musici....
| spacechild1 wrote:
| This is obviously a piece of satire, very typical of Satie.
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