[HN Gopher] Unheard works by Erik Satie to premiere 100 years af...
___________________________________________________________________
Unheard works by Erik Satie to premiere 100 years after his death
Author : gripewater
Score : 166 points
Date : 2025-06-28 10:19 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| kaonwarb wrote:
| I assume these are well-vetted as real discoveries, but can't
| help but think of "Albinoni's" Adagio:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_in_G_minor
|
| Still looking forward to listening!
| eitally wrote:
| Satie's Gymnopedies have been on our household's "calming &
| focused" playlists for years now. Highly recommend, and I look
| forward to hearing these new works, too.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Did you perchance find these originally on youtube? They're
| very popular on their autosuggestions.
| jiehong wrote:
| They've been a bit everywhere for decades I think. Like I
| think in movies such as The Royal Tenenbaums of Wes Anderson.
|
| I think I heard it more or less since childhood.
| viraptor wrote:
| It got very popular with the raise of lofi. The Gymnopedie
| samples are everywhere.
| williamdclt wrote:
| They're hugely famous, I don't think most people's first
| encounter with them would be as YouTube suggestions
| andrepd wrote:
| Indeed, they feature in a number of media. I think I first
| heard them in the Mother 3 game!
| amrocha wrote:
| I think you're overestimating how much people listen to
| music from 100 years ago. Youtube is probably hugely
| responsible for Erik's modern popularity.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| I can assure you that Satie's music was very, very well-
| known and popular (even though most people wouldn't
| recognise his name) long before YouTube existed.
|
| Most people don't intentionally listen to 100-year-old
| music, sure, but you're underestimating how much we
| absorb this stuff as background music in ads, movies, TV
| shows etc.
|
| Most classical music is very niche but a few pieces
| become cornerstones of popular culture -- think of
| "flight of the bumblebee" or the William Tell overture.
| Satie has a disproportionate number of hits. His style is
| exceptionally simple, distinct and timeless.
| sheiyei wrote:
| I think you live in a bubble ignorant of classical music.
| ithkuil wrote:
| There are a lot of interpretations of Satie's work and a
| random playlist on YouTube may not necessarily get you the
| best performers, also because not everybody has the same
| tastes in music.
|
| My favourite interpretation of Satie's is played by Reinbert
| de Leeuw. He plays very slow, playing just a bit behind the
| beat, with astonishing precision and expressiveness.
| garciansmith wrote:
| Yes, I agree. I also like Aki Takahashi.
| zahlman wrote:
| I have three different recordings of Satie's Gymnopedies on
| CD from many years ago: de Leeuw's, coming in at almost 16
| minutes total; a version from 1968 by William Masselos
| totaling about 9 minutes; and on the extreme end, Klara
| Kormendi's version totaling less than 7 minutes.
|
| When I used to play piano, I once timed myself playing them
| to my own preference. As I recall, it was around 11 minutes
| at the speed that makes sense to me.
|
| Chacun a son gout. (Satie himself claimed to only eat foods
| that are white, after all.)
| ithkuil wrote:
| He also claimed to eat only fat of dead animals, so yes
| nothing too peculiar I must say
| RhysU wrote:
| A Strangeloop talk by Mouse Reeve, years ago, looked at the
| Markovian structure of "Gnossiennes" then made an endless
| version. A beautiful talk and really cool music website.
|
| Music website: https://gnossiennes.mousereeve.com/ (slightly
| better on Desktop).
|
| Talk: https://youtu.be/ANYMii3Sypg
|
| Abstract: https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2019/minimalist-piano-
| forever...
| lordfrito wrote:
| I love this. Thank you.
| vunderba wrote:
| If you like procedurally based music - you should definitely
| check out CPU Bach, a program written by Sid Meier (the Civ
| series designer) for the 3DO console back in the 90s.
|
| It doesn't use markov chains (to my knowledge) but can generate
| some pretty impressive sounding Bach-like preludes / fugues
| using a weighted rule based approach across notes and melodic
| phrases.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbGO0a5P0M8
| matt3210 wrote:
| It's AI
| madaxe_again wrote:
| This may come as a shock, but there was no AI in 19th century
| France.
| reify wrote:
| my go to chill out music for the past 10 years
|
| I highly recommend
|
| Eric Satie's complete piano works on 2 x CD
|
| has all the music from this wiki:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Erik_S...
|
| I tried to play some of these on classical guitar and failed
| dismally.
| aduffy wrote:
| Major Hari Seldon vibes
| emeril wrote:
| I'm still waiting to hear 4'33" by John Cage and it's allegedly
| very popular
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's permanently performed everywhere all the time.
|
| You simply have to decide to hear it.
| crabl wrote:
| Ian Penman wrote a fantastic biography of Satie, published
| earlier this year. Worth a read! He was a profoundly strange and
| fascinating person: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635902532/erik-
| satie-three-piec...
| pyman wrote:
| Is he remembered for his personality or his music? I'm asking
| because I find it fascinating how some music from 100 years ago
| still holds value today.
| akka47 wrote:
| >Is he remembered for his personality or his music?
|
| Both, but mostly for his music. Listen to Gymnopedie No. 1
| and Gnossienne No. 1 for good beginner pieces.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Certainly both, but in your question, I'm suspecting your
| unaware of how much of this music you're familiar with it
| since it lives rent-free in the general zeitgeist. For
| example, I suspect you'd recognize Satie's work Gymnopedie
| no. 1[1] and perhaps putting a name to it will give you some
| appreciation for _why_ his work is valued
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU
| jayrot wrote:
| Talk about living rent free...the number of modern songs
| which are (generally obliviously) derivative of Pachelbel's
| Canon in D is mind boggling, which itself was surely built
| upon even earlier, similar chord progressions.
| leptons wrote:
| He is primarily remembered for his music. Most people know
| some of his compositions but don't even know who wrote it.
| Gymnopedie is still used all over the place today in ads,
| remixes, and everywhere else - but few know who composed it,
| and even fewer know about his eccentric personality.
|
| But apparently hackernews loves to point out how "weird" he
| was.
| pyman wrote:
| I see. Thanks for the info.
| touggourt wrote:
| Various musicien like to play his music. Here's Gnossienne
| Ndeg1 in a Gipsy Jazz style, by the Beltuner group in 2005
| https://beltuner.bandcamp.com/track/gnossienne-n-1
| Supernaut wrote:
| > I find it fascinating how some music from 100 years ago
| still holds value today.
|
| Some of the world's most cherished music is much older than
| that. Is it your general expectation that musical
| compositions, regardless of merit, will inevitably lose their
| appeal over time?
| pyman wrote:
| Right, and that's kind of the point. A small group still
| finds immense value in it, but for the majority, the appeal
| has faded or been replaced by other forms of music. It
| doesn't mean the compositions aren't brilliant, it just
| shows how cultural relevance shifts over time (regardless
| of quality).
| Dfiesl wrote:
| I think if you explore the "classical" genre of music you'll
| quickly find many works of merit by composers which date back
| over 100 years
| mlaux wrote:
| My favorite Satie piece is "Vexations" [1], a short clip that the
| composer ostensibly wished to be played 840 times in a row.
|
| As a little art project, I recently made a version for MS-DOS and
| AdLib [2] that starts with a piano-like sound and gradually
| distorts the timbre every repetition by flipping a random bit in
| the AdLib's registers.
|
| I never made a recording of it because I was envisioning it as an
| "if you got to see it in person, cool" type of thing, but I
| should probably go back and do that
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/7GoV2psW-OE
|
| [2] http://constcast.org/vexations.html
| justinc8687 wrote:
| Please make that recording!
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| Kinda reminds me of Industry [0] by Michael Gordon.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gujb-wyTy5s
| jancsika wrote:
| > My favorite Satie piece is "Vexations" [1], a short clip that
| the composer ostensibly wished to be played 840 times in a row.
|
| Live performances of Vexations are illuminating in their own
| right.
|
| But as a reminder for those who don't know: from the score it's
| clear Satie was satirizing the practice of composers taking on
| the long, boring process of drilling inane counterpoint
| exercises in the hope of eventually writing "serious" music,
| only to teach themselves the singular lesson of how to write
| long, boring phrases of music.
|
| Probably he's also satirizing the arbitrariness of the received
| wisdom, as evidenced by his surprising voice-leading decisions
| for the phrase in Vexations. (Digression-- I find the common-
| practice prohibition on parallel fifths funny given there are
| near-constant parallel fifths sounding as an accident of the
| harmonic series, especially prominent in step-wise basslines in
| the cello or bass part. Did Rameau or anyone every address
| that? I don't remember...)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| That's _why_ parallel fifths are considered a bad thing. They
| disappear into the rest of the texture and you lose one
| stream of independent movement.
|
| Counterpoint is like any other musical technique. If you're a
| hack you can get it "right" and never say anything expressive
| with it. But if you have a creative musical sensibility it
| can add interest and complexity that wouldn't be possible
| otherwise.
| derbOac wrote:
| I listened to this recording yesterday and thought the pieces
| were unfamiliar but didn't realize they were newly rediscovered.
|
| The pieces were more conventional than I was expecting. I like
| the album and the music, it's a different side to Satie more
| reflective of the era, provides some context and perspective on
| his works.
| yapyap wrote:
| music leaks from the 20th century, neat
| 7357 wrote:
| tharaud rules the piano, i like what he did with the goldberg
| stuff
| gsuuon wrote:
| I always thought furniture music was such a pragmatic description
| of his work. Every few years I make a half-hearted attempt to
| learn Gymnopedie 1 on guitar but can never seem to follow
| through.
| steeleduncan wrote:
| Are the new scores available anywhere?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-28 23:00 UTC)