Satie and the poet who must have died on a Thursday, in a rainstorm.

Satie and the poet who must have died on a Thursday, in a rainstorm.

Erick Satie was a French composer and pianist who were born in Honfleur, France in 1866. Since he was young, he developed a curious character, perhaps as a result of the union of Normand and Scots blood or perhaps, according to some scholars, because he suffered with Asperger’s syndrome.  

Although in his early music education at the Paris Conservatoire he was labeled in negative terms by his teachers he developed a love for composition that no one could deny. In his first years as a composer he start to develop his eccentric personality, he is always described as a shy, discreet and reserved man, well-mannered and bohemian. His personality made him a lonely man, his character although is described as charming and lovable was also violent and unpredictable. 

His first compositions are full of his influence and love for medieval church polyphony, they are slow and solemn, full of successions of seventh and ninth harmonies, this give us the idea that the chords could continue for hours and yet the pieces remains in the realm of almost-miniatures. The Satie that we see in these early compositions, is a cerebral sensualist man, the use of solemn chords give to his music a vague mysticism, almost superficial but full of symbolism.

In 1890 He write his Gymnopedies, this composition spring away from the first mystic works and begun to show us a more heavy, a-rhythmic Satie, who  started to experiment with static harmonies, which characterizes his work latter. The pieces are presented in a set of three, like the Sarabandes which precede them, each one representing a different facet. This concept gives to the pieces a sense of unity although each gymnopedie supplies a variant.

The use of the number three was a peculiarity and an obsession for Satie and it is manifested over and over in his works that commonly are arranged in sets of three.  The popularity of this pieces remains in the singular music, its modality and stark simplicity and also in their enigmatic nature express in the mysterious and bizarre name that Satie chose for them.

The name came from a Greek word; Gymnopaidia, who is defined as a dance in which naked boys performance gymnastic exercise and that was part of a Spartan festival. The word was adapted by Satie supposedly in an attempt to describe his music as graceful arabesque painted by naked boys under an early-morning sky. When he wrote his Gymnopedies, he was part of the symbolist movement, mostly as a result of his work as a pianist at the Chat Noir cabaret (favorite place of the symbolist).  We can find this influence in the Gymnopedies, because Symbolism movement was characterized by the use of strange words, derived mostly form Latin or Greek and full of mysticism and esotericism. We can find also a lot of musicality in the word itself that refers us directly to the mood of the piano pieces. They are almost like silent poem, full of ancient happiness outlined by a transparent texture that serves also as a basic harmonic structure for the three pieces.

Cesar Vallejo, one of the most remarkable Latin American poets of that time and perhaps the only one that was labeled as a symbolist without being French, called Satie  the most “Great musician of France”. He was introduced to him by Vicente Huidobro. For Vallejo, Satie was  a dark man, poor inglorious and genius, sensitive and full of a peculiar sense of humor. In a music review published in 1926, by a Peruvian magazine called Revista Variedades, Vallejo ask himself how French people can ignored such a musician as Satie. By the time that this review was written Satie was already died in Paris.  For Vallejo, Satie was in his way to become the most recognized of the French musicians. And as he said, “Satie died poor, humble and lonely on a Wednesday of July 1, in his way to make the act of excite, a natural one.” He didn’t die a Thursday, like Vallejo himself, who died on April 5 on a Friday.

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris-- it does not bother me--
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

C.V