Interesting review by Jonathan Coe in the LRB.
www.lrb.co.uk
Coe contrasts Satie — who hasn’t heard his Gympnopédies— with composers like Mahler, showing that whereas Mahler embraced complexity, drama and large orchestration, Satie preferred simple forms, repetition, and a kind of beauty in passivity and understated melody. Arthur Honnegar wrote - “Think of Erik Satie’s music, which some musicians look upon as genius, and the degree to which it reverts to a primitive simplification of language – an absence of harmonic richness, an absence of contrapuntal richness. At the rate at which we are going, before the end of the century we shall have a very scanty and barbaric music, combining a rudimentary melody with brutally stressed rhythms – marvellously suited to the atrophied ears of the music lovers of the year 2000!”
Indeed this did come true .. as Penan writes - “On these and other occasions, the younger members of the French musical establishment wielded the Gymnopédies as a potent weapon against the Germanic solemnity and ponderousness they loathed; in the process, they lent these pieces a prominence they might otherwise never have attained. The rest is by now well-trodden history. Satie’s three piano pieces changed the harmonic vocabulary of 20th-century music. The major seventh chord became ubiquitous, first in jazz, then in pop music. Repetition, rather than development, became the guiding principle of composition. Satie is the progenitor of torch songs and lounge music, systems music and minimalism, even (with his later innovation, ‘musique d’ameublement’) muzak and ambient music. Mahler’s influence, by comparison, has been non-existent.”
And since this is an audiophile forum , what Satie himself wrote in 1951, may resonate with some , “Anyone will tell you that I am not a musician. They are right. From the beginning of my career I immediately classified myself as a phonometrographer. My work is pure phonometrics ... In fact it gives me more pleasure to measure a sound than to hear one. With my phonometer in hand, I work with joy and with assurance ... The first time I used a phonoscope, I examined a middling-sized B flat. I can assure you, I have never seen anything more revolting. I called my servant to have him look.”
Jonathan Coe · Don’t we all want to be happy? Satie against Solemnity
Erik Satie is the progenitor of torch songs and lounge music, systems music and minimalism, even (with his later...
www.lrb.co.uk
Coe contrasts Satie — who hasn’t heard his Gympnopédies— with composers like Mahler, showing that whereas Mahler embraced complexity, drama and large orchestration, Satie preferred simple forms, repetition, and a kind of beauty in passivity and understated melody. Arthur Honnegar wrote - “Think of Erik Satie’s music, which some musicians look upon as genius, and the degree to which it reverts to a primitive simplification of language – an absence of harmonic richness, an absence of contrapuntal richness. At the rate at which we are going, before the end of the century we shall have a very scanty and barbaric music, combining a rudimentary melody with brutally stressed rhythms – marvellously suited to the atrophied ears of the music lovers of the year 2000!”
Indeed this did come true .. as Penan writes - “On these and other occasions, the younger members of the French musical establishment wielded the Gymnopédies as a potent weapon against the Germanic solemnity and ponderousness they loathed; in the process, they lent these pieces a prominence they might otherwise never have attained. The rest is by now well-trodden history. Satie’s three piano pieces changed the harmonic vocabulary of 20th-century music. The major seventh chord became ubiquitous, first in jazz, then in pop music. Repetition, rather than development, became the guiding principle of composition. Satie is the progenitor of torch songs and lounge music, systems music and minimalism, even (with his later innovation, ‘musique d’ameublement’) muzak and ambient music. Mahler’s influence, by comparison, has been non-existent.”
And since this is an audiophile forum , what Satie himself wrote in 1951, may resonate with some , “Anyone will tell you that I am not a musician. They are right. From the beginning of my career I immediately classified myself as a phonometrographer. My work is pure phonometrics ... In fact it gives me more pleasure to measure a sound than to hear one. With my phonometer in hand, I work with joy and with assurance ... The first time I used a phonoscope, I examined a middling-sized B flat. I can assure you, I have never seen anything more revolting. I called my servant to have him look.”
