What I Did Not Know About Erik Satie
Just loading a Satie playlist into Rhapsody and came across a few facts about the man that explain a great deal about him. Namely that he was self taught and committed to a life of poverty thus "removing his art from the unconscious confinements of class and the corruptible influences of popular acceptance".
Satie's music resonated with me the first time I ever heard it which if I remember correctly was in Mike Gibbs's arranging for small ensemble class at Berklee. Mike was a visiting teacher in residence and I was elated to have the opportunity to work with someone who was working on the outside of the school.
I'm quite certain Mike had us listen to Trois Gymnopedies No. 3 in class - this was one of those musical experiences that I will never forget. There I was sitting in class at a school who's allegiances to complex harmonic structures as barometer for musical worthiness was oppressive listening to a piece of work that is seemingly so simple and yet conveys so much. It was a moment in which I felt I'd won - I'd won by trusting my instincts about music and not giving them over to the intellect and pressure to think like the rest of the be-bop gestapo. Mike Gibbs was a big deal and there he was turning us onto music it felt natural to claim as mine, part of my lineage as the musician I knew myself to be.
Little did I know that Satie'd never spent too much time in school and quite consciously removed himself from situations that would exert their own agendas on his own creative process.
Here's the Rhapsody blurb on Satie:
"Few composers deserve the phrase "ahead of his time" more than the French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925). Ideologically committed to a life of poverty, the composer removed his art from the unconscious confinements of class and the corruptible influences of popular acceptance. Though he did study briefly at the Conservatoire de Musique et de Declamation, Satie was primarily self-taught, a luxury that freed him to explore ideas as he found them. As a result, he broke with convention to such an extent as to become the conceptual godfather of the twentieth century's Avant-Garde movement. In an environment where Impressionism and Wagnerism ruled, Satie injected his work with dry, ironic wit and deceptively simplistic progressions. Yet underneath his seemingly casual whimsy lie crisp conceptual models explored with such discipline as to become vaguely spiritual. "Trois Gymnopedies," one of his most well-known works, depicts ancient Greek gymnastic exercises. "Vexations," made famous by a John Cage performance, consists of 152 notes and is to be played 840 times -- a process which lasts over eighteen hours. Godfather of the Avant-Garde, indeed."
Just loading a Satie playlist into Rhapsody and came across a few facts about the man that explain a great deal about him. Namely that he was self taught and committed to a life of poverty thus "removing his art from the unconscious confinements of class and the corruptible influences of popular acceptance".
Satie's music resonated with me the first time I ever heard it which if I remember correctly was in Mike Gibbs's arranging for small ensemble class at Berklee. Mike was a visiting teacher in residence and I was elated to have the opportunity to work with someone who was working on the outside of the school.
I'm quite certain Mike had us listen to Trois Gymnopedies No. 3 in class - this was one of those musical experiences that I will never forget. There I was sitting in class at a school who's allegiances to complex harmonic structures as barometer for musical worthiness was oppressive listening to a piece of work that is seemingly so simple and yet conveys so much. It was a moment in which I felt I'd won - I'd won by trusting my instincts about music and not giving them over to the intellect and pressure to think like the rest of the be-bop gestapo. Mike Gibbs was a big deal and there he was turning us onto music it felt natural to claim as mine, part of my lineage as the musician I knew myself to be.
Little did I know that Satie'd never spent too much time in school and quite consciously removed himself from situations that would exert their own agendas on his own creative process.
Here's the Rhapsody blurb on Satie:
"Few composers deserve the phrase "ahead of his time" more than the French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925). Ideologically committed to a life of poverty, the composer removed his art from the unconscious confinements of class and the corruptible influences of popular acceptance. Though he did study briefly at the Conservatoire de Musique et de Declamation, Satie was primarily self-taught, a luxury that freed him to explore ideas as he found them. As a result, he broke with convention to such an extent as to become the conceptual godfather of the twentieth century's Avant-Garde movement. In an environment where Impressionism and Wagnerism ruled, Satie injected his work with dry, ironic wit and deceptively simplistic progressions. Yet underneath his seemingly casual whimsy lie crisp conceptual models explored with such discipline as to become vaguely spiritual. "Trois Gymnopedies," one of his most well-known works, depicts ancient Greek gymnastic exercises. "Vexations," made famous by a John Cage performance, consists of 152 notes and is to be played 840 times -- a process which lasts over eighteen hours. Godfather of the Avant-Garde, indeed."
posted by Stacia @ 12:01 PM
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