Erik Satie

1866–1925, FRENCH

Best known for his hauntingly simple Gymnopédies for piano, Satie was a pioneer of Modernism in the early 20th century, and an iconoclastic figure whose music and writings mirrored his eccentric lifestyle.

ERIK SATIE, 1891
This portrait of Satie as a young man in his studio was made by the Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol i Prats, who, like Satie and many other artists, established himself in Montmartre.

Often referred to as the “Velvet Gentleman,” sporting a dapper gray frock coat and pince-nez, Erik Satie was a familiar figure in the cafés and cabarets of Paris at the turn of the 20th century. The image he cultivated was of the quintessential Parisian gentleman, showing little evidence of his highly unconventional ideas.

He was born Eric Alfred Leslie Satie in Honfleur, Normandy, in 1866, the elder son of Alfred Satie, a translator, and his Scottish wife, Jane Leslie. The family moved to Paris in 1870, but when Jane died two years later, Eric and his brother Conrad lived with their grandparents in Honfleur until 1878, when they rejoined their father in Paris.

Satie had a conventional middle-class education, which included music lessons, and was encouraged by his new stepmother, a piano teacher, to play and compose. His efforts were not altogether successful: he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire in 1879, but was soon dismissed for lacking the necessary talent and dedication. Rejected but not disheartened, he rejoined the Conservatoire in 1885, but met with the same criticism of his abilities, and decided to leave the following year to join the army.

MONTMARTRE
The district of Montmartre, crowned by the basilica of the Sacré-Cœur, became a focus of artistic activity in the Belle Epoque, largely because of its low rents.

Parisian life

Enlisting with the French infantry, he discovered that he was not cut out for military life either. He found the discipline and conditions unbearable, and in order to get himself discharged found a way of intentionally catching severe bronchitis. Once out of the army, Satie returned to live with his father until he came of age in 1887, when he moved to the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris. It was here that he began composing in earnest, publishing the first of his Gymnopédies for piano. These works of timeless simplicity, purity, and melancholy would be his main legacy, despite his later avant-garde compositions that were arguably more significant. In Montmartre, Satie began frequenting the bars, cafés, and cabarets where the artists, writers, and musicians of Paris congregated. Among them was Claude Debussy, who was making his name as a composer of innovative music in an Impressionist style, and he and Satie struck up a friendship, and a friendly rivalry, that would last until Debussy’s death in 1918.

At this time, Satie became involved with the mystical Rosicrucian Order, joining the Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique du Temple et du Graal, and being appointed official composer and chapel-master. He was a devoted member of the order, but later fell out with its leader Joséphin Péladan. The religious and ritual aspects of the Rosicrucians continued to influence him, inspiring a number of semi-mystical works using his own arcane system of composing (see box). He took to walking around in priestly robes, proclaiming himself as founder, leader, and sole member of the Eglise Métropolitaine d’Art de Jésus Conducteur (Metropolitan Art Church of Jesus the Conductor), for which he wrote a Grande Messe that was later known as the Messe des pauvres (Mass for the Poor). It is difficult to judge whether this was a sincere act of devotion or a prank.

At the beginning of the 1890s, Satie began cultivating his eccentric reputation, referring to himself as a “phonometrician”or “gymnopedist” rather than as a composer, initiating a series of hoaxes, and developing an interest in obscure local history, rare marine animals, and wholly impracticable machinery.

ROSICRUCIAN SYMBOL
Satie allied himself with Rosicrucianism, a set of doctrines derived from “esoteric truths of the ancient past” that also absorbed elements of other faith systems.

SUZANNE VALADON, c. 1916
This self-portrait is by Valadon, to whom Satie proposed marriage on the night they met at the Chat Noir cabaret. During their brief affair, Valadon painted Satie’s portrait; he gave her necklaces that were made of sausages.

A change of style

With funds running low, Satie moved in 1890 to a smaller apartment in Montmartre. While there, he had a passionate affair—probably the only romantic relationship in his life—with the painter Suzanne Valadon; his devastation when she left after six months was a factor in the great changes in both his lifestyle and his music that followed.

In 1895, a small inheritance marked the beginning of a new phase in Satie’s life. He used some of the money to buy seven identical gray velvet corduroy suits, ditching the clerical robes and his obsession with religious cults. The money also gave him the opportunity to publish some of his humorous writings, and the time to compose.

However, funds eventually ran out and Satie was forced to move from Paris. He took a room in the suburb of Arcueil, which was his home for the rest of his life. He lived alone, never received visitors, apart from stray dogs, and to the outside world presented himself as a respectable gentleman who walked into the city every day to earn a modest living as a pianist. However, behind that exterior was an extraordinary mind and a wicked sense of humor.

Return to study

For some years, Satie’s musical output was limited to making arrangements of popular songs and composing cabaret-style pieces, which he later dismissed as lightweight. Still intent on making composing his career, in 1905 he enrolled in the Schola Cantorum de Paris, a conservatory that stressed plainsong in its teaching, to study under Vincent d’Indy and Albert Roussel. This was a great surprise to those who knew him, because the Schola was steeped in the 19th-century tradition, and his teachers were protégés of Saint-Saëns, whose music Satie loathed. Nevertheless, he studied diligently for five years, paying his way with the earnings from his cabaret work.

This period allowed him to mature as a composer and to consolidate his ideas: he moved away from the light, evocative piano pieces for which he was best known, and formulated what can be regarded as a Modernist musical philosophy, rejecting the overblown self-indulgence and sentimentality he associated with the late 19th century. Sometimes ironic, sometimes satirical or parodistic of classical ideas, he placed emphasis on clarity and simplicity.

AT THE MOULIN ROUGE, THE DANCE, 1889–1890
Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting captures the atmosphere of Montmartre’s decadent cabaret scene, in which Satie thrived.

Cryptic compositions

With his studies at the Schola Cantorum complete, Satie set about composing with renewed confidence. He published a set of piano pieces bizarrely entitled Trois morceaux en forme de poire (Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear). He had written these prior to his studies, building on the popularity of his early piano music, but he also set about writing other works for solo piano in a more humorous and less expressive style. In these, he continued the habit he had begun in the 1890s of giving cryptic and witty instructions to the pianist (such as “think right,” “wonder about yourself,” and play “on the tip of the tongue”); and, again, bizarre titles appeared, including Préludes flasques (pour un chien) [Flabby preludes (for a dog), 1912] and Embryons desséchés (Desiccated embryos, 1913). His aim was probably to poke fun at Debussy, whose impressionistic pieces were embellished with descriptive titles and detailed expression markings.

SATIE AND DEBUSSY, 1910
Satie (right) is pictured with his friend and fellow composer Claude Debussy in the latter’s home on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Paris.

Influences and collaborations

As Satie gradually made his name as a composer, opinions about him became divided: the older disciples of Debussy, including Ravel, admired Satie’s early pieces, while those of the younger generation latched on to the Modernism of his more recent work. He gathered around him a group of young acolytes—including Georges Auric, Louis Durey, and Arthur Honegger—that he wished to be known as Les Nouveaux Jeunes. Although members of the group composed in a variety of styles, they shared an affinity with Satie’s rejection of both Romanticism and Debussy’s Impressionism. When Satie parted from the Jeunes following the success of his ballet Parade in 1917, the other members gathered around Cocteau and later became known as Les Six. Satie meanwhile continued to develop his own idiosyncratic style, much influenced by the artistic movements of the time (see box). In 1919, he completed what many regard as his masterpiece, Socrate, an enigmatic Modernist work scored for chamber orchestra and four sopranos who sing sections from Plato’s dialogues. The composition confounded critics (used to Satie’s whimsical works) with its profundity, sincerity, and intimacy.

Satie died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1925. For the last 27 years of his life, he lived alone in chaos among unopened mail, unsorted writings, and a collection of umbrellas, all invisible to the outside world.

IN PROFILE

Creative partners

Through his work as a cabaret pianist, Satie met many artists, writers, and musicians and from 1910 found himself at the center of the Parisian avant-garde. Among his circle of friends was the writer Jean Cocteau, with whom he collaborated on a number of projects. The most famous of these was the ballet Parade, which incorporated elements of modern artistic trends, such as Surrealism, Dadaism, and Futurism. The sets and costumes were designed by Pablo Picasso and the ballet was staged by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In his later years, Satie mixed less with musicians and more with avant-garde visual artists including Man Ray, Constantin Brâncuși, and Marcel Duchamp.

FIRST EDITION OF THE SCORE FOR SATIE’S PARADE, 1917