Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), better known as Erik Satie, was a French composer and pianist. He was born to a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire but was not very successful and did not earn a diploma. In the 1880s, he worked as a pianist in café-cabarets in Montmartre, Paris, and began writing music, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also composed music for a Rosicrucian sect, a group he was briefly part of.

After a time when he composed few works, Satie joined the Schola Cantorum, a second music school in Paris, as an older student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. Around 1910, he became a key influence on young composers who admired his unusual ideas and creativity. One of these groups was called Les Six. In 1915, he met the writer Jean Cocteau, which led to the creation of the ballet Parade (1917) for Sergei Diaghilev. The ballet featured music by Satie, sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso, and choreography by Léonide Massine.

Satie’s musical style inspired a new generation of French composers to move away from the complex, post-Wagnerian Impressionism toward a simpler and more direct style. During his lifetime, he influenced composers such as Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Francis Poulenc. He is also seen as an influence on later composers like John Cage and John Adams. His music often uses unresolved chords, and he sometimes avoided using bar lines, as in his Gnossiennes. His melodies are usually simple and often reflect his interest in old church music. He gave some of his later works unusual titles, such as Véritables Préludes flasques (pour un chien) ("True Flabby Preludes (for a Dog)", 1912), Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois ("Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Man", 1913), and Sonatine bureaucratique ("Bureaucratic Sonatina", 1917). Most of his works are short, and most are for solo piano. Exceptions include his "symphonic drama" Socrate (1919) and two late ballets, Mercure and Relâche (1924).

Satie never married. For most of his adult life, he lived in a small room, first in Montmartre and, from 1898 until his death, in Arcueil, a suburb of Paris. He wore different outfits over the years, including a period when he dressed like a priest, another when he wore matching velvet suits, and finally, a neat bourgeois costume with a bowler hat, wing collar, and umbrella. He drank heavily throughout his life and died of liver disease caused by cirrhosis at the age of 59.

Life and career

Erik Satie was born on May 17, 1866, in Honfleur, Normandy, France. He was the first child of Alfred Satie, a shipping broker who was a Roman Catholic, and Jane Leslie (née Anton), an English Protestant with Scottish ancestry. A year after Erik’s birth, the Satie family had another child, a daughter named Olga, and in 1869, a second son named Conrad. All of the children were baptized in the Anglican church.

After the Franco-Prussian War, Alfred Satie sold his business, and the family moved to Paris. There, Alfred started a music publishing business. In 1872, Jane Satie died, and Erik and his brother were sent back to Honfleur to live with Alfred’s parents. The boys were rebaptized as Roman Catholics and attended a local boarding school. At school, Erik excelled in history and Latin but struggled in other subjects. In 1874, he began taking music lessons from Gustave Vinot, a local organist who had once studied with Louis Niedermeyer. Vinot helped Erik develop an interest in old church music, especially Gregorian chant.

In 1878, Erik’s grandmother died, and the boys returned to Paris to live with their father. Erik did not attend school but went to lectures at the Collège de France and had a tutor teach him Latin and Greek. Before returning to Paris, Alfred married Eugénie Barnetche, a piano teacher and salon composer, which upset 12-year-old Erik.

Eugénie decided Erik should become a professional musician and enrolled him in the preparatory piano class at the Paris Conservatoire in November 1879. Erik disliked the Conservatoire, calling it a "large, uncomfortable, and unattractive building" like a prison. He studied solfeggio with Albert Lavignac and piano with Émile Decombes, a former student of Frédéric Chopin. In 1880, Erik took his first piano exams and was described as "gifted but lazy." The next year, Decombes called him "the laziest student in the Conservatoire." In 1882, Erik was expelled for poor performance.

In 1884, Erik wrote his first known composition, a short piano piece called Allegro, while on vacation in Honfleur. He signed his name "Erik" on this and later works, though he used "Eric" on other documents until 1906. In 1885, he returned to the Conservatoire in the intermediate piano class of his stepmother’s former teacher, Georges Mathias. Mathias described Erik’s playing as "insignificant and laborious" and Erik himself as "worthless." During this time, Erik became interested in religion, spending time at Notre-Dame de Paris and studying medieval manuscripts. His friend Alphonse Allais nicknamed him "Esotérik Satie." One of his works from this period was Ogives, a set of four piano pieces inspired by Gregorian chant and Gothic architecture.

Erik wanted to leave the Conservatoire and joined the 33rd Infantry Regiment in November 1886. He disliked army life and intentionally got sick by standing outside in the cold. After three months of recovery, he was discharged.

In 1887, at age 21, Erik moved out of his father’s home and lived in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. He began a lasting friendship with the poet Contamine de Latour, whose poems he set to music. His father published these early compositions. Erik lived near the Chat Noir cabaret, where he became a regular and later a resident pianist. The Chat Noir was known for its unconventional style, and Erik embraced a new, bohemian lifestyle, wearing long hair, a frock coat, and a top hat.

In the late 1880s, Erik called himself "Erik Satie – gymnopédiste" and composed the three Gymnopédies (1888) and the first Gnossiennes (1889–1890). He earned money as a pianist and conductor at the Chat Noir but later had a disagreement with the owner and moved to the Auberge du Clou, where he became friends with Claude Debussy. Both men shared a similar artistic approach and struggled financially. At the Auberge du Clou, Erik met Joséphin Péladan, a member of a mystical group called the Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique du Temple et du Graal. Péladan appointed Erik as the group’s composer, giving him opportunities to experiment. Péladan’s salons at the Galerie Durand-Ruel introduced Erik to a wider audience. To save money, Erik moved to a small room near Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre.

By mid-1892, Erik had created his own musical system, composed incidental music for a play, and published a hoax about a fictional opera. He also started a project called Uspud, a "Christian Ballet," with Contamine de Latour. Erik challenged the musical establishment by applying for a position in the Académie des Beaux-Arts but was not selected. Between 1893 and 1895, Erik wore quasi-priestly clothing and founded a group called the Eglise Métropolitaine d’Art de Jésus Conducteur. From his "Abbatiale" in the rue Cortot, he wrote critical reviews of his artistic rivals.

In 1893, Erik had a five-month romantic relationship with the painter Suzanne Valadon. After their first night together, he proposed marriage, but they did not wed. Valadon moved to a room near Erik’s in the rue Cortot. Erik became deeply attached to her, writing about her "lovely eyes" and "tiny feet." He composed the Danses gothiques to help calm his mind. Valadon painted his portrait, which she gave to him. After five months, Valadon left, leaving Erik deeply sad. He later said he felt "nothing but an icy loneliness" after her departure.

In 1895, Erik changed his appearance again, adopting the image of "the Velvet Gentleman." He bought seven identical gray suits using money from a small inheritance. This marked the end of his Rose+Croix period and the start of a new artistic direction.

In 1898, Erik moved to a room in the southern suburbs of Paris, in the commune of Arcueil-Cachan, eight kilometers from the city center. He lived there for the rest of his life, never allowing visitors. After the assassination of Jean Jaurès, Erik joined the Socialist Party and later switched to the Communist Party after its founding.

Works

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Music, Erik Satie was important because he helped French composers move away from Wagner-influenced Impressionism toward a simpler, more concise style. Debussy called him "the precursor" due to his early use of new harmonic techniques. In 1917, Satie described his musical philosophy.

Among his earliest works were three Gymnopédies (1888) and Gnossiennes (1889 and later) for piano. These pieces remind listeners of ancient times because of their simple, repetitive patterns and unique harmonic structures, as noted by critics Roger Nichols and Paul Griffiths. Some believe Debussy influenced Satie, while others think Satie influenced Debussy. During a short time when Satie worked for Péladan's group, he created music with a similar simple and serious style.

While working as a café pianist in Montmartre, Satie wrote songs and short waltzes. Later, when he moved to Arcueil, he began composing works with unusual titles, such as the seven-movement piano piece Trois morceaux en forme de poire ("Three Pear-shaped Pieces") from 1903. This music, described by Nichols and Griffiths as a summary of Satie's work since 1890, reused earlier compositions and popular songs of the time. He struggled to develop his own musical style. Musicologist Richard Orledge noted that this was partly because Satie tried to copy his famous peers, as seen in his miniature opera Geneviève de Brabant (which includes elements of Ravel's style) and his Nouvelles pièces froides (1907), which show influences from Fauré and Debussy.

After finishing his studies at the Schola Cantorum in 1912, Satie composed more confidently and frequently. Although orchestration was not his strongest skill, his understanding of counterpoint is clear in the opening of Parade. From the start of his career, Satie had original ideas about harmony. In his later years, he created short instrumental works with absurd titles, including Véritables Préludes flasques (pour un chien) ("True Flabby Preludes (for a Dog)", 1912), Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois ("Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Man", 1913), and Sonatine bureaucratique ("Bureaucratic Sonata", 1917).

Satie wrote detailed instructions for performers in his neat handwriting. Though these instructions seemed humorous or nonsensical, Nichols and Griffiths noted that skilled pianists could find meaning in phrases like "arm yourself with clairvoyance" or "with the end of your thought." His Sonatine bureaucratique foreshadowed the neoclassical style later used by Stravinsky. Despite a disagreement with Debussy, Satie honored his friend in 1920 by composing the sorrowful "Elégie," the first piece in his song cycle Quatre petites mélodies. Orledge considers this cycle the finest but least known of Satie's late works.

Satie created the term musique d'ameublement ("furniture music") to describe background music meant for easy listening. He composed Cinéma, an early example of film music, for René Clair's Entr'acte (from the film Relâche). This music aimed to set a mood rather than demand attention, an approach linked to surrealism's focus on the unconscious mind. René Magritte admired Satie's music and aesthetic, and both he and E. L. T. Mesens appeared on the program for Relâche.

Some writers consider Satie an influence on minimalism, a style that developed in the 1960s. Musicologist Mark Bennett and composer Humphrey Searle noted that John Cage's music shows Satie's influence. Searle and writer Edward Strickland connected the term "minimalism" to Satie's Vexations, which the composer suggested should be played 840 times. John Adams included a tribute to Satie's music in his 1996 work Century Rolls.

Satie wrote extensively for newspapers, but unlike colleagues such as Debussy and Dukas, he did not focus on music criticism. His writing often had little direct connection to music. His biographer Caroline Potter described him as "an experimental creative writer, a blagueur who provoked, mystified, and amused his readers." He wrote humorous pieces claiming to eat dinner in four minutes with only white food, drink boiled wine mixed with fuchsia juice, or be woken hourly for temperature checks. He also praised Beethoven's non-existent "sumptuous" Tenth Symphony and the unplayable instruments called cephalophones.

Satie grouped some of these writings under titles like Cahiers d'un mammifère ("A Mammal's Notebook") and Mémoires d'un amnésique ("Memoirs of an Amnesiac"), as Potter noted, indicating these were not traditional autobiographies. He credited Oliver Cromwell as a major influence on his humor and mentioned Christopher Columbus, whose "American spirit" occasionally inspired him.

His published writings include:

• A Mammal's Notebook: Collected Writings of Erik Satie (Serpent's Tail; Atlas Arkhive, No 5, 1997) ISBN 0-947757-92-9 (with introduction and notes by Ornella Volta, translations by Anthony Melville, and drawings by Satie)
• Correspondence presque complète: Réunie, établie et présentée par Ornella Volta (Paris: Fayard/Imes, 2000) ISBN 2-213-60674-9 (an almost complete edition of Satie's letters in French)
• Nigel Wilkins, The Writings of Erik Satie (London, 1980).

Legacy

The first biography of Satie was published in Paris in 1932 (though translated into English only in 1969). The author, Pierre-Daniel Templier, worked with Conrad Satie, the composer's brother, who also provided documents and old family photographs for the book. This biography is important for history, and all later biographies have used it as a source. In 1948, Rollo Myers, an English music critic living in Paris, wrote the first English-language study of Satie. This work focused more on analyzing Satie's music. Before this, the composer Constant Lambert had included a major chapter about Satie in his important 1934 study of contemporary music called Music Ho!

The 100th anniversary of Satie's death was celebrated by the BBC, which named him their "composer of the week" and broadcast a special program called Satie-Day Morning. A digital album titled Satie: Discoveries was introduced. It included 27 previously unknown works discovered by James Nye and Sato Matsui. These works were performed on the piano by Alexandre Tharaud.