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Erik Satie (Honfleur, 17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French composer and pianist, and was widely regarded as one of the most important figures to have come out of the late Romantic period, and of Impressionism as a whole. The first years of his life were somewhat tragic - from losing his mother, and continual shifting residence between that of his paternal grandparents and father, he eventually found himself under tuition from a local organist. He was eventually accepted into the Paris Conservatoire in 1879, but even here, his time was spent under the duress of his tutors and teac ...read more
Erik Satie (Honfleur, 17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French composer and pianist, and was widely regarded as one of the most important figures to have come out of the late Romantic period, and of Impressionism as a whole. The first years of his life were somewhat tragic - from losing his mother, and continual shifting residence between that of his paternal grandparents and father, he eventually found himself under tuition from a local organist. He was eventually accepted into the Paris Conservatoire in 1879, but even here, his time was spent under the duress of his tutors and teachers who were quick to label him as "untalented."Much of Satie's personal life is unknown, making it harder to pinpoint why he set upon composing music of the time which clearly pushed many musical boundaries. One such theory suggests that perhaps the short length of Satie's compositions was a reaction against the lengthy, complex pieces that proliferated amongst many important Romantic composers, particularly Richard Wagner, someone who Satie is said to have disliked. In 1888, he went on to compose his most well known set of works, his "Gymopedies". He frequently composed pieces in small suites, and in turn tried to create genres of his own such as the ever strange "Embryos" to the romantic quality of the Gnossiennes. Of these, most instalments run no more than four minutes as he firmly believed in maintaining that a captivated audience is one which doesn't get bored with the music, and more over doesn't become stretched out into exuberant lengthy passages. His caustically parodic “Vexations”, where the pianist is instructed to repeat a short musical cycle 830 times, was just another expression of his love of brevity.Ignoring and dismissing the label of 'musician', perhaps as a result of disillusionment with the classical establishment, he often claimed to be a 'gymnopedist' or 'phonometrician', and claimed his own music to be 'furniture music' - an idea which was to have a major impact on both minimalism and ambient music. Brian Eno, Philip Glass, and Aphex Twin have all pointed toward his influence on their own work, making him one of the few composers of art music to have a direct, major impact on popular music. « hide |
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