Page 259 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

MODERN 1900–1950 257

See also: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 228–231 ■ Quartet for the End of
Time 282–283 ■ 4´33˝ 302–305 ■ In C 312–313 ■ Einstein on the Beach 321

Noise-making instruments in Parade

Ticker tape

Pistol Typewriter
Erik Satie
Satie used a
variety of “found Born in Honfleur, France, in
sounds” in Parade in 1866, Satie was a natural
rebel. He spent two periods
order to add unusual at the Paris Conservatoire,
percussive first as a pianist and then
elements. as a composer, but left to
join the military in 1886.
Soon discharged, he moved
to Montmartre in Paris, where
he became a regular patron
of Le Chat Noir club.
In 1888, Satie published
Foghorn Milk bottle Gymnopédies, innovative
piano pieces. Always seen
Airplane propellor in a gray velvet suit (he had
seven of them), he lacked a
steady income and so resorted
Guillaume Apollinaire’s program Vexations (c.1893–1894), a piano to writing and playing cabaret
notes as a “kind of surrealism”— piece that may have been a joke— music. By 1912, he began to
three years before the eponymous the minimalist music consists of receive more attention from
art movement. Evoking the streets a bass theme and accompanying critics, especially for his earlier
of Paris, the music was scored for chords above it—which was never piano pieces. Commissions
“noise-making” instruments, such published in Satie’s lifetime. Satie’s followed, including two ballets
as a typewriter and a foghorn. score bore the inscription: “In order and the multimedia Sports et
to play the theme 840 times in divertissements. After his
Influential figure succession, it would be advisable death from cirrhosis of the
It was after this, in 1917, that Satie to prepare oneself beforehand, and liver in 1925, a great many
unknown works, including
formed Les Nouveaux Jeunes, in the deepest silence, by serious Vexations, came to light, found
a collective of six young French stillness.” Played by a relay team of in his chaotic apartment.
composers. Under the influence six, the first performance took more
of Cocteau, the group became than 18 hours, although it has since
Les Six, whose different styles been performed by a single pianist. Other key works
were united in their opposition Some critics saw the piece as pure 1888 Gymnopédies
to German Romanticism. experimentation; others as a 1914 Sports et divertissements
Satie also influenced much later reaction against Wagner. In the 1917 Sonatine bureaucratique
composers such as John Cage. 20th century, it became a key 1924 Relâche
In 1963, Cage published Satie’s work for conceptual artists. ■

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