The ''Allegro'' is a brief piano piece by

Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...

. Dated September 9, 1884, when Satie was 18, it is his earliest known composition. It also marked the first time he signed his given name as "Erik" instead of "Éric".

Description

In 1884 Satie was still struggling through his unhappy studies (1879-1886) at the Paris Conservatoire, which he later described as a "penitentiary". Significantly, he produced the ''Allegro'' - his first surviving attempt at composing - not as a student exercise but on his own, during a summer holiday visit to his native

Honfleur Honfleur () is a commune in the Calvados department in northwestern France. It is located on the southern bank of the estuary of the Seine across from le Havre and very close to the exit of the Pont de Normandie. The people that inhabit Honf ...

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

. It was the only music he would ever compose in his hometown. The breezy, irony-free optimism of the nine-bar ''Allegro'' is uncharacteristic of Satie's subsequent work. It is a musical postcard of sorts, quoting the well-known song ''

Ma Normandie "Ma Normandie" was the official regional anthem of the Bailiwick of Jersey, a British Crown dependency in the Channel Islands, and was written and composed by Frédéric Bérat. Jersey is historically part of the Duchy of Normandy, and Fren ...

'' (1836) by

Frédéric Bérat Frédéric Bérat (11 March 1801, Rouen - 2 December 1855, Paris) was a French composer, chansonnier and goguettier. His best known song is '' Ma Normandie'', the official anthem of the Bailiwick of Jersey. Biography He was the sixth of s ...

. A snatch of the refrain, the lyrics of which are "J'irai revoir ma Normandie" ("I long to see my Normandy"), is discreetly worked into the middle of the piece. Biographer Mary E. Davis saw this early instance of musical borrowing as a "surprising glimpse of Satie's future compositional style" and added, "The musical reference, clear enough to be audible by any listener familiar with the tune, creates an allusion to both song and place, thus deepening the experience beyond the purely sonic realm into the arena of memory and nostalgia." Birthplace of Satie

In his book ''Satie the Bohemian'' (1999), Steven Moore Whiting asserted that this bit of

juvenilia Juvenilia are literary, musical or artistic works produced by authors during their youth. Written juvenilia, if published at all, usually appears as a retrospective publication, some time after the author has become well known for later works. ...

revealed "no precocity whatever...an isolated case of allusion to popular repertoire, and an utter lack of awareness how to proceed beyond a promising start." Pianist-musicologist Olof Höjer, on the other hand, found it more technically interesting, noting how Satie deliberately compressed an already minuscule piece through the use of a short bridge passage. The existence of the ''Allegro'' was unknown for nearly a century before it was discovered amongst Satie's papers at the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

. Facsimiles of the manuscript were first published by Alan M. Gillmor (1972) and Nigel Wilkins (1980). Three performance versions, edited by Robert Orledge, were issued by Salabert between 1995 and 1998. The ''Allegro'' was given its concert premiere by pianist Giancarlo Carlini at the Teatro di Porta Romana in Milan, Italy, on April 12, 1980. It was first recorded by

Jean-Pierre Armengaud Jean-Pierre Armengaud (born 17 June 1943) is a French music educator, musicologist, researcher and pianist. Career Armengaud was born in Clermont-Ferrand. From 1967 to 1974, he seconded Germaine Arbeau-Bonnefoy in the presentation of the , pedagogi ...

for the Le Chant Du Monde label in 1986.

Recordings

Recordings of the ''Allegro'' have been primarily confined to comprehensive editions of Satie's piano music: Aldo Ciccolini (EMI, 1988), Olof Höjer (Swedish Society Discofil, 1996), Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Decca, 2002), Cristina Ariagno (Brilliant Classics, 2006) and Alessandro Simonetto (

OnClassical OnClassical is an Italian independent record label. It features classical music mostly for single instrument or chamber ensemble. History Founded in April 2003 by Alessandro Simonetto, harpsichordist, producer and sound engineer, it enlist ...

, 2021) who made an unedited version with an originally deleted passage.

References

External links

* {{Erik Satie Compositions by Erik Satie Compositions for solo piano 1884 compositions