''Sonnerie pour réveiller le bon gros Roi des Singes (lequel ne dort toujours que d'un œil)'' ''(Fanfare for Waking Up the Big Fat King of the Monkeys ho only Ever Sleeps with One Eye)'' is a

fanfare A fanfare (or fanfarade or flourish) is a short musical flourish which is typically played by trumpets, French horns or other brass instruments, often accompanied by percussion. It is a "brief improvised introduction to an instrumental perfo ...

for two

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

s in C composed in 1921 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 ...

. It was the last of his works to which he gave an outlandish title reminiscent of his "humoristic" vein. Eugene Goossens conducted the premiere at the

Queen’s Hall The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

on October 27, 1921. A performance lasts about a minute.

Description

The ''Sonnerie'' was commissioned by the new British periodical ''Fanfare: A Musical Causerie'', edited by musicologist Leigh Vaughan Henry (1889-1958). Although it ran for only seven biweekly numbers (October 1, 1921 - January 1, 1922), it covered a wide range of contemporary musical subjects, from indigenous African to Russian avant-garde. Best known was its namesake feature of publishing original fanfares by noteworthy composers in each issue;

Manuel de Falla Manuel de Falla y Matheu (, 23 November 187614 November 1946) was an Andalusian Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first hal ...

Granville Bantock Sir Granville Ransome Bantock (7 August 186816 October 1946) was a British composer of classical music. Biography Granville Ransome Bantock was born in London. His father was an eminent Scottish surgeon.Hadden, J. Cuthbert, 1913, ''Modern Music ...

Arnold Bax Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, (8 November 1883 – 3 October 1953) was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral musi ...

Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''., group=n (27 April .S. 15 April1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, p ...

Havergal Brian Havergal Brian (born William Brian; 29 January 187628 November 1972) was an English composer. He is best known for having composed 32 symphonies (an unusually high total for a 20th-century composer), most of them late in his life. His best-know ...

Arthur Bliss Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (2 August 189127 March 1975) was an English composer and conductor. Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years he qu ...

, and

Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-kno ...

were among those who contributed. Like his previous trumpet duet ''Marche de Cocagne'' (1919, later incorporated into the '' Trois petites pièces montées''), Satie's ''Sonnerie'' is an example of pure

Neoclassicism Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was ...

, though three times as long.

Robert Orledge Robert Orledge (born 5 January 1948) is a British musicologist, and a professor emeritus of the University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 ...

wrote of it as "a rare example of a Satie piece that survived in its original contrapuntal conception (including a canon at the third by inversion which is suddenly left high and dry in bar 8, followed by invertible counterpoint in bars 9-12). Satie had learned his craft at the Schola Cantorum well, but his natural sense of proportion and occasion told him to make his last four bars more straightforward and climactic, though sufficiently quirky in harmonic terms to identify him unmistakably as their author". He finished the piece in only two drafts before making a neat copy in his elegant calligraphy on August 30, 1921. This was published in facsimile in ''Fanfares debut issue on October 1. After

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Satie was focused primarily on theatre music and saved his verbal wit for journalism. The disproportionately long title of ''Sonnerie pour réveiller le bon gros Roi des Singes (lequel ne dort toujours que d'un œil)'' may have been stirred by a recent blast from his humoristic past. On May 24, shortly before receiving the ''Fanfare'' invitation, Satie saw the belated premiere of his 1913 absurdist comedy ''

Le piège de Méduse ''Le piège de Méduse'' ("The Ruse of Medusa") is a short play of which Erik Satie wrote both the text and the incidental music. The text of the play was written as a " comédie lyrique" in one act, February–March 1913. In June of the same ye ...

'', in which the mechanical dancing monkey Jonas was the musical star of the show. The title also takes into account Satie's fascination with eyes, a recurring theme in his work dating back to the "Christian ballet" ''Uspud'' (1892). In his ''Mémoires d'un amnésique (Memoirs of an Amnesiac)'' the composer himself claimed he always slept with one eye open. The first commercial score for the ''Sonnerie'' was published by Editions BIM in 1981.Robert Orledge, ''Satie the Composer'', Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 325.

Recordings

Bernard Jeannoutot and Pierre Thibaud (Erato, 1981), Stephane Gourvat and Frédéric Mellardi (Indesens, 2006), Dallas Trumpets (Crystal Records, 2008), David Ammer (both parts, Brassjar Records, 2011).

Notes and References

External links

Score available at IMSLP: https://imslp.org/wiki/Sonnerie_pour_reveiller_le_bon_gros_Roi_des_Singes_(Satie%2C_Erik) {{Authority control Compositions by Erik Satie 20th-century classical music Neoclassicism (music) 1921 compositions