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Gymnopédies
The ''Gymnopédies'' (), or ''Trois Gymnopédies'' ('Three Nude Dances"), are three piano compositions written by French composer and pianist Erik Satie. He completed the whole set by 2 April 1898, but they were at first published individually: the first and the third in 1888, the second in 1895. History The work's unusual title comes from the French form of gymnopaedia, the ancient Greek word for an annual festival where young men danced either naked or, perhaps figuratively, simply unarmed. The source of the title has been a subject of debate. Satie and his friend Alexis Roland-Manuel maintained that he adopted it after having read Gustave Flaubert's novel ''Salammbô'', while others see a poem by J. P. Contamine de Latour as the source of Satie's inspiration, since the first ''Gymnopédie'' was published in the magazine ''La Musique des familles'' in the summer of 1888 together with an excerpt of Latour's poem ''Les Antiques'', where the term appears. It remains ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (born 17 May 18661 July 1925), better known as Erik Satie, was a French composer and pianist. The son of a French father and a British mother, he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, Paris Conservatoire but was an undistinguished student and did not obtain a diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabarets in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his ''Gymnopédies'' and ''Gnossiennes''. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached. After a period in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum de Paris, Schola Cantorum, as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910 he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six. A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
