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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 undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret 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 spell in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the 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 creation of the ballet ''Parade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercure (ballet)
''Mercure'' (''Mercury'', or ''The Adventures of Mercury'') is a 1924 ballet with music by Erik Satie. The original décor and costumes were designed by Pablo Picasso and the choreography was by Léonide Massine, who also danced the title role. Subtitled "Plastic Poses in Three Tableaux", it was an important link between Picasso's Neoclassical and Surrealist phases and has been described as a "painter's ballet." ''Mercure'' was commissioned by the Soirées de Paris stage company and first performed at the Théâtre de la Cigale in Paris on June 15, 1924. The conductor was Roger Désormière. Background The Soirées de Paris was a short-lived attempt by Count Étienne de Beaumont (1883–1956) – socialite, balletomane, and patron of the arts – to rival Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes as an arbiter of Modernism in French theatre.John Richardson, ''A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932'', Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, pp. 256-262.Ornella Volta, "Satie Seen Through His Let ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Veritables Preludes Flasques (pour Un Chien)
The ''Véritables Préludes flasques (pour un chien)'' (''True Flabby Preludes for a Dog'') is a 1912 piano composition by Erik Satie. The first of his published humoristic piano suites of the 1910s, it signified a breakthrough in his creative development and in the public perception of his music. In performance it lasts about 5 minutes. Satie biographer Rollo H. Myers, writing in 1948, remarked on the prophetic nature of this seemingly unassuming keyboard suite: "In the heyday of Impressionism...came the ''Flabby Preludes'' which in their linear austerity heralded the Neoclassic vogue which was to dominate Western music during the nineteen-twenties." Background The ''Véritables Préludes flasques (pour un chien)'' represents Satie's determination to reconcile his belated education at the Schola Cantorum in Paris under Vincent d'Indy (1905-1912) with his own natural sense of wit and fantasy. It was in fact his second attempt at creating a composition on a canine theme, an ide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonatine Bureaucratique
The ''Sonatine bureaucratique'' (''Bureaucratic sonatina'') is a 1917 piano composition by Erik Satie. The final entry in his humoristic piano music of the 1910s, it is Satie's only full-scale parody of a single musical work: thSonatina Op. 36 N° 1(1797) by Muzio Clementi. In performance it lasts around 4 minutes. Satie's modern, irreverent reinterpretations of 18th Century music in this little pastiche have been hailed as a notable forerunner of Neoclassicism, a trend that would dominate Western concert hall music in the years between the World Wars. Music and texts Satie's sonatina, even shorter than Clementi's example, was composed in July 1917 and published the same year. The composition is in three tiny movements, of which the last one exposes some pseudo-development: the motifs of the first half of that movement are rearranged in another sequence by way of "development section", or rather as the ''imitation'' of development. From a formal point of view the sonatina is S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Socrate
''Socrate'' is a work for voice and piano (or small orchestra) by Erik Satie. First published in 1919 for voice and piano, in 1920 a different publisher reissued the piece "revised and corrected". Wolfgang Rathert and Andreas Traub, "Zu einer bislang unbekannten Ausgabe des 'Socrate' von Erik Satie", in ''Die Musikforschung'', Jg. 38 (1985), booklet 2, . A third version of the work exists, for small orchestra and voice, for which the manuscript has disappeared and which is available now only in print. The text is composed of excerpts of Victor Cousin's translation of Plato's dialogues, all of the chosen texts referring to Socrates. Commission – composition The work was commissioned by Princess Edmond de Polignac in October 1916. The Princess had specified that female voices should be used: originally the idea had been that Satie would write incidental music to a performance where the Princess and/or some of her (female) friends would read aloud texts of the ancient Greek phi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gnossiennes
The ''Gnossiennes'' () are several piano compositions by the French composer Erik Satie in the late 19th century. The works are for the most part in free time (lacking time signatures or bar divisions) and highly experimental with form, rhythm and chordal structure. The form as well as the term was invented by Satie. Etymology Satie's coining of the word ''gnossienne'' was one of the rare occasions when a composer used a new term to indicate a new "type" of composition. Satie used many novel names for his compositions (''vexations'', '' croquis et agaceries'' and so on). ''Ogive'', for example, is the name of an architectural element which was used by Satie as the name for a composition, the ''Ogives''. ''Gnossienne'', however, was a word that did not exist before Satie used it as a title for a composition. The word appears to derive from ''gnosis''. Satie was involved in gnostic sects and movements at the time that he began to compose the ''Gnossiennes''. However, some published ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Croquis Et Agaceries D'un Gros Bonhomme En Bois
''Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois'', translated as ''Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Dummy'', is a 1913 piano composition by Erik Satie. One of his pre-World War I humoristic suites, it was published by E. Demets that same year. Ricardo Viñes gave the premiere during a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on March 28, 1914. A typical performance lasts about five minutes. Description In the April 5, 1913 issue of the periodical ''Le Guide du concert'', Satie advertised his plans to produce a series of pianistic works in which he would "devote myself to the sweet joys of fantasy", naming ''Descriptions automatiques'', '' Embryons desséchés'', '' Chapitres tournés en tous sens'' and '' Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses'' as upcoming projects. He stuck to this scheme, with one detour. The first part of the unannounced ''Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois'' was completed on June 2 and the rest inter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gymnopédies
The ''Gymnopédies'' (), or ''Trois Gymnopédies'', are three piano compositions written by French composer and pianist Erik Satie. He completed the whole set by 2 April 1888, 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 naked – or perhaps 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 reading 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. However, it remains uncertain whether the poem was composed befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parade (ballet)
''Parade'' is a ballet choreographed by Leonide Massine, with music by Erik Satie and a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau. The ballet was composed in 1916–17 for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The ballet premiered on Friday, May 18, 1917 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, with costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso, choreography by Léonide Massine (who danced), and the orchestra conducted by Ernest Ansermet. Overview The idea of the ballet seems to have come from Jean Cocteau. He had heard Satie's ''Trois morceaux en forme de poire'' ("Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear") in a concert and thought of writing a ballet scenario to such music. Satie welcomed the idea of composing ballet music (which he had never done before) but refused to allow any of his previous compositions to be used for the occasion, so Cocteau started writing a scenario (the theme being a publicity parade in which three groups of circus artists try to attract an audience to an indoor performanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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-known are the piano suite '' Trois mouvements perpétuels'' (1919), the ballet ''Les biches'' (1923), the ''Concert champêtre'' (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera ''Dialogues des Carmélites'' (1957), and the '' Gloria'' (1959) for soprano, choir, and orchestra. As the only son of a prosperous manufacturer, Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, and he was not allowed to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc also made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as ''Les Six''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, ''Boléro'' (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abilities in orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other compose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Six
"Les Six" () is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse. The name, inspired by Mily Balakirev's '' The Five'', originates in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in '' Comœdia'', (see Bibliography). Their music is often seen as a neoclassic reaction against both the musical style of Richard Wagner and the impressionist music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The members were Georges Auric (1899–1983), Louis Durey (1888–1979), Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983). ' In 1917, when many theatres and concert halls were closed because of World War I, Blaise Cendrars and the painter Moïse Kisling decided to put on concerts at 6 , the studio of the painter Émile Lejeune (1885–1964). For the first of these events, the walls of the studio were decorated with canvases by Picasso, Matisse, Léger, M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition ''4′33″'', which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
