Sati, Eric

Sati was born May 17, 1866 in the Norman city ​​of Honfleur ( Department of Calvados ). When he was four years old, the family moved to Paris . Then, in 1872, after the death of the mother, the children were again sent to Honfleur.

In 1879, Sati entered the Paris Conservatory , but after two and a half years of not very successful studies was expelled. In 1885 he entered the conservatory again, and again did not finish it.

In 1888 , Sati wrote the work “Three Hymnopedias” ( French Trois gymnopédies ) for piano solo, which was based on the free use of non-chord sequences. A similar technique has already been met by S. Frank and E. Chabrier . Sati was the first to introduce quartet chords; this technique first appeared in his work “The Son of the Stars” (Le fils des étoiles, 1891). Such innovations were immediately used by almost all French composers. These techniques have become characteristic of French music of the modernist style . In 1892, Sati developed his own composition system, the essence of which was that for each play he composed several - often no more than five to six - short passages, after which he simply docked these elements to each other.

Sati was eccentric , he wrote his compositions in red ink and loved to play friends. He gave his works titles such as “Three Pear Shaped Pieces” or “Dried Embryos”. In his play Irritations, a small musical theme must be repeated 840 times. Eric Satie was an emotional person, and although he used Camille Saint-Saens melodies for his “Music as a Furnishing Item”, he sincerely hated him. His words even became a kind of calling card:

In 1899, Sati began working as a pianist in the Black Cat cabaret, which was his only source of income.

When you work as a taperist or accompanist in a cafe-chantana , very many consider it their duty to bring a pianist a glass or two of whiskey, but for some reason no one wants to treat at least a sandwich.

- Alfons Alle

Sati was almost unknown to the general public until his fiftieth birthday; a sarcastic, biliary, reserved man, he lived and worked separately from the musical beau monde of France. The public became aware of his work thanks to Maurice Ravel , who arranged a series of concerts in 1911 and introduced him to good publishers.

“In short, at the very beginning of 1911, Maurice Ravel (who, as he always said, owes a great deal to me” ^[7] ) made a double public injection - both by me and me. Several concerts at once, performances in the orchestra, in the salon, in the piano, plus publishers, conductors, donkeys ..., and again - an obsessive lack of money, how tired I am of this rotten word! The applause and the cries of “bis!” Had a strong but bad effect on me. It’s a sinful thing, having longed for them over the past years, I didn’t even realize right away that they should not be taken too seriously ... and at my own expense. ”

- Eric Sati, Yuri Hanon . “Backdating memories” ^[8]

In 1917, Sati commissioned Sergei Diaghilev to write the ballet Parade for his Russian Seasons (the libretto by Jean Cocteau , choreography by Leonid Myasin , and design by Pablo Picasso ; the orchestra was conducted by Ernest Anserme ). During the premiere on May 18, 1917 at the Chatelet Theater ^{[9] [10]} , a scandal erupted in the theater: the public demanded to lower the curtain, shouting “Down with the Russians! Russian Bosh ! ”, A fight started in the auditorium. Irritated by the reception given to the performance not only by the audience, but also by the press, Sati sent an insulting letter to one of the critics, Jean Puegu, for which he was sentenced by the tribunal to eight days in prison and 800 fine francs on November 27, 1917 (thanks to the intervention of Mizia Sert, the Minister of the Interior on March 13, 1918 gave him a “reprieve” from punishment).

At the same time, the score of the Parade was highly praised by Igor Stravinsky :

“The performance struck me with its freshness and genuine originality. The “Parade” just confirmed to me the extent to which I was right when I placed so high on Satie's dignity and the role that he played in French music by contrasting the vague aesthetics of impressionism , which is still living, with its powerful and expressive language, devoid of any or pretentiousness and embellishment. "

- Igor Stravinsky . “Chronicle of my life” ^[11]

Eric Sati met Igor Stravinsky back in June 1911, ^[12] shortly after the Parisian premiere of “ Parsley ” in Diaghilev’s Russian ballets (the same year, but three months later, two famous photographs taken by Stravinsky and Sati visiting Claude Debussy, on which you can see all three) ^[13] and experienced a strong personal and creative sympathy for him. However, closer and regular communication between Stravinsky and Sati occurred only after the premiere of "Parade" and the end of the First World War ^[14] . Eric Sati wrote two large articles on Stravinsky (1922), published at the same time in France and the USA ^[15] , as well as about a dozen letters, the end of one of which (dated September 15, 1923 ) is especially often cited in literature devoted to both composers ^[16] . Already at the very end of the letter, while saying goodbye to Stravinsky, Sati signed with his characteristic irony and smile, this time kind, that did not happen so often: “You, I adore you: aren't you the Great Stravinsky? And this I am none other than little Eric Satie ” ^[17] . In turn, both the poisonous character and the original, "nothing like" music by Eric Sati evoked the constant admiration of "Prince Igor", although neither close friendship nor any permanent relationship arose between them. Ten years after his death, Sati Stravinsky wrote about him in the Chronicle of my life: “I liked Sati at first sight. Thin thing, he was all filled with cunning and clever anger ” ^[18] . - Being the founder of several great styles in XX century music, starting from impressionism and ending with neoclassicism , Sati paradoxically repeatedly became the forerunner and guide for the creativity of different periods of Igor Stravinsky. Some of Sati's works, in particular the ballet Parade (1917) and the symphonic drama Socrates (1918), had a turning effect on Stravinsky's work, prompting him to another change of style. ^[16]

In addition to the scandalous sensational Parade, Eric Satie is the author of four more ballet scores: Uspud (1892), Beautiful Hysterical (1920), Adventures of Mercury (1924) and Performance is Canceled (1924). Also (after the death of the author), many of his piano and orchestral works were often used for staging one-act ballets and ballet numbers, primarily the hymnopedia and the Jack in the Stall suite. ^[9]

Eric Satie died of cirrhosis of the liver as a result of excessive consumption of alcohol (especially absinthe ) ^[19] on July 1, 1925 in the working suburb of Arkoy near Paris . His death went almost unnoticed, and only in the 50s of the XX century, his work began to return to the active space. Today, Eric Sati is one of the most frequently performed piano composers of the 20th century.

Sati's early work influenced the young Ravel . He was a senior companion of the short-lived friendly association of composers Six . It did not have any common ideas ^[20] or even aesthetics, but everyone was united by a commonality of interests, expressed in rejection of everything vague and the desire for clarity and simplicity - just what was in the works of Sati.

Sati became one of the pioneers of the prepared piano idea and significantly influenced the work of John Cage . Cage was carried away by Eric Satie during his first trip to Europe, receiving notes from the hands of Henri Sauguet , and in 1963 he decided to present Sati's composition “Annoyances” - a short piano piece accompanied by the instruction: “Repeat 840 times” ^[21] . At six o'clock in the evening of September 9, Cage's friend Viola Farber sat down at the piano and began to play "Annoyances." At eight in the evening at the piano, she was replaced by another cage friend, Robert Wood, continuing from the place where Farber stopped. There were eleven performers in total, they replaced each other every two hours. The audience left and came, the New York Times columnist fell asleep in an armchair. The premiere ended at 0:40 on September 11, it is believed that this was the longest piano concert in the history of music.

Under the direct influence of Satie, such famous composers as Claude Debussy (who was his close friend for more than twenty years), Maurice Ravel , the famous French group Six , in which Francis Pulenck , Darius Millau , Georges Oriique and Arthur Onegger are most famous, were formed . The creativity of this group (it lasted a little over a year), as well as Sati himself, had a noticeable effect on Dmitry Shostakovich , who heard Sati's works after his death, in 1925 , during the tour of the French Six in Petrograd- Leningrad. In his ballet Bolt, the influence of Sati's musical style from the ballet Parade and Beautiful Hysterical is noticeable .

Some of Sati's works made an extremely strong impression on Igor Stravinsky. In particular, this refers to the ballet Parade (1917), the score of which he had been asking the author for almost a whole year ^[22] , and the symphonic drama Socrates ( 1918 ). It was these two works that left the most noticeable mark in the work of Stravinsky: the first in his constructivist period, and the second in neoclassical works of the late 1920s . Having been greatly influenced by Sati, he moved from impressionism (and Fauvism ) of the Russian period to an almost skeletal style of music, simplifying the writing style. This can be seen in the works of the Paris period - “The Story of a Soldier ” and the opera “ Moor ”. But even after thirty years, they continued to recall this event no other than about the amazing fact of the history of French music:

Since the Six felt free of its doctrine and was filled with enthusiastic reverence for those against whom it posed itself as an aesthetic opponent, it did not constitute any group. “ The Sacred Spring ” grew into a powerful tree, pushing our shrubbery away, and we were about to declare ourselves defeated, when Stravinsky himself soon joined our circle of receptions and inexplicably in his works even felt the influence of Eric Sati.

- Jean Cocteau , "for the anniversary concert of the Six in 1953 " ^[23]

Having invented in 1916 the vanguard genre of "background" (or " furnishing ") industrial music, which does not need to be specifically listened to, Eric Sati was also the pioneer and forerunner of minimalism . His unobtrusive melodies, repeated hundreds of times without the slightest change and interruption, sounding in the store or in the salon during the reception of guests, were ahead of their time by almost half a century.

• Schneerson G. French music of the XX century. M., 1964; 2nd ed. - 1970.
• Filenko G. E. Sati // Questions of the theory and aesthetics of music. L .: Music , 1967. Issue. 5.
• Hanon J. Eric-Alfred-Leslie: A completely new chapter in every sense // Le zhurnal de Saint-Petersburg. 1992. No. 4.
• Sati, E., Hanon U. Posthumous Memoirs. - St. Petersburg: Faces of Russia; Center for Middle Music, 2010. - 680 p. - 300 copies. - ISBN 978-5-87417-338-8 . - The first book of Sati and about Sati in Russian, including all his literary works, notebooks and most of his letters.
• Selivanova A. D. " Socrates " by Eric Satie: Musique d'ameublement or rehearsal music? // Scientific Bulletin of the Moscow Conservatory. Moscow, 2011, No. 1, p. 152-174.
• Sati E. Notes of a mammal. SPb. ed. Ivan Limbach. 2015
• Davis, Mary E. Eric Satie / Per. from English E. Miroshnikova. - M: Garage, Ad Marginem, 2017 .-- 184 p. - ISBN 978-5-91103-392-7 .

In French

• Cocteau Jean E. Satie. Liège, 1957.
• Satie, Erik. Correspondance presque complete. Paris: Fayard ; , 2000.
• Satie, Erik. Ecrits. Paris: , 1977.
• Rey, Anne Satie. Paris .: , 1995.

• Furniture music
• Minimalism a hundred years earlier
• " Socrates, or the beginning of neoclassicism "
• Brancusi and Sati: two sculptors
• " Beautiful hysterical "
• " Submission is canceled "
• Eric Satie and Alphonse Alle
• Eric Satie - The Beginning of Impressionism in Music
• Renee Claire & Eric Satie: Intermission instead of movie
• Eric Satie and Soge Cat
• Eric Satie and Durey

• Eric Sati: sheet music at International Music Score Library Project
• Eric Satie: The Forerunner of Life
• Eric sati in faces
• Yuri Hanon : "An almost complete list of works by Eric Sati"
• Yuri Hanon. Fragments from the book: Eric Satie, “Backdating Memories”
• Gymnopedies & Gnossiennes Scores + audio & MIDI.
• Eric Sati and Alphonse Alle: “Minimalism to minimalism” on the hanograf website
• Eric Sati in words and phrases
• "Bastard of Tristan" (first opera by Eric Satie)
• “Automatic Inventories” (discovery of surrealism)
• Georges Oriol : “Eric Satie: The Corduroy Gentleman” (1924 essay)
• Encyclopaedia Around the World: Eric Sati