BY MADELINE ROYCROFT
If I made a list of my favourite composers based on their music, Erik Satie would probably be in the top five. However, if I reordered the list based on their perceived personalities, he’d definitely be number one.
On May 17, we celebrate 150 years since the birth of France’s most eccentric composer, Erik ‘Esotérik’ Satie.
While he may be most famous for the Gymnopédies (music you’ll find on every compilation entitled Classical Music to Relax To), Satie wrote some of the most experimental keyboard music, daring ballets, and iconic cabaret tunes of the early 20th Century. His use of rhythm and harmony preceded the wave of 1920s jazz-inspired classical compositions, and he was the first composer to include non-musical items such as horns, sirens and typewriters in his scores.
Known by many a title – ‘The Velvet Gentleman’, ‘Monsieur le Pauvre’, or ‘Erik Satie: Gymnopédiste!’ to name a few – Satie spent most of his life working in the cabaret clubs of Montmartre. While he may not have taken them seriously, songs such as La Diva de l’Empire, Le Piccadilly, Je te veux and La belle excentrique are still regularly performed and recorded.
This is not to say that his ‘serious’ works were that serious either; Satie is renowned for humourous music with sarcastic titles such as Flabby Preludes for a Dog, Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear, Unpleasant Glimpses, Dessicated Embryos, Sketches and Provocations of a Portly Wooden Mannequin…I could go on.
In the early 20th century, Satie also wrote several contributions to the French journal Revue musicale S.I.M., from which we can learn a lot about the eccentric man behind the music. Here are just eight crazy reasons why we love him.
- His daily routine was very meticulous
Passages like the following give us way too much insight into the composer’s painstakingly specific schedule:
An artist must organise his life. Here is the exact timetable of my daily activities: I rise at 7.18am; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I have lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14pm. A healthy ride on horseback around the thick of my park follows from 1.19 to 2.53pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.07pm. Various activities (fencing, thinking, motionlessness, visits, contemplation, dexterity, swimming, etc.) from 4.27 to 6.47pm. Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20pm. Then some symphonic readings (out loud), from 8.09 to 9.59 pm. I go to bed regularly at 10.37pm. Once a week, I wake up with a start at 3.19am (on Tuesdays).
- He had no time for conventional score instructions
Often written without bar lines and in red ink, Satie’s scores skipped on the usual tempo and dynamic markings. Instead, he offered challenging, philosophical tidbits such as ‘Postulez en vous-même’ (wonder about yourself), ‘Ouvrez la tête’ (open your head) or ‘Munissez-vous de clairvoyance’ (provide yourself with clairvoyance). Then there are some strangely evocative instructions like ‘Light as an egg’, ‘Very Turkish’, or my personal favourite, ‘Like a nightingale with a toothache’.
- He only ate white food
Here is another excerpt from Satie’s ramblings that will probably put you off your lunch:
My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coconuts, chicken cooked in white water, mouldy fruit, rice, turnips, white pudding, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold with Fuschia juice. I have a good appetite, but I never speak while eating, for fear of choking.
- He never had visitors
In 1898, Satie could no longer afford to rent his room in Montmartre, moving instead to cheap lodging in Arcueil, an industrial suburb of Paris. Here, he would spend the remaining 27 years of his life, never allowing anyone else inside. After his death – cirrhosis of the liver from years of drinking bourbon and absinthe – Satie’s friends found his apartment in an absolutely disastrous state; quite the surprise for a man of such impeccable appearance. In addition to many unfinished and unpublished manuscripts, Satie’s apartment had inside it a bed, chair and table, a ridiculous amount of umbrellas, and two grand pianos stacked on top of one another (the top being used for storage). Hanging on a wall were the two portraits Satie and Suzanne Valadon had painted of one another in 1893. Satie’s six-month affair with Valadon, a painter and artists’ model, would be the only romantic relationship of his life.
- He wore the same thing every day
Shortly before moving to Arcueil, Satie inherited some money – most of which he spent on 12 identical grey suits made of luxurious velvet. He alternated wearing them every day, thus, ‘The Velvet Gentleman’ was born.
- He considered himself a ‘photometrographer’
Whatever that is… I’ll let Satie explain this one:
Everyone will tell you that I am not a musician. This is true. Since the beginning of my career, I have classified myself among the phonometrographers. My work is completely phonometrical. Take the Fils des Étoiles, Morceaux en Forme d’une Poire, En Habit de Cheval, or the Sarabandes — it is evident that musical ideas played no part whatsoever in their composition. Science is the dominating factor. Besides, I take more pleasure in measuring a sound than hearing it. Phonometer in hand, I work happily and with confidence. What have I not weighed or measured? All Beethoven, Verdi, etc. Very curious. The first time I used a phonoscope, I examined a B-flat of medium size. I assure you, I have never seen anything so repugnant. I called in my servant to show it to him. On my phonoscales, an ordinary F-sharp registered 93 kilograms. It emanated from a fat tenor whose weight I also took.
- He walked over 20km daily
Satie was still working at cabaret clubs when he moved to Arcueil. He made the 10km commute to and from Montmartre on foot. Every. Single. Day. He walked under an umbrella no matter the weather and always carried a hammer in his coat for protection: “While walking, I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me”. Now that’s a sight I would love to have seen.
- He created his own religion
During his time living in Montmartre, Satie joined the Rosicrucian Order, a religion “built on esoteric truths of the ancient past”. He was both chapel-master and official composer of the Rosicrucians, writing the religiously charged pieces Sonneries de la Rose+Croix and Préludes du Nazaréen in this period. Satie quickly became bored with this sect though, subsequently inventing his own religion: the Metropolitan Church of Art and the Leading Christ. Satie’s vision was that precisely 1,600,000,000 recruits, draped in black robes with grey hoods, would defend his church in battle using oversized swords and medieval lances 5m in length. He also maintained an “official” church journal, which chastised music critics who deemed his work subpar and inaccessible. Obviously, Satie was the church’s only member.
