ERIK SATIE

A Small Boy With Two Countries in His Blood

I was born in 1866 in Honfleur, in Normandy, to a father who was a shipping broker and a mother who was English, with Scottish roots. When I was six my mother died, and my brother and I were sent back to live with our paternal grandparents in Honfleur. In 1879 I entered the Paris Conservatoire, a very serious school for musicians, and I stayed there until 1882. They dismissed me as an unsatisfactory pupil, which I like to think of as the school's loss rather than mine.

A Little Tune Slips Into a Magazine

In 1886 I tried military service, but I was discharged because of bronchitis, so my career as a soldier was short. Two years later, in 1888, a piece of mine was printed in a magazine called La Musique des familles. It was the first of my Gymnopédies, and it was quiet enough that nobody could have guessed it would last. That was how I got started: a very small step, taken very softly.

Piano Man of Montmartre

To pay my bills I played the piano in the cabarets of Montmartre, including Le Chat Noir and Le Lapin Agile. These were smoky, noisy places where people came to drink, talk and laugh, and I had to be heard without really being listened to. That turned out to be useful training for a man with my ideas about music. Paris was full of painters and poets and odd characters, and I fit in perfectly well among them.

The Pieces You Probably Already Know

Between 1888 and 1890 I wrote the Gymnopédies and the Gnossiennes, and the piece on this site is Gymnopedie No 1. It moves slowly, with a gentle, swaying accompaniment under a simple melody that seems to float, and it never asks anything of you. Later I came up with a name for music that stays in the background, "musique d'ameublement", which means furniture music. I meant it as music you could live alongside, like a good chair, though people kept insisting on sitting down and listening to it.

Seven Identical Suits and a Church of One

I was never an ordinary man, and I didn't try to be. I wrote music for Joséphin Péladan's Rosicrucian order, and then between 1893 and 1895 I founded and led my own church, the Église Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur. In 1895, with a small inheritance, I bought seven identical suits, so that I would never have to wonder what to wear. I also drank heavily throughout my life, which is the part of my story I would not recommend you copy.

The Man From Arcueil

In 1898 I moved to Arcueil, just south of Paris, and I lived there for the rest of my life. In 1905, already a grown man with a reputation, I enrolled at the Schola Cantorum in Paris to study properly. Then in 1917 came Parade, made together with Diaghilev, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso, and its opening night caused a riot. I died in Paris on 1 July 1925, aged 59, of cirrhosis of the liver, and I am buried in Arcueil.

What I Left Behind on the Piano

A group of young French composers, known as Les Six, looked on me as an inspiration, and that pleased me very much. Claude Debussy orchestrated the first and third Gymnopédies, so my little piano pieces got to hear what a full orchestra sounds like. Some people call me a forerunner of minimalism, but that is a matter of interpretation, and I leave it to you to decide. What is certain is that music which stays simple and calm has never stopped finding listeners.

A Quiet Corner Just for You

What I want to give you is a few minutes of calm, with nothing to prove and nothing to figure out. Put on Gymnopedie No 1 and let the slow melody drift over you while you do whatever you like. You can listen closely, or you can let it fade into the room like furniture, and I will not be offended either way. If it gives you a little room to breathe, then it has done everything I ever hoped for it.