Satie, Eric

Erik Satie – Socrate, Drame Symphonique en trois Parties avec Voix

(b. Honfleur, 17 May 1866 – d. Paris, 1 July 1925)

„… In writing this work… I did not want to add anything to the beauty of Platon’s dialogues… it is only a gesture of reverence, only the reverie of an artist… a humble homage….

… The aesthetics of this work are consecrated to clarity; simplicity accompanies it… That is all… Nothing else I wished for… “1

Erik Satie’s artistic coordinates are widely scattered. He was known to walk every day from his home in the working-class neighbourhood of Arcueil to Montmartre, where he was employed as a pianist first at the Chat Noir and later at the Auberge du Clou. As a composer, he always caused uproar, with reactions to him ranging from admiration of his avantgardism to accusations that he was a fake and a washout. But he was also an illustrator and calligrapher, writer, designer and inventor – an aesthete who saw himself as a successor to the bohemian jugglers and at the same time, as an inhabitant of the modern metropolis, was interested in urban space and in architecture, form and spatiality. He, the inventor of the musique d’ameublement, imagined music as part of an environment that furnishes the space with sound rather than drawing sole attention to itself as an autonomous and culminated art form. For him, the place was no longer the concert hall but the noisy city with its cabarets and cafés – and it, the music, thus became “a contribution to natural life “2. If in this music “the significant thing is that the music stands still and that the listener moves”,3 this is also a way of approaching Satie’s Socrate – not least in reference to the image of the walker, which Satie was, between the arts and places.
Socrate is composed of three scene-like parts that draw a praising picture of Socrates from different perspectives. For this, Satie took parts from three of Plato’s dialogues – “Symposion”, “Phaidros” and “Phaidon” – although Plato himself does not appear. Instead, the text of the composition presents a kind of panoramic view of Socrates: first, Alcibiades gives a portrait of Socrates. This is followed by a conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus that takes place during their walk together on the banks of the Ilisos. Finally, Phédon describes in detail the poisoning and death of Socrates, which he accompanies to the end. …

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