Satie, Erik / arr. Debussy, Claude

Erik Satie

(geb. Honfleur, 17. Mai 1866 – gest. Arcueil, 1. Juli 1925)

Deux Gymnopédies
arranged for small orchestra by Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)

Preface
Satie was the son of a wealthy French father and an Anglo-Scottish mother. Named Éric Alfred Leslie, he adopted Erik when he was 18. At the Paris Conservertoire he was said to be “untalented” and told that his only musical hope lay in composition. A very short military career followed, during which he deliberately infected himself with bronchitis to secure a discharge, and he settled in Monmartre and began to live the life of a Bohémien, among other young writers, poets and artists frequenting a café called Le Chat Noir. One became a close friend, the Spanish-born J. P. Contamine de Latour, whose poem Les Antiques either inspired or was inspired by (we do not know which) Satie’s Gymnopédies.

Satie wrote his three piano pieces called Gymnopédies in 1888. The first (in D major) was published in August accompanied by a verse of Contamine’s poem:

Oblique et coupant l’ombre un torrent éclatant
Ruisselait en flots d’or sur la dalle polie
Où les atomes d’ambre au feu se miroitant
Mêlaient leur sarabande à la gymnopédie

[Slanting and shadow-piercing a bursting torrent
Streamed in waves of gold on the polished flags
Where the amber atoms shimmering in the fire
Mingled their sarabande with the naked dance]

The third (in A minor) appeared later the same year. The second (in C major) was not published until 1895. All three seem to explore the same musical idea from different viewpoints, with no development of the themes but rather within different harmonic surroundings, as if we are looking at the same Greek urn in different lighting.

Read full preface > HERE