emily’s Reviews > Erik Satie Three Piece Suite > Status Update

‘Orchestral Debussy can sometimes be—bit much—purple passages where the agreeably lush becomes almost sickly. When I do love him it mostly involves the counterpoint of strict economy—beckoning swoon—Becoming nearly as besotted w/ Ravel as I am w/ Satie—Gaspard de la Nuit: The Treasurer of the Night. What might his duties be—this treasurer of the night? Is he like Poseidon—who did the endless accountancy of the seas?’

‘—fundamentally industrial—designed to satisfy “utility” requirements—Furniture Music creates vibrations—has no other purpose—A man who has not heard it does not know happiness—Listen without feeling awkward—It would be easy to dismiss all this as—another Satie blague. But it's yet another radical break w/ tradition—music that doesn't rely on dramatic development/expressive gestures—Pure sound—tone—spatial awareness’

‘If clothes can speak—Satie's new ensemble says—I am no bohemian—nor some wild Romantic—but a worker like anyone else. This matter of image may not seem so notable today—but is another prescient departure, ahead of its time. (Think René Magritte—Kraftwerk) Like his scores—it betrays a keen interest in—and a rapt understanding of—how things look—This is art flirting with anonymity, on the way towards pure abstraction’

‘Gymnopédie 1—probably Satie's best-known—the music's ineluctable strangeness—like a painting by Velázquez—everything looks correct but the perspective seems somehow subtly awry. You're pulled in without quite knowing why—there is no better description than—Constant Lambert: “Melodically speaking we find the juxtaposition of short lyrical phrases of great tenderness with ostinatos of extreme—deliberate bareness—'