Composer Of The Week: Satie

Satie the Onion: his surreal life viewed in reverse. Donald Macleod peels off the layers, starting with his legacy and his controversial Dadaist final works including Relache.

Erik Satie’s existence was a self-consciously surreal one. He reinvented himself throughout his life, rather like a proto-David Bowie, changing his clothing, his friends, his beliefs and his music. Though he claimed not to want to, he influenced countless others, but he had a tendency to dramatically fall out with almost everyone he was close to. This week, marking the composer’s 150th anniversary, Donald Macleod peels off the layers to examine Satie’s life in reverse, beginning with his significant posthumous influence and working back to the early music which is still a household name.

Several contemporary schools of composition draw on Satiean inspiration, not least Minimalism, celebrating Satie since John Cage’s championing of his work in the 1960s. Such celebrity was denied Satie for much of his life, but when it did come in his final years, rather than rest on his laurels he courted controversy, ditching earlier friends including Les Six and embracing extreme Dadaism, epitomised in the remarkably forward-looking Cinema – the filmed entr’acte for the ballet Relache.

Music featured in the programme includes:

Satie: Sonnerie pour réveiller le bon gros Roi des Singes (lequel ne dort toujours que d'un oeil)
Pierre Thibaud (trumpet)
Bernard Jeannoutot (trumpet)

Satie: Gymnopédie No 1
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano)

Satie: Vexations
Alan Marks (piano)

Satie orch Milhaud: Jack in the Box
Jack Lanchbery (conductor)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Satie: Cinéma (Entr'acte from Relache)
Sandra van Veen and Jeroen van Veen (piano)

Satie: Mercure
Pierre Dervaux (conductor)
Orchestre de Paris

Satie: Ludions
Eva Lind (soprano)
Jean Lemaire (piano)

Satie: Seven Monkey Dances from Le Piège de Méduse
Bernard Desgraupes (director)
Ensemble Erwartung

Tuesday: Donald examines the work which earned Satie his own riot – the absurd ballet, Parade.

Wednesday: Today’s programme finds Satie’s playfulness in full flow with works such as Flabby Preludes For A Dog.

Thursday: Donald looks at Satie’s mid-life-crisis, when he went back to school and wrote chorales.

Friday: The final programme of the week reaches the core of mystic spirituality and boozy nightlife – and timeless Gymnopedies.

Presenter/Donald Macleod, Producer/Dominic Jewel for the BBC

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