The Trailblazer

Donald Macleod explores five aspects of Satie. Today, meet the innovative and influential composer Ravel dubbed “a precursor of genius” and Cage termed simply “indispensable”.

On Satie’s death in July 1925, the Musical Times pronounced that he had written “little of real importance in itself”, yet grudgingly acknowledged that “his influence on modern French music was considerable”. The obit writer was probably taking his cue from Ravel, whose support for Satie, nine years his senior but still, up until that point, languishing in obscurity, had taken concrete form in January 1911, when he put on a concert in Satie’s honour at a fashionable new venue in the eighth arrondissement of Paris. On that occasion, Ravel paid homage to the older composer’s “inventor’s mind par excellence” and praised the manner in which he had opened up paths “to new fields of experiment”. From this point on, Satie ceased to be a kind of musical satnav for other composers; now he was on the map himself.

Trois Gymnopédies (No 1, Lent et douloureux)
Pascal Rogé, piano

Trois Sarabandes (No 2)
Francis Poulenc, piano

uspud – ballet chrétien (3rd act)
Reinbert de Leeuw, piano

Le piège de Méduse
Tzenka Dianova, (prepared) piano

Relâche – ballet instantanéiste
New London Orchestra
Ronald Corp, conductor

Vexations (très lent) – excerpt
Nicolas Horvath, piano

Produced by Chris Barstow