Satie through His Writings

Donald Macleod explores five aspects of Satie. Today, his copious, playful and highly idiosyncratic writings, which present a kaleidoscopic panoply of absurdist wit and humour.

Satie’s writings: there are the texts he set to music; texts which he specifies are “not to be read aloud”; bits of copy he wrote for bizarre adverts in his local newspaper; the publications of his private church; letters to friends – and enemies – some 400 of them; and strangest of all, thousands of beautifully calligraphed “personal advertisements” – little cards, discovered amidst the chaos and squalor of his room in the humdrum Parisian suburb of Arcueil after his death, carefully stored in old cigar-boxes. Many of them depict means of transport: five-masted schooners, streamlined “Transaerial” liners, elaborate gliders “made of steel”, magnificent airships – each describing, as Satie authority Ornella Volta put it, “elements of a looking-glass world”.

Première pensée Rose+Croix
Alexandre Tharaud, piano

Messe des pauvres (Kyrie eleison)
Choeurs René Duclos
Jean Laforge, chorus master
Gaston Litaize, organ
Pierre Dervaux, conductor

Quatre Ogives
Jeroen van Veen, piano

The Dreamy Fish
Aldo Ciccolini, piano

Avant-dernières pensées
1. Idylle, for Claude Debussy
2. Aubade, for Paul Dukas
3. Méditation, for Albert Roussel
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Sonatine bureaucratique
1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Vivache
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Mercure – ‘Poses plastiques’ in 3 tableaux by Picasso
New London Orchestra
Ronald Corp, conductor

Produced by Chris Barstow