How Erik Satie Invented Fashionable Music: A Visible Clarification

When you hear Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, you nev­er for­get it. Not that pop­u­lar cul­ture would allow you to for­get it: the piece has been, and con­tin­ues to be, rein­ter­pret­ed and sam­pled by musi­cians work­ing in a vari­ety of gen­res from pop to elec­tron­ic to met­al. In ver­sions that sound near what Satie would have intend­ed when he com­posed it in 1888, it’s additionally been fea­tured in depend­much less movies and tele­vi­sion reveals. It’s even heard with some fre­quen­cy in YouTube movies, although within the case of the one from The Music Professional­fes­sor above, it’s not simply the sound­monitor, but in addition the sub­ject. Utilizing an anno­tat­ed rating, it explains simply what makes the piece so endur­ing and influ­en­tial.

Upon “a sim­ple iambic rhythm with two ambigu­ous main seventh chords,” Gymnopédie No. 1 intro­duces a melody that “floats above an aus­tere professional­ces­sion of notes,” then “strikes down the octave from F# to F#.” With its lack of a transparent key, in addition to its lack of devel­op­ment and dra­ma that the orches­tral music of the day would have educated lis­ten­ers to anticipate, the piece was “as shock­ing because the dance of bare Spar­tans it was meant to evoke.”

The melody makes its turns, however nev­er fairly arrives at its appear­ing des­ti­na­tions, going round in cir­cles as a substitute — earlier than, all of a sud­den, swerv­ing into the “minor and dis­so­nant” earlier than finish­ing in “professional­discovered melan­choly.”

Regardless of music in gen­er­al hav­ing lengthy since assim­i­lat­ed the dar­ing qual­i­ties of Gymnopédie No. 1, the orig­i­nal piece nonetheless catch­es our ears — in its sub­tle method — when­ev­er it comes on. So, in anoth­er method, do the much less rec­og­niz­ready and extra exper­i­males­tal Gnossi­ennes with which Satie fol­lowed them up. In the video above, the Music Professional­fes­sor professional­vides a visu­al expla­na­tion of Gnossi­enne No. 1, dur­ing whose per­for­mance “gentle dis­so­nance hangs within the air” whereas “a curi­ous melody floats over gen­tle syn­co­pa­tions within the left hand” over simply two chords. The rating comes with “sur­re­al com­ments”: “Très luisant,” “Du bout de la pen­sée,” “Pos­tulez en vous-même,” “Ques­tionez.” Satie is commonly cred­it­ed with pio­neer­ing what would grow to be ambi­ent music; might these be professional­to-Indirect Strate­gies?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Eric Satie’s Most Well-known Items: “Gymno­pe­die No. 1” and “Gnossi­enne No. 1”

Lis­ten to Nev­er-Earlier than-Heard Works by Erik Satie, Per­fashioned 100 Years After His Dying

The Vel­vet Underground’s John Cale Performs Erik Satie’s Vex­a­tions on I’ve Acquired a Secret (1963)

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Professional­voked a Riot and Impressed the Phrase “Sur­re­al­ism”

Japan­ese Artwork Instal­la­tion Lets Peo­ple Play Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” As They Stroll on Social­ly-Dis­tanced Notes on the Ground

How Erik Satie’s “Fur­ni­ture Music” Was Designed to Be Ignored and Paved the Manner for Ambi­ent Music

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.