satie

Erik Satie (May 17, 1866 – July 1, 1925) was a French composer and pianist whose work helped shape modern music in the early 20th century. He is noted for a distinctive, often ironic style and a preference for clarity, repetition, and atmosphere over virtuosity or complex form.

His piano works include the Gymnopédies (published 1888–1895) and the Gnossiennes (begun in the 1890s), which are characterized by spare textures, modal harmonies, and an emerging sense of stillness. He also wrote Vexations (1893), a short, highly repetitive piece famous for its proposed long performance. Beyond solo piano, Satie contributed music for theatre and ballet, most famously Parade (1917), a collaboration with Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and Relâche (1924), a multimedia production with cinema.

Between 1910 and 1920, Satie helped develop early modernist ideas, including musique d’ameublement or furniture music, conceived as background music for daily life rather than to be performed actively. He cultivated relationships with artists and writers such as Cocteau and Apollinaire and influenced later avant-garde and minimalist composers, including John Cage and subsequent generations within experimental music.

Born in Honfleur, Satie spent much of his career in Paris, where he lived a frugal, independent life and published many pieces that often mocked traditional musical forms. He died in Paris in 1925, leaving a legacy that reoriented attitudes toward melody, rhythm, and musical purpose.