Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Letters

Mozart's letters: 10 wonderful, emotional and bizarre quotes

Mozart was a prolific letter-writer, and these quotes show us some startling aspects to the composer's personality: scatological, funny, romantic and poignant - take a look through Mozart's private letters.

Carl Maria von Weber : Der Freischutz - Overture

Mind-blowing: this is what really happens when you play a string instrument

By Daniel Ross, Classic FM London

This incredible DIY footage shows just what your guitar or violin strings look like when you play them.

Guitar strings wobble very strangely

So, you're playing the guitar, merrily unaware that you're creating some seriously weird shapes with the strings you're plucking. Like this:

*brain explodes*

Take a look at what this guy shows us, with only his iPhone and an acoustic guitar:

You know what? It works for violins too!

It's not just the finger-picking likes of casual guitarists that can enjoy these sonic lovelies - the string section can have exactly the same amount of fun. Look!

Now take a tour of this string quartet - you can see how lower strings and plucking produce different oscillations to higher bowed notes. 

The good thing about these videos is that they were made on perfectly normal cameras that anyone can use, even if it's just your iPhone. 

So why not get your battered acoustic out of the cupboard and pop your phone inside?

Hermann Reutter - His Music and His Life

Hermann Reutter

Born: June 17th, 1900

Died: January 1st, 1985

Country of origin: Germany

Hermann Reutter was born in Stuttgart on 17 June 1900. In 1920 he moved to Munich. After three years of singing lessons with Emma Rückbeil-Hiller (Stuttgart) and Karl Erler (München) he studied at the Munich Academy of Musical Arts composition with Walter Courvoisier and piano with Franz Dorfmüller, and organ with Ludwig Mayer. 

Since 1923 he participated in the music festival of Donaueschingen and intensified his contact with the Donaueschingen circle, in particular with Paul Hindemith. Starting with 1926 he was a frequent composer in association with the annual music festival of the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein where many of his works were world premiered. He began intensive concert activities as pianist and accompanist in lieder in 1929, working together with major conductors and soloists of his period. 

In 1932 he succeeded Ewald Straesser as principal teacher of composition at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. He was appointed director of the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt on the Main four years later. In 1945 was the end of this work. He returned to Stuttgart and resumed concert activities in 1950. Two years later he was appointed professor of composition and lied interpretation at the Stuttgart Hochschule fuer Musik. In 1955 he became full member of the Berlin Akademie der Kuenste and of the Bayerische Akademie der Schoenen Kuenste, Munich. Since 1956 he was juror, later chairman, of the jury in the category Singing at the ARD competition. 

He succeeded Hermann Erpf as director of the Stuttgart Hochschule fuer Musik. Since 1960 he often stayed in the USA for interpretation courses at various universities. From 1966-1974 he led the master class of lied interpretation at the Munich Musikhochschule. In 1968 he founded the Hugo Wolf Society Stuttgart, being its president until his death.

For his achievement as a composer and a teacher he was awarded (among others) the Ludwig-Spohr-Award of the City of Brunswig (1953), the Grand Cross for Distinguished Service of the Federal Republic of Germany (1959 and with Star in 1975), a Honorary doctorate of the Music and Arts Institute San Francisco and the Hugo Wolf Medal of the International Hugo Wolf Society, Vienna (both in 1976). 

Hermann Reutter died in Heidenheim on 1 January 1985.

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Johann Friedrich Reichardt - Miltons Morgengesang (1808)

Johann Friedrich Reichardt - His Music and His Life

Reichardt, Johann Friedrich (born in Königsberg, 1752; died Giebichenstein, 1814). German composer, conductor, and writer. Court composer and conductor to Frederick the Great and Frederick II, 1775–94. Instituted many reforms. Visited London and Paris 1785 and again some years later. Dismissed from court post for sympathy with French Revolution. Conductor Kassel Opera (Germany) 1808. Wrote at least 12 operas, Singspiele, setting of Milton's Morning Hymn, over 1,500 songs (incl. setting of Erlkönig, highly praised by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy), and much chamber music. Author of several books on compostions.

Peter Illjitsch Tschaikovsky - Valse Sentimentale

PABLO de SARASATE Zigeunerweisen Op.20

Nine Film Scores We Can't Believe Are Not in the Hall of Fame

Superman, John Williams

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? etc. etc. Superman  (1978) is surely one of John Williams’s classic movie scores. His music for Star Wars,Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, E.T. and Harry Potter have all made it into the top 300. But for reasons which are frankly a mystery to us, Superman is nowhere to be seen. 

The Magnificent Seven, Elmer Bernstein

Elmer Bernstein’s 1960 score for the Western classic The Magnificent Seven is a Classic FM favourite, but glance at last year’s Hall of Fame and the iconic music for John Sturges’s film is nowhere to be found. Let’s fix that.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, John Williams

The score for everyone’s favourite (and completely daft) American adventure film is right up there with the best movie music ever written –and yet it’s missing from the Classic FM Hall of Fame. What gives? 

Gone with the Wind, Max Steiner

This iconic 1939 score is notably absent from the Hall of Fame. Max Steiner’s music provides the sweeping musical backdrop to the fiery romance between Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Frankly, my dears, we think it should be in the top 300 this year.

Lawrence of Arabia, Maurice Jarre

Peter O’Toole and his amazing blue eyes star in this epic re-telling of the life of T.E. Lawrence. Maurice Jarre’s atmospheric music includes not one but two overtures. If that doesn’t merit an entry in the Hall of Fame, we don’t know what does.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Ennio Morricone

Arguably, the most iconic score for a Western ever written, the music for this Clint Eastwood classic is unforgettable (sorry in advance for the earworm…). Surely that iconic whistle warrants a Hall of Fame vote?

Cinema Paradiso, Ennio Morricone

Can you believe the only Morricone score in last year’s Hall of Fame was The Mission? No. Neither can we. What about the completely charming Cinema Paradiso? If the film and the delightful score don't make you want to a) go to Sicily and/or b) become a projectionist, we’ll eat our standard-issue movie-director cap.

The Godfather, Nino Rota

But the most famous cinematic jaunt to Sicily is surely the trip in The Godfather . And Nino Rota’s score for Francis Ford Coppola’s American crime classic is surely part of the reason for its fame. Inhale the Sicilian atmosphere captured in Rota’s famous Love Theme and tell us you don’t want to immediately go and vote for this soundtrack.

The Piano, Michael Nyman

The 1993 film about a mute pianist and her daughter is as haunting a movie as you could wish for. Set on the coast of New Zealand, Jane Campion’s film is scored beautifully by Michael Nyman – and it’s a bit of a mystery to us why this wonderful score isn’t among the top 300 at the moment.

(C) 2015 by CLASSIC FM London

Arnold Schoenberg - His Music and His Life

Arnold Schoenberg (September 13, 1874 - July 13, 1951) was one of the founders of musical Modernism, an incredibly influential figure from the early twentieth century to at least twenty-five years after his death – with Stravinsky, one of the two most influential composers of his time. Even those fundamentally antithetical to atonality were moved to see musical aesthetics very much as he did. As a composer, Schoenberg largely taught himself, sometimes relying on the advice of his friend, the composer Alexander von Zemlinksy. Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde became Schoenberg's first wife. The marriage came close to foundering when Mathilde left Schoenberg for an artist. She returned, but the marriage never recovered. Nevertheless, when she died in 1923, Schoenberg was devastated. Still, he remarried quickly, this time choosing the sister of the violinist Rudolf Kolisch, Gertrud. It was a love match.

From the early twentieth century, Schoenberg was considered a leading light of the younger generation, attracting the attention of no less than Gustav Mahler. He kept up a steady stream of composition, extending the language of the day as well as striking out in new directions. However, in 1912, he underwent an artistic crisis and for close to a decade completed no major new piece. For most of these years, he made very little money, mainly from private teaching, although he had achieved international fame. During World War I, he was rejected from military service for health reasons. However, his students were called up, and he had to stop teaching for a time.

The Twenties saw a change in his fortunes. He began to compose again, this time in a new compositional language he had worked out, which he called "the method of composing with twelve tones" – what today is known as dodecaphonic serialism. He founded the Union for Private Performance, a subscription organization dedicated to new music and intended only for interested parties, rather than for the general public. Orchestral works were given in chamber arrangements, and the composers played included Claude Debussy, Mahler, and even Charles Ives. He received conducting engagements in major European music centers, as well as several honors in Germany and in Austria. He was put in charge of the composition master class at the Berlin Academy of Art and elected (supported by Kurt Weill) to the Prussian Academy.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Schoenberg left Germany for France and, later, the United States, where he eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in 1934. Schoenberg, of Jewish family, had converted to Protestantism in 1898, but he never was formally religious. Nevertheless, he saw the swastika on the wall and got out – surprising, when one considers his unworldliness in practical matters. He also formally converted back to Judaism, mostly as a protest against anti-Semitism. He became a professor at UCLA and an influential teacher in the country. For composers, southern California became a major musical center, mainly because Schoenberg taught there. However, the United States proved hard ground for his music. His health, never robust, deteriorated sharply. Nevertheless, he felt so out of place that as late as the Forties, he still considered leaving for somewhere else. Health problems forced him to resign his academic appointment, and he and his family lived on his small pension. To make ends meet, he resumed giving private lessons. The circumstances of earning a living as well as extremely high artistic ambition kept his output small – only fifty opus numbers. He died in 1951.

Schoenberg began plying the post-Wagnerian super-chromaticism typical of Vienna in the mid-to-late 1890s. The music is tonal, but highly chromatic. Major works include the String Quartet #1 (1904), the Chamber Symphony #1 (1906), the lush choral Friede auf Erden (1907), the string sextet Verklärte Nacht (1899; probably his most popular piece), and the massive, Mahlerian Gurre-Lieder (1900-1911). Toward the end of the decade, he began to move toward a free atonality – that is, music with no key center, usually exhibiting an Expressionist aesthetic. The String Quartet #2 (1908) is literally a transitional work – the early movements in the older style, the final movements in the new. Other highpoints from this time include the song cycleDas Buch der hängenden Gärten (1909), the mini-operas Erwartung (1909) and Die glückliche Hand (1910-1913), 5 Orchestral Pieces (1909), and Pierrot lunaire (1912). In many of these works, Schoenberg not only tests and throws away tonality, but defines modern orchestration, especially in the 5 Orchestral Pieces and in Pierrot lunaire.

In the Twenties, Schoenberg produces scores in his dodecaphonic serial method. About this, many writers, pro and con, have misinformed their readers and missed the point of Schoenberg's achievement. Fundamentally, it's a very simple idea. A composer arranges the twelve notes of the chromatic scale in an order of his choosing. This arrangement is called the row, or series (hence, "serial"). Everything that happens in a classically-dodecaphonic score depends on this order, although certain manipulations are allowed: you can transpose the row to begin on another note but keep the intervals, play it backwards, play it upside-down, and play it backwards and upside-down. You can even break the row up into two, three, or four parts and manipulate each of the parts. It sounds easy to the point of simple-minded, but its very conceptual simplicity made it an extremely flexible and powerful compositional tool. It makes no sense to consider all twelve-tone music as monolithic, any more than it makes sense to treat all traditionally tonal music as the same. Good composers have their own personalities and their own sounds. It is no more difficult to distinguish Schoenberg from Berg than to pick out Haydn from Mozart. It comes down to an experienced ear. Serial Stravinsky doesn't differ all that much from tonal Stravinsky. Schoenberg's procedures don't lead all by themselves to the New Jerusalem, and to Schoenberg's credit, he never claimed that they did. Composers still need the poetry and vision they always needed. According to Schoenberg himself: "Of course, a soul you have to have." His own masterpieces of this period include the Wind Quintet (1924), 3 Satires (1925), Variations for Orchestra (1926), the Third and Fourth String Quartets (1927, 1934), the grand opera Moses und Aron (1932), and the Violin Concerto (1936). In the late Thirties, Schoenberg began to seek a stronger rapprochement with the German classical tradition, writing pieces that made analogies to sonata form, for example, as in the Piano Concerto of 1942, the String Trio (1946), and the choral Dreimal tausend Jahre and De Profundis (1949, 1950).

One should also note that Schoenberg sprinkled "wrong pieces" throughout these phases. For example, he never gave up writing tonal music even after he came up with his serial technique. He was blest with a powerful talent for harmony – indeed, one of the great ears of Western music. Such scores include the tender Weihnachtsmusik (1921), 3 Folksongs (1930), the cello and string quartet concerti (both from 1933), the magnificent Suite in G (1934), the Chamber Symphony #2 (1916; 1939), and the Theme and Variations for Band (1943).

Why did Schoenberg feel compelled to pursue thorny paths? He believed that the harmonic freedom of the late Nineteenth Century had led to a crisis in compositional form. The traditional classical forms – sonata, rondo, scherzo and trio, and so on – depended on the establishment of a key center and a modulation or change to another key center in order to articulate structural components. If you had an A-B-A form, for example, changes of key would mark the beginning of the B section and the return of the A. However, music after Wagner tended to change key far more often than the music before. Indeed, keys morphed so quickly, that it was hard to say whether a key had even been established. No established key meant that structural boundaries blurred, and the listener got lost in an aural swamp. Schoenberg's solution was to find principles of organization other than tonality. By removing tonality, Schoenberg also emphasized the independence of each musical line and the importance of a set of intervals, rather than what most listeners thought of as themes. It was a radically new way of perceiving music, while remaining curiously faithful to fundamental principles of the classical tradition. Indeed, one can view Schoenberg's compositional method as remarkably similar to Beethoven's. One also grasps an emotional complexity – from the same intellectual milieu as Freud, Benjamin, Schiele, and Kokoschka, especially in works like Moses und Aron, the Piano Concerto, and the gripping A Survivor from Warsaw (1947).

I must admit, however, that many listeners don't see things in this way. Schoenberg's music has the same appeal to the general public as broccoli to a six-year-old. On the other hand, one must also admit that most people haven't heard anywhere near all of Schoenberg's catalogue and very often a work not more than once. Furthermore, until recently, good performances have been few and far between. It took even professionals decades to grasp this music. Pioneering recordings, like those of Robert Craft, notable mainly for the fact that they exist at all, have been superseded by those of a younger generation. Schoenberg is gradually becoming less a twelve-tone composer and more a great one. ~ Steve Schwartz

Stefan Jackiw plays Beethoven's Romance in F

Jean-Philippine Rameau - His Music and His Life

A legendary composer who transformed the face of French opera, Jean-Philippe Rameau was ahead of his time, his theories and works inspiring such succeeding operatic innovators as Gluck and Wagner.

Who was he? The most distinguished French composer of the late baroque.

Why is he important? He revolutionised French opera and was a leading theorist

What are his most famous works? Hippolyte Et Aricie; Castor Et Pollux; Les Indes Galantes; La Poule; Les Cyclopes; La Triumphante; Gavotte Variée


Rameau was one of the most profoundly gifted of all French composers. At a time when the finest musician in Spain was an Italian (Domenico Scarlatti) and England’s most celebrated composer was German (Handel), Rameau stemmed the tide of popular Italian operatic imports with a series of bracing theatrical masterpieces.

He shunned trends towards showpiece arias sung by the latest stars charging exorbitant fees and put the focus firmly back on dramatic tension and pacing.

“I conceal art with art,” was his maxim, and his desire to unite all the arts in one magnum musical opus led to the operatic reforms of Gluck and, most notably, Wagner.

Considering Rameau’s importance, it is surprising how little we know with any certainty about his personal life. He was extremely tall and thin: “more like a ghost than a man” attested one contemporary, another that “he had a sharp chin, no stomach and flutes for legs” and that he “resembled a long organ pipe with the blower away”.

Those who knew him in childhood remembered a lively, outgoing personality. Yet as time went by, while his music retained a boyish sparkle and vigour, he personally became more withdrawn and introspective as he dedicated his energies exclusively to composing and writing learned treatises.

As one close friend put it: “His heart and soul were in the harpsichord; once he had shut its lid, there was no one home.”

Rameau was notoriously careful with money. Having amassed a small fortune, by the time of his death he owned just a few clothes, a single pair of worn-out shoes and a harpsichord that was seriously in need of repair. Yet he supported his family generously – he set up a large dowry for his daughter when she took holy orders – and helped a number of promising musicians, most notably Claude-Bénigne Balbastre.

Above all his belief in the power of music – what he described as “the language of the heart” – remained absolute, and woe betide anyone who disagreed with him. He made personal enemies of a number of influential people whose views he opposed and avoided intimacy at all costs – yet he seemed quite content in his own skin.

“The emptiness he found in society made him avoid it,” observed the artist Jacques-Fabien Dagoty.

Rameau belongs to that select group of composers – alongside Bruckner and Franck – who produced little of any real significance before they were 40 years of age. Although he could play the harpsichord before he could read or write and was actively encouraged by his father (along with 10 other siblings!), Jean-Philippe was enrolled in a Jesuit school with the ultimate aim of his becoming a lawyer.

However, his heart was never really in it and eventually he was asked to leave. Having finally received his parents’ blessing to make music his career, he made his way to Milan with a view to making up for lost time.

Rameau stayed in Italy just a few months before returning to France and joining a troupe of wandering players as a violinist. His wanderlust continued as he accepted a series of organist posts in fairly quick succession around Paris and the provinces, including five months in Avignon, four years apiece in Clermont and Dijon, and two years in Lyons.

All the while he was refining his composing technique and in 1706 he produced his Premier livre de pièces de clavecin, the first of his works to roll off the printing presses.

However, it was only after Rameau finally settled in Paris in 1722 that his career took off in earnest. That same year he published his Traité De L’harmonie, which immediately won him the respect and admiration of his peers.

Meanwhile, his books of harpsichord pieces, with such characterful titles as La Villageoise, La Joyeuse, Les Cyclopes and La Triumphante, had become all the rage. His newfound happiness was compounded when in 1726 he married a gifted pupil of his, Marie-Louise Mangot, who bore him four children.

Not all was plain sailing. Rameau tried repeatedly to gain an organist’s post in the French capital, but finally threw in the towel in 1727 when he lost out to Louis-Claude Daquin – composer of that delightful keyboard charmer Le Coucou – for a job at St Paul.

As if to rub salt in the wound, his trailblazing second treatise Nouveau Système De Musique Théorique (1726) was witheringly dismissed by traditionalists, the first of a series of musical controversies that would haunt the remainder of Rameau’s career.

Rameau was already 50 when he produced his first opera, Hippolyte Et Aricie, in 1733. Its searing dramatic urgency and unprecedented attention to orchestral detail and colouristic effects caused a sensation.

Immediately lines were drawn between the staunch supporters of the well-established Lully tradition, with its unmistakably French poise and reserve, and those who preferred the red-blooded passion and intensity of Rameau – or as the Lullyists put it, his “grotesque, discordant music” replete with “noisy instrumentation”.

Nowadays it is difficult to hear quite what all the fuss was about, but at the time it was akin to the storms of protest that greeted another infamous Paris premiere – that of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring. As time went by, so the initial furore gradually died down.

Between 1735 and 1753 Rameau served as the Maître de musique to the wealthy financier La Pouplinière. This was something of a dream appointment, for it not only gave him the opportunity to mix with the cream of Paris’s writers, artists, musicians and even the infamous libertine Giovanni Casanova (!) at La Pouplinière’s various residences, but it also brought him into direct contact with the French court.

He became Compositeur de la musique de la chambre du roy in 1745, the same year he was invited to compose a comédie-ballet in collaboration with the great writer-philosopher Voltaire – La Princesse De Navarre.

The same team went on to produce Les Surprises De L’amour for the Théâtre des Petits-Cabinets of Mme de Pompadour in 1748. Also that year, working alongside his favourite librettist Louis de Cahusac, he scored a hit with Zaïs, whose overture features a heart-stopping depiction of the world’s creation, complete with atmospheric rustlings, swirling explosions and an ominous tolling drum.

With his position at court now unassailable and his reputation soaring, Rameau was at the very height of his career when on April 22, 1749 he premiered his three-act pastorale-heroïque Naïs.

Another Cahusac collaboration, it was composed in celebration of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle signed the previous year. This highly evocative story of a nymph’s love for a stranger (Neptune in disguise), luxuriates in the simple pleasures of life and features an enormous cast of giants, gods, goddesses, zephyrs, sea-divinities, nymphs and shepherds.

This groundbreaking work inspired a wave of nostalgia for the Arcadian ideal amongst the Parisian elite, which rapidly spread to all the arts.

Just as it seemed as though nothing could go wrong, Rameau unwittingly found himself embroiled in fresh controversy. In 1752, a visiting opera troupe staged a performance of Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona in Paris that hit the musical scene like a thunderbolt.

Now it was Rameau’s turn to be declared old-fashioned by the likes of Rousseau and Diderot, although he retained some powerful allies including the loyal Voltaire – who passionately declared “Rameau has made of music a new art” – and the King himself.

With 12 years remaining to him and with his creative powers in decline, Rameau deeply regretted that he had not spent more time composing earlier in his career rather than dedicating himself to theoretical tracts – much to his own amazement he had composed only half-a-dozen solo keyboard pieces since 1728.

The last of his works to be performed appears to have been Les Paladins, a delightful comédie-ballet premiered in February 1760.

Despite his deteriorating health, Rameau remained active almost to the end. He secured for his eldest son, Claude-François, a highly paid sinecure as valet de chambre to the King and was ennobled just four months before his death in Paris from “a fever” on September 12, 1764.

He was buried at St Eustache, Ile de France, and although a bronze bust and red marble tombstone were erected in his memory there by the Société de la Compositeurs de Musique in 1883, the exact site of his burial remains a mystery.

Dmitri Shostakovich - The second waltz / Dimitri Schostakowitsch - Der Zweite Walzer

Eric Satie - His Music and His Life

Erik Satie — an eccentric, an esteemed music composer and a performing pianist of extremely anti-establishment nature is hailed as a genius in contemporary classical music. Versatile as he was, Satie composed theatre and ballet music and performed for café and cabaret audiences. Often criticized by critics for being dull, his music compositions were original, humorous, weird, and minimalistic. Termed as furniture music, his works are said to be the reflection of everyday life. However, it was only after his death that his achievements were acknowledged and he was hailed a genius. Simple in structure and marked by an innovative and characteristic wit, his works were explicitly anti-romantic and anti-impressionistic. His works were also a kind of revolt against the works of Romantic composers such as Richard Wagner, whose works were jazzier than his. He left a scarce work behind as most of his works were composed for piano. However, his revolutionary usage of bitonal and polytonal notes became a trademark of the twentieth century music.

Erik Satie’s Childhood and Early Life

Satie was born on 17 May 1866 in London to Scottish parents Alfred Satie and Jane Leslie. Satie was born in Honfleur in Normandy, the home that is open to public now. When Satie was just four years old, his family relocated to Paris, where his father was offered the job of a translator. After his mother passed away in 1872, he and his younger brother Conrad was send to Honfleur to live with his grandparents. It was from here that he received his first lessons in music from a local organist. When his grand mother passed away in 1878, he and his brother were reunited with their father in Paris. His father remarried a piano teacher after a short period. The year 1880’s witnessed Satie publishing salon compositions by his stepmother and by himself.

 

In 1879, Satie joined Paris Conservatoire where his tutors branded him as incompetent and useless. Georges Mathias, who was his piano professor, labeled his piano technique as ‘insignificant, ‘laborious’ and ‘worthless’. Emile Descombes, another piano teacher at the Conservatoire, tagged him as the most indolent student. After he was sent back home for two and a half years, he rejoined the Conservatoire at the end of 1885, but failed to create a positive impression on his teachers. As a result, he decided to quit music and take up a military career a. However, his military career was short lived as he was infected with bronchitis and was discharged of military duties within a few months.

 

Career

In 1887, Satie left home for Montmartre. During this time, he also got his first compositions published by his father. He also published his “Gymnopedies”, which was followed by publishing compositions in the same vein. In this period, he befriended Claude Debussy. By 1891, he became the composer and chapel master of Rosicrucian Order, of which the leader was Sar Josephin Peladan. Here, he produced many compositions.

 

The middle of 1892 witnessed him composing the first pieces in a compositional system of his making, publishing his first hoax and giving incidental music to a chivalric esoteric play. In 1893, he met Maurice Ravel with Satie’s style emerging in the first composition of the youngster. One of his compositions during that time called ‘vexations’ remained undisclosed until his death. By the time the year ended, he had founded ‘The Metropolitan Church of the Leading Christ’. Being its only member, he composed ‘Grande Messe’ and penned numerous pamphlets, letters and articles, which showed his self-assuredness in religious and artistic matters.

 

By the middle of 1896, he was forced to move to a much smaller lodging as he was deprived of all financial means. He moved to a place called Rue Cortot and to Arcueil in 1897, a suburb that is five kilometers from the central part of Paris. During this time, he restored the lost relationship with his brother, Conrad for the sake of practical and financial matters. He also disclosed some of his inner emotions and feelings and those letters validated the religious ideas, which Satie had set aside.

 

From the year 1899, he started performing as a cabaret pianist, finding his feet in over hundred compositions of well-liked music for piano and adding some of his contributions. Most of them became immensely popular. However, in the later phases, Satie rejected all these cabaret music as contemptible and against his nature as it was composed just for the time being, especially for income.

 

In October 1905, Satie joined an Organisation in Paris to study classical counterpoint while continuing the cabaret work. The students and professors there were as dumbfounded when they heard of his intentions to return to the classrooms. Satie attended the classes as a respected pupil in Schola for almost five years, receiving the diploma in 1908. A few of his classroom counterpoint exercises were published posthumously.

 

Most of his publications validate that Satie did not reject Romanticism, but it’s certain aspects. Through this career, he totally rejected the concept of musical development. According to him, a composer must not take more time from the public than it is strictly essential. Satie also avoided melodrama strictly in his music. He had also written works, which are a parody of that genre.

 

Meanwhile, Satie became a member of radical socialist party, started associating with the Arcueil community, and developed some interesting hobbies such as maintaining a collection of imaginary buildings, most of which were described as made if metal. Occasionally, he would make anonymous announcements in journals offering some of these buildings for rent or for sale.

 

Height Of Success

In 1912, his miniatures for piano became quite popular, which he wrote and published in the following years. He also had a habit of maintaining scores for the compositions with all kinds of written remarks.

 

However, the success in Satie’s life was not due to the popularity of his piano pieces, but due to Ravel, who inspired the characteristics of Satie’s remaining years. In 1910, a group of young musicians who were based around Ravel stated their preference for the works of Satie, reaffirming the idea that Satie is a forerunner of Debussy. In the initial phases, Satie was pleased about the public attention that his works received. However, when he realized that his recent works were being overlooked, he sought the help of other artists with better ideas. Thus, he started his association with Roland-Manuel, Georges Auric and Jean Cocteau. Along with Roland-Manuel, he started to publicize his thoughts with more irony than he had done before. In 1915, he met Jean Cocteau with whom he started working on the production of Shakespeare’s “A midsummer Night’s Dream”. In 1916, he and Cocteau worked jointly on a ballet “Parade”, which had its premiere in 1917. The costumes of the ballet were done by Pablo Picasso and choreographed by Leonide Massine. Through Picasso, he became quite acquainted with other cubists such as Georges Braque.

 

Satie formed a group along with Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, and Germaine Tailleferre after writing “Parade”. However, in September 1918, he withdrew from the group without any formal explanation. In 1919, Satie became associated with Tristan Tzara, who was the initiator of Dada Movement and met artists like Francis Picabia and Andre Derain. In Zurich, Dadaists made Satie the honorary member of their organisation. He also contributed to the movement through works such as ‘The Gift’ in 1921. In 1924, his second ballet, which was staged by Picabia, led to an uproar in Paris. However, the work that reflected his true spiritual legacy was ‘Socrate’ in 1919.

 

Satie also tried to evade the influence of composers like Wagner and literally led a revolt against them in the early phases of the 20th century. Dryness was the characteristic of his works, which he tried to escape through writing pieces with silly titles such as ‘Limp Preludes for a Dog’.After he was accused of writing music without any form, Satie composed ‘Trois morceaux en forme de poire’ ("Three Pieces in the Pear Form").He was also the godfather of a group named ‘Les Six’, which consisted of loosely knit band of composers working under Cocteau to get rid of the heavy Germanic and the impressionistic influences on current music.This group intended to emphasize straightforwardness, briefness and a commitment to the themes of modern music.

 

Personal Life

Satie and Suzanne Valadon had a long courtship. Though they did not marry, they started living in adjacent rooms. However, she moved away ending a six month relationship, leaving Satie heartbroken. Suzanne was the only women with whom Satie had an intense relationship.

 

Death

Satie passed away on 1 July 1925, due to liver cirrhosis in Paris in France, which was mainly because of excessive drinking.

 

Erik Satie Gymnopédie nº 3