Erik Satie was an inadvertent innovator
The music critic Ian Penman has structured his new book about the great French composer and rascally agent provocateur Erik Satie in three parts, in the manner of classic Satie compositions such as Trois Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes and Trois morceaux en forme de poire. A hundred years after his death, aged 59, in 1925, Satie remains one of the great enigmas of 20th-century composition. A frequent visitor of Parisian cabarets, immersed in the city’s chanson tradition, his work could also be bafflingly conceptual. He was connected to the world of classical composition through his friendships with Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, but remained determinately his own person. His music is regularly held up as a precursor to John Cage and to ambient electronica alike.
