Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (1866 – 1925), who signed
his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer
and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a
British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire,
but was an undistinguished student and obtained no
diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in
café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing
works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies
and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian
sect to which he was...(+)
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (1866 – 1925), who signed
his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer
and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a
British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire,
but was an undistinguished student and obtained no
diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in
café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing
works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies
and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian
sect to which he was briefly attached.
In the view of the Oxford Dictionary of Music, Satie's
importance lay in "directing a new generation of French
composers away from Wagner?influenced impressionism
towards a leaner, more epigrammatic style". Debussy
christened him "the precursor" because of his early
harmonic innovations. Satie summed up his musical
philosophy in 1917: "To have a feeling for harmony is
to have a feeling for tonality… the melody is the
Idea, the outline; as much as it is the form and the
subject matter of a work. The harmony is an
illumination, an exhibition of the object, its
reflection.".
Chapitres tournés en tous sens (Chapters Turned Every
Which Way) is a 1913 piano composition by Erik Satie.
One of his humoristic keyboard suites of the 1910s, it
was published by the firm E. Demets that year. Ricardo
Viñes gave the premiere at the Salle Erard in Paris on
January 14, 1914. Satie announced the title of this
suite as an upcoming project in his April 1913
advertisement in the periodical Le Guide du concert,
although he did not begin sketching the music until
late August. On September 16 he wrote to his protégé
Alexis Roland-Manuel with ironic bluster, "I have just
completed the Chapitres tournés en tous sens. I
consider this a great triumph". As with most of Satie's
piano suites from this time, the Chapitres is a trilogy
of unrelated pieces. The melodic lines are kept simple
through the borrowings from operettas and children's
songs, but backed up by Satie's unique and often
experimental harmonic sense.
"Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois"
(Sketches and Agaceries of a Big Wooden Man) is a
collection of three piano pieces by Erik Satie,composed
in 1913. The score was published the same year by
Eugène Demets and premiered by the pianist Ricardo
Viñes at the Salle Pleyel on March 28, 1914, during a
concert of the National Music Society. Both admirers of
Chabrier, Satie and Ravel paid homage to him in a
roundabout way, in 1913. Vladimir Jankélévitch
recommends reading carefully "the malice-free parody
that Ravel writes in the style of Emmanuel Chabrier".
Satie, who specializes in "parodies and caricatures of
an author or a work", takes up España in the same
spirit, in these Sketches and Agaceries of a Big Wooden
Man.
The first piece in the collection, "Tyrolienne turque"
(Turkish Tyrolienne), presents twisted echoes of
Mozart's "Favorite Waltz" and his Turkish March, while
the second piece, Dance Meager, mixes some singing
motifs (in the manner of the Airs to Frighten Cold
Pieces ) to small ostinatos. After these two pieces
with a rather slow tempo, comes the last piece with a
waltz rhythm, Españaña, which makes fun of (even in
its title, mistreating España) the popular Spanish
rhythms ofChabrier, Bizet or Ravel. Thus, "a quote from
Chabrier’s España is carried from the "Puerta
Maillot" to the "Rue de Madrid", passing through the
"Plaza Clichy"; it is at the address of the
Conservatory note, of course, that it is harmonized
with the most platitude".
Source: Wikipedia
(https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquis_et_Agaceries_d%2
7un_gros_bonhomme_en_bois).
Although originally composed for Solo Piano, I created
this Interpretation of "Tyrolienne turque" (Turkish
Tyrolean) from "Croquis & Agaceries D'un Gros Bonhomme
En Bois" (Sketch & Teasing Of A Big Wooden Man) for
Flute and Piano.
PARTITION