Satie Erik - Erik Satie: Music, Art and Literature

ERIK SATIE: MUSIC, ART AND LITERATURE

Je me ddie cette uvre. E.S.
[I dedicate this work to myself. E.S.]

Erik Satie: dedication of Prlude de la Porte hroque du ciel (1894)

Edited by

CAROLINE POTTER

Kingston University, UK

ASHGATE

Caroline Potter 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Caroline Potter has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Erik Satie : music, art and literature. (Music and literature)

1. Satie, Erik, 18661925 Criticism and interpretation. 2. Satie, Erik, 18661925 Knowledge Art. 3. Satie, Erik, 18661925 Knowledge Literature. 4. Satie, Erik, 18661925 Friends and associates. 5. Music and literature France History 19th century. 6. Art and music France History 19th century. 7. Music and literature France History 20th century. 8. Art and music France History 20th century.

I. Series II. Potter, Caroline.

780.9'2-dc23

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Erik Satie : music, art and literature / edited by Caroline Potter.

pages cm. (Music and literature)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-3421-4 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4094-3422-1 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-4724-0277-6 (epub) 1. Satie, Erik, 18661925 Criticism and interpretation. I. Potter, Caroline, editor.

ML410.S196E72 2013

780.92dc23

2012049940

ISBN 9781409434214 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409434221 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781472402776 (ebk-ePUB)

Robert Orledge

Ann-Marie Hanlon

Grace Wai Kwan Gates

Caroline Potter

Simon Shaw-Miller

Helen Julia Minors

Christine Reynolds

Pietro Dossena

Matthew Mendez

Robert Orledge

Pietro Dossena is a musicologist, composer and pianist. He is the author of an article on Saties Socrate published in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association in 2008 and completed his PhD, focusing on sketch studies of the music of Erik Satie, at the University of Padua in 2010. As a composer, he studied at the Milan Conservatory and has been awarded prizes in various national and international competitions. He has also studied at the University of Paris III and the University of California, Santa Barbara. A passionate film lover, he has written and performed the soundtracks of various short movies and documentaries, and also makes short films of his own.

Grace Wai Kwan Gates is a PhD candidate at Kingston University, focusing on piano performance issues in the music of Erik Satie. A pianist and former part-time lecturer on the joint Kingston/SPACE degree in Hong Kong, she is a graduate of Kingston and Surrey Universities.

Ann-Marie Hanlon has completed a PhD thesis on Erik Satie and The New Canon: Criticism, Reception and Analysis. She graduated with an MA in Music in 2006 (Newcastle University) and a BMus (First Class Honours) in 2004 (University College Cork). She has lectured undergraduate classes on music history at Trinity College Dublin and Newcastle University. In 2009 two of her works on Satie were published: an article on humour and cubist aesthetics in the music of Erik Satie in The Musicology Review (Dublin) and a foreword to a study score edition of Trois petites pices montes (Munich: Musikproduktion). She is a recipient of a three-year Travelling Studentship from the National University of Ireland.

Matthew Mendez is an independent scholar specialising in the study of contemporary music. A graduate of Harvard University, where he earned a Bachelors degree in music, he also holds Masters degrees from the University of Edinburgh and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. He is active as a composer, having studied with Julian Anderson and Brian Ferneyhough.

Helen Julia Minors is Senior Lecturer in Music at Kingston University. She completed her PhD on Paul Dukas at Lancaster University and is a musicologist with interests in music at the turn of the twentieth century, especially music theatre, music and the other arts, music and dance, and criticism in France. She has published book chapters in Bewegungen zwischen Hren und Sehen, edited by Stephanie Schroedter (2012) and La musique franaise: esthtique et identit dans le processus de transformation 18921992, edited by Pascal Terrien (2012).

Robert Orledge is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool and is one of the worlds leading experts on Satie. Author of Satie the Composer (1990) and of numerous articles on Satie, and editor of Satie Remembered (1995), he has also completed and published several unfinished works by the composer.

Caroline Potter is Reader in Music at Kingston University, London. An established specialist in French music since Debussy, she has published books on Henri Dutilleux and the Boulanger sisters and is co-editor, with Richard Langham Smith, of French Music since Berlioz (2006). In April 2010 she convened a conference Erik Satie: His Music, the Visual Arts, His Legacy hosted by Gresham College.

Christine Reynolds studied French and Spanish at Kings College, University of London, then taught for many years. As a mature student she took a degree in music at the University of Liverpool, also studying History of Art for two years. She subsequently ran the north-west branch of a national music charity while working with Professor Robert Orledge on a PhD thesis about the ballet Parade which brought together her love of the French language, art and music.

Simon Shaw-Miller is currently Professor of History of Art at Bristol University. He studied at the Universities of Brighton and Essex and previously held positions at the Universities of St Andrews and Manchester. In 2005 he was made an Honorary Research Fellow and in 2007 an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London. He is the author of many works on the relationships between music and art, including the books The Last Post: Music after Modernism (1993) and Visible Deeds of Music: Art and Music from Wagner to Cage (2002). His co-edited collection of essays Samuel Palmer Revisited was published in 2010 and his new book Eye hEar: The Visual in Music is due to be published in 2013 by Ashgate.

Howard Skempton is a composer, teacher, performer and adjudicator. He studied in London with Cornelius Cardew, who helped him to discover a musical language of great simplicity. Since then he has continued to write undeflected by compositional trends, producing a corpus of more than 300 works many pieces being miniatures for solo piano or accordion. He calls these pieces the central nervous system of his work.

Erik Satie (18661925) was a quirky, innovative and enigmatic composer whose impact has spread far beyond the musical world. As an artist active in several spheres from cabaret to religion, from calligraphy to poetry and playwriting and collaborator with some of the leading avant-garde figures of the day, including Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Serge Diaghilev and Ren Clair, he is one of the few genuinely cross-disciplinary composers. His artistic activity, during a tumultuous time in the Parisian art world, situates him in an especially exciting period. His friendships with Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and others place him at the centre of French musical life; more importantly, so does his music. His manuscripts and correspondence testify to his talent for calligraphy, and his drawings, usually in black or red and usually created for himself, show that he was an artist gifted in several media.