 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 4 5 ] Next Last |
By mid- 1896 all his financial means have vanished, and he has to move to cheaper lodgings, first at Rue Cortot to a room not bigger than a cupboard, two years later (after having composed the two first sets of Pièces froides in 1897), to Arceuil , a suburb some 10 kilometers from the centre of Paris (in the Val-de-Marne district of the Île-de-France).
From now on he reverts to his brother Conrad much in the same way as Vincent Van Gogh had reverted to his brother Theo, for numerous practical (...and financial) matters, disclosing some of his inner feelings in the process. For example, from his letters to his brother Conrad becomes clear that religious thoughts had vanished by the end of the century (not to come back till the last months of his life), where Satie uses a process that would still come up often in his later life (as a kind of indicator of second thought about a subject about which he had first been adamant): HUMOUR.
Anyway, from the winter of 1898- 1899 on Satie could be seen, as a daily routine, leaving his apartment in the Parisian suburb of Arcueil to walk across the whole of Paris to either Montmartre or Montparnasse before walking back again in the evening.
From 1899 on he starts making money as a cabaret pianist (mostly accompanying Vincent Hyspa , later also Paulette Darty ), adapting over a 100 compositions of then popular music for piano (or piano and voice), adding some of his own: the most popular of these are "Je te veux" (text by Henry Pacory), "Tendrement" (text by Vincent Hyspa), "Poudre d'or" (a waltz), "La Diva de l' 'Empire'" (text by Dominique Bonnaud/Numa Blès), "Le Picadilly" (A March), "Légende Californienne" (text by Contamine de Latour lost, but the music later reappears in La Belle Excentrique ), and many more (probably even more lost). In his later years Satie would reject all his cabaret music as vile and against his nature, except that he revived some of the fun of it in his 1920 Belle excentrique . But for the time being, it was an income.
Few compositions that Satie took serious himself remain from this period, amongst others Jack-in-the-Box , music to a pantomime by Jules Dépaquit (but named a "clownerie" by Satie); Geneviève de Brabant , a short comic opera (?shadowy play) on a serious theme, text by Lord Cheminot ; The Dreamy Fish , piano music to accompany a lost tale by Lord Cheminot ; and a few other (mostly incomplete, nearly none of them staged, and none of them published in the same period).
Both Geneviève de Brabant and The Dreamy Fish have been analysed (e.g. by Ornella Volta ) to contain elements of competition towards Claude Debussy, of which Debussy was probably not aware (Satie not disclosing this music). In the mean while Debussy was having one of his first major successes with Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, leading a few years later to who-was-precursor-to-whom discussions between the two composers (in which discussions also Maurice Ravel would get involved).
In October 1905 Satie enrolls in Vincent D'Indy's Schola Cantorum to study classic counterpoint (while still continuing his cabaret employments). Most of his friends were as dumbfounded as the professors at the Schola when they heard about his new plan to return to the classrooms (especially as D'Indy was an admiring pupil of Saint-Saëns, not particularly favoured by Satie). As for Satie's motivation for this step, probably two reasons played a major role: first of all he was tired of being reproached that the harmonisation of his compositions was erratic (a criticism he could not very well counter while not having completed any studies in music), and secondly he was developing the idea that one of the most typical characteristics of French music was clarity (which could better be achieved with a good background knowledge of how traditionally harmony was perceived). Satie would follow these courses at the Schola, as a respected pupil, for more than 5 years, receiving a first (intermediary) diploma in 1908.
Some of his classroom counterpoint exercises would, after his death, be published (e.g. the Désespoir agréable ) but, to himself, he saw probably the En Habit de Cheval (published in 1911 as the result of "8 years hard work to come to a new, modern fugue") as the culmination of the Schola episode. Another summary, of the period prior to the Schola, also appeared in 1911: the Trois Morceaux en forme de poire , which was a kind of compilation of the best of what he had written up to 1903.
Something that becomes clear by now is that maybe he did not so much reject Romanticism (and its exponents like Wagner) as a whole (he has become more moderate in a way), as that he rejected certain aspects of it: musically the thing he rejected most consequently, from his very first composition to his very last, was the idea of development, certainly in the more strict definition of this term: the intertwining of different themes in a development section of a sonata form: naturally this makes his contrapuntal (and other works) very short: e.g. his Fugues do not extend further than the exposition of the theme(s). Generally he would say that he didn't think it permitted that a composer would take more time from his public than strictly necessary, certainly avoiding to be boring in any way.
Also Melodrama, in its historical meaning of the then popular genre of "spoken words to a background of music", was something Satie appears to have succeeded quite well to stay clear of (although his 1913 Piège de Méduse could be seen as an absurdistic spoof of that genre).
In the mean while some other changes had taken place too: he had become a member of a radical (socialist) party, had socialised in the Arceuil community (amongst other things involvement in the "Patronage Laïque" work for children) and he had changed his looks, now definitively, to the 'bourgeois functionary' (with bowler hat, umbrella, etc...). Also, instead of involving himself again in any kind of medievalistic sect, he channels these kinds of intrests in a peculiar secret hobby: in a filing cabinet he maintains a collection of imaginary buildings (most of them described as being built in some kind of metal) which he draws on little cards. Occasionally, extending the mind game, he would publicise anonymous small announcements in local journals of some of these buildings (e.g. a "castle in lead") being up for sale or rent.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|