introductory thoughts & comments
While at university, I wrote a paper on the influence of Erik Satie
and was amazed by the paucity of documented acknowledgement of his influence
- particularly by composers of his era, who knew him and his work intimately.
On the other side of the coin, and just as startling, is the lack of
evidence
to prove the influence of other contemporary and near-contemporary composers
on Satie's own work - a conjecture here, an acknowledgement of exposure
there, is pretty much what it boils down to, with little concrete evidence
to say that "in this work, Satie was influenced by such-and-such
a composer, such-and-such a piece, such-and-such a movement".
It is, as several writers on Satie have pointed out, as if he were
born outside
of the natural plane of musical endeavour, untouched by either historical
or contemporary music, composing independently of influence.
This independence of creation is particularly interesting when we view
his work closely, discerning traces of evidence of a prophetic musical
vision: Impressionist harmony in his early work, spidery neoclassicism
- not just in the Sonatine bureaucratique but throughout his oeuvre,
the highly chromatic repetitions of Vexations revealing links with
both atonality/serialism and minimalism, the use of noise-makers in Parade
which predate the work of F.T. Marinetti and the Italian futurists.
The research in this site does not pretend to discover new channels of
influence from Satie through to the generative figures of all these movements
- far be it from me to suggest that Schoenberg drew his theories from
Vexations or that Stravinsky's Pulcinella only existed because
of Satie's experiments. Rather, I seek to explore the inventiveness of
Erik Satie and the many facets of his work, which have so often in the
past been unfairly dismissed as slight or trivial.
The project set forth in this website has occupied me now for a number
of years - since 1994 to be precise - and no doubt will take many more
to complete. My plans for the site's expansion include a searchable list
of scores, discography (including a section on works referencing Satie's
music), research notes for sections currently being researched, and regular
updates to the bibliography. A complete online/downloadable Vexations is
also underway.
Caitlin Rowley, June 2002, rev. June 2003
A note on definitions
One of the most difficult aspects of researching the subject of this
website is the matter of defining the terms used - neoclassicism seems
to be defined in a variety of different ways by different people - some
take it to mean just pastiche pieces; other points of view are more broad-ranging;
many papers on musical impressionism pretty much deal exclusively with
Debussy, conveniently ignoring the problem that 'one man doth not a movement
make', and most so-called 'minimalist' composers have been up in arms
for years over the designation. To overcome this, I have sorted through
what definitions I have found to arrive at my own, which hopefully represents
a synthesis of these many conflicting points of view. I have tried to
include a clear explanation of the definition of each that I have arrived
at within each section of the site. No doubt there are those out there
who would disagree with me on these definitions - if so, I'm always happy
to hear an alternate point of view!
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