Various - CHILL WITH SATIE

Chill with SatieErik Satie (1866-1925)The French composer Erik Satie earned himself a reputationas an eccentric. Stravinsky described him as 'the oddest person he had everknown' but at the same time 'the most rare and constantly witty'. His musicalinnovations proved immensely influential on his nearer contemporaries Debussyand Ravel, and on a younger generation of composers and artists in the yearsafter the Great War of 1914-18.Satie was born in 1866 at Honfleur on the Normandy coast.His father was a shipping broker at the time, and his mother was of Scottishorigin. The family moved to Paris but on the death of his mother in 1872 Satiewas sent back to Honfleur to the house of his grandparents. Six years later heentered the Conservatoire in Paris where he proved an unsatisfactory pupil,lingering on, it was alleged, to avoid the obligatory five years of militaryservice, reduced for students to one year.After his discharge from the infantry Satie had his firstpieces published by his father, who now had a small publishing business. In theearly 1890s his preoccupation with the medieval age led him to establish hisown sub-religious movement, the Metropolitan Church of the Art of Jesus theConductor, of which he fancifully described himself as Parcier et Ma?�tre deChapelle, a title he had entirely invented. He started to publish LeCartulaire, a periodical in which he criticised those of whom he disapproved.This period also brought him into contact with Debussy, to whom he became veryclose.In the early 1900s Satie earned a modest living as a cafepianist, after which he enrolled at the Schola Cantorum where for three yearshe tried to remedy his technical difficulties as a composer, particularly bythe study of counterpoint. It was not until the 1911 performance, under Ravel,of Satie's 1887 Sarabandes that the original nature of Satie's genius began tobe acknowledged. Further recognition came through his association withDyaghilev.   In the years after the Great War he became the centre ofattention of a group of young composers known as Les Six. The group changed itsname in 1923 to the ?�cole d'Arcueil, after the remote district of Paris where Satie chose to live in starksimplicity until his death in 1925.TracklistingTrack 1 - Gymnopedie No. 1 (guitar/orchestra)Track 5 - Gymnopedie No. 3 (guitar/orchestra)Track 13 - Gymnopedie No. 1 (harp)Track 18 - Gymnopedie No. 1 (orchestral)Track 19 - Gymnopedie No. 2 (orchestral)Track 20 - Gymnopedie No. 3 (orchestral)Satie's famous Gymnopedies derive their name from the'Gymnop?�dia' which was an Apollonic celebration in ancient Sparta where men ofall ages danced unarmed. Within his Gymnopedies, Satie found a thin, ascetic, \nakedpiano structure in which lonesome and singularly expressive melodies circlelike falling autumn leaves. There is a monotonous, low bass line accompaniment,and against it softly dissonant chords in the middle register, constantlyrepeating the same rhythm-pattern. Together this creat