Erik satie works list. Biography

His piano pieces influenced many modern composers. Erik Satie is the forerunner and founder of such musical movements as impressionism, primitivism, constructivism, neoclassicism and minimalism. It was Satie who invented the genre of “furniture music”, which does not need to be listened to specifically, an unobtrusive melody that sounds in a store or at an exhibition.

In 1888, Satie wrote the work “Three Gymnopedies” (fr. Trois gymnopedies) for solo piano, which was based on the free use of non-chord sequences. A similar technique has already been used by S. Frank and E. Chabrier. Satie was the first to introduce sequences of chords built in fourths; this technique first appeared in his work “The Son of the Stars” (Le fils des étoiles, 1891). This kind of innovation was immediately used by almost all French composers. These techniques became characteristic of French modern music. In 1892, Satie developed his own system of composition, the essence of which was that for each play he composed several - often no more than five or six - short passages, after which he simply docked these elements to each other.

Satie was eccentric, he wrote his essays in red ink and loved to play pranks on his friends.

The general Parisian public recognized Satie thanks to Diaghilev's Russian Seasons, where at the premiere of Satie's ballet “Parade” (choreography by L. Massine, scenery and costumes by Picasso).

“The performance struck me with its freshness and true originality. “Parade” just confirmed to me to what extent I was right when I so highly valued the merits of Satie and the role he played in French music by contrasting the vague aesthetics of the dying impressionism with his powerful and expressive language, devoid of any pretentiousness and embellishment." ( Igor Stravinsky. Chronicle of my life.) Erik Satie met Igor Stravinsky back in 1910.

In addition to Parade, Erik Satie is the author of four more ballet scores: Uspud (1892), The Beautiful Hysterical Woman (1920), The Adventures of Mercury (1924) and The Performance Is Canceled (1924). Also (after the author’s death) many of his piano and orchestral works were often used for staging one-act ballets and ballet numbers.

Under his direct influence, such famous composers as Claude Debussy (who was his friend for more than twenty years), Maurice Ravel, the famous French group “Six”, in which Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric and Arthur Honegger are most famous, were formed. The work of this group (it lasted a little over a year), as well as Satie himself, had a strong influence on Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich heard Satie’s works after his death, in 1925, during a tour of the French “Six” in Petrograd. His ballet Bolt shows the influence of Satie's music.

Erik Satie became one of the pioneers of the idea of ​​the prepared piano and significantly influenced the work of John Cage.

Having invented in 1916 the avant-garde genre of “background” (or “furniture”) music that does not need to be specifically listened to, Erik Satie was also the discoverer and forerunner of minimalism. His unobtrusive melodies, repeated hundreds of times without the slightest change or break, sounding in a store or in a salon while receiving guests, were ahead of their time by a good half century.

eccentric French composer and pianist

Erik Satie

short biography

Eric Satie(French Erik Satie, full name Eric-Alfred-Leslie Satie, fr. Erik Alfred Leslie Satie; May 17, 1866, Honfleur - July 1, 1925, Paris) - an eccentric French composer and pianist, one of the reformers of European music of the first quarter of the 20th century.

His piano pieces influenced many modern composers, from Claude Debussy, the French Six to John Cage. Erik Satie is the forerunner and founder of such musical movements as impressionism, primitivism, constructivism, neoclassicism and minimalism. At the end of the 1910s, Satie came up with the genre of “furniture music,” which does not require special listening, an unobtrusive melody that continuously sounds in a store or at an exhibition.

Satie was born on May 17, 1866 in the Norman city of Honfleur (department of Calvados). When he was four years old, the family moved to Paris. Then, in 1872, after the death of their mother, the children were sent back to Honfleur.

In 1879, Satie entered the Paris Conservatory, but after two and a half years of not very successful studies, he was expelled. In 1885 he again entered the conservatory, and again did not graduate.

In 1888, Satie wrote Trois gymnopédies for solo piano, which was based on the free use of non-chord sequences. A similar technique has already been used by S. Frank and E. Chabrier. Satie was the first to introduce sequences of chords built in fourths; this technique first appeared in his work “The Son of the Stars” (Le fils des étoiles, 1891). This kind of innovation was immediately used by almost all French composers. These techniques became characteristic of French modern music. In 1892, Satie developed his own system of composition, the essence of which was that for each play he composed several - often no more than five or six - short passages, after which he simply docked these elements to each other.

Satie was eccentric, he wrote his essays in red ink and loved to play pranks on his friends. He gave his works titles such as “Three Pieces in the Shape of Pears” or “Dried Embryos.” In his play "Vexation", a small musical theme must be repeated 840 times. Erik Satie was an emotional person and, although he used the melodies of Camille Saint-Saëns for his “Music as Furnishings,” he sincerely hated him. His words even became a kind of calling card:

It is stupid to defend Wagner just because Saint-Saens is attacking him; one must shout: Down with Wagner along with Saint-Saens!

In 1899, Satie began working part-time as a pianist at the Black Cat cabaret, which was his only source of income.

When you work as a pianist or accompanist in a café-chantan, many people consider it their duty to offer the pianist a glass or two of whiskey, but for some reason no one wants to treat him to at least a sandwich.

Erik Satie, self-portrait

Satie was virtually unknown to the general public until his fiftieth birthday; a sarcastic, bilious, reserved person, he lived and worked separately from the musical elite of France. His work became known to the general public thanks to Maurice Ravel, who organized a series of concerts in 1911 and introduced him to good publishers.

“In short, at the very beginning of 1911, Maurice Ravel (as he said everywhere, “owed a lot to me”) made a double public injection - both by me and by me at the same time. Several concerts at once, performances in an orchestra, in a salon, in a piano, plus publishers, conductors, donkeys... and again - the obsessive lack of money, how tired I am of this rotten word! The applause and shouts of “encore!” had a strong, but bad, effect on me. Unfortunately, having yearned for them over the past years, I didn’t even immediately understand that they shouldn’t be taken too seriously... and at my own expense.”

Erik Satie, Yuri Khanon. "Memories in Hindsight"

In 1917, Satie, commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev, wrote the ballet “Parade” for his “Russian Seasons” (libretto by Jean Cocteau, choreography by Leonide Massine, design by Pablo Picasso; the orchestra was conducted by Ernest Ansermet). During the premiere, which took place on May 18, 1917 at the Chatelet theater, a scandal erupted in the theater: the audience demanded to lower the curtain, shouting “Down with the Russians!” Russian Boches!”, a fight broke out in the auditorium. Irritated by the reception given to the performance not only by the audience, but also by the press, Satie sent one of the critics, Jean Pueg, an insulting letter - for which on November 27, 1917, he was sentenced by the tribunal to eight days in prison and an 800 franc fine (thanks to the intervention of Misia Sert, the Minister of the Interior Jules Pams gave him a “respite” from punishment on March 13, 1918).

At the same time, the score of “Parade” was highly appreciated by Igor Stravinsky:

“The performance struck me with its freshness and true originality. “Parade” just confirmed to me to what extent I was right when I so highly valued the merits of Satie and the role he played in French music by contrasting the vague aesthetics of the dying impressionism with his powerful and expressive language, devoid of any or pretentiousness and embellishment.”

Igor Stravinsky. Chronicle of my life

Erik Satie met Igor Stravinsky back in 1910 (the famous photograph taken by Stravinsky visiting Claude Debussy, in which all three can be seen, dates back to the same year) and experienced a strong personal and creative sympathy for him. However, closer and more regular communication between Stravinsky and Satie occurred only after the premiere of “Parade” and the end of the First World War. Erik Satie wrote two large articles about Stravinsky (1922), published at the same time in France and the USA, as well as about a dozen letters, the end of one of which (dated September 15, 1923) is especially often quoted in the literature dedicated to both composers. Already at the very end of the letter, saying goodbye to Stravinsky, Satie signed with his characteristic irony and a smile, this time a kind one, that happened to him not so often: “You, I adore you: aren’t you the same Great Stravinsky? And this is me - none other than little Erik Satie." In turn, both the poisonous character and the original, “unlike anything” music of Erik Satie aroused the constant admiration of “Prince Igor”, although neither close friendship nor any permanent relationship arose between them. Ten years after Sati’s death, Stravinsky wrote about him in the Chronicle of My Life: “I liked Sati at first sight. A subtle thing, he was all filled with slyness and intelligent anger.”

In addition to Parade, Erik Satie is the author of four more ballet scores: Uspud (1892), The Beautiful Hysterical Woman (1920), The Adventures of Mercury (1924) and The Performance Is Canceled (1924). Also (after the author’s death) many of his piano and orchestral works were often used for staging one-act ballets and ballet numbers.

Erik Satie died of cirrhosis of the liver as a result of excessive alcohol consumption (especially absinthe) on July 1, 1925 in the working-class suburb of Arceuil near Paris. His death went almost unnoticed, and only in the 50s of the 20th century his work began to return to the active space. Today, Erik Satie is one of the most frequently performed piano composers of the 20th century.

Ramon Casas El Bohemio, Poet of Montmartre, 1891, the painting depicts Erik Satie.

Creative influence

Satie's early work influenced the young Ravel. He was a senior comrade of the short-lived friendly association of composers, the Six. It did not have any common ideas or even aesthetics, but everyone was united by a commonality of interests, expressed in the rejection of everything vague and the desire for clarity and simplicity - exactly what was in Satie’s works.

Satie became one of the pioneers of the idea of ​​the prepared piano and significantly influenced the work of John Cage. Cage became fascinated by Erik Satie during his first trip to Europe, receiving sheet music from the hands of Henri Sauguet, and in 1963 he decided to present Satie's composition "Vexations" to the American public - a short piano piece accompanied by the instruction: “Repeat 840 times.” At six o'clock in the evening on September 9, Cage's friend Viola Farber sat down at the piano and began to play "Vexation." At eight in the evening, she was replaced at the piano by another of Cage's friends, Robert Wood, picking up where Farber left off. There were eleven performers in total, they replaced each other every two hours. The audience came and went, and a New York Times columnist fell asleep in his chair. The premiere ended at 0:40 on September 11, it is believed that it was the longest piano concert in the history of music.

Under the direct influence of Satie, such famous composers were formed as Claude Debussy (who was his close friend for more than twenty years), Maurice Ravel, the famous French group "Six", in which the most famous are Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric and Arthur Honegger . The work of this group (it lasted just over a year), as well as Satie himself, had a noticeable influence on Dmitri Shostakovich, who heard Satie’s works after his death, in 1925, during the tour of the French “Six” in Petrograd-Leningrad. In his ballet “Bolt,” the influence of Satie’s musical style from the times of the ballets “Parade” and “The Beautiful Hysterical Woman” is noticeable.

Some of Satie's works made an extremely strong impression on Igor Stravinsky. In particular, this applies to the ballet “Parade” (1917), the score of which he asked the author for almost a whole year, and the symphonic drama “Socrates” (1918). It was these two works that left the most visible mark on Stravinsky's work: the first in his constructivist period, and the second in the neoclassical works of the late 1920s. Heavily influenced by Satie, he moved from the impressionism (and fauvism) of the Russian period to an almost skeletal style of music, simplifying his writing style. This can be seen in the works of the Parisian period - “The Story of a Soldier” and the opera “The Maura”. But even thirty years later, this event continued to be remembered as nothing other than an amazing fact in the history of French music:

“Since the Six felt free from their doctrine and were filled with enthusiastic reverence for those against whom they presented themselves as aesthetic opponents, they did not form any group. “The Rite of Spring” grew like a powerful tree, pushing aside our bushes, and we were about to admit ourselves defeated, when suddenly Stravinsky soon I joined myself to our circle of techniques and inexplicably the influence of Erik Satie was even felt in his works.”

- Jean Cocteau, "for the anniversary concert of the Six in 1953"

Having invented in 1916 the avant-garde genre of “background” (or “furnishing”) industrial music that does not need to be specifically listened to, Erik Satie was also the discoverer and forerunner of minimalism. His haunting melodies, repeated hundreds of times without the slightest change or break, sounding in a store or in a salon while receiving guests, were ahead of their time by a good half century.

Bibliography

Eric Satie, self-portrait 1913(from the book “Hindsight Memories”)

• Schneerson G. French music of the 20th century. M., 1964; 2nd ed. - 1970.
• Filenko G. E. Satie // Questions of the theory and aesthetics of music. L.: Music, 1967. Vol. 5.
• Khanon Yu. Eric-Alfred-Leslie: A completely new chapter in every sense // Le Journal de St. Petersburg. 1992. No. 4.
• Satie, E., Hanon Y. Memories in hindsight. - St. Petersburg: Faces of Russia; Center for Secondary Music, 2010. - 680 p. - 300 copies. - the first book by and about Sati in Russian, including all of his literary works, notebooks and most of his letters.
• Selivanova A. D.“Socrates” by Erik Satie: Musique d’ameublement or rehearsal music? // Scientific Bulletin of the Moscow Conservatory. Moscow, 2011, No. 1, pp. 152-174.
• Davis, Mary E. Erik Satie / Trans. from English E. Miroshnikova. - M: Garage, Ad Marginem, 2017. - 184 p.

In French

• Cocteau Jean E. Satie. Liege, 1957.
• Satie, Erik. Correspondance presque complete. Paris: Fayard; IMEC, 2000.
• Satie, Erik. Ecrits. Paris: Champ libre, 1977.
• Rey, Anne Satie. Paris.: Éditions du Seuil, 1995.

And minimalism. It was Satie who invented the genre of “furniture music”, which does not need to be listened to specifically, an unobtrusive melody that sounds in a store or at an exhibition.

Biography

“The performance struck me with its freshness and true originality. “Parade” just confirmed to me to what extent I was right when I so highly valued the merits of Satie and the role he played in French music by contrasting the vague aesthetics of the dying impressionism with his powerful and expressive language, devoid of any or pretentiousness and embellishment.”

In addition to Parade, Erik Satie is the author of four more ballet scores: Uspud (1892), The Beautiful Hysterical Woman (1920), The Adventures of Mercury (1924) and The Performance Is Canceled (1924). Also (after the author’s death) many of his piano and orchestral works were often used for staging one-act ballets and ballet numbers.

Under his direct influence, such famous composers as Claude Debussy (who was his close friend for more than twenty years), Maurice Ravel, the famous French group “Six”, in which Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric and Arthur Honegger are best known, were formed . The work of this group (it lasted just over a year), as well as Satie himself, had a noticeable influence on Dmitri Shostakovich, who heard Satie’s works after his death, in 1925, during the tour of the French “Six” in Petrograd-Leningrad. In his ballet “Bolt,” the influence of Satie’s musical style from the times of the ballets “Parade” and “The Beautiful Hysterical Woman” is noticeable.

Some of Satie's works made an extremely strong impression on Igor Stravinsky. In particular, this applies to the ballet “Parade” (), the score of which he asked the author for almost a whole year, and the symphonic drama “Socrates” (). It was these two works that left the most visible mark on Stravinsky's work: the first in his constructivist period, and the second in the neoclassical works of the late 1920s. Heavily influenced by Satie, he moved from the impressionism (and fauvism) of the Russian period to an almost skeletal style of music, simplifying his writing style. This can be seen in the works of the Parisian period - “The Story of a Soldier” and the opera “The Maura”. But even thirty years later, this event continued to be remembered as nothing other than an amazing fact in the history of French music:

- (Jean Cocteau, "for the anniversary concert of the Six in the year")

Having invented the avant-garde genre of “background” (or “furniture”) industrial music in 2016, which does not need to be listened to specifically, Erik Satie was also the discoverer and forerunner of minimalism. His haunting melodies, repeated hundreds of times without the slightest change or break, sounding in a store or in a salon while receiving guests, were ahead of their time by a good half century.

Bibliography

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Notes

1. Compiled by M. Gerard and R. Chalus. Ravel in the mirror of his letters. - L.: Music, 1988. - P. 222.
2. Erik Satie, Yuri Khanon. Faces of Russia, 2010. - P. 189. - 682 p. - ISBN 978-5-87417-338-8.
3. Anne Rey. Satie. - second. - Paris: Solfeges Seuil, 1995. - P. 81. - 192 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 2-02-023487-4.
4. Filenko G. French music of the first half of the 20th century. - L.: Music, 1983. - P. 69.
5. Stravinsky I.F. Chronicle of my life. - L.: Music, 1963. - P. 148.
6. Anne Rey. Satie. - second. - Paris: Solfeges Seuil, 1995. - P. 144. - 192 p. - 25,000 copies. - ISBN 2-02-023487-4.
7. Ornella Volta. Erik Satie. - second. - Paris: Hazan, 1997. - P. 159. - 200 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 2-85025-564-5.
8. Eric Satie. Correspondance presque complete. - Paris: Fayard / Imec, 2000. - T. 1. - P. 1132. - 1260 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 2-213-60674-9.
9. Erik Satie, Yuri Khanon."Memories in hindsight." - St. Petersburg. : Center for Secondary Music & Faces of Russia, 2010. - pp. 517-519. - 682 s. - ISBN 978-5-87417-338-8.
10. Erik Satie, Yuri Khanon."Memories in hindsight." - St. Petersburg. : Center for Secondary Music & Faces of Russia, 2010. - P. 570. - 682 p. - ISBN 978-5-87417-338-8.
11. Eric Satie. Correspondance presque complete. - Paris: Fayard / Imec, 2000. - T. 1. - P. 560. - 1260 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 2-213-60674-9.
12. Stravynsky Igor."Chroniques de ma vie". - Paris.: Denoël & Gonthier, 1935. - pp. 83-84.
13. Mary E. Davis, Reaktion Books, 2007. ISBN 1861893213.
14. Poulenc Fr. Entretiens avec Claude Rostand. P., . R.31.
15. Eric Satie. Correspondance presque complete. - Paris: Fayard / Imec, 2000. - T. 1. - P. 491, 1133. - 1260 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 2-213-60674-9.
16. Jean Cocteau."Rooster and Harlequin." - M.: “Prest”, 2000. - P. 79. - 224 p. - 500 copies.
17. . Retrieved January 13, 2011. .

see also

	Erik Satie in Wikiquote
	in Wikisource
	Erik Satie on Wikimedia Commons

Links

• Erik Satie: sheet music of works on the International Music Score Library Project
• Yuri Khanon:
• Yuri Khanon.
• + audio & MIDI.

Excerpt characterizing Satie, Eric

The only significance of the Berezina crossing is that this crossing obviously and undoubtedly proved the falsity of all plans for cutting off and the justice of the only possible course of action demanded by both Kutuzov and all the troops (mass) - only following the enemy. The crowd of Frenchmen fled with an ever-increasing force of speed, with all their energy directed towards achieving their goal. She ran like a wounded animal, and she could not get in the way. This was proven not so much by the construction of the crossing as by the traffic on the bridges. When the bridges were broken, unarmed soldiers, Moscow residents, women and children who were in the French convoy - all, under the influence of the force of inertia, did not give up, but ran forward into the boats, into the frozen water.
This aspiration was reasonable. The situation of both those fleeing and those pursuing was equally bad. Remaining with his own, each in distress hoped for the help of a comrade, for a certain place he occupied among his own. Having given himself over to the Russians, he was in the same position of distress, but he was on a lower level in terms of satisfying the needs of life. The French did not need to have correct information that half of the prisoners, with whom they did not know what to do, despite all the Russians’ desire to save them, died from cold and hunger; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The most compassionate Russian commanders and hunters of the French, the French in Russian service could not do anything for the prisoners. The French were destroyed by the disaster in which the Russian army was located. It was impossible to take away bread and clothing from hungry, necessary soldiers in order to give it to the French who were not harmful, not hated, not guilty, but simply unnecessary. Some did; but this was only an exception.
Behind was certain death; there was hope ahead. The ships were burned; there was no other salvation but a collective flight, and all the forces of the French were directed towards this collective flight.
The further the French fled, the more pitiful their remnants were, especially after the Berezina, on which, as a result of the St. Petersburg plan, special hopes were pinned, the more the passions of the Russian commanders flared up, blaming each other and especially Kutuzov. Believing that the failure of the Berezinsky Petersburg plan would be attributed to him, dissatisfaction with him, contempt for him and ridicule of him were expressed more and more strongly. Teasing and contempt, of course, were expressed in a respectful form, in a form in which Kutuzov could not even ask what and for what he was accused. They didn't talk to him seriously; reporting to him and asking his permission, they pretended to perform a sad ritual, and behind his back they winked and tried to deceive him at every step.
All these people, precisely because they could not understand him, recognized that there was no point in talking to the old man; that he would never understand the full depth of their plans; that he would answer with his phrases (it seemed to them that these were just phrases) about the golden bridge, that you cannot come abroad with a crowd of vagabonds, etc. They had already heard all this from him. And everything he said: for example, that we had to wait for food, that people were without boots, it was all so simple, and everything they offered was so complex and clever that it was obvious to them that he was stupid and old, but they were not powerful, brilliant commanders.
Especially after the joining of the armies of the brilliant admiral and the hero of St. Petersburg, Wittgenstein, this mood and staff gossip reached its highest limits. Kutuzov saw this and, sighing, just shrugged his shoulders. Only once, after the Berezina, he became angry and wrote the following letter to Bennigsen, who reported separately to the sovereign:
“Due to your painful seizures, please, Your Excellency, upon receipt of this, go to Kaluga, where you await further orders and assignments from His Imperial Majesty.”
But after Bennigsen was sent away, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich came to the army, making the beginning of the campaign and being removed from the army by Kutuzov. Now the Grand Duke, having arrived at the army, informed Kutuzov about the displeasure of the sovereign emperor for the weak successes of our troops and for the slowness of movement. The Emperor himself intended to arrive at the army the other day.
An old man, as experienced in court affairs as in military matters, that Kutuzov, who in August of the same year was chosen commander-in-chief against the will of the sovereign, the one who removed the heir and the Grand Duke from the army, the one who, with his power, in opposition the will of the sovereign, ordered the abandonment of Moscow, this Kutuzov now immediately realized that his time was over, that his role had been played and that he no longer had this imaginary power. And he understood this not just from court relationships. On the one hand, he saw that military affairs, the one in which he played his role, was over, and he felt that his calling had been fulfilled. On the other hand, at the same time he began to feel physical fatigue in his old body and the need for physical rest.
On November 29, Kutuzov entered Vilna - his good Vilna, as he said. Kutuzov was governor of Vilna twice during his service. In the rich, surviving Vilna, in addition to the comforts of life that he had been deprived of for so long, Kutuzov found old friends and memories. And he, suddenly turning away from all military and state concerns, plunged into a smooth, familiar life as much as he was given peace by the passions seething around him, as if everything that was happening now and was about to happen in the historical world did not concern him at all.
Chichagov, one of the most passionate cutters and overturners, Chichagov, who first wanted to make a diversion to Greece, and then to Warsaw, but did not want to go where he was ordered, Chichagov, known for his courage in speaking to the sovereign, Chichagov, who considered Kutuzov benefited himself, because when he was sent in the 11th year to conclude peace with Turkey in addition to Kutuzov, he, making sure that peace had already been concluded, admitted to the sovereign that the merit of concluding peace belonged to Kutuzov; This Chichagov was the first to meet Kutuzov in Vilna at the castle where Kutuzov was supposed to stay. Chichagov in a naval uniform, with a dirk, holding his cap under his arm, gave Kutuzov his drill report and the keys to the city. That contemptuously respectful attitude of the youth towards the old man who had lost his mind was expressed to the highest degree in the entire address of Chichagov, who already knew the charges brought against Kutuzov.
While talking with Chichagov, Kutuzov, among other things, told him that the carriages with dishes captured from him in Borisov were intact and would be returned to him.
- C"est pour me dire que je n"ai pas sur quoi manger... Je puis au contraire vous fournir de tout dans le cas meme ou vous voudriez donner des diners, [You want to tell me that I have nothing to eat. On the contrary, I can serve you all, even if you wanted to give dinners.] - Chichagov said, flushing, with every word he wanted to prove that he was right and therefore assumed that Kutuzov was preoccupied with this very thing. Kutuzov smiled his thin, penetrating smile and, shrugging his shoulders, answered: “Ce n"est que pour vous dire ce que je vous dis. [I want to say only what I say.]
In Vilna, Kutuzov, contrary to the will of the sovereign, stopped most of the troops. Kutuzov, as his close associates said, had become unusually depressed and physically weakened during his stay in Vilna. He was reluctant to deal with the affairs of the army, leaving everything to his generals and, while waiting for the sovereign, indulged in an absent-minded life.
Having left St. Petersburg with his retinue - Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonsky, Arakcheev and others, on December 7, the sovereign arrived in Vilna on December 11 and drove straight up to the castle in a road sleigh. At the castle, despite the severe frost, stood about a hundred generals and staff officers in full dress uniform and an honor guard from the Semenovsky regiment.
The courier, who galloped up to the castle in a sweaty troika, ahead of the sovereign, shouted: “He’s coming!” Konovnitsyn rushed into the hallway to report to Kutuzov, who was waiting in a small Swiss room.
A minute later, the thick, large figure of an old man, in full dress uniform, with all the regalia covering his chest, and his belly pulled up by a scarf, pumping, came out onto the porch. Kutuzov put his hat on the front, picked up his gloves and sideways, stepping with difficulty down the steps, stepped down and took in his hand the report prepared for submission to the sovereign.
Running, whispering, the troika still desperately flying by, and all eyes turned to the jumping sleigh, in which the figures of the sovereign and Volkonsky were already visible.
All this, out of a fifty-year habit, had a physically disturbing effect on the old general; He hurriedly felt himself with concern, straightened his hat, and at that moment the sovereign, emerging from the sleigh, raised his eyes to him, cheered up and stretched out, submitted a report and began to speak in his measured, ingratiating voice.
The Emperor glanced quickly at Kutuzov from head to toe, frowned for a moment, but immediately, overcoming himself, walked up and, spreading his arms, hugged the old general. Again, according to the old, familiar impression and in relation to his sincere thoughts, this hug, as usual, had an effect on Kutuzov: he sobbed.
The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenovsky guard and, shaking the old man’s hand again, went with him to the castle.
Left alone with the field marshal, the sovereign expressed his displeasure to him for the slowness of the pursuit, for the mistakes in Krasnoye and on the Berezina, and conveyed his thoughts about the future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no objections or comments. The same submissive and meaningless expression with which, seven years ago, he listened to the orders of the sovereign on the Field of Austerlitz, was now established on his face.
When Kutuzov left the office and walked down the hall with his heavy, diving gait, head down, someone’s voice stopped him.
“Your Grace,” someone said.
Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long time into the eyes of Count Tolstoy, who stood in front of him with some small thing on a silver platter. Kutuzov did not seem to understand what they wanted from him.
Suddenly he seemed to remember: a barely noticeable smile flashed on his plump face, and he, bending low, respectfully, took the object lying on the platter. This was George 1st degree.

The next day the field marshal had dinner and a ball, which the sovereign honored with his presence. Kutuzov was awarded George 1st degree; the sovereign showed him the highest honors; but the sovereign’s displeasure against the field marshal was known to everyone. Decency was observed, and the sovereign showed the first example of this; but everyone knew that the old man was guilty and no good. When, at the ball, Kutuzov, according to Catherine’s old habit, upon the Emperor’s entrance into the ballroom, ordered the taken banners to be laid down at his feet, the Emperor frowned unpleasantly and uttered words in which some heard: “old comedian.”
The sovereign's displeasure against Kutuzov intensified in Vilna, especially because Kutuzov obviously did not want or could not understand the significance of the upcoming campaign.
When the next morning the sovereign said to the officers gathered at his place: “You saved more than just Russia; you saved Europe,” everyone already understood that the war was not over.
Only Kutuzov did not want to understand this and openly expressed his opinion that a new war could not improve the situation and increase the glory of Russia, but could only worsen its position and reduce the highest degree of glory on which, in his opinion, Russia now stood. He tried to prove to the sovereign the impossibility of recruiting new troops; spoke about the difficult situation of the population, the possibility of failure, etc.
In such a mood, the field marshal, naturally, seemed to be only a hindrance and a brake on the upcoming war.
To avoid clashes with the old man, a way out was found by itself, which consisted in, as at Austerlitz and as at the beginning of the campaign under Barclay, to remove from under the commander-in-chief, without disturbing him, without announcing to him that the ground of power on which he stood , and transfer it to the sovereign himself.
For this purpose, the headquarters was gradually reorganized, and all the significant strength of Kutuzov’s headquarters was destroyed and transferred to the sovereign. Tol, Konovnitsyn, Ermolov - received other appointments. Everyone said loudly that the field marshal had become very weak and was upset about his health.
He had to be in poor health in order to transfer his place to the one who took his place. And indeed, his health was poor.
Just as naturally, and simply, and gradually, Kutuzov came from Turkey to the treasury chamber of St. Petersburg to collect the militia and then into the army, precisely when he was needed, just as naturally, gradually and simply now, when Kutuzov’s role was played, to take his place a new, needed figure appeared.
The war of 1812, in addition to its national significance dear to the Russian heart, should have had another – European one.
The movement of peoples from West to East was to be followed by the movement of peoples from East to West, and for this new war a new figure was needed, with different properties and views than Kutuzov, driven by different motives.
Alexander the First was as necessary for the movement of peoples from east to west and for the restoration of the borders of peoples as Kutuzov was necessary for the salvation and glory of Russia.
Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, balance, Napoleon meant. He couldn't understand it. The representative of the Russian people, after the enemy was destroyed, Russia was liberated and placed at the highest level of its glory, the Russian person, as a Russian, had nothing more to do. The representative of the people's war had no choice but death. And he died.

Pierre, as most often happens, felt the full weight of the physical deprivations and stresses experienced in captivity only when these stresses and deprivations ended. After his release from captivity, he came to Orel and on the third day of his arrival, while he was going to Kyiv, he fell ill and lay sick in Orel for three months; As the doctors said, he suffered from bilious fever. Despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him and gave him medicine to drink, he still recovered.
Everything that happened to Pierre from the time of his liberation until his illness left almost no impression on him. He remembered only grey, gloomy, sometimes rainy, sometimes snowy weather, internal physical melancholy, pain in his legs, in his side; remembered the general impression of misfortune and suffering of people; he remembered the curiosity that disturbed him from the officers and generals who questioned him, his efforts to find a carriage and horses, and, most importantly, he remembered his inability to think and feel at that time. On the day of his release, he saw the corpse of Petya Rostov. On the same day, he learned that Prince Andrei had been alive for more than a month after the Battle of Borodino and had only recently died in Yaroslavl, in the Rostov house. And on the same day, Denisov, who reported this news to Pierre, between conversations mentioned Helen’s death, suggesting that Pierre had known this for a long time. All this seemed strange to Pierre at the time. He felt that he could not understand the meaning of all this news. He was only in a hurry then, as quickly as possible, to leave these places where people were killing each other, to some quiet refuge and there to come to his senses, rest and think about all the strange and new things that he had learned during this time. But as soon as he arrived in Orel, he fell ill. Waking up from his illness, Pierre saw around him his two people who had arrived from Moscow - Terenty and Vaska, and the eldest princess, who, living in Yelets, on Pierre's estate, and having learned about his release and illness, came to him to walk behind him.
During his recovery, Pierre only gradually unaccustomed himself to the impressions of the last months that had become familiar to him and got used to the fact that no one would drive him anywhere tomorrow, that no one would take his warm bed away, and that he would probably have lunch, tea, and dinner. But in his dreams, for a long time he saw himself in the same conditions of captivity. Pierre also gradually understood the news that he learned after his release from captivity: the death of Prince Andrei, the death of his wife, the destruction of the French.
A joyful feeling of freedom - that complete, inalienable, inherent freedom of man, the consciousness of which he first experienced at his first rest stop, when leaving Moscow, filled Pierre's soul during his recovery. He was surprised that this internal freedom, independent of external circumstances, now seemed to be abundantly, luxuriously furnished with external freedom. He was alone in a strange city, without acquaintances. Nobody demanded anything from him; they didn't send him anywhere. He had everything he wanted; The thought of his wife that had always tormented him before was no longer there, since she no longer existed.
- Oh, how good! How nice! - he said to himself when they brought him a cleanly set table with fragrant broth, or when he lay down on a soft, clean bed at night, or when he remembered that his wife and the French were no more. - Oh, how good, how nice! - And out of old habit, he asked himself: well, then what? What will i do? And immediately he answered himself: nothing. I will live. Oh, how nice!
The very thing that tormented him before, what he was constantly looking for, the purpose of life, now did not exist for him. It was no coincidence that this sought-after goal of life did not exist for him at the present moment, but he felt that it did not and could not exist. And it was this lack of purpose that gave him that complete, joyful consciousness of freedom, which at that time constituted his happiness.

Erik Satie

France / Impressionism, neoclassicism and Dada / Main genres: ballet, chamber-vocal lyrics and piano miniature

Erik Satie was born in 1866 and died in 1925. He was practically the same age as Mahler, Rachmaninov, Richard Strauss, however, his name stands apart in the history of music. He does not belong to any artistic movement or direction. Nevertheless, his art greatly influenced the development of music in the 20th century, first in France and then throughout the world. At different periods of creativity and with varying degrees of intensity, he was the first urbanist, dadaist, cubist, impressionist, expressionist, and finally, one of the first French composers to use twelve-tone rows. And if in musicology it is customary to count the beginning of a new musical century from the 1910s, then Satie’s work pushes this line back two decades, to the 1890s.

With his work, Satie tried to resist impressionism and Wagnerism. He is famous for saying: “ It is stupid to defend Wagner just because Saint-Saens is attacking him; one must shout: Down with Wagner along with Saint-Saens!“The composer’s main goals were clarity and simplicity, but his creative destiny, on the contrary, was full of complex metamorphoses and unresolved collisions.

During his lifetime he became a “living legend.” The fact is that Satie was incredibly eccentric. All his actions were aimed primarily at shocking. His creativity, his style of life and communication did not leave anyone indifferent: some saw him as a genius, others as a charlatan. Contemporaries classified Satie as a member of the group of so-called “dreamers” composers. In addition to his pronounced musical talent, he was a very provocative writer and a paradoxical writer. Just look at the names of his compositions or the performance notes in them! Sometimes they are quite reasonable and really provide instructions for the performers. In other cases these are absolutely absurd lines. For example, he has a play “Funeral March”, where he simply takes the second movement from Chopin’s Sonata in b minor, transposes it into a different key, simplifies it a little, and, as if mockingly, writes: “Well, now you will hear a fragment from Schubert’s Mazurka " Of course, there is no quotation there, since Schubert did not write mazurkas at all. In the cycle “The Sting of the Jellyfish,” which, oddly enough, consists of seven monkey dances, we read: “the monkey dances gracefully, then goes into a rage (or pretends to). Instructions to the performer: “sit in the shadows and behave well - the monkey is watching you.” Further, according to Sati’s scenario: “the monkey is thinking about something else.” Instructions to the performer: laugh, but so that no one sees.”

Satie's first work, which became an application for the future, was the piano triptych "Gymnopédie", which he composed in 1888 after leaving the conservatory. Let's ask ourselves: where did such a strange word - “gymnopedia” come from?

There are a huge number of versions on this matter. One of them says that Gymnopaedia was the name of a holiday in Ancient Sparta, celebrated in July for about ten days and consisting of military dance, musical and gymnastic exercises. If we look at this word from an etymological point of view, we will see that the compound word from the Greek roots “hymnopaedia” (from hymnos solemn chanting of gods and heroes, and paideia education) ultimately refers to the songs that were sung during the competition of young men in strength and dexterity in ancient Greece. If we put everything together, the translation will be: “education with anthem.”

Another version of the title of Satie’s work is hidden in a poem by the poet Contamine de Latour, who was quite famous at that time. Sati was friends with him and was probably very familiar with this verse. These lines are in my free translation, since the works of this author have never been published in Russian:

… Where amber atoms reflect themselves,

There sarabands are mixed with Gymnopedias….

Satie himself claimed that this name came to him after reading Flaubert’s novel “Salammbô”. From my point of view, Satie’s “Gymnopedia” can be recognized as the world’s first “ambient music”, the progenitor of the modern “lounge” style.

Erik Satie's life was not at all easy. He twice entered the Paris Conservatory, and was twice expelled for incompetence. He joined the army, but he didn’t like it either. In order not to serve in the regiment, Sati stood with his torso naked for several hours in the cold. Result: bronchitis and release from service.

His appearance, like his behavior, was extremely eccentric. Among his eccentricities are a wardrobe consisting of twelve completely identical gray velvet suits, and the statement that he eats only white foods: salt, sugar, ground bones, mold on fruit and white fish without skin. Sati often changed his appearance, could go out into society dressed like a tramp, and the next day he would appear as an impeccable dandy. This is how he described himself: “ I am eager to give you my characteristics: dark brown hair and eyebrows, gray eyes, low hairline, long nose, medium-sized mouth, wide chin, oval face»

Throughout his life, Sati experienced financial difficulties. Living among the poor of a Parisian working-class suburb, sending desperate letters for help to his closest friends, out of pride he does not allow them into his miserable home. The composer’s only more or less permanent place of work was the famous Parisian cafe “The Black Cat” (“Le Chat Noir”), which is located in Montmartre. They say that this cabaret served as a model for the now cultural monument of the Silver Age, the St. Petersburg artistic cafe “Stray Dog”, where all the bohemians of that time gathered. In the 80s, Satie accompanied readers and actors (pantomimes were fashionable then), or even simply played something “for the background.” And this is very important. Satie considered music not only as an independent work of art and a way of self-expression of the creator, but also assigned it a more modest role - in his own words, “static sound decoration,” something like wallpaper or furniture (this is where the first name he proposed for this kind of musical background: “furniture music”). He wrote that “furniture music” in restaurants should be part of the ambient sounds, its task is to soften the clatter of knives and forks on plates and fill awkward pauses that occasionally arise between people. By the way, it was Erik Satie who can be considered the first film composer in the history of mankind. I mean Rene Clair's film "Intermission", the music for which Satie wrote while terminally ill.

It was as if fate was pursuing this brilliant mocker and troublemaker of the first quarter of the century. He lived most of his life in obscurity, known only to those who went to the Black Cat cabaret. Among the creative bohemia, Satie was an outsider. However, in 1911 (the composer was already 45 years old at that time), Satie’s life began to change for the better. He gained fans, among whom were young composers Francis Poulenc and Georges Auric, but his acquaintance with Jean Cocteau, an artist, writer and playwright, played a special role. They met in 1915. Cocteau was so struck by the composer’s strange and original personality that he advised Diaghilev to involve Satie in staging the ballet “in a new spirit.” This is what Cocteau himself wrote about the composer: “ Outwardly, Sati looked like an ordinary official: a beard, pince-nez, bowler hat and umbrella. An egoist, a fanatic, he did not recognize anything other than his dogma, and tore and threw when anything contradicted it" Cocteau himself acted as librettist for the ballet Parade, which became Satie's most famous work.

The idea of ​​the ballet belonged to Jean Cocteau (1889 - 1963), the leader and ideologist of the European avant-garde of the early 20th century. Cocteau became interested in Diaghilev's Russian Seasons from the first days of their existence. He painted posters and wrote articles for Russian ballet programs. To work on Parade, he brought Pablo Picasso (sets and costumes) and Leonid Massine (choreography) to the project. Cocteau recalled: “ I met Picasso on the Boulevard Montparnasse between the Rotunda and the Dome; there were few pedestrians. I invited him to come to Diaghilev to work on the scenery. He agreed and came. Italian futurists helped him in his work" The premiere of the ballet on May 18, 1917 turned into a scandal. By the way, especially for the shocking effect, Cocteau and Satie added unusual instruments to the ballet score, such as: a typewriter, a fire siren, a revolver, and a set of milk bottles. A fight broke out in the hall. A highly respected theater critic wrote a devastating review, calling Satie " anti-harmonic, psychotic composer of typewriters and rattles"(the innovative technique of including the sound of a typewriter in the soundtrack was then met with hostility). Guillaume Apollinaire composed the text for the program (at the same time using a new word: “surrealism”). The motto of the production was the words of Apollinaire: “The New Spirit” (“L’Esprit Nouveau”). Written at the personal request of Diaghilev and Cocteau, the manifesto of the art of the future paved the way for the young music of France.

Satie composed music like this: he wrote one fragment of approximately 5-6 bars, then another of the same, and then connected one to the other according to the principle of a constructor. Fragments could be in different keys, different rhythms and even different styles. It is precisely because of this method of composition that such a diversity of styles is obtained. This, in a sense, is the beginning of polystylistics as a phenomenon realized by the composer. At the same time, Satie also became the progenitor of minimalism, long before its appearance on the musical arena.

The publication of Satie’s cycle under the unusual title “Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear” caused a great stir, where he guesses a pear in the graphic design of the work. Satie was the Apollinaire of music. This cycle was a caustic mockery of the sophistication of titles and stage directions in impressionist plays. In his famous “Waltz-Fugue,” Satie combines two seemingly incompatible genres: a light salon waltz and a completely academic fugue. As we can see, Satie's composing thinking was unconventional and not clichéd. Maybe he, like Berlioz, was lucky in that from childhood they were not driven into the framework of the academic tradition.

Satie's innovative music attracted a handful of young composers to him in 1920, who gathered in the famous "Six", and Satie became their godfather. They were united by a love of music hall, ragtime and jazz, seasoned with an explosive mixture of anti-war and anarchist spirit of Dadaism. The Six included: Louis Durey, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Taillefer.

Just as Maurice Ravel once revealed the composer Erik Satie to the general public in 1911, so John Cage in the second half of the 20th century became a conductor of Satie’s ideas. Cage loved his music from an early age. Without exaggeration, we can say that Satie owes his revival to this American composer. John Cage considered Satie to be the forerunner of all significant modernist movements in art: Dadaism, surrealism, modernism and even pop art in the spirit of Andy Warhol and Cage himself. He appointed Satie as the father of all modern art.

The French maestro actually knew Tristan Tzara, who founded Dada. He even wrote literary exercises for Dada collections and took part in performances, evenings, and Dada demonstrations that were held starting in 1916.

Cage’s passion for Satie’s music began when he discovered the play “Vexation,” which translated means “bitterness of resentment,” “trouble,” “oppression,” “annoyance.” This play was never performed during Sati's lifetime. It consists of three musical phrases. The main thing that struck Cage so much in this work was that on the manuscript it was written in Satie’s hand: “Perform 840 times in a row.” Finally, in 1963, Cage organized a performance of this work by Satie, which lasted almost eighteen hours and forty minutes, with the participation of twelve pianists in succession. Among the characters were: John Cage himself, Lewis Lloyd, David Tudor, Philip Korner, Viola Farber, Christian Wolf, Robert Wood, MacRae Cook, John Cale, David del Tredici, Howard Kline. There was an entrance fee for this marathon: five dollars. Listeners were given watches, and the longer they spent listening to Satie's work, the more money they got back. Since then, "Vexation" has been performed numerous times.

The originality of Satie's music and his innovative techniques influenced many composers. As a result, in addition to the fact that many of his works actually paved the way for the emergence of ambient music, Satie himself was a forerunner of such creative movements as minimalism, “music of repetition” and “Theater of the Absurd”.

A pleasant, unobtrusive melody that doesn’t invite you anywhere, doesn’t tell about great passions, people don’t pay much attention to it at all, but it creates a comfortable environment - just like furniture... That’s what it’s called - “furniture music”. The creator of this peculiar phenomenon is the French composer Erik Satie. But, of course, his services to world art lie not only in this - many musical trends that flourished at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries and in the 20th centuries have their roots in the work of Satie.

Like all talented people, Erik Satie showed early musical abilities and a love of music - but his parents did not pay attention to this at first: there were no artists in the family, his father was a port broker. The boy began to seriously study music only at the age of twelve, when the family moved from Honfleur, where Erik Satie was born, to Paris. He entered the Paris Conservatory twice - at thirteen and at eighteen, but never finished: the first time he was expelled after two and a half years, since his studies could not be called successful, the second time he himself left the conservatory because studying was not interesting. He joined the army, after a year of service he returned to the capital and worked part-time as a tapper in a cafe. However, this did not interfere with the composer’s creativity - and in 1888 the piano cycle “Three Gymnopedies” was born. What was remarkable about him? The composer used free relationships of non-chords in it. It cannot be said that no one had used this harmonic technique before Satie - for example, Cesar Franck did it, but Satie subsequently developed it - in “Son of the Stars,” written in 1891, sequences of non-chords were built in fourths. As for the Three Gymnopedies, Claude Debussy, whom Satie met in a cafe in Montmartre and became friends with, suggested orchestrating them. It was thanks to his friendship with Satie that Debussy overcame his youthful passion for Wagnerian music.

Extravagance has always distinguished Erik Satie. This quality was manifested in everything - in the apt sayings with which his notes are full, in the habit of writing his works in red ink and, of course, in the music itself. In 1892, he created a very unexpected method of composition - several short passages (no more than six) are combined with each other in different combinations, and in this way a play is composed. In an even more original way, in 1893, he expressed his annoyance at Suzanne Valadon, the composer’s beloved, who was by no means distinguished by a gentle character. The composer composed a piece which he called “Vexations” (from French this can be translated as “Irritations” or “Troubles”). The piece sounds monotonous, ideally reflecting the state of a person experiencing troubles, and in itself is not particularly long, but the author instructs the pianist to repeat it many times, and how many times exactly is up to the performer to decide. True, the composer did set a limit: a maximum of eight hundred and forty times. Depending on the tempo (which Satie also left to the musician’s discretion), this can range from twelve hours to a day. However, some other works of that period were written in a similar style: “Chimes of the Rose and Cross”, “Gothic Dances” and others. Devoid of contrasts and sharp transitions, some pieces were not even divided into measures. True, the composer did not require them to be repeated hundreds of times, but in style they were reminiscent of “Trouble.”

Since 1898, Satie lived in Arceuil, a suburb of Paris. “The Hermit of Arkay” - that’s what they called him; he preferred not to meet with anyone, only occasionally visiting Paris to present a new work. However, the composer was almost unknown to the general public until in 1911 he organized a series of concerts from his works. Satie's works attract attention not only with their unusual style, but also with their extravagant titles: “Dried Embryos”, “Automatic Descriptions”, “Three Pieces in the Shape of Pears”.

In 1915, the composer met. On his initiative, Satie took part in the creation of a ballet for the troupe (the libretto was written by Cocteau, and the design was done by Pablo Picasso). The ballet, presented in 1917, was called “Parade”, and to say that Satie’s ballet music shocked the audience is to say nothing: deliberately primitive, with the howling of sirens, the clatter of a typewriter and other non-musical sounds... But the composer had even more original idea - in 1916, he proposed to couturier Germain Bongard a wonderful psychological technique: unobtrusive music should be played in salons and stores, influencing customers. After two years, Bongar ordered him such music, and it was written, but the implementation of the idea was prevented by military actions. Pieces from “Furniture Music Invented by Erik Satie” (precisely invented - the composer considered it something more technical than creative) were performed only in 1919, during the intermission of Satie’s musical drama “Socrates”, written on the text of Plato’s dialogues.

The death of the "Hermit of Arkay" in 1925 went unnoticed by the music world. A true surge of interest in Satie's work followed in the mid-20th century, when it became obvious how ahead of his era the composer was.

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