Erik Satie

At thirty-nine, with the Gymnopédies long behind him, Erik Satie enrolled at the Schola Cantorum to study counterpoint. Born in Honfleur and briefly a pupil at the Paris Conservatoire, he earned his living at the piano in the cabarets of Montmartre. The Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes suspend time by the plainest means: modal harmony, unhurried repetition, a texture with nothing to spare. Later scores carry titles and performance directions that mock Romantic solemnity outright. Parade, made with Cocteau and Picasso for the Ballets Russes in 1917, brought typewriter and siren into the pit; Socrate, a year later, uses restrained dynamics and a contemplative manner. His musique d'ameublement, furniture music, meant to be present rather than listened to, was conceived as background music. Debussy, Ravel and the young composers who became Les Six were influenced by him. He died in Paris in 1925. He returned from Honfleur to Paris at twelve, the son of a Norman father and a Scottish mother, and from 1898 lived in a single room in the suburb of Arcueil, unmarried to the end. Two late ballets, Mercure and Relâche, came in 1924, and he died of cirrhosis at fifty-nine.