When you hear Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, you never forget it. Not that popular culture would allow you to forget it: the piece has been, and continues to be, reinterpreted and sampled by musicians working in a variety of genres from pop to electronic to metal. In versions that sound near what Satie would have intended when he composed it in 1888, it’s additionally been featured in relymuch less movies and television exhibits. It’s even heard with some frequency in YouTube movies, although within the case of the one from The Music Professionalfessor above, it’s not simply the soundobserve, but in addition the subject. Utilizing an annotated rating, it explains simply what makes the piece so enduring and influential.
Upon “a simple iambic rhythm with two ambiguous main seventh chords,” Gymnopédie No. 1 introduces a melody that “floats above an austere professionalcession of notes,” then “strikes down the octave from F# to F#.” With its lack of a transparent key, in addition to its lack of development and drama that the orchestral music of the day would have skilled listeners to anticipate, the piece was “as shocking because the dance of bare Spartans it was meant to evoke.”
The melody makes its turns, however never fairly arrives at its appearing destinations, going round in circles as a substitute — earlier than, all of a sudden, swerving into the “minor and dissonant” earlier than finishing in “professionaldiscovered melancholy.”
Regardless of music in general having lengthy since assimilated the daring qualities of Gymnopédie No. 1, the original piece nonetheless catches our ears — in its subtle method — whenever it comes on. So, in another method, do the much less recognizready and extra experimalestal Gnossiennes with which Satie followed them up. In the video above, the Music Professionalfessor professionalvides a visual explanation of Gnossienne No. 1, during whose performance “delicate dissonance hangs within the air” whereas “a curious melody floats over gentle syncopations within the left hand” over simply two chords. The rating comes with “surreal comments”: “Très luisant,” “Du bout de la pensée,” “Postulez en vous-même,” “Questionez.” Satie is commonly credited with pioneering what would turn into ambient music; may these be professionalto-Indirect Strategies?
Related Content:
Watch Animated Scores of Eric Satie’s Most Well-known Items: “Gymnopedie No. 1” and “Gnossienne No. 1”
Listen to Never-Earlier than-Heard Works by Erik Satie, Pershaped 100 Years After His Loss of life
The Velvet Underground’s John Cale Performs Erik Satie’s Vexations on I’ve Obtained a Secret (1963)
Watch the 1917 Ballet “Parade”: Created by Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso & Jean Cocteau, It Professionalvoked a Riot and Impressed the Phrase “Surrealism”
Japanese Artwork Installation Lets People Play Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” As They Stroll on Socially-Distanced Notes on the Ground
How Erik Satie’s “Furniture Music” Was Designed to Be Ignored and Paved the Manner for Ambient Music
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly often called Twitter at @colinmarshall.
