Unheard works by Erik Satie to premiere 100 years after his death

79 gripewater 17 6/28/2025, 10:19:44 AM theguardian.com ↗

Comments (17)

crabl · 2m ago
Ian Penman wrote a fantastic biography of Satie, published earlier this year. Worth a read! He was a profoundly strange and fascinating person: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635902532/erik-satie-three-piec...
RhysU · 1h ago
A Strangeloop talk by Mouse Reeve, years ago, looked at the Markovian structure of "Gnossiennes" then made an endless version. A beautiful talk and really cool music website.

Music website: https://gnossiennes.mousereeve.com/ (slightly better on Desktop).

Talk: https://youtu.be/ANYMii3Sypg

Abstract: https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2019/minimalist-piano-forever...

eitally · 2h ago
Satie's Gymnopedies have been on our household's "calming & focused" playlists for years now. Highly recommend, and I look forward to hearing these new works, too.
TZubiri · 2h ago
Did you perchance find these originally on youtube? They're very popular on their autosuggestions.
ithkuil · 1h ago
There are a lot of interpretations of Satie's work and a random playlist on YouTube may not necessarily get you the best performers, also because not everybody has the same tastes in music.

My favourite interpretation of Satie's is played by Reinbert de Leeuw. He plays very slow, playing just a bit behind the beat, with astonishing precision and expressiveness.

zahlman · 18m ago
I have three different recordings of Satie's Gymnopedies on CD from many years ago: de Leeuw's, coming in at almost 16 minutes total; a version from 1968 by William Masselos totaling about 9 minutes; and on the extreme end, Klára Körmendi's version totaling less than 7 minutes.

When I used to play piano, I once timed myself playing them to my own preference. As I recall, it was around 11 minutes at the speed that makes sense to me.

Chacun a son gout. (Satie himself claimed to only eat foods that are white, after all.)

garciansmith · 42m ago
Yes, I agree. I also like Aki Takahashi.
williamdclt · 1h ago
They’re hugely famous, I don’t think most people’s first encounter with them would be as YouTube suggestions
andrepd · 1h ago
Indeed, they feature in a number of media. I think I first heard them in the Mother 3 game!
jiehong · 2h ago
They’ve been a bit everywhere for decades I think. Like I think in movies such as The Royal Tenenbaums of Wes Anderson.

I think I heard it more or less since childhood.

viraptor · 1h ago
It got very popular with the raise of lofi. The Gymnopedie samples are everywhere.
kaonwarb · 2h ago
I assume these are well-vetted as real discoveries, but can't help but think of "Albinoni's" Adagio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_in_G_minor

Still looking forward to listening!

aduffy · 1h ago
Major Hari Seldon vibes
reify · 1h ago
my go to chill out music for the past 10 years

I highly recommend

Eric Satie's complete piano works on 2 x CD

has all the music from this wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Erik_S...

I tried to play some of these on classical guitar and failed dismally.

matt3210 · 1h ago
It’s AI
madaxe_again · 1h ago
This may come as a shock, but there was no AI in 19th century France.
emeril · 24m ago
I'm still waiting to hear 4'33" by John Cage and it's allegedly very popular