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WD_336/ 2007
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 4 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 25.6 x 17.7 | | Size (mm): | 650 x 450 | | Catalog #: | WD_0336 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
It is divided into three movements, which closely approximate a symphony in form. The first, 'From Dawn to Noon on the Sea', begins with a thin, hauntingly grayed quality and grows animated in such a spiritual manner that it is hard to see how Debussy's friend Erik Satie could have forsaken his customary elegance to remark that he particularly enjoyed the part at a quarter past eleven.
* From the (unattributed) sleeve-notes on the 1988 RCA Victor release of Claude Debussy's La Mer.
-en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Satie
Erik Satie's Sarabandes and their importance to his composing career - An article by Robert Orledge.
Published in Music & Letters, page 555-565, vol. 77, issue 4, Nov. 1996. Reprinted with kind permission from the copyright holders. © 1996 Oxford University Press, UK.
..............................
On 16 January 1911, Ravel gave the first public performance of Satie's second Sarabande at a concert of the newly founded Societe Musicale Independante in the Salle Gaveau, Paris.(1) At the time, Satie was in his sixth year of study at the Schola Cantorum, under Vincent d'Indy, and was still largely unknown as a composer at the age of 44. In the event, less than four minutes of music in the right place at the right time provided the turning-point in his career - the moment for which he had been waiting since 1902, when the 'absolutely astounding' success of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande had forced him to seek a completely new artistic direction.(2) Ravel's 'discovery' of Satie led to recognition and publication and ultimately to the humoristic piano pieces of 1912-15 for which he is now justly famous. But in common with the strange logic that pervades all aspects of Satie scholarship, sources reveal that he was far from pleased with the outcome at the time. As he explained to his brother Conrad on the day after the concert:
In 1905 I put myself to work with d'Indy. I was tired of being reproached with an ignorance of which I thought I must be guilty, since competent people pointed it out in my works.
After three years of hard work I obtained from the Schola Cantorum my diploma in counterpoint . . . Proud of my knowledge, I set to work to compose. My first work of this kind is a Choral & Fugue [the Apercus desagreables]. I have often been insulted in my poor life, but never was I so despised. What on earth had I been doing with d'Indy? The things I wrote before had such charm! Such depth! . . . Whereupon the 'Jeunes' mounted a campaign against d'Indy and played the Sarabandes and Le Fils des etoiles, and so on, works that were once considered the fruits of a profound ignorance - wrongly, according to these 'Jeunes'.
That's life, mon vieux!
It's total nonsense.(3)
As a result, however, two of Satie's 1887 Sarabandes appeared in print: the first in the S.I.M. Revue musicale mensuelle on 15 March 1911(4) and the second in Musica in April.(5) At the same time, Satie's close friend Debussy - doubtless prompted by his current rivalry with Ravel - agreed to conduct his c.1893-6 orchestrations of Satie's third and first Gymnopedies on 25 March. On this occasion, neither party was exactly
overjoyed by the outcome, as Satie again explained to his brother on 11 April:
One person who isn't pleased is the good Claude. It's really his own fault; if he had done sooner what Ravel - who makes no secret of the influence I had on him - has done, his position would be different . . . The success achieved by the Gymnopedies at the concert conducted by him at the Cercle Musical - a success which he did
everything possible to turn into a failure - gave him an unpleasant surprise.
I'm not angry with him about it. He's the victim of his social climbing. Why won't he allow me a very small place in his shadow? I have no use for the sun. His conduct has antagonised the 'Ravelites' and the 'Satieists', people who have been keeping quiet in their place, but who are now yelling at each other like polecats.(6)
But Satie knew that there was no such thing as bad publicity, and willingly supervised the Rouart, Lerolle & Cie publications of various early works in 1911-13,(7) including the three Sarabandes in October 1911. He was happier still when the same firm brought out his latest work, En habit de cheval, in 1912, and when Demets published Veritables preludes flasques (pour un chien) and Apercus desagreables shortly after their completion. He was now composing to demand, and it was only when publishing was curtailed in 1915 by the war that the tidal flow generated by Ravel's performance of the second Sarabande was forced into other channels. Satie was also able to give up his income-generating cabaret work in the process, though its influence survived to fertilize both the humoristic piano pieces and the theatre works (such as Parade) that stemmed from his second 'discovery' by Cocteau in 1915.
The Trois sarabandes played an important part in Satie's composing career for several other reasons. First, they established the principle of composing works in groups of three, like viewing the same sculpture from different angles. And Satie later told Paul Collaer that if his second and third Gymnopedies or Sarabandes appeared to him as good as the first, it was 'the absolutely new form' he had invented that 'was good in itself'.(8) Second, they established the technique of juxtaposing musical cells, using both large-scale repetition and repetition within sections (with or without transposition) to create a substantial piece entirely without Germanic development. Third, they are the only pieces by Satie which have survived in several different manuscript (and even published) versions. Lastly, they provide the only known instance of the ever forward-looking Satie revising an earlier work at a later stage in his career.
The event which made this article possible was the sale in 1992 of the first drafts of the first and second Sarabandes from the collection of Jacques Guerin.(9) Among other things, these drafts reveal that Satie's original conception of the Sarabandes was radically different from the pieces we know today. To begin with, each was conceived as a 'Sarabande vive' with a metronome marking of crotchet = 104. Ex. 1 shows Satie's original, and much more spirited, conception of bars 16-21 of the first Sarabande, and had he not changed the marking to crotchet = 84,(10) his subsequent 'Rose + Croix' compositions might well have been much more varied, instead of being uniformly slow and hieratic. Even so, the 'Lent' marking which appears on the first Sarabande was also crossed out, and there is no sign of the apocalyptic extract from Contamine de Latour's La Perdition which prefaces the second version,(11) and makes it the first example of a
piece that is totally divorced from the text which accompanies it.(12)
Evidence from the first draft of the first Sarabande allows us to be certain that Satie wrote down all three Sarabandes during September 1887: the first is dated '[1.sup.er] Septembre 1887. Paris' while the third (Bibliotheque Nationale, MS 14457(3)) is dated '18 Septembre 1887'. Although no preliminary sketches have survived, the first drafts show every evidence of being working manuscripts, and the close proximity of the dates suggest that the Sarabandes resulted from a short period of sustained composition. Such evidence casts further doubt on the oft-claimed notion that they derived (in the use of parallel ninths) from the prelude to Chabrier's opera Le Roi malgre lui. If Satie, as we know, responded enthusiastically to seeing the opera on 18 May 1887,(13) it is unlikely that he would have waited over three months before making a non-functional transformation of an isolated passage (bars 15-19) that he had heard only once, without a score.(14) We know that Satie had a superb ear, but it is far more likely that his harmonic audacities (which undoubtedly influenced Debussy's Sarabande of 1894) came about as a logical extension of the sevenths, ninths and even thirteenths without conventional preparation or resolution that we find in his barless song 'Sylvie' of April 1887.(15) Even more remarkable is the way that Satie's first Sarabande begins on a tonic seventh on A[flat] and reaches B[double flat] (A) major by bar 8 (Ex. 2a). In the first version, the only time this Sarabande reached a pure tonic chord was in the last two bars. This (and the choice of difficult keys - A flat major, D sharp minor and D flat major - for the three pieces) hardly bears out Contamine de Latour's opinion that Satie in his Montmartre days 'was in the position of a man who knew only thirteen letters of the alphabet but who had nevertheless decided to create a new literature with only these means, rather than admit his inadequacy'.(16) However, after his years at the Schola Cantorum we find Satie notating the opening (seen in Ex. 2a) differently in the S.I.M. Revue musicale mensuelle version of 1911 (Ex. 2b). But given the printing problems that this enharmonic revision produced (and Satie must never have corrected proofs for it), he reverted to the notation of Ex. 2a in the Rouart, Lerolle edition later that year. There was, incidentally, no desire to be deliberately abstruse here, in contrast with Satie's
notation in the last of the Heures seculaires et instantanees of 1914.(17)
The other important factor that can be discerned from the first draft of the first Sarabande is that it was meant to be highly expressive and full of dramatic contrast, in terms of register and dynamics (see Exx. 1 and 2a). The music is also to be pedalled, and at its faster original speed it can perhaps be seen as a hybrid stage between the salon pieces of 1885 and the chains of block chords that characterize the 'Rose + Croix' pieces of the early 1890s. This is especially evident in the almost Chopinesque scales and arpeggios that pervade the third Sarabande, and it does, of course, bypass the Ogives of 1886, which were directly inspired by plainsong, with a simpler [AA.sup.1][A.sup.2][A.sup.1] form based mainly on textural and dynamic contrast. Given the rich, sensual harmonies and the haunting melodic lines of the Sarabandes, it is tempting to imagine that composition of the notes and their dynamic markings happened simultaneously, but unfortunately there is every evidence to suggest that their expressiveness was appended later - just as the rhythms were often added to the block chords in the 'Rose + Croix' pieces. For the dynamics stop abruptly at the end of the first page of the first Sarabande and are nowhere to be seen in the first draft of the second. Conversely, there are none at all in the second draft of No. 1 (Bibliotheque Nationale, MS 14457(1)), while No. 2 is full of them. And in No. 3, the first dynamic marking that appears is in the 1911 Rouart, Lerolle edition, and then not until bar 3. What is even more curious is the way in which the same music can be provided with different dynamics at different stages. An extreme instance of this is given in Ex. 3a and b.
The most interesting feature of all concerns the form and length of the Sarabandes. The first drafts of all three reveal that they were conceived in two repeating halves, with the second half slightly longer than the first, plus a short coda in Nos. 1 and 3.(18) Moreover, Nos. 1 and 2 cadenced in the dominant at the end of the first half, like a dance movement from a suite by Couperin or Rameau. Although Satie's first idea was too fast to be a dance, his second was not, and there is every evidence to suggest that it was Satie rather than Debussy who first tried consciously to be a 'musicien francais'. This concept has hitherto been obscured for several reasons which revolve around the changing lengths of the different drafts of the first and second Sarabandes. In fact, what Satie did in his second 1887 version was to modify the repeats of the second halves of Nos. 1 and 2 to give greater interest, and also, in the case of No. 1, to prepare the tonic before the final bars. In the process, the added A[flat] major chords in bars 84-85 and 92-93 act as punctuation points, prefiguring later 'Rose + Croix' pieces such as the 1892 Preludes du Nazareen. But because of the internal repetitions, either Satie or the printer became confused and cells were omitted at different stages. So as early as MS 14457 Satie resolved to write out Nos. 1 and 2 in full, dispensing with the repeat marks and thus obscuring the form. It is from this manuscript that Ravel must have given his performance of the second Sarabande in January 1911.
On the question of musical punctuation, as he prepared the 1911 edition for Rouart, Lerolle Satie shortened many of his phrase endings in an aeration process more typical of his later works, and in marked contrast to the continuous chordal flow of the 'Rose + Croix' period. One of these changes can be seen by comparing the second bars of Ex. 3a and b. Apart from the silences at the ends of the descending triplet figures in bars 5, 10, 26, 31, 47 and 72 of No. 3, no such aerations occur in 1887, whereas in the Rouart, Lerolle edition there are 64 such points. The real curiosity is that they were not added to the early 1911 editions of Nos. 1 and 2. Since the evolutionary process was complex (with the first and second Sarabandes having up to four different overall lengths), it is best charted stage by stage (and source by source) for each piece, and bearing in mind that the third Sarabande retained its original length and form (AABB plus coda) throughout.
SARABANDE NO. I
1. Guerin MS ('Sarabande vive'). Dedicated 'A Monsieur Conrad Satie'. Dated ['1.sup.er] Septembre 1887. Paris'. Total bars = 116.
A 1-21 (repeat = 22-42) B 43-79 (repeat = 80-116)
2. MS 14457(1). Written out in full, incorporating changes indicated in (1). Bar numbers as in (5) (Rouart, Lerolle edition, 1911). Dedicated 'A Monsieur Conrad Satie' with extract from Contamine de Latour's La Perdition added in the latter's hand. Dated 'Septembre 1887'. Total bars = 104.
A 1-21 (repeat = 22-42)
[B.sup.1] 43-77 plus 78-79 added (new link)
[B.sup.2] 80-83 as 43-46
84-85 added (A[flat] tonic chords)
86-87 as 78-79
88-91 as 59-62
92-93 added (A[flat] tonic chords)
94-104 = 106-16 in (1) (94-104 in (5) minus bass additions in 102-3)
3. S.I.M. Revue musicale mensuelle (15 March 1911), 33-34. No dedication, Contamine de Latour quotation remains. Musical text as (2), with enharmonic notation changed in [5.sup.3] to [9.sup.1]. Section B includes confusing partial repeat in which bars 53-55 and 72-74 are missing. Total bars = 98. 4. MS copied in 1911 for Rouart, Lerolle edition of the same year. No dedication or quotation. Musical text as (2), with dynamics in
section A only, and new bass additions to 102-3. Total bars = 104.
5. Rouart, Lerolle edition (October 1911: plate-number RL 9800). No dedication or quotation. Musical text as (4), but no repeat signs used. Dynamics added to second half, plus 'ralentir' in bar 100. Total bars = 104.
SARABANDE NO. 2
1. Guerin MS ('Sarabande vive'). Dedication 'A mon ami Arthur Dodement'. Undated, but earlier than (2) below. Total bars = 108.
A 1-22 (repeat = 23-44)
B 45-72 (repeat = 73-100) plus coda, 101-4 (repeated)
2. MS 14457(2). Written out in full incorporating changes indicated in (1). Bar numbers as in (5). Dedication to Dodement changed to 'a Mademoiselle Jeanne de Bret' (in another hand). Dated 'Septembre 1887'. Total bars = 101.
A 1-22 (repeat = 23-44)
[B.sup.1] 45-72
[B.sup.2] 73-86 as 45-58
87-91 repeat of 82-86
92-98 as 67-72
99-101 = 101-4 in (1) (93-96 in (5))
3. Musica (April 1911), 89-90. Musical text as (2) with a few minor printing errors. No dedication. Total bars = 101.
4. MS copied in 1911 for Rouart, Lerolle edition of the same year. No dedication. In two repeated halves with long first- and second-time bars in section B, in which repeat of 82-86 as 87-91 in (2) is omitted. Dynamics substantially revised from (2). Total bars = 96.
5. Rouart, Lerolle edition (October 1911: plate-number RL 9801). Musical text as (4), but written-out repeats. Dedication 'a Maurice Ravel'. Total bars = 96.
SARABANDE NO. 3
1. MS 14457(3). No dedication or dynamics. Dated '18 Septembre 1887'. Total bars = 100.
A 1-21 (repeat = 22-42)
B 43-67 (repeat = 68-92) plus coda, 93-100
2. MS copied in 1911 for Rouart, Lerolle edition of the same year. As (1), with no dynamics. Total bars = 100.
3. Rouart, Lerolle edition (October 1911: plate-number RL 9802). Musical text as (1), but written-out repeats and dynamics from bar 3 onwards. No dedication. Total bars = 100.
Thus what began as a gradually diminishing process of reduction by eight bars at a time ended up with the first and second Sarabandes balanced, respectively, at four bars more and four bars fewer than the consistent 100 bars of the third Sarabande. Although the final shortening of Sarabande No. 2 might seem to have arisen through an inadvertent omission at the start of the '[2.sup.me] fois pour finir' section at stage (4), it is far more likely to have been a deliberate revision on Satie's part which both improved the flow of the ending and gave a balanced proportional scheme. As he told Jacques Lerolle on 5 May 1911, 'In the case of the "Sarabande" [No. 2] I prefer the given version - the one that you have - to that which appeared in 'Musica'. There is therefore no need to change anything at all' (Satie's emphasis).(19)
What is equally remarkable about the Sarabandes is the way that they were subtly, but deliberately interlinked. The loud rising chords in quavers that add drama and focus to the 'A' section of No. 1 (bars 11, 16, 32, 37) and derive from bars 7-8 make a striking reappearance to start the 'B' section of No. 2 (bars 45, 73: compare Exx. 1 and 4). The held dominant ninth chord on G[flat] in root position, which forms the focus of the opening phrases of No. 1 (bars 2, 4, 10: see Ex. 2b) returns (notated with F[sharp] as its root) in the 'B' section of No. 2 (bars 57-58, 85-86). A cadentially related dominant ninth in root position (on D[flat]) is the first thing we hear in No. 3 (bars 1-2) and is also used to end the 'A' section (bars 20-21) - with a further, immediate repeat as the 'A' section returns in bars 22-23. The second-inversion dominant ninth on A[sharp] which is highlighted in the 'A' section of No. 2 (bars 5-6, 27-28) - and recurs a semitone higher in 82-83 - fulfils a similar function. Apart from the obvious harmonic unity deriving from the chains of seventh and ninth chords and the modal cadences in all three Sarabandes, Satie provides a link between the rising arpeggiated chords in No. 2 (bars 7, 29, 56, 84) and the untypical arpeggios and scales (both falling and rising) which play such a substantial role in No. 3 (bars 3-5, 8-10, 13-18, 24-26, 29-31, 34-39, 45-47, 50-51, 60-65, 70-71, 75-76, 85-90). From a position in No. 1 where there is little or no direct linkage between the 'A' and 'B' sections (apart from the odd rhythmic pattern and the repeated final chords), the sections become progressively interrelated as the pieces proceed, thus confirming the hypothesis that Satie composed his Sarabandes in their published order during September 1887, even though the two 'Sarabandes vives' were originally unnumbered. Further proof that Satie was concerned about their unification is provided by the addition of the low bass part to bars 102-3 of No. 1 at stage 4 (after March 1911). At this stage he also added the low bass octaves to the repeating bars - 48, 50, 59, 61, 76 and 78 - of No. 2 to create another feature occurring with increasing frequency across the set . A similar instance is provided by the Gymnopedies of 1888, in which Satie added a four-bar introduction to No. 2 before publication in 1895 to bring it into line with Nos. 1 and 3.
A characteristic of Satie first seen in the Sarabandes is internal repetition by transposition; for bars 9-13 of No. 1 recur a tone higher as bars 14-[18.sup.2]. The fact that this repetition embraces three consecutive cells shows that Satie had continuity and logical progression in mind to a far greater extent than in a piece such as the Prelude en tapisserie of 1906, where the jigsaw puzzle construction is more evident (and baffling). In the Sarabandes, the cells are mostly longer (usually five bars or fewer, but up to nine in the case of No. 3, bars 13-21). One curious instance arises in No. 1, where Satie becomes unexpectedly lyrical in bars 53-58 , detaches the melody briefly from its harmony and introduces his first 6-4 chord, as well as the only motif in the entire piece which does not end with a root-position chord (see bar 55 in ). When this passage recurs in bars 69-74 and 94-99, the order of the two three-bar cells is reversed. Or rather, both cells were originally as in bars 56-58 of Ex. 5, and Satie altered the first cell here, but the second when it returns, which provides further evidence that he was thinking about continuity and variety as he composed. Moreover, the last time this figure occurs it is thrust into special prominence by the insertion of two bars of tonic chords (92-93) immediately before it. The introduction of the sudden pianissimo in all three occurrences, found only in the 1911 Rouart, Lerolle edition, might suggest that Satie remained a Romantic at heart who secretly loved sensuous harmonies, for all his outward iconoclasm. Such tendencies show up equally in his Brahmsian fondness for sonorous bass octaves, and especially in the other 6-4 chord (with added sixth) which suddenly bursts forth in bar 48 of No. 2 (Ex. 4), and keeps on doing so, as we saw earlier. As far as Ex. 5 is concerned, one wonders whether Faure had already heard this lyrical passage when he set Verlaine's 'Une sainte en son aureole' in September 1892: the opening song of La Bonne Chanson undeniably has something in common with Satie's first Sarabande, over and above its metre, mood and key.
The other unifying element demonstrated in Exx. 4 and 5 is Satie's use of perfect fourths and fifths, both melodically and as the bass part of plagal and perfect cadence types (to which sevenths and ninths are invariably added). This pattern is established as early as bars 3-4 of No. 1 ???(see Ex. 2b), and the fourths and fifths fall as often as they rise. Thus, despite the harmonic novelty and foreshadowing that was noted so prominently when the Sarabandes were rediscovered in 1911,(20) Satie's procedures had stronger links with the past than he cared to admit. Moreover, each of the three Sarabandes begins and ends with the same perfect fifth on the tonic in the bass, and it is the sudden, distant tonal digressions that are a more remarkable feature. The swift move to A major (from A flat) at the start of No. 1 is recalled by the sudden Neapolitan progressions (from D[flat] to E[double flat] major) in bars 52-59 and 77-84 of No. 3. Then the Sarabandes end as they began with rapid tonal movement, for the new cells in the coda of No. 3 pass from D flat minor (seven flats) to E flat major (three flats), before settling in D flat major (five flats). The final cadence to the set appears odd until we realise that B flat minor (the relative minor of D flat major) opened the 'B' sections of No. 3 (and - as A sharp minor - ended the 'A' sections of No. 2), and that the set began with a major-seventh chord on A[flat] (compare Ex. 2b with bar [99.sup.3] in Ex. 6). Satie may have done this instinctively, but I doubt it.
Ex. 6 also shows another important aspect which recurs across the Sarabandes in the way that last-inversion dominant sevenths resolve on to root position tonics (as in bars 94-98 of Sarabande No. 3). First, the falling bass fourth idea was of greater concern to Satie than conventional resolution, and it was his aim to transform accepted procedures anyway, as well as to question the wisdom of the teaching of the Conservatoire, which had given him such a miserable time during 1879-86. Second, it shows that the notes of any chord and the resulting sound, often created through unexpected juxtapositions, were of greater importance than the chord's inversion per se. Satie's philosophy seems to have been that if a seventh or a ninth chord was beautiful in itself, then chains of such chords would be even more beautiful, and that there was no need to prepare or resolve them correctly, no need for motivic development, and no need to use thirds and sixths regularly between the outer parts to add warmth, as Schumann or Brahms might have done. Ex. 6 also shows Satie preserving the sarabande rhythm, with its stressed second beat, to the very end, and a comparison of Ex. 2a and b reveals that he deliberately added this characteristic feature to the first bar of the set.
While the newly discovered manuscripts of the Sarabandes shed considerable light on the evolution of Satie's composing career, there is still no completely correct edition of all three.(21) No corrected proofs have survived for the 1911 Rouart, Lerolle edition, and given the number of errors and inconsistencies it contains, it is doubtful that they ever existed. Some of the errors sprang from Satie's own neat copy of 1911; and, from the way that the Sarabandes are constructed from repeating cells, there can be no doubt that these are meant to be the same when they recur. They also provided a source of confusion for Satie when he tried to save time in 1911 by using first- and second-time bars in No. 2, as we have seen. Given the trouble Satie took with the minutest details of his Veritables preludes flasques in 1913,(22) and with subsequent editions, such laxity is surprising, but it must be remembered that in 1911 he was a newcomer to publication, and that the Sarabandes were then works of the past for him, and consequently of lesser importance. He never mentioned the Sarabandes after 1911, and perhaps their nearest later equivalents come in the 'Choral inappetissant' which begins the Sports et divertissements of 1914, and the 'Choral' which opens Parade (added in 1919). Both of these use the sarabande rhythm prominently, as well as the melodic interval of the rising perfect fourth, and it was probably the early 1911 editions of the first two Sarabandes that led to the establishment of this later pattern in the opening 'Choral' of En habit de cheval that summer. Indeed, triple time becomes far more conspicuous in Satie's 'serious' music after 1911 than it had been at any time since 1887-8. The main difference, of course, is that the later chorales are much more dissonant, even aggressive, in their harmonies, whereas such explosiveness as there is in the Sarabandes springs from contrasts of dynamics and register. However, Satie continued to be fascinated by the dance throughout his career,(23) and even returned to a dance of the past in his Premier menuet of 1920. But without Ravel's public rediscovery of the Sarabandes, Satie's years of obscurity might well have persisted and his career taken a very different course.
1 He also performed the third Gymnopedie (1888) and the Act I prelude to Le Fils des etoiles (1891). Although these were first public performances in their solo piano form, the third Gymnopedie had already been heard in Debussy's orchestration in February 1897, and the prelude to Le Fils des etoiles had been performed in some sort of instrumental version in March 1892.
2 So described in a letter to Conrad Satie on 27 June 1902. Cited from a copy in the Archives de la Fondation Erik Satie, Paris.
3 Cited in Satie Seen through his Letters, ed. Ornella Volta, trans. Michael Bullock, London & New York, 1989, p. 28.
4 S.I.M. Revue musicale mensuelle, vii/3 (March 1911), pp. 33-34, together with the first two Morceaux en forme de poire (ibid., pp. 35-38, though only the first 32 bars of the second Morceau were published), and the first Danse gothique of 1893 (ibid., pp. 39-40).
5 As a musical supplement to Musica, x, No. 103 (April 1911), pp. 89-90.
6 Satie Seen through his Letters, ed. Volta, p. 147.
7 The Trois morceaux en forme depoire (1890-1903) in September 1911 (Rouart, Lerolle & Cie (RL) plate-number 9799); the three Sarabandes in October (RL plate-numbers 9800-9802); the Trois Gymnopedies (RL plate-numbers 9838-40) around November; the Pieces froides (1897) and the Prelude a 'La porte heroique du ciel' (1894) in early 1912 (plate-numbers RL 9871-2 and 9875 respectively); and the Trois Gnossiennes (1890) in January 1913 (RL plate-numbers 9884-6).
8 Cited in Paul Collaer, La Musique moderne, 1905-1955, Paris & Brussels, 1955, trans.
Sally Abeles as A History of Modern Music, Cleveland, 1961, p. 136.
9 Lot No. 106 in the Hotel Drouot sale on 20 May 1992: 3 + 3 folios (35.5 X 29 cm.), bound together in a folio with the manuscripts copied for printing by Rouart-Lerolle in 1911 of all three Sarabandes (2 + 2 + 2 folios: each marked 'Grave. A. Gulon'). The manuscripts were bought for exhibition in a new Satie museum at Honfleur, though the museum's opening has been postponed indefinitely owing to the death of its patroness, Mme Schlumberger. I am grateful to Ornella Volta for providing me with copies of these manuscripts from the Archives de la Fondation Erik Satie, Paris, and for other help in the preparation of this article.
10 The slower marking appears in the S.I.M. Revue musicale mensuelle and Musica editions of 1911 only. No metronome mark is provided at any stage for the third Sarabande, and one can only assume that it, too, is meant to be played at crotchet = 84.
11 In Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS 14457(1); 3 folios. Sarabandes Nos. 2 and 3 are classed as MSS 14457(2-3); 3 and 2 folios respectively. MS 14457(3) is the only 1887 source for No. 3.
12 Contamine de Latour's inscription found its way only on to the S.I.M. Revue musicale mensuelle edition of March 1911. It reads as follows: 'Soudain s'ouvrit la Vue et les Maudits tombtrent / Hurlant et se heurtant en un lourd tourbillon; / Et quand ils furent seuls dans la nuit sans rayon, / Ils se virent tout Noirs. Alors ils blasphemerent.' (Trans. by Roger Nichols in Erik Satie: Music for Solo Piano, i (London, 1989), 4: 'Suddenly all was revealed and the Damned fell / Screaming and struggling in a dense, whirling confusion', / And when they were alone in the un-illumined night, / They saw that they were wholly Black. Then they began to blaspheme.')
13 According to Pierre-Daniel Templier, Satie 'left one of his works, decorated with a superb dedication (in red ink, of course), with Chabrier's doorman. The good Chabrier did not bother to reply' (Erik Satie, Paris, 1932, p. 14). This score was probably the now lost manuscript of the 1886 Ogives.
14 This derivation is explored in greater detail in Robert Orledge, Satie the Composer, 1990, pp. 34-36.
15 The dating comes from Conrad Satie in his 'Chronologie de la vie et de l'oeuvre d'Erik
Satie', p. 2 (unpublished MS formerly in the collection of Robert Caby).
16 From P[atrice] Contamine de Latour, 'Erik Satie intime', Comoedia (3 August 1925), 2.
17 At the end of the 'Affolements granitiques' he deliberately writes cadential chords of C and F major in sharps and double sharps (Demets's edition of 1917: E.1870.D, p. 7).
18 The manuscripts of Nos. 1 and 2 from the Guerin collection and MS 14457(3), which is the earliest known draft of No. 3.
19 Letter kindly supplied by Ornella Volta from the Archives de la Fondation Erik Satie. This extract appears as a postscript, the place where Satie's most important observations often occur.
20 The Musica edition of No. 2 was headed: 'This sarabande is filled with discoveries of surprising originality if you bear in mind that it dates from 1887'. What must have annoyed Satie more than the general focus on 'harmonic prophecy' was the following (unsigned) review which appeared in the February 1911 edition of Musica, after Ravel's concert: 'This disturbing inventor of neologisms seems otherwise to be strangely uninterested in his discoveries and has not persevered with his explorations' (Musica, x, No. 101 (February 1911), p. 33).
21 Pianists are recommended to use Roger Nichols's edition of Erik Satie: Music for Solo Piano, i. 17-23. They should, however, substitute B?? as the bass note on the third crotchet of bar 48 of No. 2 (and in all later appearances: ); add a piano marking to the start of No. 3; and perform the Sarabandes at crotchet = 84.
22 See Orledge, Satie the Composer, p. 170.
23 See Ornella Volta, Satie et la danse, Paris, 1992, for the last word on this subject.
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