Gymnopedies.

It has been a beautiful Wednesday morning. I have been sitting in the kitchen with the back door open. The sun is shining, my sunflowers sway occasionally in a gentle breeze and butterflies and bumble bees go about their business without a care. If you didn’t watch the news you would think everything was fine in the world. All that madness seems a long way away. I have been listening to my new CD which came today. It is a recording of works by Erik Satie.

I heard Gymnopedies by Satie on the radio on Sunday morning and decided to order it. I had heard it before, but didn't know what it was called. As well as that piece there are five works by Satie in all, played on piano by Reinbert De Leeuw. I love this minimalist music. There are times when I do not want to hear songs or complicated orchestrations. I just want to hear something that creates an ambiance and puts me in a good mood. This music is like silence in a nice frame. Although Satie composed this music over a century ago it sits nicely alongside other music I have such as Rainbow In Curved Air by Terry Riley, Music For Zen Meditation by Tony Scott, Keith Jarrett, or Virginia Astley who I have discovered recently. Satie was a close friend of Debussy and I can certainly see that connection as well.

There are sleeve notes to the album  which I found enlightening, because I confess I knew hardly anything about Satie before today. He was in the Rosicrucian order for five years and then set up his own religion called ‘The Metropolitan Church of Art and of Christ the Conductor. He was the only member of this church. He left Paris for a suburb called Arcueil and lived in one room which he called ‘Our Lady Of Lowliness’. He had an affair with a model called Suzanne Valadon who left him after six months. This had a huge impact on his life and he never had another relationship again. He died in 1925 from cirrhosis of the liver. No one else had ever entered the room where he lived until after his death. Amongst the squalor of the room many unpublished compositions were found. One score of a work called Jack In The Box was found behind a piano. Satie thought he had left it on a bus. Many of his works were published after his death. I am glad I have discovered Erik Satie and I have enjoyed listening to his music on this nice July day. Apparently Gymnopedies was a dance in ancient Greece which was performed naked. Jean Cocteau said, “Satie’s work goes forth quite naked”, and it certainly does.