Musical Moments #44
“I never wrote a note I didn’t mean.”
Erik Satie
“Gymnopédie No.2” Erik Satie (1866-1925)
“March Militaire Francaise Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Two for One Friday
The two selections today are by French composers whose life spans overlapped, but that is where similarities ended. Both were admitted to the Paris Conservatory at age thirteen. Satie was subsequently dismissed for being “insignificant and laborious, worthless, and the laziest student in the Conservatoire.” By the time Saint-Saëns enrolled, he had played public concerts for eight years and at age ten performed a Mozart Piano Concerto and the Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto on the same program. The New York Times music critic Harold Schoenberg wrote, “It is not generally realized that he (Saint-Saëns) was the most remarkable child prodigy in history, and that includes Mozart.”
Both composers were young when each suffered the loss of a parent. Saint-Saëns’s father died the year he was born, and he was raised by his nurturing mother and aunt. Satie’s mother died when he was six, and he was subsequently sent to live with his maternal grandparents until he was twelve when his grandmother passed, requiring him to move back with his father and new stepmother.
Satie was avant-garde; Saint-Saëns was a traditionalist. Saint-Saëns admired the music of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner though admitting that he had “never been, and I shall never be of the Wagnerian religion.” Liszt, Berlioz and Rossini were quick to acknowledge his talent as a performer and composer. In addition to his musical prowess, Saint-Saëns was an intellect who seriously studied multiple subjects including French literature, Latin and Greek, divinity, archaeology, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy. Satie was a well-published writer including pieces in such magazines as Vanity Fair, but he was more interested in Cubist and Surrealist art and contemporary drama than any traditional subjects.
Satie had acquaintances such as Ravel, Debussy, and Honegger who respected his music, and non-musical friends included Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau. He was a fan of Stravinsky and wrote about him, while Saint-Saëns was one of the audience members who walked out of the infamous riotous first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Saint-Saëns was a respected teacher with Gabriel Fauré as his most famous student, while Satie did not want to teach. Saint-Saëns had a lifelong love for the music of J.S. Bach, while Satie rebelled against established compositional techniques such as fugues.
Both musicians served briefly in the military. Saint-Saêns joined to support the Franco-Prussian War effort, and Satie signed up after he was released from the conservatory for the second time. Saint-Saëns was a devoted and decorated French citizen receiving the French Legion of Honour award and honorary doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge. Satie was a political radical eventually joining the Communist party and was briefly imprisoned for sending a threatening postcard to a critic.
As a performer, Saint-Saëns was an accomplished pianist and organist holding the organist position at La Madeline, the official church of the Empire. Additionally, he made over 170 trips to 27 countries, including two successful tours to America in 1906 and 1909. His works were performed in major halls including the Covent Garden premier of his popular “Organ Symphony” in London with Sir Arthur Sullivan conducting. Satie, on the other hand, lived near Paris his whole life with the exception of a trip to Belgium and Monte Carlo to participate in performances of his music. And while a decent pianist, in his early years he made his living playing for cabarets.
Both composers were prolific. Satie wrote predominantly for the piano with only a few larger scale works. His miniature pieces remain popular, but other works such as Parade, Mercure, and Vexations are worth a listen. On the other hand, Saint-Saëns wrote in multiple genres including symphonic, opera, oratorio, sonata, chamber, concerti, songs, and solo works. While his output was varied and extensive, only a few of his works remain in the classical cannon. Saint-Saëns most enduring opera is Samson and Dahlia, and his most famous orchestral works are “Dance Macabre,” Cello Concerto, Organ Symphony and, of course, his charming “Carnival of the Animals” which he wrote for his students and refused to have played later in life because he feared it made him look frivolous.
Today’s offering “March Militaire Francaise” is the final movement from Suite Algerienne that Saint-Saëns wrote in 1873 as a tribute to his love for a favorite destination, Algiers.
The work presented by Erik Satie was written in 1888 as one of a set of three piano pieces, Trois Gymnopédies. He referred to a number of his works, including this one, as “furniture music,” believing it was primarily background music. This work was orchestrated by Claude Debussy. Surprisingly, I first heard this music in an arrangement by the rock group Blood, Sweat and Tears.
To the ends of their respective lives, contrasts were glaring. Camille Saint-Saëns, who died at age 86, continued to write and be outspoken against “modern” music, and his passing was mourned as a legend lost. Erik Satie was even less understood after his death. As a result of years of heavy drinking, he died at age 59 from cirrhosis of the liver. When friends “cleaned-out” his apartment, they discovered a bizarrely chaotic existence: two grand pianos stacked on top of each other, peculiar hobbies, and many unknown compositions as well as ones believed to have been lost. These works were located in his clothes, behind the piano, and in other unusual locations. Many of these pieces have since been published.
A side bar, while Saint-Saëns’ music is better known and his writing more comprehensive and accessible, the English music writer, Sir George Grove, captured his contributions by saying: “it cannot be said that he evolved a distinctive musical style. Rather, he defended the French tradition that threatened to be engulfed by Wagnerian influences and created the environment that nourished his successors.” Satie, while not as well know, may well have had more influence on the future of music with composers such as Ravel, Stravinsky and Debussy citing him as important to their respective development.
Simply stated, Camille Saint-Saëns belonged to the past, Satie to the future. Satie flew toward the light of Modernism, while Saint-Saëns played it safe with the Romantics.
Both of these selections are from a November 1997 program featuring our fabulous Bach Festival Orchestra. Now please stop thinking about the two pianos on top of each other, and enjoy these two short musical gems.
“Saint-Saëns was the most accomplished, all-around second-rate composer in the world. Although he never did anything that was supremely outstanding, he wrote a large quantity of excellent music and it is, all of it, a model of technical proficiency and style, occasionally achieving charm….”
Sir Thomas Beecham
Listen on YouTube:
“Gymnopédie No.2” Erik Satie (1866-1925)
“March Militaire Francaise Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)