Gymnopédie No. 1: A Song History
Erik Satie had only just moved to Montmartre when he wrote the three Gymnopédies for piano, one after another, finishing the set by early April 1888.[1] The title borrows the name of the ancient Greek gymnopaedia, a compound of the Greek for naked and young man, which first named a recurring festival of sport and dance in which unarmed youths showed their worth as warriors; later in antiquity the word came to mean a kind of dance.[1] The word was already in Satie's vocabulary, for a story has him introducing himself as a "Gymnopédiste" to Rodolphe Salis, founder of the Chat Noir cabaret, in December 1887.[1] It also appears in Les Antiques, a poem by his friend J. P. Contamine de Latour, and the sources consulted here cannot say whether the poem prompted the music or the other way round.[1][2] Satie himself said that reading Flaubert's Salammbô had inspired the pieces, but the editor of the Henle edition reads such statements from Satie as ironic and meant to mislead.[1][2]
Arnold Genthe, Kanellos dance group at ancient sites in Greece, photograph, 1929. A modern revival of ancient Greek dance, shown for the title's Greek source; it has no connection to Satie.
Publication was piecemeal, spread over seven years.[1] The first, dedicated to Jeanne de Bret, appeared in August 1888 as a supplement to the illustrated weekly La Musique des familles, with lines from Contamine de Latour's poem printed above the music.[1][3] Satie paid to publish the third himself later that year, while the second, dedicated in print to his brother Conrad, waited until 1895, when it came out together with a fresh engraving of the first.[1][2][4] Claude Debussy, a friend of Satie's since 1891, orchestrated the first and third; the Henle preface, drawing on the conductor Gustave Doret's memoirs, says Doret commissioned the arrangement, while another account has Debussy offering it to draw attention to his friend's music.[1][2] Doret conducted the premiere at a Société nationale de musique concert in the Salle Érard in Paris on February 20, 1897.[1][5] Sources differ on whether the orchestration was made in 1896 or early 1897.[2][5] The publisher Baudoux issued it in 1898, and Debussy swapped the numbers, so that his No. 1 is Satie's third piece and his No. 2 is Satie's first.[2][5]
Today the set ranks with Satie's most familiar music, and the Henle edition's editor credits the 1897 orchestral premiere with launching that reputation.[1] Judy House and Kirk House include the first in The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts, Book 2, their own collection of eleven ensemble arrangements, each written in four or five parts.[6]
Sources
- G. Henle Verlag: "Satie, Gymnopédies (HN 1072), Preface by Ulrich Krämer".
- Musikproduktion Höflich, Repertoire Explorer: "Erik Satie, Deux Gymnopédies arranged for small orchestra by Claude Debussy, Preface by Phillip Brookes".
- Bibliothèque nationale de France, data.bnf.fr: "Gymnopédies. No 1, Erik Satie".
- Bibliothèque nationale de France, Catalogue général: "Gymnopédies. No 2, Erik Satie".
- Bibliothèque nationale de France, data.bnf.fr: "Claude Debussy, Orchestrations. Satie, Erik. Gymnopédies. No 1".
- Judy House and Kirk House: "The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts, Book 2".
- Image: Arnold Genthe, Kanellos dance group at ancient sites in Greece, photograph, 1929. Library of Congress.