EDITIONS AND MANUSCRIPTS

Erik Satie's first works were published by his father, a music editor in his spare time. The label "Paris, Alfred Satie éditeur, 66 bd Magenta", address of a stationery store run by the family, appears in the margins of three scores by Erik Satie - one of these being a triptych of songs - published in 1887 and 1888.

As soon as he found a welcoming audience, Satie preferred to compose for specific events and performers. Since he couldn't count on this type of solicitation in the early going, he began by confronting the poems of his close friend José-Patricio Contamine de Latour. However, he hardly tried to render their profound rhythm in musical terms, opposing it with his own.

Even as he chose songs expressly to endear himself to the public, Satie left it to a popular magazine, La Musique des Familles, to print his first waltzes for piano as well as his first Gymnopédie. Waltzes, slow ones particularly, would reappear often in his work.

In 1888, having left home for good and managing to cadge 7,000 francs in the process¹, Satie wastes no time in having his third Gymnopédie ("one of the prettiest"², he would call it in a press release), published at his own expense. He ordered a deluxe edition from the Dupré printing firm: hand-trimmed Bristol paper, title in Gothic characters, the whole printed in red ink. Soon afterwards, he would use an almost identical format for his Ogives, four pieces conceived while contemplating the Gothic arches of Notre-Dame as reconstructed by Viollet-le-Duc^3.

He would soon come under the spell of a personage who shared his taste for a certain form of beauty in solemnity. It was "in the name of the Rose+Cross" of which Sâr Péladan was the "Grand Maître", that the Sonneries - which Satie had composed specially for the ceremonies of his Order - were printed, still on quality paper and still by Dupré. It was no random choice to decorate the cover with a sanguine by Puvis de Chavannes, who was his aesthetic model at the time.

Having separated from Peladan, for fear that the Sâr's burdensome company would tarnish his image, Satie took advantage of his first consistent income of any kind (perhaps the generosity of a friend) to publish the 1st and 2nd Gymnopédies under the same conditions as the third piece of that title.

By contemplating these editions together, Claude-Achille Debussy was seduced to the point of orchestrating two of the three pieces, the only works of another composer to which he ever spontaneously donated a bit of his time. With the exception of a "Sarabande" which would later be seen as influenced by the 2nd Sarabande of Satie, these orchestrations were the only works Debussy managed to finish in 1896, probably the year when the two composers were closest. As if reminding us that the 3rd Gymnopédie was the first to be published, Debussy reversed the titles of the two pieces in his orchestrated version. Without taking the slightest offense, Satie went so far as to copy out carefully by hand the orchestrations sketched by his friend, as a service to the publisher Emile Baudoux, who agreed to print them.

The privilege of benefitting from an orchestration by Debussy, already in high esteem, brought Satie the first performance of any of his works in a traditional concert hall - on February 20, 1897, under the auspices of the highly respected Société Nationale. The conductor was Gustave Doret, "the blond Doret, wild for the music of Erik Satie", l'Ouvreuse du Cirque d'Eté (Henri Gauthier-Villars, a/k/a Willy) wrote later, not without some asperity^4.

Thanks to the contact furnished by Debussy, Baudoux also published the preludes of Fils des Etoiles, "wagnérie kaldéenne" by the Sâr Peladan, in a sumptuous edition printed in red and prefaced by a "Dédicatoire" from Erik Satie "to his peers", reproduced in facsimile of the autograph manuscript, which was drawn in red ink on a sheet of paper decorated with the symbol of the "Eglise Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur," which the composer founded "to attack society by way of music and painting"^5.

Within the group of Publications by the "Eglise," but under the seal, already used by Gide and Claudel, of the Librairie de l'Art Indépendant, Satie had also published at his own expense a portion of the Messe des Pauvres, "Commune qui mundi nefas" and a fragment of plainchant, "Intende votis supplicum." Two brochures which, in addition to the "Christian ballet" Uspud, confirm his taste for a hodge-podge of media, pages of music alternating sharply with open letters and other perfervid tracts, all aimed at the most highly visible figures of Paris intellectual life.

By accepting Satie's Fils des Etoiles, Emile Baudoux could have had no idea that this character, draped as he was in the dignity of being "Parcier et Maître de Chapelle", would very soon sing another tune to his successors, Bellon, Ponscarme & Cie. In effect, transformed into the Velvet Gentleman by an ensemble of seven identical velvet suits (which he would not leave behind for another seven years or more), turn-of-the-century Satie would feed the repertoires of songster Vincent Hyspa and the "queen of the slow waltz", Paulette Darty, whose superb pink décolleté - photographed by Reutlinger - would contribute more than anything else to the successful launching of his sheet music. One of his songs would later be published in a revue dedicated to the "humor of Hyspa"⁶, while two others were featured in a special number of the Album musical which reprinted the same chansonnier's "ten greatest hits".

      Erik SATIE, Gymnopédie, Publ. Dupré, 1888
          (Archives de la Fondation Erik Satie)

The charms of the music-hall could not hold Satie for long: would he not come to judge this milieu "dumber and dirtier than nature"?⁷. Only toward the end of his life would he recognize his debt to popular music: "The music hall, the circus have a true innovative spirit"⁸.

Deciding once more, and not for the last time, to start all over again, Satie hocks his velvet suit for the uniform of a minor bureaucrat. This anonymous getup, designed to make a man invisible during his journey in the desert, made the explosive nature of his work stand out all the more clearly by contrast.

This from an Everyman in his forties who returned humbly to school to learn counterpoint from a professor younger than himself. Having judged the first fruits of his studies as too unripe to justify the search for a publisher, it was the turn of the publisher to come to him - in the person of Alexis Rouart, soon to be associated with his cousin Jacques Lerolle.

Encouraged by the campaign in favor of Satie's role as "precursor", waged in the early 1910s by Ravel and the "jeunes Ravêlites", with the help of the S.M.I. and the S.I.M.⁹, Rouart, Lerolle & Cie started by reprinting the works in Baudoux's catalog which they had just purchased, soon after to publish themselves a number of pieces which Satie long had under wraps: the Morceaux en forme de poire (1903), Trois Gnossiennes (1890), as well as three "Airs à faire fuir" and three "Danses de travers" which he combined under the title Pièces froides (1897), perhaps to emphasize that they weren't published hot out of the oven...

In all the confusion, and against the advice of the Jeunes Ravêlites, hostile as they were to d'lndy and the establishment he built - this Schola Cantorum, Satie's self-imposed finishing school - our composer succeeded in having Rouart, Lerolle & Cie publish his latest work, En Habit de Cheval, of which the title evokes the constraints all good students must suffer. He will claim to have invented, for that very occasion, "the modern fugue which never existed before, especially the expositions"^10.

As soon as he laid hands on the first galley proofs of his Pièces froides, Satie wasted no time in showing them to the great pianist Ricardo Viñes, already linked to Ravel and Debussy, of whom he would make an active accomplice in years to come.

The austere period of the Schola behind him, the time has come to recreate himself yet again. Leaving his "habit de cheval" and other vexing restraints behind, he now throws himself into a playful genre which he would himself call "fantaisiste" in tribute to a certain school of poetry which manipulates the smallest phonemes with subtlety and skill - to which he also testified with his sounds.

For this latest series, he would often use material excerpted from the works of other composers, reserving for them a special treatment which sometimes takes on an air of twisting (if not dynamiting) away from a certain cultural heritage. What he manipulated were the "embryos" of melodies, reduced to their simplest possible expression - which is to say "dried", then "turned every which way", or even confronted with others by an "automatic" process of free association. Also, each score constitutes a self-contained puzzle whose key is, in general, hidden in the playing instructions, presented under cover of little stories with poetic humor.

The listener having to take in this music by an almost subliminal path, without the distracting weight of words, the job of decoding is reserved for the pianist: "It's a secret, Satie explains, between the interpreter and me". It was during his "fantaisiste" period that he paid most attention to notions of sound and its duration, to the point of defining himself as a "phonometrographer" ("I have more satisfaction in measuring a sound than hearing it")^11.

Even as he continued to exploit his caf'conc' songs, inherited from Bellon, Ponscarme & Cie, the firm of Rouart, Lerolle & Cie seemed content to confine him to a role as author of the Gymnopédies. For his "fantaisiste" pieces, Satie began the inevitable quest for a new publisher.

After an initial failure with Jacques Durand (publisher of Debussy and Ravel) - who returned his manuscript "like a glove" - Satie obtained, on the strength of a single interview, a contract with E. Demets. It was Demets, then, who reaped the abundant harvest of these years - except, of course, its summit: the collection Sports & Divertissements, commissioned by Lucien Vogel. As an illustrated album, truly a jewel of published music, this collection would not see print for nine years, because the war which exploded into being in August 1914 dealt a near-fatal blow to all artistic production and display. Satie temporarily gave up composing, since - perhaps even more than his colleagues - he needed an audience of active listeners to express himself.

The war would follow its course for several years, but artists did not keep silent quite as long, because the smallest pretext must have been good for a performance of any kind. There was still talk in the cafés of Montparnasse, for example, of the sumptuous production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Max Reinhardt in Berlin, in 1910. Edgard Varèse, who contributed to the musical portion, encouraged his friends to prove that the French could do even better. After all, as Jean Cocteau observed when he nominated himself to adapt the play, the Englishman Shakespeare is an "Ally;"; he couldn't be on the side of the Huns!¹² Theatres being dark for the duration, they planned to use the grounds of the Cirque Médrano, which led to the idea of, among other things, mixing clowns with actors. As for the incidental music, they would replace Mendelssohn (traditional for the play at that time) with a "pot-pourri of French music", composed especially for the occasion. Among the composers solicited, Satie was the only one to answer the call. His Cinq Grimaces were destined from the beginning to be unplayed and unpublished until much later, as a posthumous work¹³, since the Midsummer project came to naught. He could not have grieved for long, because there were performances of several of his works to attend for the dedication of the Salle Huyghens, the atelier of a painter from Montparnasse which Blaise Cendrars - having returned from the front minus one arm - had transformed into a concert hall and which would soon be used as an art gallery as well. An "Instant musical" by Erik Satie accompanied the first group exhibit (Picasso, Modigliani, Ortiz de Zarate and Kisling) which also included, for the first time, Negro sculptures presented not for their ethnological value, but for their artistic qualities. For two years, the Salle Huyghens would never want for an audience. Seeing Parisiens quickly take up their habitual passion for life and art, despite the bombs and the artists' comings and goings at the front, music publishers would soon get back to work themselves. And so Rouart, Lerolle & Cie brought out, among other things, a number of Satie's new compositions: some pieces for piano and three songs, not to mention the ballet Parade which brought Satie and Picasso together - the very same Parade which Cocteau dared to call "the greatest battle of the war". Dragged into court at the height of this battle by the critic Jean Poueigh who accused him of slander, Satie feared the seizure of his modest royalties as agreed by his publishers. Faced with the risk of losing all possibility of financial help (he was never exactly spoiled in this sense, anyway), he simply switched allegiances and offered his subsequent work - a Sonatine bureaucratique - to a fly-by-night publisher named Stéphane Chapelier. This Chapelier had shown a great admiration for the ballet then under fire by arranging several excerpts himself, under the pseudonymn Hans Ourdine ("en sourdine" translates as "muted") with a totally Satiean modesty.

The war finally over with (at roughly the same time as his run-in with the law), five Nocturnes came to haunt the composer's mind. The first three made up a "complete work" in his opinion¹⁴, so he was careful to distinguish them from the remaining two by not submitting the two groups to the same publisher. They were, in fact, his "parting gifts" to Rouart, Lerolle and E. Demets, because his friend Blaise Cendrars - who had just founded La Sirène with the financier Paul Laffitte - managed to score an exclusive contract. At Cocteau's urging, the factory siren Cendrars used as inspiration for the name became a feminine silhouette with the tail of a fish ^15.

It fell, therefore, to La Sirène to publish, in 1920, his crowning work which is the "drame symphonique" Socrate, "pure and white as the ancient world". La Sirène would also publish the products of a highly effervescent climate as envisioned by Cocteau and the Six, like La Belle Excentrique, a sly wink at the music-hall of days gone by, a nostalgic trifle.

Even here, we must concede an exception - in the form of a dealer in Cubist paintings named Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who could thus include in his collection for bibliophiles the "comédie lyrique" Le Piège de Méduse, written in 1913, but whose only guiding spirit was the Dadaism of the postwar years. For this work, which was the only literary work by Satie to be published in his lifetime, Georges Braque would make his debut as an illustrator ¹⁶.

      Logo for the Library of Independent Art,
      by Félicien Rops.

La Sirène's activities having slowed considerably after 1922, Satie looked to escape his contract. At the very same time - coincidence or consequence of his little deception? - his output grows sparse. The Musique d'Ameublement - which he had every plan to disseminate on on a vast scale, a thing of mass production, was taken seriously by no publisher (like every other effort he ever made to increase the number of musical genres.) It's worth noting that the following works went unpublished in his lifetime: a composition to accompany the reading of a literary text (Leitmotiv pour "Le Panthée", The Dreamy Fish, The Angora Ox, Les Pantins dansent), as well as music composed for himself alone: (Danses gothiques, Vexations).

Near the end, overcome with illness and directing all his energies toward his last commissions (the ballets Mercure for Count Etienne de Beaumont's Soirées de Paris and Relâche for the Ballets Suédois), Satie had no plans to publish the first of these scores. As for the second, which includes the "entr'acte symphonique" Cinéma, it would become the product of his very last contract, signed at Saint-Joseph Hospital - where Jacques Lerolle, knowing him to be in danger, hurried to acquire the rights to five minuscule songs, the Ludions, on poems by Léon-Paul Fargue.

Satie died on July 1, 1925. Having forced open the door of the "Four Chimneys", the inside of which nobody else had seen for thirty years, his friends discovered dozens of the tiny notebooks he always carried in his pockets, forever ready to seize an idea on the run. Didn't Apollinaire see him one evening, in the middle of the street, taking notes by gaslight? And didn't Blaise Cendrars discover him composing while lying under the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde during an air raid?¹⁷

His notebooks contained a number of unpublished works. Believing himself unable to gauge their worth, Conrad Satie (whose devotion to his older brother could be compared to that of Théo Van Gogh for Vincent), entrusted them to Darius Milhaud, whose qualifications as a musician and a friend he never had reason to doubt.

After a quick initial study, Milhaud split the pieces he considered worthy of publication between Rouart, Lerolle and Universal of Vienna - the city which had had the courage to defend, through the intermediary Arnold Schönberg (yes, Monsieur Boulez...), the music of Satie and Les Six, at a time when the latter had not quite won the day.

Forced to leave France during the Nazi invasion, Milhaud donated the manuscripts that he had had time to examine to the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire de Paris; he had already put several examples on display at the Violon d'lngres exposition which took place in December 1938 and January 1939, at the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet. He carried the rest to the United States where they were featured in a 1940 exhibit at Mills College, California, at the headquarters of the Boston Symphony and at the Chicago Art Club; they ended up in Dumbarton Oaks thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wood-Bliss, then ultimately in the Houghton Library at Harvard.

In 1965, the pianist and musicologist Jean-Joël Barbier published a new edition of the Ogives with Le Chant du Monde, originally printed by Satie in a tiny vanity edition. One year later, for the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth, François Lesure organized an exhibit of the manuscripts conserved in the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire which he then transferred to the music department at the Bibliothèque nationale, of which he was director at the time^18.

Under the initiative of Robert Caby, who befriended Satie at the end, éditions Salabert (along with their offshoot, Musique Contemporaine) and Max Eschig found much in this lot to enrich their respective catalogs. Most were uneven in their musical value; fragments and unfinished sketches were published alongside other works with which Satie had evidently been satisfied, since he had taken the time to sign and date them. Salabert having acquired the Rouart, Lerolle catalog in the meantime, also picked up the pieces which had been published earlier by E. Baudoux, Bellon, Ponscarme & Cie, and Lucien Vogel. Max Eschig, who succeeded Demets after 1924, purchased the Sirène backlist in 1943 (it had belonged to Michel Dillard since 1927). Still following its solitary little path, the Sonatine bureaucratique passed in December 1917 to Louis Philippo, along with the rest of the éditions Chapelier (including its director), to wind up in 1975 with Combre, successor to Philippo. Erik Satie's work has largely lapsed into the public domain, and new editions have appeared sporadically in certain countries;¹⁹, in Japan, taking advantage of more lenient copyright law, two firms - Doremi Music and Zen On - each have published a "Complete Works" for piano.

Conrad only entrusted the musical manuscripts to Darius Milhaud and kept the various drawings and literary texts for himself. Some of the latter went to auction at the Hôtel Drouot on March 28, 1933 (expert G. Andrieux), others were offered to some of Satie's friends (not to mention his first biographer), still others stayed with Conrad and disappeared in the destruction of his house - apparently provoked by grudge-bearing neighbors after his death.

Other manuscripts, most of them musical, all of them designed with the greatest possible care, were passed around by Satie himself; some went to publishers and patrons, others to people who had helped him along the way, or those whom he quite simply wished to please. Some of them are jealously guarded by the descendants of their original owners, others were donated to Harvard or to the Bibliothèque nationale; still others wound up at the auction house or in the hands of autograph dealers to find their place in a private collection (generally Anglo-Saxon) or at various institutions such as the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet - or even the Fondation Erik Satie.

In France

Yves GERARD, lntroduction à l'oeuvre d'Erik Satie, Memoire du Prix d'Esthétique, dir. Roland-Manuel, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, 1958.

Anne REY, Dada et le pré-surréalisme dans l'oeuvre d'Erik Satie, D.E.S., dir. J. Chailley, Univ. de Paris, 1967.

Marie-Claude FLEURIEL, L'oeuvre de piano d'Erik Satie, Mémoire de Maîtrise, dir. E. Weber, Univ. de Paris-Sorbonne, 1978.

Mireille BERTHE, Parade, ballet cubiste, Mémoire de Maîtrise, dir. M. Honegger, Univ. de Strasbourg II, 1979.

Chr. SIRE, Le Socrate d'Erik Satie, Mémoire de Maîtrise, dir. J. Bellas, Univ. de Toulouse II, 1979.

P. DUCHESNE, Les langages d'Erik Satie dans sa musique pour piano (...), Mémoire de Maîtrise, dir. J.M. Bailbé, Univ. de Rouen, 1980.

Frédéric BOUESNARD, De la spiritualité en architecture :

1. Le premier Goetheanum de Rudolph Steiner;
   

2. Un Musée Erik Satie, Mémoire (Diplôme d'Architecture), dir. M. Freydefont, Ecole d'Architecture de Clermont-Ferrand, 1985.

Françoise CAILLEUX, Erik Satie et l'aphorisme, Mémoire de Maîtrise, dir. J.R. Julien, Univ. de Paris-Sorbonne, 1985.

Bernard CLANET, Essai sur une personnalité particulière: Erik Satie, Mémoire, dir. P. Morel, Univ. de Caen, Faculté de Médecine (Certificat d'Etudes Spéciales de Psychiatrie), 1985.

See also:

Michèle MADONNA-DESBAZEILLE, La musique expérimentale en Angleterre depuis 1968 (p. 26-46, "Erik Satie: une leçon de simplicité"), Thèse de Doctorat d'Etat, dir. P. Rafroidi, Univ. de Lille II, 1983.

Outside of France

William Grey SASSER, Erik Satie: a study of mutations in his style, D.M.A., dir. G. Haydon, Univ. of North Carolina, 1949.

William Patrick GOWERS, Erik Satie: his studies, notebooks and critics, Ph. D., Cambridge Univ., 1965.

Barbara FERRELL HILL, Characteristics of the music of Erik Satie that suggests the Id, D.M.A., dir. H. Waltz, Univ. of Colorado, 1966.

Alan Murray GILLMOR, Erik Satie and the concept of the Avant-garde, Ph.D., dir. A. M. Walter, Univ. of Toronto, 1972.

Giuseppina CAMPIOTTI, Erik Satie nella cultura del suo tempo, Tesi di Laurea in Lettere, Univ. Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milano), dir. S. Martinotti et G. Vecchi, 1973.

A. Margery A. KOON, Aspects of harmonic structure in piano works of Erik Satie, D.M.A., Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1974.

Earl ROSENBAUM, Erik Satie, Parade, M.A., The California State Univ., 1974.

Charles Timothy BLICKHAN, Erik Satie: "Musique d'Ameublement " with dialectics for orchestra, D.M.A., The Univ. of lllinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1976.

Massimo PRIVITERA, Erik Satie: Produzione & Riproduzione, Tesi di Laurea, dir. G. Stefani, Univ. di Bologna, 1981.

Marie-Isabelle COLLART, Biblio-discographie descriptive d'Erik Satie, musicien et écrivain, Liège, Institut Provincial d'Etudes et de Recherches Bibliothéconomiques, 1982.

Steven M. WHITING, Erik Satie and Parisian musical entertainment, 1888 to 1909, D.M.A., Univ. of Illinois, 1984.

See also:

Geneviève MURITH, La Musique: un produit de consommation, Mémoire (Brevet de Musique), dir. A. Wenziker, Conservatoire de Musique de Lausanne, 1984.

RESEARCH NOTES

We are looking for the following documents, not located as of 1987. For each document, we have listed all essential information of which we are currently aware (genre, first printing and/or premiere, performances, patrons).

Abreviations

a.n.i. : author not identified.
AS : publ. Alfred Satie.
BP : publ. Bellon, Ponscarme & C^ie.
Cat. aut. : Catalog of autographs for sale.
CH : publ. Stéphane Chapelier.
ED : publ. E. Démets.
EN : publ. Enoch & C^ie.
ES : vanity edition.
fcs : facsimile.
HD : Hôtel Drouot.
LGBT : Msrs Laurin, Guillaux, Buffetaud, Tailleur, commiss. priseurs associés.
LS : éditions de La Sirène.
LV : Publications Lucien Vogel.
RC : "by the power of the Rose+Cross".
UE : Universal Edition, Vienna.
? : unconfirmed.

AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPTS BY ERIK SATIE

"Adieu", voice and piano, on a poem by Radiguet, LS, 1922.
"Chanson à boire sur des vers anonymes du XVIII^e siècle," Almanach de Cocagne, LS, 1921 (fcs).
"Chanson op. 52", voice and piano, on a poem by Contamine de Latour, AS, 1888.
Chapitres tournés en tous sens, piano, ED, 1913.
"Chez le Docteur", caf'conc' song, words by V. Hyspa, L'Album musical, no. XXXIII, gift to V. Hyspa, March 1906.
Croquis et Agaceries d'un gros Bonhomme en bois, piano, ED, 1913.
"Danseuse", voice and piano, on a poem by J. Cocteau, LS, 1922.
Descriptions automatiques, piano, ED, 1913.
Divertissement, organ. Alternate title: La Statue retrouvée.
"Composé pour un bal masqué du comte E. de Beaumont et exécuté dans son hôtel, 2 rue Duroc", May 30, 1923.
"Elégie", op. 19, voice and piano, on a poem by Contamine de Latour, AS, 1887.
Embarquement pour Cythère, violin and piano, written (?) for Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, 1917.
Embryons desséchés, piano, ED, 1913.
Enfantillages pittoresques, piano, ED, 1916.
"Entrée des Managers", fragment from the ballet Parade, dedicated to M. Kisling, piano four hands, reproduced fcs in a concert program, June 6, 1917, 6 rue Huyghens.
Fantaisie-Valse, piano, La Musique des Familles, July 28, 1887.
Gloria, excerpt from the Messe des Pauvres, voice and organ, unpublished.
Gnossienne n^o 1, Le Figaro musical, September 1893.
Gnossienne n^o 3, Le Figaro musical, September 1893.
6^e Gnossienne, Le Coeur, April 1893.
"Je te veux", voice and piano, words by H. Pacory, BP, 1902.
"Je te veux", voice and piano, words by H. Pacory, BP, 1902; piano, BP, 1904.
La Belle Excentrique, piano four hands and orchestra, LS, 1922.
Le Bâtard de Tristan, opera (?), libretto by A. Tinchant, advertised for the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, in Le Courrier du Soir, July 22, 1892.
Le Fils des Etoiles, préludes, piano, published by E. Baudoux & C^ie, in 1896; version for harps and flutes performed for the Soirées de la Rose+Croix, 1892.
("Le Roi de la Grande île..."), voice and piano, a. n. i, mentioned in Cat. aut. Berès, 1977, no. 74.
"Les Anges", voice and piano, on a poem by Contamine de Latour, AS, 1887.
"Les Fleurs", voice and piano, on a poem by Contamine de Latour, AS, 1887.
"L'Omnibus-automobile", lyrics by V. Hyspa, L'Album musical, no XXXIII, dedicated to V. Hyspa, March 1906.
Marche de Cocagne, two trumpets in C, reproduced fcs in Almanach de Cocagne, LS, 1920.
Menuet de la Princesse Maleine, title in gothic letters, reproduced in a painting by Maurice Denis: "Marthe au piano", 1891.
Menus Propos Enfantins, piano, ED, 1916.
Mercure, orchestra, UE, 1929.
Ogives, piano, ES, 1889.
Paul et Virginie, voice and piano (or orchestra), libretto by Cocteau and Radiguet, 1920-1923.
Peccadilles importunes, piano, ED, 1916.
"Petit Recueil des Fêtes", voice and piano, words by V. Hyspa, registered with SACEM, no number.
"Prière des Orgues", fragment of the Messe des Pauvres, in Le Coeur, no. 10, June 1895.
Rêverie, piano, LS, 1921, partially reproduced in Cat. aut. HD, LGBT, 1979, no. 165 (partial fcs).
"Roxane", voice and orchestra, words by J.P. Contamine de Latour, 1893.
San Bernardo, piano, August 2, 1913, mentioned in Cat. aut. Marc Loliée, no. 20.
Sonatine bureaucratique, piano, CH, 1917.
Sonneries de la Rose+Croix, piano, RC, 1892; version for harps and trumpets performed at the Soirées de la Rose+ Croix, March 19, 1892.
Sonneries pour réveiller le bon gros Roi des Singes, lequel ne dort toujours que d'un oeil, two trumpets in C, reproduced fcs in Fanfare, no. 1, October 1921.
Sports & Divertissements, piano, 21 plates on Bristol paper, 39 x 43 cm, LV, (1923).
"Sylvie", op. 20, voice and piano, on a poem by Contamine de Latour, AS, 1887.
"Tendrement", voice and piano, lyrics by V. Hyspa, BP, 1902.
Trois petites pièces montées, piano four hands and orchestra, LS, 1922.
"Un Dîner à'Elysée", caf'conc' song. Alternate title: "Le Dîner des peintres français", lyrics by V. Hyspa, Chansons d'Humour, EN, 1903.
Valse-Ballet, "op. 62", piano, La Musique des Familles, March 17, 1887.
Vieux Sequins & Vieilles Cuirasses, piano, ED, 1914.

MANUSCRIPTS BY OTHERS

Ballet sketches

Concurrence, Satie-Derain, c. 1923 - another ballet of the same name with music by G. Auric and design by Derain was performed in 1932 by the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.
Conte pour un Ballet, Louise Faure-Favier, 1917.
Corcléru, ballet in one act, Satie-Contamine de Latour ?, 1893.
Couleurs, Satie-Derain, for Diaghilev, c. 1923.
Divertissement. Alternate title: La Statue retrouvée, Satie-Cocteau?, 1923.
Fables de La Fontaine, for Diaghilev, Satie?, 1916.
Irnebizolle, ballet in two acts, Satie-Contamine de Latour?, 1893.
La Naissance de Vénus, Satie-Derain, 1921.
Mercure, Satie-Picasso-Massine, 1924.
Ontrotance, ballet in one act, Satie-Contamine de Latour ?, 1893.
Quadrille, after "Souvenirs de Munich" by Chabrier, Satie-Braque, c. 1923.
Super-Cinéma, Satie-Derain, for the Ballets Suédois, 1921.
Tumisrudebude, ballet in three acts, Satie-Contamine de Latour?, 1893.

Libretti

Le Bâtard de Tristan, opera, Albert Tinchant, 1892.
(Opera ?), Tristan Tzara, 1922.
Paul et Virginie, light opera, Cocteau-Radiguet, 1920. Autograph ms. annotated by Satie.

Plays, Revues

Dévidons la bobine, revue, D. Bonnaud-N. Blès, 1904, performed at Berck, July 26, 1904.
Eginhard, drama?, a.n.i., c. 1890.
Jack in the Box, pantomime, Jules Dépaquit, 1899, performed by Le Rideau de Paris, Salie d'Iéna, November 29, 1937.
Le Dîner de Pierrot, play, a.n.i., performed by students of the Patronage laïque, at the Ecole maternelle d'Arcueil-Cachan, September 17, 1909.
Monsieur Mouche, play, Lord Cheminot, c. 1900.
Pousse l'Amour, play, Jean Kolb-Maurice de Féraudy, c. 1905, performed in Paris, Comédie Royale, November 22, 1907; later under the title Coco chéri in Monte-Carlo, Théâtre dés Beaux-Arts, February 27, 1913.
Ruffian toujours, truand jamais, play in three acts by Max Jacob, c. 1920, performed in Paris, Galerie Barbezanges, March 8, 1920.
Un Songe d'une Nuit d'Eté, Shakespeare, adaptation by J. Cocteau, c. 1914.

Songs, Lyrics

"Impérial Oxford", Contamine de Latour.
"La Chemise", Jules Dépaquit.
"La Transatlantique", a.n.i.
"Légende Californienne", Contamine de Latour.
"Le Roi de la Grande île", a.n.i.
"Les Oiseaux", a.n.i.
"Le Veuf", a.n.i.
"Marienbad", a.n.i.
"Petit Recueil des Fêtes", Vincent Hyspa.
"Rambouillet", a.n.i.
"Roxane", Contamine de Latour.

Literary Texts

"La Perdition", poem, Contamine de Latour.
"Les Antiques", poem, Contamine de Latour.
The Angora Ox or Le Boeuf Angora, story, Lord Cheminot.
The Dreamy Fish or Le Poisson Rêveur, story, Lord Cheminot.

Publications

"Salut au Drapeau", from Prince de Byzance by Joséphin Péladan, music by Erik Satie (mentioned among the publications of the Eglise Métropolitaine d'Art, in 1895).

NOTES

CINEMA

1 This project is mentioned, unfortunately with no other details, in several of Erik Satie's unpublished letters to André Derain (Archives André Derain). <return to text>

2 Miriam CENDRARS, "Les métamorphoses d'un Ballet suédois", in Continent Cendrars, no. 1, 1986. Pages 23-24 show an autograph manuscipt reproduced in facsimile - edited in 1952 and conserved in the Bibliothèque de Berne - in which Blaise Cendrars revendique without proof the creator of the "entracte cinématographique." <return to text>

3 Relâche, first performed December 4, 1924, was the final production by the Ballets Suédois, without counting a holiday revue ("Ciné-Sketch") mounted by René Clair and Picabia, with music by Satie, for St. Sylvester's in 1924. The Ballets Suédois ceased to exist in March 1925. <return to text>

4 This revival of Relâche took place in Florence, at the Teatro Comunale, as part of the XXXIIIe Maggio musicale fiorentino in 1970. Pour la circonstance, René Clair n'avait plus tenu compte de l'argument de Picabia et avait complètement réécrit le scenario avec le concours du chorégraphe Aurelio M. Milloss. Il avait conservé, en revanche, les décors d'origine, reconstitués par Jacques Dupont. <return to text>

5 This version was first shown in Paris, at Le Racine, in October 1968; the soundtrack recording was directed by Henri Sauguet. - See the article "René Clair,'Entr'acte,' A nous la Liberté" in L'Avant-Scène-Cinéma, no. 86, November 1968. <return to text>

6 As legal executor of the Ballets Suédois, producers of the film "Entr'acte" by René Clair, M. Bengt Häger, director of the Dansmuseet in Stockholm, is somewhat less categorical. It's hard to understand, after all, that it could be forbidden (as Mme René Clair and Pathé-Cinéma see it) to perform Erik Satie's work under the conditions in which the author conceived it, which is to accompany the projection of the film with real, flesh-and-blood musicians. <return to text>

7 We have been able to intervene in some cases, most notably at the Cineteca Italiana in Milan, to restore the editing to the sequence intended by its authors. <return to text>

8 Twelve separate works (and four translations) on Erik Satie - in which many of the composer's own writings are published for the first time - have come out since 1974, as opposed to two sole monographs published, in 1932 and 1948, since his death in 1925. <return to text>

9 Erik SATIE, "Cinéma", entr'acte symphonique de Relâche, reduction for piano two hands, Paris, Salabert, 1972, E.A.S. 17 061.

Satie had composed this work for the orchestra of the Ballets Suédois, directed in this instance by Roger Désormière. The autograph manuscript of the orchestral score, originally belonging to Désormière, is presently housed at the University of Texas, Austin, Harry Ramson Humanities Research Center.

The piano score must still have preceded the orchestral transcription, which conforms to Satie's working habits; there were to be no "reductions" after the first performances of Relâche, because Satie already suffered from the illness which would claim him six months later.

Darius Milhaud transcribed Relâche and "Cinéma" for piano four hands in 1926. <return to text>

10 René CLAIR, "Picabia, Satie et la première d''Entr'acte'", in Le Figaro littéraire, June 1967. <return to text>

11 To re-establish the exact synchronization of music to film, as imagined by the composer, the film must run at its original frame rate, which was 16 frames per second in 1924. In his 1967 restoration, René Clair adapted "Entr'acte" to the 24 frames-per-second standard in use today. <return to text>

GENEVIEVE DE BRABANT

1 ROLAND-MANUEL, Erik Satie, Paris, Impr. H. Roberge, 1916, p. 10-11. <return to text>

2 Paul COLLAER, "Catalogue de l'oeuvre d'Erik Satie", in Arts & Lettres d'Aujourd'hui, IIe année, no. 11, Brussels, March 16, 1924, pp. 255-257. <return to text>

3 Darius MILHAUD, Notes sans musique, Paris, Julliard, 1940, pp. 198-199. - According to other oral sources, the story of the bus only concerned Jack, the score of which Satie had copyrighted at SACEM in 1905. <return to text>

4 Harvard University, Houghton Library, Satie's Manuscripts, no. 15. <return to text>

5 Bibliothèque nationale, Département de la Musique, Fonds Erik Satie, Ms 15 333. <return to text>

6 Play by Dépaquit with incidental music, was first performed by the Rideau de Paris, in a program dedicated to "The Humor of Erik Satie" at the Salle d'Iéna, November 29, 1937. <return to text>

7 La Revue musicale, V, no. 5, March 1, 1924, pp. 208-216. <return to text>

8 The initials J.P. have intrigued Satie's biographers, who often plump for either Jean-Pierre or Jean-Paul. We now know for certain that this great companion of the composer's youth - Patrice to his friends - was named José-Maria, Vicente, Ferrier, Francisco de Paula, Patricio, Manuel Contamine and that he was born in Tarragone (Catalonia), on March 17, 1867. He died in Paris, May 2, 1926, after marrying - in extremis - for the third time. According to P.D. Templier, he met the composer through the intercession of some minor modistes he was courting at the time. Satie called him "le vieux Modeste" or "Ch'timi" ("cher ami" in the patois of Arras where he had done his military service). Templier goes on to mention that Contamine claimed descent from Napoleon (P.D. TEMPLIER, Erik Satie, Paris, Rieder, 1932; repr. Plan-de-la-Tour, Ed. Aujourd'hui, coll. Les Introuvables, 1975, p. 12). Michel Herbert reports that a certain "Condamine [sic] de Latour, pretender to the French Crown", took part in the "cabaret artistique" Chez Bruault, in the Latin Quarter (M.H., La Chanson à Montmartre, Paris, La Table Ronde, 1967, p. 277.

Journalist by profession, Contamine signed "P. Contamine de Latour" three articles entitled "Erik Satie intime, Souvenirs de jeunesse" in Comoedia, August 3, 5 and 6, 1925; and "J.P. Contamine de Latour" poems and other new writings between 1887 and 1889, as well as the libretto to Uspud, 1892. One of his poems, "Miroir plein," was published in La Lanterne japonaise, I, no. 7, December 8, 1888. Another poem, "Parfum d'avril", dated "April 1888" and dedicated to Erik Satie, a fait l'objet d'une plaquette, s.l.n.d. Several other poems by "J.P. Contamine de Latour" were set to music by either Erik Satie or Charles Lévadé. We also find his Cinq Nouvelles under this signature (the first, "Miriam", is dedicated to Erik Satie) and published in Paris, Société des Publications Internationales, 1889. An excerpt of a poem by J.P. Contamine de Latour, "La Perdition", written in quill pen, figure en exergue in the autograph of Satie's first Sarabande, 1887) B.N., Fonds E. Satie, Ms 14 457). It was most likely in another of his friend's poems, "Les Antiques", that the composer first came across the word "gymnopédie" (an excerpt of this poem has been published en exergue in the (first) Gymnopédie, in La Musique des Familles, August 18, 1888).

Besides Geneviève de Brabant, Contamine signed "Lord Cheminot" another play, Monsieur Mouche, and two fairy tales, The Dreamy Fish and The Angora Ox - an even more bizarre title than the famous "Boeuf sur le toit", which would later fire the imagination of so many). Satie composed a score for all three of these pieces, all unfinished and unpublished in his lifetime - The Dreamy Fish in March 1901, and Prélude pour "La Mort de Monsieur Mouche", April 21, 1900, were finally published between 1968 and 1970 by Salabert. A short story by Lord Cheminot, La Veilleuse, was printed without author's credit in a review called Humour 1900 by Jean-Claude Carrière, Paris, Ed. Ditis, J'ai lu l'essentiel, 1963, p. 322-323.

In "1892-1893", Suzanne Valadon made charcoal drawings of J.P. Contamine de Latour and A.L. Erik Satie in profile, superimposed on a medallion designed for the cover of Uspud and reproduced in P.D. Templier, Op. cit., plate XI, and in L'Ymagiér d'Erik Satie by O. Volta, Francis Van de Velde/Opéra de Paris, 1979, p. 30. On the basis of physical characteristics visible in this portrait, Patrice Contamine has been tentatively identified in two photos conserved in the archives of the Fondation Erik Satie and reproduced in P.D. Templier, Op. cit., plates XIX, 1 and XXV. In the first, we see Satie decked out in his Velvet Gentleman suit, having dinner in the company of the alleged Contamine - a gentleman of somewhat darker complexion with an impressively well-tended mustache - in a restaurant decorated with a painting strongly suggstive of a Spanish artist, as well as two drawings by Erik Satie featuring a pair of knights. They are the exact doubles, (if not the geniune article) of two drawings now kept in the archives of Darius Milhaud and reproduced L'Ymagiér d'Erik Satie, p. 99). In the second photo, Satie wears a more "everyday" suit and a straw boater, and the supposed Contamine, with fuller hair and a mustache trimmed down in relation to the other photo, are seated on the terrace of a "Brasserie", situated at no. 60 on an unidentified street. The tavern owner and two waiters, wearing long aprons, also posed for this photo, with several other customers. <return to text>

9 Which proves again that in 1919 a sister of Patrice Contamine, Barbara, married - only to divorce three years later - Henry Pacory, lyricist of the caf'conc' song "Je te veux" by Erik Satie. Pacory was born in Arcueil-Cachan, the suburb in which Satie lived for the last twenty-seven years of his life, and he may well have played a role in Satie's choice of address. <return to text>

10 P. CONTAMINE DE LATOUR, "Erik Satie intime", art. cit. <return to text>

11 "Impérial Oxford" and "Légende californienne", submitted to the SACEM as "songs without words", August 18, 1905. On his declaration form, in the blank labeled "Authors", the name J.P. Contamine de Latour was written then scratched out in both cases. The manuscripts of these scores carry no text whatsoever (Harvard Univ., Ms n. 34). <return to text>

12 Voir supra. <return to text>

13 Private collection. <return to text>

14 Série aux Armes d'Epinal, no. 301, Imagerie d'Epinal, Pellerin & Cie. - See Pierre LAGUEUINIERE, "Debussie? Jarry? Saty? A Dada?", in Les Chiens Jaunes, Journal de théâtre, no. 14, February 1983. <return to text>

15 See "Schumann, Genoveva", in L'Avant-Scène-Opéra, no. 71, January 1985, p. 145. <return to text>

In the early stages of their friendship, Satie made known to Debussy his plans to write incidental music for Maeterlinck's La Princesse Maleine. Debussy not long afterward requested permission from the Belgian dramatist for this very same work, forcing Satie to renounce his project, no doubt with some bitterness. It was Pelléas and not La Princesse Maleine in which Maeterlinck and Debussy ultimately met. See also the elliptical and slightly romanticized version of this story in Jean Cocteau, "Fragments d'une conférence sur Erik Satie", in La Revue musicale, V, no. 5, March 1, 1924, p. 221. The ins and outs of Debussy's treatment for La Princesse Maleine have been described by Léon VALLAS, Claude-Achille Debussy, Paris, P.U.F., 1949, p. 213-214. The score, with no author's name, of a "Menuet de la Princesse Maleine" - of which the title is hand-written in the Gothic characters which Satie affected in the early 1890s - figure in a painting by Maurice Denis, "Marthe au piano", 1891, priv. coll., reproduced in the catalog of an exhibit called "Erik Satie e gli artisti del nostro tempo" by O. Volta, Chiesa della Manna d'Oro, Festival des Deux Mondes, Spoleto, 1981, pl. X. A drawing by Maurice Denis (precursor to to the stained-glass "Femmes au ruisseau", 1894, Musée du Prieuré) also adorns the cover of this score. We know that Maurice Denis also illustrated, in 1892, La Demoiselle élue by Debussy (published in 1893). The latter, of which Alfred Bruneau confirmed in 1897 that he had written several pages for La Princesse Maleine, never drew the titles of his scores in Gothic characters of any kind. Maurice Denis used none for the title page of La Damoiselle élue, either. As of 1987, we discovered that it was in Gothic letters that the title of Maeterlinck's La Princesse Maleine appears in the original edition (Brussels, Paul Lecomblez, 1890), which of course leaves all hypotheses open. <return to text>

16 These few hasty notes, taken by Conrad Satie on September 30, 1914, after a conversation with his brother, show clearly that Satie considered Debussy - even in everyday life - a paternal figure who could terrorize you, all the while fostering an irresistible giggle-fit: "Erik and Debussy. Their intimate friendship;. How the other scolds him. Jupiter. Chouchou, nine years old, Debussy and Kiki (Erik)'s daughter. Playing at bows and arrows. They walk down the promenade, are scolded..." (coll. part.). <return to text>

17 After Pelléas, summit of an esthetic in which he believed to have a hand in forging; Satie would later say: "Either I find somthing else, or I am lost". Not long after, at the age of thirty-nine, he would return to school to take up the study of counterpoint. <return to text>

18 Former director of the Ballets Suédois. <return to text>

19 The proceeds from this Festival were to fund a grave monument for Satie, carved by Brancusi, in the little cemetery of Arceuil. The receipts having proved insignificant - 580 francs in all, despite the most brilliant of audiences (Tout-Paris had been invited) - they gave up on the sculptor's contribution (without consulting him, by the way) and covered the grave of Erik Satie with '"an ordinary stone, of which they turn out millions every year, around all the various cemeteries of all the cities in which men live. It's certainly proper and convenient, but it's as sad and ridiculous as death itself" (extract of a letter from Conrad Satie to Brancusi, s.d., reproduced in Brancusi, by Pontus Hulten, N. Dimitresco and A. Istrati. Paris, Flammarion, 1986, p. 167). <return to text>

20 At the Chat Noir, the silhouettes of the théâtre d'ombres were cut out of cardboard, when nobody had the means to purchase zinc. <return to text>

21 Marcel Proust described the projections of a magic lantern show based on Geneviève de Brabant and the charm they exerted on him; they transformed the walls of his room into "a multicolored stained-glass window, shifting from moment to moment;" (Du côté de chez Swann, Ed. de la Pléiade, p. 9). <return to text>

22 This work was first performed on June 25, 1923 in the private salon of Princess Edmond de Polignac, avenue Henri Martin. For the details of this performance, se El Retablo de Maese Pedro by O. Volta, in the program printed by La Fenice of Venice, for a revival of this play in April 1983. Geneviève de Brabant by Lord Cheminot was also on the program. <return to text>

23 All documentation relating to the Festival Erik Satie, 1926, is conserved in the archives of the Fondation Erik Satie. <return to text>

24 The series of nine drawings by André Derain for Geneviève de Brabant, gouache on paper 33.5 x 24.5 cm - plus several rough sketches - is now conserved in the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet, Mss 11 147, 1 to 9. <return to text>

25 Désormière had conducted the premiere of Mercure at the Théâtre de la Cigale, for Count Etienne de Beaumont's Soirées de Paris, on June 15, 1924, and of Relâche at the Théàtre des Champs-Elyseés, for the Ballets Suédois of Rolf de Maré, on December 4, 1924. <return to text>

26 This choreography is generally dated 1925. According to documentation conserved in the archives of Count de Beaumont (donated to the Fondation Satie), Adolph Bolm was not aware of the score for Geneviève until January 1926. <return to text>

27 Universal 1930, renewed 1968; piano, UE 9386; orchestra UE 9956. <return to text>

28 See Claude-Françoise BRUNON, "Geneviève en image et en chanson", in L'Avant-Scène-Opéra, no. 71, January 1965, p. 22-27. <return to text>

29 The name "J.P Contamine dé Latour" (the only one Satie's friends ever recognized) is now understood as the pseudonym Lord Cheminot, thanks to information furnished by Conrad Satie after the death of his brother. <return to text>

30 The text in French and the Italian translation of Lord Cheminot's play, undertaken by our efforts, were published in the program that evening. <return to text>

GNOSSIENNES

1 Erik SATIE, Trois Gnossiennes pour piano, Paris, Rouart, Lerolle & Cie, 1913, R.L. 9884. Copyright R.L. 1912. Publication contract: June 20, 1912. Copyright: January 20, 1913. Submitted to the SACEM, March 12, 1913. This collection is dedicated to Roland-Manuel. <return to text>

2 Erik SATIE, Morceaux en forme de poire, avec une Manière de Commencement, une Prolongation du même & un En Plus, suivi d'une Redite, September 1903. Autogr. Ms., 30 p., Bibliothèque de l'Opéra de Paris, Rés. 218. <return to text>

3 This particular Gnossienne - obviously untitled - is located at the end of Act One of Fils des Etoiles, Thème de la Volonté. Composed in 1891 for the Soirées de la Rose+Croix, this final work was published by Salabert in 1973, E.A.S. 17 100, edited by Robert Caby. <return to text>

4 Erik SATIE, Quatrième, Cinquième, Sixième Gnossienne, Salabert, Musique Contemporaine, 1968. MC 287, MC 288, MC 289. <return to text>

5 Satie liked to shuffle the deck in matters of arithmetic as well as chronology. His sketchbooks show a working title of "Poème d'Amour no 3" for the second of his Trois Poèmes d'Amour, and "Poème d'Amour no 2" for the third. Of course, he took no offense whatsoever at the reversal of titles in the Gymnopédies orchestrated by Debussy. <return to text>

6 Jean-Joël BARBIER, Au piano avec Erik Satie, Paris Librairie Séguier Vagabondages, 1986, p. 45. <return to text>

7 Erik SATIE, Trois Gnossiennes, Rouart, Lerolle & Cie, P.L. no 9884, galley proofs corrected by the author, Bibliothèque nationale, Département de la Musique, Fonds Erik Satie, Rés. Vma 163. <return to text>

8 Having first taken it on himself to date his Gnossienne no 3 to "1890", effectively the date this work was composed, Satie dated the entire collection the same way, striving perhaps for consistency. In 1913, at the very moment Ravel and the "jeunes Ravêlites" were hailing Satie as a "precursor" the publishers felt it important to show - however approximately - that these works had been written over twenty years before. See also Erik SATIE, Ecrits, collected by O. Volta, Paris, Champ libre, 1977; 2nd edition: 1981 pp. 241 et 244-245. <return to text>

9 It should be noted that this innovation of Satie's came about shortly after his collaboration on Uspud, which may have whetted Satie's appetite for writing in general. As for the chronological details, it bears repeating that the personalized playing instructions in Fils des Etoiles were added at press time as well (by Baudoux & Cie, 1896), five years after the score was complete (1891). <return to text>

10 Erik SATIE, Gnossienne, July 8, 1889. Autograph manuscript, signed and dated, brown ink on 2 p., 16.2 x 25.8 cm, Bibliothèque nationale, Département de la Musique, Fonds Erik Satie, Ms 10 054 (1). <return to text>

11 Erik Satie, January 22, 1891. Untitled autograph manuscript, signed and dated. Black and purple ink on 4 p., 23.4 x 31 cm. Bibliothèque nationale, Département de la Musique, Ms 10 051 (2) <return to text>

12 We have no further information on the Gnossienne no 1, besides the fact that it was the only one to keep its original number throughout and that it first appeared in September 1893. There's still reason to believe it preceded, not only the other four already mentioned, but the Gnossienne dated "April of '93" as well, since the latter would become known as the "sixth". <return to text>

13 Erik SATIE, Gnossienne, January 1897. Autograph manuscript, dated and signed. Brown ink on 2 p., 23 x 31 cm. Bibliothèque nationale, Ms 10 054 (2). <return to text>

14 EMI - Pathé Marconi, 1987, 270 30 11 - PM 375. <return to text>

15 Vladimir JANKELEVITCH, Le Nocturne, Paris, Album Michel, 1957, p. 137. <return to text>

LA BELLE EXCENTRIQUE

1 Erik SATIE, La Belle Excentrique, fantaisie sérieuse pour piano à quatre mains, Paris, La Sirène, 1922, E.D. 94 L.S., 28 p., 27 x 35 cm; Léon Grandjean, engraver. This edition was later reprinted, unchanged, by Max Eschig. Dedicated to the eccentric dancer Caryathis, this work was commisioned by her, under her real name Elisabeth Toulemon (she would later be more widely known as the writer Elise Jouhandeau). <return to text>

2 Same title as above, Max Eschig, 1954. - In an early draft, Satie looked to compose three dances, each situated in a different point in time : 1. Marche pour une grande Cocotte, 1900; 2. Elégance de cirque (Ecuyère), 1910; 3. Cancan moderne, 1920 (Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Houghton Library, Satie's Manuscripts). <return to text>

3 In addition to Caryathis, for whom La Belle Excentrique was composed, this work was danced by Moses Pendleton (Paris, Opéra-Comique, 1979), by Lorca Massine (Venise, La Fenice, 1980) and by Kuniaki Ida (Milan, Teatro dell-Arte, 1985). <return to text>

4 The sketchbooks are in the Bibliothèque nationale, Département de la Musique, Fonds Erik Satie, Ms 9605 (1 to 4). The original manuscript for orchestra went on sale at the Hôtel Drouot on March 18, 1933. Several pages of the four-hand piano reduction are located in the Bibilothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet, fonds Elise Jouhandeau. <return to text>

5 Satie submitted his declaration to SACEM for this work on July 22, 1921 (copyright no. 252 808, April 14, 1922). Here the composer listed the running time of La Belle Excentrique as twelve minutes, basing his total on a reprise of the Grande Ritournelle (two times two and a half minutes). <return to text>

6 Erik Satie's correspondence, edited by our efforts, was published by Bibliothèque Artistique et Littéraire, Montpelier. <return to text>

7 Le Coq parisien, no. 4-5, September-October 1920. <return to text><return to text>

8 Jean Hugo relates: "(...) I imagined for the Marche de la coffer d'un lustre, et de l'affubler, pour le Cancan, with a skirt of ostrich feathers. Despite the example of Gaby Deslis, it proved difficult to dance in this contraption. Caryathis still showed the sketches to M. Satie. It wasn't at all what the "bon maître" wanted, and there the matter ended until I could find a costume appropriate to the 'Mystérieux baiser dans 1'oeil'" (Jean HUGO, Le Regard de la Mémoire, Le Paradou, Actes Sud, 1983, p. 191-192).

Three sketches by Jean Hugo for the three dances of La Belle Excentrique, gouache on paper, the first two (Marche and Cancan) 40 x 30 cm format, the third (Valse) 24 x 18 cm, are now conserved at the Fondation Erik Satie (dépôt Loretta Hope-Nicholson - Jean Hugo).

Other painters were consulted - Marie Laurencin, Van Dongen - who also failed to find Satie's favor. Jean Cocteau (mentor of Caryathis for the occasion) ended up finding the solution, by designing one simple and audacious costume for all three dances, of which there is a photograph - Studio Henry - at the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet (Fonds Elise Jouhandeau).

Caryathis would premiere La Belle Excentrique along with several other dances accompanied by music of the Six, at the Colisée on June 14, 1921. The poster was designed by Bakst. Other costumes for the dancer were conceived for the performance by Gontcharova. <return to text>

9 EMI Pathé Marconi, 1987, 270 30 11 PM 375. Here the four pieces were recorded in the following order: 1. Marche franco-lunaire; 2. Grande Ritournelle; 3. Valse du mystérieux baiser dans l'oeil; 4. Grande Ritournelle; 5. Cancan Grand-Mondain. <return to text>

SPORTS ET DIVERTISSMENTS

1 This invoice is not spelled out in the clearest terms, so we offer the following clarifications, which we owe largely to the kindness of the bibliophile Ferrand de Nobele.

There exist several versions of this piece, the difference being the number of illustrations it may or may not contain. As for the rest, the 900 copies of the first print run, which was never reprinted as such, are identical so far as the cover is concerned: similar to stiff drawing paper, 40 x 45 cm, with a pink dust-jacket and decorated with ribbons of the same color, on which is glued the title page designed by Charles Martin, printed on off-white paper. This same page, printed on a single sheet of white bristol (39.3 x 43.1 cm) like the rest of the package, shows up inside as well as at the head of each copy. The whole makes up a suite of twenty-one hand-drawn scores by Erik Satie - engraved on the reverse of the title page for for each piece and drawn by Charles Martin - and a table of contents, designed by Charles Martin as well. As for the illustrations, however, there exists :

• ten copies, numered 1 to 10, making a first series of twenty engraved drawings, completed by Charles Martin in 1914 - uncolored copper engravings in 29 x 20.3 cm format - and a second series of twenty drawings by Charles Martin, different from the first, finished in 1922, in 39.3 x 43.1 cm format and stencilled over the pouch by Jules Saudé. No. 1 of this initial print run is comprised of a double version of the plate designed for "Pique-Nique" and two versions of the engraving (one black, the other in bistre), which brings the total number of illustrations to forty-two. (We've been able to study this copy, which is made even richer by a series of watercolors and original drawings by Charles Martin, conceived especially for this edition). No. 2 in this printing, however, is missing the plate for "La Pêche", but contains a double version of "Pique-Nique" as well. The other eight copies of this first printing all contain forty plates by Charles Martin, or two illustrations (one from 1914, the other from 1922) for each subject.

• Two hundred twenty-five copies, numbered 1 to 225, containing the series of twenty designs from 1922, stencilled by Jules Saudé.

• Six hundred seventy-five copies, numbered 226 to 900, with only a single plate by Charles Martin, chosen at random from the 1922 series. A certain number of copies from this last printing were put on the market in 1985, earning appraisals from 500 to 7,000 francs each.

In 1926, Rouart, Lerolle & Cie repurchased the rights for this edition from Vogel and brought out a new edition which only featured Erik Satie's scores, reproduced in facsimile, but on ordinary paper, format 24 x 30 cm, in black and white, and loaded with symbols which Charles Martin had designed for the title page of each score. This edition was re-released, intact, in 1964 by Musique Contemporaine (Salabert), M.C. 194.

In 1962, Dover Publications (New York) published a booklet containing both the Satie scores and the Charles Martin illustrations, in black and white, 23 x 30.6 cm format, accompanied by an (uncredited) English translation of Satie's text between the staves. The cover uses the illustration for "Tango", in color. The title of this edition is "Erik Satie, Twenty Pieces for Piano (Sports et Divertissements), illustrations by Charles Martin".

In 1986, the Japanese firm Zen-On brought out a publication which mirrors the Vogel edition (twenty illustrations), the only difference being its format as a bound booklet rather than a folder and that the 23.2 x 30.8 cm format, shrunk in relation to the original, does not follow the same proportions as the latter (as was the case with the Dover edition). Satie's text is translated in Japanese at the end of each piece. Contrary to the original, in which the table of contents is printed on the final page, in the Japanese edition this table is placed at the beginning. < return to text>

2 ROLAND-MANUEL, Op. cit., p. 11.< return to text>

3 We can see on the invitation card, with no indication of the year, that "Mesdames Lucien Vogel and Charles Peignot, Messieurs Charles Peignot and Lucien Vogel invite you to hear Socrate and a few little novelties, entitled Sports & Divertissements, by M. Erik Satie, at the home of Madame Vogel, 18 rue Bonaparte, December 14, at 9:00" (priv. coll.). We know that "Madame Charles Peignot" has since made her fame as a vocalist of refinement, under the name Suzanne Peignot. Having performed Socrate a number of times, she tells us how Satie personally attended the rehearsals, asking her to sing "with no expression". - "Whatever you do, don't sing it like Pierre Bertin!" he's supposed to have said. However, we have at our disposal a copy of Socrate, with a dedication signed by the composer: "For you, mon cher Bertin, this little song which you speak so movingly" (Archives de la Fondation Erik Satie, dépôt P.B.).< return to text>

4 Priv. coll.- Lucien Vogel, who founded La Gazette du Bon Ton, Jardin des Modes and Vu, was the son of French School painter Hermann Vögel, born in 1856 at Flensburg, Germany, and died in Paris in 1918, and who was an illustrator for the Bibliothèque Rose (Hachette).< return to text>

5 December 3, 1922 - precisely the time when Sports & Divertissements finally saw print - Satie wrote Paul Collaer that things were going "très mal" with La Sirène (Archives Paul Collaer). We've also discovered a form letter - probably typed by a legal professional - which the composer could have used to break with this publisher before the expiration of his contract on January 6, 1924 (Archives de la Fondation Erik Satie). We don't know if Satie ever took this path. He must have considered himself obligation-free in any case, when he signed his last contracts with Rouart, Lerolle & Cie in February 1925, on his hospital bed (for Relâche and the Ludions).< return to text>

6 Paul COLLAER, Op. cit., p. 257.

7 We have one of the drawings with Satie so categorically rejected, no doubt unsatsfied with the intended result. These are the tentative false starts of a collection which do not correspond to those which made their way into the final edition (priv. collection); The original manuscript of the twenty-one plates has yet to be found.<return to text>

8 Charles Martin, critical study by Marcel Valotaire, preface by Pierre Mac-Orlan, Henry Babou editor, les Artistes du Livre (April 1928), pp. 16-19.< return to text>

9 From 1913 to 1917, Satie constructed, in the form of little stories, the bulk of the playing instructions found in his scores. They could often be called "textes à clé:, and their solution reveals a number of musical quotations (more or less deformed) which show up in the corresponding pieces. An inventory of these quotes from opera, operetta, popular songs, appeared in the introduction to to the catalog of the exhibit Satie et la tradition populaire, organized by the Fondation Erik Satie in Paris, Musée des Arts et des Tradition Populaires, in May 1988.< return to text>

10 See Moïsé KISLING, "Souvenir de Satie", in La Revue musicale, no 214, June 1952, pp. 108-109.<return to text>

11 A letter from Erik Satie to René Clair, dated October 23, 1924, shows that the composer was waiting to see the details of this film, before undertaking the music (L'Avant-Scène-Cinéma, no. 86, November 1968, "René Clair, 'Entr'acte'", p. 8).< return to text>

12 Ex. no. 1 of the original edition, priv. coll.; see note 1.< return to text>

13 Here is the text inscribed by Erik Satie between the staves of "Water-Chute" : "Graciously. - If you have a solid constitution, you will not make yourself too ill. It will seem that you have fallen from a scaffold. You will see how curious it all is. Careful ! Don't change color. - I feel uneasy. - This proves that you need to have some fun". Erik Satie, April 14, 1914 .< return to text>

14 Bibliothèque nationale, Département de la Musique, Fonds Erik Satie, Mss 9627 (1 to 10). <return to text>

15 Francis STEEGMULLER, Cocteau, translated by Marcelle Jossua, Paria, Buchet-Chastel, 1973, p. 102. <return to text>

16 At the end of autumn 1914, Satie really did compose three songs, under the title Trois Poèmes d'Amour, published par Rouart, Lerolle & Cie in 1916. It is doubtful, however, that he conceived them with the Gazette du Bon Ton in mind; the latter had ceased publication at the beginning of the war.<return to text>

17 See Ornella VOLTA, Satie and the Dance, Layton, Utah, Gibbs M. Smith, Peregrine Smith Books (under press as of 1987).<return to text>

18 Priv. coll.< return to text>

19 Salle des Agriculteurs, 1923-1924 season, Troisième Concert Jean Wiéner, December 21, 1923. <return to text>

USPUD

1 Voir supra, Geneviève de Brabant.<return to text>

2 Erik SATIE, Uspud, ballet chrétien en trois actes, argument de J.P. Contamine de Latour, for piano. Paris, Salabert, Musique Contemporaine, 1970, M.C. no. 443.<return to text>

3 Uspud, ballet chrétien en trois actes de J.P. Contamine de Latour. Musique sacrée de Erik Satie. Présenté le 20 décembre 1892 au Théâtre National de l'Opéra. Paris, Imprimerie Artistique, E. directed by Woestiendieck, s.d. (1893). Broché, 12 pages, 23 x 14 cm.<return to text>

La date du 20 décembre ci-dessus a sans doute été indiquée par Satie par approximation (See note 21). <return to text>

4 Reynaldo HAHN, "L'humour d'Erik Satie", in Le Figaro, December 19, 1937, p. 3. - In this article, Hahn calls Satie "an inoffensive personality (...), author of lucubrations sonores and fumisteries insignifiantes". But this was the same Hahn who must have alerted Proust, at the start of the 1890s, to the name of Satie as that of a musician in the avant-garde (see Marcel PROUST, Les Plaisirs et les jours, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1896, p. 92).

What Hahn may never have forgiven Satie was the fact that Parade (Satie, Cocteau, Picasso - Ballets Russes, 1917) so thoroughly made old hat of Le Dieu bleu (Hahn, Cocteau, Benois - Ballets Russes, 1912).

Reynaldo Hahn met Erik Satie in the salon of Edouard Risler. <return to text>

5 Uspud, ballet chrétien en trois actes de J.P. Contamine de Latour. Musique sacrée de Erik Satie. Présenté le 20 décembre 1892 au Théâtre National de l'Opéra, s.l.n.d. (1895). Broché, 8 pages, 11 x 13,7 cm.<return to text>

6 This medaillon, which never left Satie's room during his life, is now kept in the Placard d'Erik Satie, 6 rue Cortot, in Montmartre.<return to text>

7 Satie revealed the chronological details of his "liaison d'amour" with Suzanne Valadon in a medaillon which he drew in red and black ink and hung on the door of his room in the rue Cortot. The original is now conserved at the Département de la Musique de la Bioliothèque nationale (gift of Robert Le Masle). The text was first published in Erik SATIE, Ecrits, p. 184.<return to text>

8 Satie insisted, for example, on completely recopying by hand the orchestral score which Debussy had published for the first and third Gymnopédies (Autograph manuscript by Erik Satie, transcription for orchestra by Claude Debussy, priv. coll.).<return to text>

9 P. CONTAMINE DE LATOUR, "Erik Satie intime (...)", art. cit.<return to text>

10 At this time, Satie had not yet signed his name to any text or published article, with the exception of an open letter he had printed in Gil Blas, in August 1892, to dissociate himself publicly with the Sâr Peladan. There is equally strong evidence of his writing style in sevral articles printed in La Lanterne japonaise, under a borrowed name or no signature at all (See Erik SATIE, Ecrits, p. 102-113).<return to text>

11 Priv. coll. Charles Koechlin made a handwritten copy of this manuscript in January 1927, held up to then by Ernest Legrand. Robert Orledge has analyzed this copy, now kept in a private collection, in "Satie, Koechlin and the Ballet Uspud", in Music and Letters, LXVIII, no. 1, January 1987, p. 26-41. <return to text>

12 Cesare MUTTI, Pittura e alchimia, Parma, 1970, p. 11. - After explaining that the number "72" corresponds to the formula EN TO PAN, in the center of the hermetic circle, Motti reminds us that "72 are the Kabbalistic attributes of Divine unity, 72 the angels according to the calculations of the Assyrians and Chaldeans, 72 the solar years of which earthly time corresponds to that of the Great Platonic Year; 72 the Sages gathered about Moses, 72 the rungs of Jacob's ladder, according to the Zohar (...)". <return to text>

13 Ernest Legrand glued onto the final page of the Uspud notebook a sheet of white paper containing, on the reverse, a drawing of a castle by Erik Satie, accompanied by the inscription "Hôtel de messere Ernest Le Grand" and, on the other side, the following handwritten dedication: "To my bon vieux Erneste Le Grand, I offer this precious manuscript made specially for the sole glory of the Lord, My Eternal Father. May he accept it from my resplendent hands, may he respect it forever, that is what I wish. His Brother in creation, Erik Satie" (Unpubl., priv. coll.).<return to text>

14 The composer in question probably belonged to Koechlin's entourage. Legrand accompanied his donation with a letter, dated May 23, 1934, from which we quote the following passage which is particularly illuminating as to the quality of Legrand's relations with Satie : "Mon cher Ami (...) allow me to offer you a little rectangular record which, if you were to spin it, would remain no less silent. It is my only remaining souvenir of a being which I have venerated for his talent and charming speech, which was quasi-divine (...)".

The "rectangular record" refers, obviously, to the sketchbook which contains the manuscript of Uspud. The "venerable being" is none other than Erik Satie.<return to text >

15 We have released an Italian translation of the text in Erik SATIE, Quaderni di un Mammifero, a cura di Ornella Volta, Milan, Adelphi, 1980, pp. 120-129. In this work, aimed at the public at large, we have still left out the numerous repetitions of dates and signatures and slightly modified the layout, for purposes of clarity.<return to text>

16 Uspud, "ballet chrétien en trois actes de J.P. Contamine de Latour, musique de Erik Satie. Paris, November '92". Bibliothèque nationale, Département de la Musique, Fonds Erik Satie, Ms 9631. <return to text>

17 P. CONTAMINE DE LATOUR, "Erik Satie intime", art. cit. Contamine gives no date for their meeting with Bertrand; we have deduced it from a letter from Satie to Ernest Legrand.<return to text>

18 Rollo MYERS, Erik Satie, translated from English by Dr. Robert Le Masle, Paris, Gallimard, 1959, p. 144-145.<return to text>

19 Erik SATIE, Socrate, "drame symphonique en trois parties, avec voix, d'après les Dialogues de Platon, traduits en français par Victor Cousin. Ouvrage composé pour les réceptions privées de la Princesse de Poilgnac". Paris, La Sirène, E.D.2 L.S.- The copyright is dated 1920 on the cover and 1919 inside.

For the opening "Portrait de Socrate", Satie chose, from among the thirty-nine chapters of the Banquet, four passages from ch. XXXII, one from ch. XXXIII and one from ch. XXXV.

For Part II ("Les Bords de l'Ilissus") he chose, from among the sixty-four chapters of Phaedra, two passages from ch. IV and one from ch. V.

For Part III ("Mort de Socrate") he excerpted, from the sixty-seven chapters of Phaedo, four passages from ch. III, one from ch. XXXIII, two from ch. XXXV, three passages from ch. XXXVIII, two from ch. LXV, and one from ch. LXVII.

By combining these twenty paragraphs (for a grand total of one hundred words), he kept to their original order, without adding a syllable of his own.<return to text>

20 P. CONTAMINE DE LATOUR, Art. cit. - According to Conrad Satie, it was at the Clou where Satie and Debussy first met. October 27, 1892, two weeks before the completion of Uspud, Debussy had written on copy no. 45 of his Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire, the famous dedication "to Erik Satie, gentle medieval musician, having wandered into this century for the joy of his dear friend Claude-A. Debussy" (priv. coll.). <return to text>

21 Here is a report of the interview which Satie wrote to his friend Ernest Legrand in an unpublished letter, dated December 18, 1892: "Mon Cher et Vénérable Maître (...Bertrand received me yesterday, along with Latour. This led me to believe that Uspud was soon to appear at the Opéra in the 1927 season or, at the latest, that of 1943. A toi de tout coeur et d'esprit. Erik Satie" (the complete text of this letter was graciously given us by Jean Roy).<return to text>

22 See note (21) above. Uspud was premiered at the Opéra-Comique, as part of a "Complete" Erik Satie which took place under the initiative of Rolf Liebermann, General Director of the Opéra, in May 1979. Pianist Michel Tranchant, reader Hubert Camerlo, simultaneous projection of slides (not exactly pertinent, truth to tell), specially conceived by Robert Doisneau.<return to text >

23 Here, for example, is Florent Schmitt's version: "(...) Then there was [Satie's] little adventure with that madman who directed the Opéra (his name is not important), guilty of having refused that Tibetan epic which is Uspud. Provoked by Satie to a duel, fate decreed that the inhospitable doctor would succumb to the troisième friction. This tragic and sweet-smelling end, which made a great noise in theatrical circles, would later suggest to Gabrielo d'Annunzio the dénouement to one of his greatest dramas (...)" (Florent SCHMITT, "Erik Satie", in Montjoie I, 1, no. 11-12, December 1913, pp. 11-22).<return to text>

24 In his 1958 "Introduction" à to Erik Satie's works, see the "Scholarly Work". Yves Gérard explains the interaction many have inferred betwen the music of Erik Satie and the various milieus he frequented.<return to text>

25 Information gathered from unpublished notes by Conrad Satie, Archives P.D. Templier. In a thesis on the cabarets of Montmartre, Mariel Oberthür posits other theories on the creators of these frescoes (which were superimposed on older ones) going so far as to suggest Picasso, among others (Mariel OBERTHÜR, "Lés Cabarets artistiques au pied de la colline de Montmartre", Thèse de 3e cycle, Univ. de Paris IV, 1979).<return to text>

26 Santiago RUSIÑOL, "El Reino de las Sombras. Cartas ilustradas. Artistes catalans in Paris. Desde el Molino" in La Vanguardia, March 31, 1892; quoted in his work Desde el Molino, Barcelona, "L'Avenç", 1894; reprinted several times (even in Paris, by éd. Garnier, 1909), but never in French translation.<return to text >

27 See Catherine BANLIN-LACROIX, "Miquel Utrillo i Morlius, critique d'art", Masters' thesis, prof. P. Guinard, Univ. de Paris IV, Etudés Ibériques, 1971, p. 32 ss.<return to text>

28 A painting by Rusiñol, "Raval de Paria" (1891), depicts Valadon and Utrillo on the banks of the Seine, the latter in a French army uniform loaned by Erik Satie ("Els Quatre Gats, Art in Barcelona Around 1900", exhibition catalog by Marilyn McCully, The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1978, p. 122). According to C. Banlin-Lacroix (op. cit.), Utrillo was the first Catalan in Paris to meet Erik Satie, whom he later introduced to his artist friends.<return to text >

29 Vincent HYSPA, "Souvenirs de Cabaret. Du Chat Noir au Chien Noir", in L'Esprit montmartrois (...), published in Paris by the Laboratoires Carlier, Léon Ullmann editor, 1938, p. 227.

Without precisely dating the "Noël" by Erik Satie (now lost), Hyspa places it at a time when the composer abandoned the velvet suit which earned him the nickname Velvet Gentleman, to adopt the uniform of a minor bureaucrat. Because this sartorial reinvention did not come about until after 1900 and that Utrillo's theater only existed in 1892, we must assume Hyspa to be mixing up his memories when, at the end of his life, he was trying hardest to put them in order. <return to text>

30 Utrillo would leave in 1893 to show his "ombres chinoises" - transformed into "ombres parisiennies" for the occasion - at the Universal Exposition in Chicago. He was to stay in the U.S. for two years before returning to Barcelona (See C. BANLIN-LACROIX op. cit., p. 22 ss). Utrillo's memoirs show he had no great love for Erik Satie, barely mentioned and with obvious bitterness (M. UTRILLO, Historia anecdotica de Cau Ferrat, unpubl. autograph manuscript, 1930 ca, p. 34, Barcelona, Museo de Arte Moderno).<return to text >

31 Program from the Théâtre du Chat Noir, s.d., priv. coll. - In that same performance, Alphonse Allais was "chief percussionist".

La Marche à l'Etoile, mystery play in ten scenes by Georges Fragerolle and Henri Rivière, was first performed at the Théâtre du Chat Noir, January 6, 1890 (see Paul Jeanne, Les Théâtres d'Ombres à Montmartre, Paris, les Ed. dés Presses Modernes du Palais-Royal, 1937, p. 62). <return to text>

32 Santiago RUSIÑOL, "El Réveillon", in op. cit., January 18, 1891. - Having affirmed (remember this is still in 1891) that the name Erik Satie was destined to live forever (at least as long as fate isn't playing a dirty trick), Rusiñol explained that this "composer-poet" was trying to "create in musical terms what Puvis de Chavannes had succeeded in doing for painting, which was to make extreme simplification an essential quality of art, to say in two words what a Spanish orator could not say in long, eloquent sentences, and to imbue his work with a je ne sais quoi of indeterminacy which allows the listener to follow, according to his state of mind, the path he has traced himself which is perfectly straight, woven with harmonies and emotions". And again: "This tactic seems to owe much to the Orient. Our friend has christened his own music 'Greek harmony.'" Rusiñol made a portrait of "Erik Satie, tocando el Harmonium" in 1891.<return to text>

33 Patrick GOWERS, "Satie's Rose+Croix Music", in Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 92, 1965-1966, pp. 16-17.<return to text>

34 Conrad SATIE, Notés inédites (op. cit.). - "La Tentation de Saint-Antoine" by Rivière and Fragerolle was performed at the shadow-plays of the Chat Noir on December 28, 1887 (see P. JEANNE, op. cit., p. 61). <return to text>

35 S. RUSIÑOL, "El Reino de las Sombras" (art. cit).<return to text>

36 The English composer and musicologist Andrew Thomson has offered to demonstrate this discovery by the Fondation Erik Satie, of which he is a member, by staging Uspud as a shadow-play at the next Camden Festival.<return to text >

37 Annie LEDOUT, "L'Eden-Théâtre, 1883-1893", in R.I.M.F., vol. VI, no. 17, June 1985, p. 115.<return to text>

EDITIONS AND MANUSCRITS

1 P. CONTAMINE DE LATOUR, "Erik Satie intime", art. cit.<return to text>

2 La Lanterne japonaise, I, no 6, December 1, 1888, p. 3.<return to text>

3 Conrad SATIE, "Erik Satie", in Le Coeur, no. 6-7, June 1895, p. 3.<return to text>

4 "Lettre de l'ouvreuse", in L'Echo de Paris, November 30, 1896.<return to text>

5 Santiago RUSIÑOL, "Impresiones de Arte (VI. El Greco en casa, 1894)", in Obres completes, Barcelona, Editorial Selecta, vol. 2, 3rd ed., 1976, p. 740.<return to text>

6 "Un dîner à l'Elysée", music by Erik Satie, drawings by Jules Dépaquit, in Vincent HYSPA, Chansons d'humour, Paris, Enoch & Cie, 1903, pp. 107-113.<return to text>

7 Unpublished letter from Erik Satie to his brother Conrad, January 17, 1911. Transcription by P.D. Templier. <return to text>

8 Erik SATIE, Ecrits, 1981, p. 164. <return to text>

9 The trademark S.M.I. stands for Société Musicale Indépendante, founded in 1909 as a splinter faction of the Société Nationale, led by Maurice Ravel. S.l.M., however, stands for the Société Internationale de Musique, which published a newsletter that eventually became the Revue musicale S.I.M. The latter ceased publication during WWI, to resume in 1920 as La Revue musicale. <return to text>

10 Erik Satie, unpublished letter to Roland-Manuel, September 6, 1911. Priv. coll.< return to text>

11 Erik SATIE, "Ce que je suis", in Revue musicale S.l.M., 8, no. 4, April 15, 1912, p. 69.<return to text>

12 "Allié" (entrefilet non signé), in Le Mot, no. 15, March 27, 1915. Cocteau was chief editor and illustrator of this newspaper (with Paul Iribe).<return to text>

13 Erik SATIE, Cinq Grimaces pour "Le Songé d'une Nuit d'Eté", Universal, 1929; version for orchestra, Universal, 1929, no. 9697. <return to text>

14 Erik Satie, unpublished letter to Valentine Hugo, August 24, 1919. Transcription by Jean Roy. <return to text>

15 In his memoirs, "Jéroboam et la Sirène", published in Les Nouvelles Littéraires in 1952, Cendrars simplifies the story by claiming he wanted to call his publishing house "L'Usine" ["Factory"] (see "La Sirène" by Pascal Fouché, Bibliothèque de Littérature Française Contemporaine, Université de Paris VII, 1984, p. 219).<return to text>

16 Le Piège de Méduse, "comédie lyrique d'Erik Satie avec musique de danse du même Monsieur", color illustrations by Georges Braque, Paris, Ed. de la Galerie Simon, 1921. <return to text>

17 "Blaise Céndrars vous parle", fragments collected by M. Manoll (1952), in Blaise CENDRARS, Oeuvres complètes vol. VIII, Paris, Denoël, 1965, p. 648.<return to text>

18 In 1953, several notebooks conserved in the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire were discovered to have pages missing or torn by "researchers," none of whom have seen fit to return the fruits of their pillage. <return to text>

19 By Broeksmans & Van Poppel (Amsterdam), United Music MSM Music Publ. and by Novello (London), California Music Press and Copa (U.S.A.), J.B. Cramer (Canada)... <return to text>

Francis PICABIA, illustration from "A Mammal's Notebook" by Erik Satie,
in 391, no. 17, June 1924.

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