One imagines that Erik Satie—a man who wrote an absurd autobiography detailing his day's activities down to the minute, a man whose apartment was filled with dozens and dozens of umbrellas at the time of his death, a man who had the notion to compose "wallpaper music," music meant to be absolutely ignored by the audience—might be tickled to death to know that his best-known pieces, the Gymnopédie and the Gnossiennes for solo piano, are now recognized by thousands upon thousands the world over. They are heard in soundtracks, over restaurant speakers (something to which they are admirably suited, considering that their composer worked as a café pianist). Very few people, however, know anything at all of the eccentric subtitles and indications that Satie wrote on his scores. The first of the three Gymnopédie, for instance, is a "Spartan dance of naked youths and men" (rather a tame description by comparison with some of Satie's others).

The three Gymnopédie were composed during 1888; No. 1 is marked Lent et douloureux (slow and mournfully). Its steady 3/4 meter music falls into to nearly identical halves, with an accompaniment that sets up a regular rhythm (short-long, short-long) in the first bars and then veers from that rhythm only at the very end of each half. Atop this gently swaying background is a melody of the most peculiarly expressive kind; its quarter notes are translucent, its longer notes somehow hollow at their center (but not cold). The end of the second half is made to spin around a low E pedal (the dissonance of the F naturals above the pedal is absolutely empty—there is, amazingly, almost no harmonic tension to it, and the pianist is well advised not to overlay any) before winding down to a glasslike modal cadence. Love it or hate it (and there are countless on both sides), only Satie could have written this piece.

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One imagines that Erik Satie—a man who wrote an absurd autobiography detailing his day's activities down to the minute, a man whose apartment was filled with dozens and dozens of umbrellas at the time of his death, a man who had the notion to compose "wallpaper music," music meant to be absolutely ignored by the audience—might be tickled to death to know that his best-known pieces, the Gymnopédie and the Gnossiennes for solo piano, are now recognized by thousands upon thousands the world over. They are heard in soundtracks, over restaurant speakers (something to which they are admirably suited, considering that their composer worked as a café pianist). Very few people, however, know anything at all of the eccentric subtitles and indications that Satie wrote on his scores. The first of the three Gymnopédie, for instance, is a "Spartan dance of naked youths and men" (rather a tame description by comparison with some of Satie's others).

The three Gymnopédie were composed during 1888; No. 1 is marked Lent et douloureux (slow and mournfully). Its steady 3/4 meter music falls into to nearly identical halves, with an accompaniment that sets up a regular rhythm (short-long, short-long) in the first bars and then veers from that rhythm only at the very end of each half. Atop this gently swaying background is a melody of the most peculiarly expressive kind; its quarter notes are translucent, its longer notes somehow hollow at their center (but not cold). The end of the second half is made to spin around a low E pedal (the dissonance of the F naturals above the pedal is absolutely empty—there is, amazingly, almost no harmonic tension to it, and the pianist is well advised not to overlay any) before winding down to a glasslike modal cadence. Love it or hate it (and there are countless on both sides), only Satie could have written this piece.

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Written during the late 1880s while he was working as a cabaret pianist in Paris, Erik Satie's Trois gymnopédies (3 Gymnopédies) are famous pieces, recognizable to countless shoppers and restaurant-goers who have never heard of Satie (the use of the music as background-sound is something of which Satie would have wholly approved). The third of the Gymnopédies, Lent et grave (slowly and solemnly), has achieved further fame as an orchestral work, having been orchestrated, along with the first, by Claude Debussy about ten years after Satie first composed it. It is in the Gymnopédies that Satie first revealed the unique and unusual style that would make him famous (or infamous) in European musical circles: simple but occasionally unexpected chords in the left hand, and a simple but curvaceous melody in the right—and nothing else. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Satie was considered either an ingenious innovator and satirist or an untrained, even incompetent, charlatan, depending on whom one asked; and the debate still rages today. But, one way or the other, it is difficult not to like a piece such as the third Gymnopédie, when played as it was meant to be played—as a simple, straightforward piece of stylized texture. The quiet, long, A minor lines and repetitive (even hypnotic, in a good pianist's hands) accompaniment rhythm conjure up an idealized ancient Greek atmosphere (explicitly suggested by the word "gymnopédie") and transport the listener straight into the bizarre, personalized world of Satie's craft.

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Written during the late 1880s while he was working as a cabaret pianist in Paris, Erik Satie's Trois gymnopédies (3 Gymnopédies) are famous pieces, recognizable to countless shoppers and restaurant-goers who have never heard of Satie (the use of the music as background-sound is something of which Satie would have wholly approved). The third of the Gymnopédies, Lent et grave (slowly and solemnly), has achieved further fame as an orchestral work, having been orchestrated, along with the first, by Claude Debussy about ten years after Satie first composed it. It is in the Gymnopédies that Satie first revealed the unique and unusual style that would make him famous (or infamous) in European musical circles: simple but occasionally unexpected chords in the left hand, and a simple but curvaceous melody in the right—and nothing else. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Satie was considered either an ingenious innovator and satirist or an untrained, even incompetent, charlatan, depending on whom one asked; and the debate still rages today. But, one way or the other, it is difficult not to like a piece such as the third Gymnopédie, when played as it was meant to be played—as a simple, straightforward piece of stylized texture. The quiet, long, A minor lines and repetitive (even hypnotic, in a good pianist's hands) accompaniment rhythm conjure up an idealized ancient Greek atmosphere (explicitly suggested by the word "gymnopédie") and transport the listener straight into the bizarre, personalized world of Satie's craft.

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Though much of Satie's music remains little known beyond the ranks of devoted connoisseurs, the three Gymnopedies (1888) for piano are instantly familiar. Indeed, Satie no doubt would have been amused by the range and absurdity of the contexts in which they have since been presented, from ballet scores to jazz-rock fusion arrangements to commercials for mundane consumer products. Debussy was very fond of these pieces—his orchestrations of the first and third likely exceed the popularity of the original version—and even Satie's critics grudgingly admired them. One of the composer's contemporaries famously remarked that these little pieces "seemed to have been written by a savage with taste."

The etymology of the title is important, and its significance is a source of some debate amongst scholars and critics. Though Satie insisted that the work was inspired by the writings of novelist Gustav Flaubert, "Gymnopedies" rather suggests Ancient Greece. Gymnopedia festivals, held in honor of warriors felled in battle, consisted of naked youths dancing and miming wrestling and boxing poses. As Satie scholar Eric Gillmor has noted, the composer had some knowledge of the Greek language and history by way of involuntary training in Greek as a boy. As with most of Satie's music, so steeped in satire and enigma, it is in the end difficult to make a connection between the Gymnopedies and their source of inspiration.

The Gymnopedies follow closely on the heels of the Sarabandes of 1887, which, Satie and his apologists insisted, marked a turning point in the history of French music. The Sarabandes, with their modal, plainchant-like melodies and static harmony comprised of unresolved chains of seventh chords, were a decidedly anti-Wagnerian statement in 1887, when the musical life of Paris was dominated by the German composer's works and admirers. As though a direct rebellion against the bombast of Wagnerian music drama, Satie composed the Sarabandes, described by the composer's friend Roland-Manuel as possessing "a sonorous magic of complete originality."

The same might be said of the Gymnopedies; they are certainly works of "sonorous magic" and share many of the musical traits of their predecessors. At the same time, they are somewhat more organic than the Sarabandes; the three pieces essentially explore a single idea, albeit each from a slightly altered perspective. This, according to Gillmor, betrays the influence of cubism on the work. Like the Sarabandes, only more so, the Gymnopedies "are one piece written three times—cast in the same mold as it were, but with the most subtle variations in phrasing, harmonic coloring, and balancing of part." The simple modal melodies are repeated with slight variations, while successions of seventh and ninth chords provide a gentle, colorful underpinning whose "sonorous magic" mitigates its dissonance. Each of the three pieces has a tonal center, in each case unstable, merely hinted at and encircled by the undulating harmonic shifts. Satie eschews melodic development in favor of repetition and juxtaposition of melodic elements, which, together with the static harmonic language, lend the work its characteristic dreamy quality.

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Supposedly after having read Flaubert's novel Salambo in 1888, Erik Satie (1866-1925) composed his Gymnopedies (3). All three are gently quiet pieces with lilting melodies and modal harmonies set in triple rhythms to a sarabande-like accompaniment. The second, marked Lent et triste (the first is marked Lent et douloureux and the third is marked Lent et grave), is in something like the Dorian on D, but with a pronounced tendency toward G with an accent on the relative minor. The grave but graceful melody in the outer sections wanders sadly through a pentatonic scale with inclinations toward the harmonic minor, relaxes into an aching but doleful melody in the central section over harmonies that think about either C minor or E flat major before settling on B flat major but without inner conviction. After a half-hearted return of the gracefully grave outer section, the piece climaxes on something like F major, but with a hint of A minor, then painfully ambles back toward the opening Dorian on D before pointlessly concluding on a C major triad.

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