Editing Erik Satie (section)

===Early years===
[[File:MaisonSatie.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|Satie's birthplace and childhood home, now a museum in [[Honfleur]], Normandy]]
Satie was born on 17 May 1866 in [[Honfleur]], Normandy, the first child of Alfred Satie and his wife Jane Leslie ({{née|Anton}}). Jane Satie was an English Protestant of Scottish descent; Alfred Satie, a [[Shipping agency|shipping broker]], was a Roman Catholic.<ref name=r11>Rey, p. 11: "Erik Alfred Leslie Satie est né le 17 mai 1866 à Honfleur (Normandie) d'une mère anglaise et protestante, d'un père catholique, courtier maritime"</ref> A year later, the Saties had a daughter, Olga, and in 1869 a second son, Conrad. The children were baptised in the Anglican church.<ref name=r11/>

After the [[Franco-Prussian War]] Alfred Satie sold his business and the family moved to Paris, where he set up as a music publisher.<ref name=gxix/> In 1872 Jane Satie died and Eric and his brother were sent back to Honfleur to be brought up by Alfred's parents. The boys were rebaptised as Roman Catholics and educated at a local boarding school, where Satie excelled in history and Latin but nothing else.<ref>Gillmor, p. 8</ref> In 1874 he began taking music lessons with a local organist, Gustave Vinot, a former pupil of [[Louis Niedermeyer]]. Vinot stimulated Satie's love of old church music, and in particular [[Gregorian chant]].<ref>Gillmor, p. 9</ref>

In 1878 Satie's grandmother died,{{refn|Her death was mysterious: she was found drowned on the beach at Honfleur in unexplained circumstances.<ref name=r11/>|group=n}} and the two boys returned to Paris to be informally educated by their father. Satie did not attend a school, but his father took him to lectures at the {{lang|fr|[[Collège de France]]|italic=no}} and engaged a tutor to teach Eric Latin and Greek. Before the boys returned to Paris from Honfleur, Alfred had met a piano teacher and salon composer, Eugénie Barnetche, whom he married in January 1879, to the dismay of the twelve-year-old Satie, who did not like her.<ref name=oxix>Orledge, p. xix</ref>

Eugénie Satie resolved that her elder stepson should become a professional musician, and in November 1879 enrolled him in the preparatory piano class at the [[Paris Conservatoire]].<ref name=grove/> Satie strongly disliked the Conservatoire, which he described as "a vast, very uncomfortable, and rather ugly building; a sort of district prison with no beauty on the inside – nor on the outside, for that matter".{{refn|"un vaste bâtiment très inconfortable et assez vilain à voir – une sorte de local pénitencier sans aucun agrément extérieur – ni intérieur du reste".<ref>Satie, p. 67</ref>|group=n}} He studied [[solfeggio]] with [[Albert Lavignac]] and piano with [[Émile Decombes]], who had been a pupil of [[Frédéric Chopin]].<ref>[[Martin Cooper (musicologist)|Cooper, Martin]], and Charles Timbrell. [https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000006587 "Cortot, Alfred"], ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, 2001. Retrieved 20 September 2021 {{subscription required}} {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220401074810/https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000006587 |date=1 April 2022}}</ref> In 1880 Satie took his first examinations as a pianist: he was described as "gifted but indolent". The following year Decombes called him "the laziest student in the Conservatoire".<ref name=grove>[[Robert Orledge|Orledge, Robert]], revised by Caroline Potter. [https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.40105 Satie, Erik (Eric) (Alfred Leslie)"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210918001425/https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040105 |date=18 September 2021}}, ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, 2020. Retrieved 16 September 2021</ref> In 1882 he was expelled from the Conservatoire for his unsatisfactory performance.<ref name=gxix>Gillmor, p. xix</ref>

[[File:Erik Satie 1884.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|alt=young white man with receding medium-length dark hair, in pince-nez|Satie in 1884]]

In 1884 Satie wrote his first known composition, a short Allegro for piano, composed while on holiday in Honfleur. He signed himself "Erik" on this and subsequent compositions, though he continued to use "Eric" on other documents until 1906.<ref name=oxx>Orledge, p. xx</ref> In 1885, he was readmitted to the Conservatoire, in the intermediate piano class of his stepmother's former teacher, [[Georges Mathias]]. He made little progress: Mathias described his playing as "insignificant and laborious" and Satie himself as "worthless. Three months just to learn the piece. Cannot sight-read properly."<ref>Gillmor, p. xx</ref>{{refn|Satie's biographer [[Robert Orledge]] has conjectured that Satie had [[dyslexia]], a condition that can make reading music as difficult as reading words.<ref name=gresham>[[Robert Orledge|Orledge, Robert]]. [https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/erik-satie-part-one-saties-musical-and-personal-logic-and-satie-as-poet "Erik Satie: His music, the vision, his legacy"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201125023449/https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/erik-satie-part-one-saties-musical-and-personal-logic-and-satie-as-poet |date=25 November 2020}}, Gresham College, 2021. Retrieved 17 September 2021</ref><ref>Ganschow, Leonore, Jenafer Lloyd-Jones, and T. R. Miles. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/23769692 "Dyslexia and Musical Notation"], ''Annals of Dyslexia'' 1994, pp. 185–202 {{subscription required}} {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210918051424/https://www.jstor.org/stable/23769692 |date=18 September 2021}}</ref>|group=n}} Satie became fascinated by aspects of religion. He spent much time in [[Notre-Dame de Paris]] contemplating the stained glass windows and in the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France|National Library]] examining obscure medieval manuscripts.<ref>Gillmor, p. 33</ref> His friend [[Alphonse Allais]] later dubbed him "Esotérik Satie".<ref>Harding, p. 35</ref> From this period comes ''[[Ogives]]'', a set of four piano pieces inspired by Gregorian chant and [[Gothic architecture|Gothic church architecture]].<ref>Rey, p. 22; and Gillmor, p. 64</ref>

Keen to leave the Conservatoire, Satie volunteered for military service and joined the 33rd Infantry Regiment in November 1886.<ref>Gillmor, p. 12</ref> He found army life no more to his liking than the Conservatoire, and deliberately contracted acute [[bronchitis]] by standing in the open, bare-chested, on a winter night.<ref>Templier, pp. 10–11</ref> After three months' convalescence he was invalided out of the army.<ref name=grove/><ref>Templier, p. 11</ref>