Editing Erik Satie (section)

===Music===
{{see also|List of compositions by Erik Satie}}
In the view of the ''Oxford Dictionary of Music'', Satie's importance lay in "directing a new generation of French composers away from [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]]‐influenced [[Impressionism in music|impressionism]] towards a leaner, more epigrammatic style".<ref name=odm/> Debussy christened him "the precursor" because of his early harmonic innovations.<ref name=ocm/> Satie summed up his musical philosophy in 1917:
{{blockquote|To have a feeling for harmony is to have a feeling for tonality… the melody is the Idea, the outline; as much as it is the form and the subject matter of a work. The harmony is an illumination, an exhibition of the object, its reflection.<ref>''Quoted'' in Orledge, p. 68</ref>|}}

[[File:Satie Gymnopedie No. 3 for piano solo 02.png|thumb|upright=1.75|left|''Gymnopédie'' No. 3|alt=musical score with simple, slow music for solo piano]]

Among his earliest compositions were sets of three ''[[Gymnopédies]]'' (1888) and his ''[[Gnossiennes]]'' (1889 onwards) for piano. They evoke the ancient world by what the critics [[Roger Nichols (musical scholar)|Roger Nichols]] and [[Paul Griffiths (writer)|Paul Griffiths]] describe as "pure simplicity, monotonous repetition, and highly original [[Mode (music)|modal]] harmonies".<ref name=ocm>Griffiths, Paul, and Roger Nichols. [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199579037.001.0001/acref-9780199579037-e-5901 "Satie, Erik (Eric) (Alfred Leslie)"], ''The Oxford Companion to Music'', Oxford University Press, 2011. Retrieved 18 September 2021 {{subscription required}} {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210918130322/https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199579037.001.0001/acref-9780199579037-e-5901 |date=18 September 2021}}</ref>
It is possible that their simplicity and originality were influenced by Debussy; it is also possible that it was Satie who influenced Debussy.<ref name=odm>Kennedy, Joyce, Michael Kennedy, and Tim Rutherford-Johnson. [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199578108.001.0001/acref-9780199578108-e-7968 "Satie, Erik (Eric) Alfred Leslie"], ''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'', Oxford University Press, 2013. Retrieved 18 September 2021 {{subscription required}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210918130322/https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199578108.001.0001/acref-9780199578108-e-7968 |date=18 September 2021 }}</ref> During the brief spell when Satie was composer to Péladan's sect he adopted a similarly austere manner.<ref name=odm/>

While Satie was earning his living as a café pianist in Montmartre he contributed songs and little waltzes. After moving to Arcueil he began to write works with quirky titles, such as the seven-movement suite ''[[Trois morceaux en forme de poire]]'' ("Three Pear-shaped Pieces") for piano four-hands (1903), simply phrased music that Nichols and Griffiths describe as "a résumé of his music since 1890" – reusing some of his earlier work as well as popular songs of the time.<ref name=ocm/> He struggled to find his own musical voice. Orledge writes that this was partly because of his "trying to ape his illustrious peers … we find bits of Ravel in his miniature opera ''[[Geneviève de Brabant (Satie)|Geneviève de Brabant]]'' and echoes of both [[Gabriel Fauré|Fauré]] and Debussy in the ''Nouvelles pièces froides'' of 1907".<ref name=grove/>

After concluding his studies at the Schola Cantorum in 1912 Satie composed with greater confidence and more prolifically. Orchestration, despite his studies with d'Indy, was never his strongest suit,<ref>Orledge, p. 95; and Gillmor, p. 137</ref> but his grasp of counterpoint is evident in the opening bars of ''Parade'',<ref>Orledge, pp. 116 and 174</ref> and from the outset of his composing career he had original and distinctive ideas about harmony.<ref>Gillmor, p. 37</ref> In his later years he composed sets of short instrumental works with absurd titles, including ''[[Véritables Préludes flasques (pour un chien)]]'' ("True Flabby Preludes (for a Dog)", 1912), ''[[Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois]]'' ("Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Man", 1913) and ''[[Sonatine bureaucratique]]'' ("Bureaucratic Sonata", 1917). 
[[File:Satie socrate manuscript.jpg|Manuscript of ''[[Socrate]]''|upright=1.5|thumb|alt=neatly written manuscript of musical score, with careful, calligraphic letters in red ink]]

In his neat, calligraphic hand,<ref>Gillmor, p. 208</ref> Satie would write extensive instructions for his performers, and although his words appear at first sight to be humorous and deliberately nonsensical, Nichols and Griffiths comment, "a sensitive pianist can make much of injunctions such as 'arm yourself with clairvoyance' and 'with the end of your thought'".<ref name="ocm" /> His ''Sonatine bureaucratique'' anticipates the [[Neoclassicism (music)|neoclassicism]] soon adopted by Stravinsky.<ref name=grove/> Despite his rancorous falling out with Debussy, Satie commemorated his long-time friend in 1920, two years after Debussy's death, in the anguished "Elégie", the first of the miniature song cycle ''[[Quatre petites mélodies (Satie)|Quatre petites mélodies]]''.<ref>Orledge, p. 39</ref> Orledge rates the cycle as the finest, though least known, of the four sets of short songs of Satie's last decade.<ref name=grove/>

Satie invented what he called ''[[Musique d'ameublement]]'' – "furniture music" – a kind of background not to be listened to consciously. ''Cinéma'', composed for the René Clair film ''Entr'acte'', shown between the acts of ''Relâche'' (1924), is an example of early film music designed to be unconsciously absorbed rather than carefully listened to.<ref name=dance>[[Roger Shattuck|Shattuck, Roger]]. [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195173697.001.0001/acref-9780195173697-e-1543 "Satie, Erik"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210918130334/https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195173697.001.0001/acref-9780195173697-e-1543 |date=18 September 2021}}, ''The International Encyclopedia of Dance'', Oxford University Press, 2005. Retrieved 18 September 2021 {{subscription required}}</ref>

Satie is regarded by some writers as an influence on [[Minimal music|minimalism]], which developed in the 1960s and later. The musicologist Mark Bennett and the composer [[Humphrey Searle]] have said that [[John Cage]]'s music shows Satie's influence,<ref>Bennett, p. 7</ref> and Searle and the writer Edward Strickland have used the term "minimalism" in connection with Satie's ''[[Vexations]]'', which the composer implied in his manuscript should be played over and over again 840 times.<ref>Potter (2016), p. 230; and Strickland, p. 124</ref> [[John Adams (composer)|John Adams]] included a specific homage to Satie's music in his 1996 ''[[Century Rolls]]''.<ref>Potter (2016), p. 252</ref>