Satie March, “Le Piccadilly”

March, “Le Piccadilly”

Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Erik Satie is often thought of as one of the great eccentric figures in French music, known for miniature compositions with titles such as “Things seen from left to right (without glasses), ” “The Dreamy Fish, ” “Flaccid Preludes, ” and an especially evocative work for piano in Four movements, “Three Pieces in the shape of a Pear.” Satie, who had stumbled through his teens with fitful attempts at gaining a conventional musical education, would go on to become compose of note (and notoriety), a close friend of Debussy, who in his later years numbered among his friends Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. He would have a deep influence upon younger composers such as Ravel, Poulenc, and such Americans as Virgil Thomson and John Cage. For many years he lived an impoverished life in the Bohemian world of Montmarte, although at one point he inherited a legacy from his family with which he purchased a set of 12 identical grey velvet suits. His musical personality ranged from a Christian mysticism which was expressed in his “Mass for the Poor, ” to “Socrate, ” an austere and poignant setting of the account of the death of the Greek philosopher. There was also an uproarious sense of humour and somewhat surrealistic sensibility, as can be heard in his ballet, “Parade” (performed in 1917 with designs by Picasso), in which a typewriter makes an appearance as an orchestral instrument.

His jaunty musical spirit is nicely expressed in the tiny “Piccadilly” March composed in 1903. The title reflects Satie’s characteristic delight in things English---an eccentric artist perhaps inspired by a notion of the British as a nation of eccentrics. However, the music itself is actually an echo of American Ragtime, which became the rage in Europe early in the 20^th century. Indeed, the March actually began life as a song, “La Transatlantique” (“The Transatlantic Girl”), with a text by Satie himself, in a hilarious scramble of French and English, full of references to Baltimore, Chicago, Mississippi, Ohio – and dollars! That version was abandoned, and the march first appeared as a piano piece (later orchestrated), which follows the traditional march and trio pattern, full of the typical prancing rhythms and syncopation of Ragtime. Scott Joplin would have loved it.

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