Satie, Ravel, Poulenc, Vol. 2
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| Satie in 1890 |
I. Satie
The French think life is interesting. That is why they have created a cuisine, which is a pretext for enjoying life and for being together around a table. As long as you are enjoying the food you remain at the table exchanging ideas and discussing your feelings. French music starts from this same circumstance.
Although the French are highly emotional (they love, they have great esteem for people), they will often hide an emotion to keep it from getting “spoiled.” They are always afraid their feelings will show too much, and someone will take advantage of them. That is why the absurd is constantly coming up in French philosophy, as in French everyday life. This feeling for the absurd is a defense of the French mind against being outwitted. The French hate to think they can be taken in. You can always see that light in the Frenchman’s eye which seems to say, “You can’t fool me!”
Chabrier, who was one of the heroes of Ravel and Poulenc, and a great discoverer in music, said of his masterpiece Le Roi Malgré Lui, “I want people to laugh for three hours.” This is not quite the case, of course; some parts are tender and very moving; he meant that he wanted people to be happy, and to find his music interesting. Stravinsky told me that once when he was having with a composition, he asked his mother to listen to it. Afterwards she said, “I cannot tell you what it was about, but it held my interest.” Stravinsky said to me, “I think that’s our only duty as composers—we have to keep people’s attention. We are wrong if people are bored. We don’t know if they will cry or laugh—that’s their business—but we have to keep them interested.” People leave their homes for a concert, they dress up, they pay for their seats; it is your duty to interest them for as long as they are there. Whether they like or dislike the work is another matter.
Printed music uses Italian words—andante, allegro, and the like. For performing French music these words are virtually useless. On the first day of rehearsals at the Metropolitan Opera, I said to the orchestra, “Just give me the first two bars of Parade—da—dum.” They did, and it was all wrong. I mean, it was all right, too much all right. So I had to approach the matter in a roundabout way. I said, “That is correct, but we are not doing this ‘correctly.’” Music is not correct, Satie is the last person to have cared about being correct. There are other considerations. Here I told them, forget everything you have ever done—Verdi, Wagner, Rossini, Puccini, all of that, and be aware that you are playing something very French, very clear, very nervous, not loose, not lazy, just very simple. Everything must be direct, cheerful, and enthusiastic.
The opening bars of Parade are a good place to begin instructing an orchestra in French music, because they show Satie poking fun at Wagner—it is mock-Wagnerian brass. Satie wanted to show that brass could be played in a more direct and efficient way. In Wagner the brass always creeps in, starting with the lowest tones, taking a long time to intensify, then slowly fades away. This ponderous way is typical of the German intellect. With Satie, the brass resounds suddenly!—quick as thought—and that thought must be sustained. We played those first two measures twenty times. I told the orchestra, “When you get the feeling for those first two bars, everything else will come easily,” and this was true.
Parade is not orchestrated, it is instrumented, rather. Orchestration means hiding things, or else it means adding color. Parade, like all of Satie’s music, is quite bare. One oboe, a few strings; an oboe sings along with nothing to hide it; the strings are not grafted to it. Like a French garden French music has to be clear, precise, and delicate. There are no lies in Satie’s music. Orchestration can mean lots of lies.
In 1917 the Paris premiere of Parade was a scandal. It showed a new way of writing music: not vulgar, yet popular and very simple. This was a revolt against Wagner. Satie respected Wagner’s music but despised all those post-Wagnerian reputations, and he was very frank about it. Parade was scandalous also because it was being performed right in the middle of a World War. Just as the audience was scandalized by a new esthetic, they were also scandalized that these men should make merry while shells were exploding only a few miles off. The poet Phillipe Soupalt told me years later he had felt that to perform Parade during war time was infamous. The surrealists were as scandalized as the bourgeoisie.
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| Parade costume by Picasso. |
The position of Satie in the musical world is impossible to situate precisely. He studied musical technique very late, and humbly. He went to the Schola Cantorum at forty, and studied there with young people who were thirteen and fourteen! He studied composition with Albert Rouvel, and under Vincent D’Indy, who was an autarch in the musical establishment. Satie wanted to learn the basic rules of music, but only to forget them. He would never show off his knowledge of composition—he was against people who did that.
Established composers like Ravel and Debussy were respectful of Satie, but not until fairly late. They were disturbed by this man who hadn’t studied seriously at the conservatoire, and who didn’t have a real “technique” for composing—yet who wrote music they had to accept, care for, and conserve. They couldn’t deny his music. In spite of themselves, they were influenced.
Out of defensiveness, and insecurity, Satie often played the jester. This helped critics and audiences not to take him seriously. Because of the odd titles he gave his pieces he was thought of as a humorist, but odd titles are an old French tradition. Couperin and Rameau in the eighteenth century often gave unusual names to their pieces. Couperin, for example, called a very serious and wonderful piece for harpsichord, Les Baricades Misterieuses. Or even more puzzling is his title Le Bavolet Flottant. These are strange and amusing titles in the French tradition. We love to play with words, their sounds and meanings. There are reasons behind all of Satie’s titles: Trois Morceaux en forme de Poivre (Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear) came from a conversation with Debussy, who had suggested that he concentrate on form, so he replied with these pieces.
The criticism Satie gave of La Mer by Debussy was wicked. The first part of La Mer is subtitled De l’aube a midi sur la mer (From dawn to noon on the sea). After the concert Satie was asked if he liked it. He replied, “Part of it.” They asked, “Which part?”, and Satie responded, “Oh, about 9:15.” This illustrates the precision which with Satie approached music: In short, it’s always too long. Satie felt that it’s better just to present your ideas simply, so people can grasp what you are saying. It is because of this simplicity that Satie’s music is ultimately so moving; it is the depouileé, stripped to the essentials. Each measure invites introspection, and you are finally moved because you cannot escape. He takes you by the hand like a child, and he tells you very clearly what he has to say.
Because of his wit, Satie was a welcomed guest almost everywhere. But he could be cruel, and kill with a few words. When Ravel turned down the Legion of Honor, Satie said, “Monsieur Ravel a refusé la Legione D’Honneur, mais toute sa musique l’accepte” (“Ravel has refused the Legion of Honor, but all of his music accepts”). Terrible. But Ravel bore him no grudge. He said to me, “That’s the way Satie is, it has nothing to do with me; it is his revenge against the world.”
Next: Satie the man, and more about his influence on the work of his peers.
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