Following up on Debussy’s “Claire De Lune”, I’ve taken on another of the greatest hits of the classical canon that my ear does not intuitively understand: Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No 1“.
My first question is, what is a gymnopédie? This appears to have been some kind of late nineteenth century hipster slang vaguely referring to the way that young people danced around naked in ancient Greece, which, whatever.
On to Satie. Speaking of hipsters, the title of this painting is “the Bohemian.”
The music in”Gymnopédie No 1″ is simple enough, at least rhythmically. Unlike “Claire De Lune,” I have no trouble counting my way through it. The phrase lengths are weird, though, and the overall structure is diffuse and hard to get a handle on.
Once again, I grabbed a MIDI file off the web and dropped it into Live. I split the MIDI into three “stems,” the melody, chords, and bassline. I picked some dreamy synths for each part. So far, so good.
Drums are tough in triple meter, because the basic oom-pa-pa rhythm is so stiff and corny. First I tried my only satisfying triple-meter groove sample: the intro to “Contemplation” by McCoy Tyner. But the jazz waltz feel was too lively and complex, so I abandoned it and switched over to 4/4. I ended up using three different beats: “God Make Me Funky” by the Head Hunters, “Alberto Balsam” by Aphex Twin, and a tambora loop from a sample pack by Simón Mejía. Here’s the result.
Let’s take a look at the structure, as represented in my Live session. I extended the intro and the orange “interlude” section in the middle, but otherwise it’s as Satie wrote it. I put section divides wherever I felt them. The opening melody is a twelve bar phrase (six bars in my session), which is a bit unusual, but the thing that was really throwing my ear off is that second purple part, which is a seven bar phrase (three and a half bars in my session.)
The harmony seems deliberately designed to frustrate a sense of forward motion and resolution. I thought I was just imagining this, but apparently that was Satie’s intention. Alison Armstrong informs me that this piece was written as a reaction against ragtime music, and it certainly succeeds in being not-ragtime. Brian Eno cites Satie as a precursor to ambient music, though “Gymnopédie No 1” is a bit too interesting to be truly ambient. Maybe if you Paulstretched it?
There’s a piece by jaja called chan chara. It’s a kind of fusion electronic south american music. Unlike most electronic music this one is in triple meter and the general atmosphere is pretty calm. It might be a good match with this satie remix or even with the clair de lune.
Had never heard of this, it’s delightful!
What’s the source on your definition of gymnopedie? I always understood it was basically just a nonsense word he came up with.
I’m also surprised and a little skeptical to see the anti-ragtime claim. The pieces were published in 1888, about 10 years before Joplin’s rags and it’s popularity in Europe(Maybe even it’s existence to begin with, I’m no expert). Also of all the composers to write an anti-ragtime piece Satie’s pretty low on list, as far as I’ve read he loved the stuff.
My guess with the phrases is that is comes from his interest at the time in chant and earlier music where the lines are modeled after the rhythms of a text and specifically not beat-oriented. I think one of the main points of interest in the piece is pitting that against a really simple waltz accompaniment.
You should listen to Reinbert de Leeuw’s recordings of them, they’re excellent and they definitely make a case for the ambient connection
My source on the word is Wikipedia, and the references sound pretty credible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnop%C3%A9dies
I have no idea what the history of ragtime is, but I doubt it burst fully-formed out of Joplin’s head, it was probably evolving gradually well in advance of 1900.
The wikipedia doesn’t seem to contradict that he’s the inventor of the term, it only mentions one other person using the term and that’s Satie’s friend in the published score. I can’t find any clarification on when the poem was published though. The wikipedia does say it was word Satie had earlier used as a joke profession. Anyways it just seemed like you were suggesting it had some kind of widespread use
About ragtime I also doubted that, and while I was on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragtime#Origins_of_Ragtime_music) I looked up ragtime and it says the first music published was in 1895. Now I still imagine it had been percolating maybe with or without that name for some time before that, but still I doubt it would have gotten across the ocean and inspired a a set of anti-ragtime pieces
Interesting! I’d always assumed it meant “exercise”, in the sense of a musical exercise or étude, rather than music to do physical exercise by.