We Who Travel Lightly...

In 1922, Erik Satie offered a curiously plausible explanation for why it had been easier for him to break away from Wagnerism and create a French style than for his friend Debussy, who had won the Prix de Rome:

When I first met him [Debussy], at the beginning of our liaison, he was full of Mussorgsky and very conscientiously seeking a path that was not easy to find. In this respect, I myself had a great advance over him: no "prizes" from Rome, or any other town, weighed down my steps, since I don't carry any such prizes around on me, or on my back; for I am a man of the type of Adam (from Paradise), who never won any prizes - a lazy sort, no doubt.

- from Robert Orledge's magnificently well-researched and insightful book Satie the Composer (Cambridge, 1990), which I'm reading for a second time and more impressed with than ever.

December 28, 2006 12:06 AM | | Comments (1)

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Robert Orledge's - Satie the Composer

heh. one copy for sale at Amazon.

$200.

KG replies: Yeah, tell me about it. And when I taught a graduate analysis course at Columbia University in 1996, I recommended the students read this book, and they scoffed at the thought that they would waste time on anything so trivial. The world is truly upside-down.

Yet, on a list of books that I would shell out $200 for if I absolutely had to, Orledge's Satie would surely be near the top. For instance, Debussy's 1896 orchestration of the Gymnopedies is sometimes criticized as overly Romantic, yet Orledge gives an excerpt from Satie's own abortive 1894 orchestration, which has similar harp argeggios. So much of our image of Satie comes from others who didn't always understand and weren't always sympathetic, and Orledge always goes back to the original documentation, and gives us a Satie authentically restored. I never believe anything said about Satie until I check it with Orledge.

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Sites To See

Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on December 28, 2006 12:06 AM.

What's Going On Here was the previous entry in this blog.

Music Not of its Time is the next entry in this blog.

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