I,II - Daniel Varsano, Philippe Entremont /Artwork:Leonora Carrington / III - Aldo Ciccolini
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Gymnopédies (Satie)
The Gymnopédies, published in Paris starting in 1888, are three piano compositions written by French composer and pianist Erik Satie.
These short, atmospheric pieces are written in 3/4 time, with each sharing a common theme and structure. Collectively, the Gymnopédies are regarded as the precursors to modern ambient music — gentle yet somewhat eccentric pieces which, when composed, defied the classical tradition. For instance, the first few bars of Gymnopédie No. 1 consist of an alternating progression of two major seventh chords, the first on the subdominant, G, and the second on the tonic, D.
The melodies of the pieces use deliberate, but mild, dissonances against the harmony, producing a piquant, melancholy effect that matches the performance instructions, which are to play each piece "slowly", "dolorously" or "gravely".
From the second half of the 20th century on, the Gymnopédies were often erroneously described as part of Satie's body of furniture music, perhaps due to John Cage's interpretation of them.
Contamine de Latour poetry
The work was possibly based upon the poetry of J.P. Contamine de Latour (1867–1926), who wrote Les Antiques ("The Ancient"), a poem containing these lines:
French version
Oblique et coupant l'ombre un torrent éclatant; Ruisselait en flots d'or sur la dalle polie; Où les atomes d'ambre au feu se miroitant; Mêlaient leur sarabande à la gymnopédie.
English translation
Slanting and shadow-cutting a flickering eddy; Trickled in gusts of gold to the shiny flagstone; Where the atoms of amber in the fire mirroring themselves;Mingled their sarabande to the gymnopaedia.
Satie claimed they were inspired by reading Flaubert's Salammbo. (Orledge, P.207)
The exact connotation intended by Contamine in using the Greek word gymnopédie remains uncertain, among the possibilities are:
- dance - probably, as he mentions it alongside another dance, the saraband(e);
- antiquity - supposedly, given the title of the poem. This however does not yet give a clear picture of how antiquity was perceived in late 19th-century France (see below);
- nudity - maybe, although words like "gymnastique" (gymnastics) and "gymnase" (gymnasium) based on the same Greek word for nudity (γυμνός - "gymnos") were common in those days, but had lost any reference to nudity; in Sparta, when much of schoolwork was physical training, the youths were typically nude. It seems clear that -ped refers to children (paed). As suggested below, a dance or parade by children from the gymnasium seems a reasonable interpretation.
- warfare (as in Ancient Greece the word indicated a war dance) - probably not; little war-like intent is apparent in the poem;
- religious ceremony/festivity (which was the context of the Ancient gymnopaedia) - probably neither; there seems to be no allusion made to them in the poem.
Gymnopédie also appears as an infrequently used word in 19th century France, to the point it might have been perceived as a neologism by many. Further, in the Contamine poem gymnopédie is used in the singular, while the original Greek word (γυμνοπαιδία - "gumnopaidia") is always plural. It was, however, already mentioned in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Dictionnaire de Musique (Paris: Duchesne, 1775), where Gymnopédie is described as “Air ou Nome sur lequel dansoient à nu les jeunes Lacédémoniennes” (vol 1, p. 376).
All this might indicate that Satie and Contamine chose the word gymnopédie perhaps rather for its intangible exoticism, than for connotations of which they were probably hardly aware themselves.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Gymnopédies (Satie)
