@@forsaken841 “cooler” is subjective, no? I say this as someone who throughly enjoys Gnossienne No 1. The beauty of music is that it can speak differently to each listener. There is no “correct” preference
As an empirical musicologist, I was involved in research on a 24 hour performance of vexations by one single performer (a nerd pianist who did this every once in a while and sort of specialised on this). We recorded not only performance (like audio and midi) but EEG and physiology as well. As you'd expect, a single performer doing 24h repetitions nonstop not only experiences wakeful and drowsy moments , but episodes of full trance. What struck me in the midi data was that during trance the timing data, although sounding like simply chaotic, the actual data could be mapped out along fractal parameters, i.e. they were still organised in a high-dimensional hyperspace so complex that neither a listener could hear nor the performer was aware of the inherent ordered structure because it was just too complex. No idea what Satie unlocked there, but crazy shit. I know it sounds esoteric but it was serious empirical research, it just showed up in the data to pretty much everyone's amazement.
That’s interesting to me but also begs the question to a layman like myself, couldn’t *anything* technically be quantified as being a part of a higher structure? Like eventually if you break anything chaotic down enough it falls into some kind of quantifiable patter
@@ElGrecoOB I am pretty sure the maths weren't applied correctly TBH. We calculated a lyapunov coefficient for the three states awake, drowsy and trance based on note duration differences n -> n+1 like a phase/return plot as far as I remember. Not even sure if the conditions for calculating these were met. Memory is vague, this was half a lifetime ago, but if you want to find the related papers (there were several) it's best to search for "Kopiez" (the senior author on all papers) and "vexations". Would love to hear a mathematicians feedback because the peer review process back then was a bit disappointing (in the sense that apparently no actual expert had been found and appointed)
Yeah, I was thinking of the original tracks for early Minecraft - songs like "Wet Hands" set a chill vibe, fade to the background, and become this subliminal presence in the game. And they also have a similar, almost hypnotic quality to them, like these Satie pieces.
I think of Satie's music like video game music. I don't entirely believe Satie meant for his music to be totally ignored, but I do feel like he was trying to integrate his music into a scene, or in a weird way, a level. I think he moreso wanted his music to add to something else insead of being the main art itself. It's kind of interactive in a way. It's like how video games, especially rpgs and jrpgs, would have different music for each part of the map with a lot of those being incredibly beautiful but not intended to be taken in on its own.
My thoughts exactly. I don't know why he got diminished to being an influence for nothing but ambient music. Imo 'background' doesn't necessarily mean 'ambient'. The part at 7:36 sounds like something from a Ghibli movie
I learned about Erik Satie in a music appreciation class I had to take to fill in core classes in college (I'm a musician: of COURSE I appreciate music!). Satie truly marched to the beat of his own drummer and I love that. He was a contemporary of Debussy and Picasso and he just did his thing. I admire the courage he had to be that way. Thanks for exploring this!
Debussy also wrote a fantastic orchestral arrangement to Satie’s Gymnopédies just to make him better known and to help him when Satie was in financial hardship
I've said this before in Nahre's video but, but Erik is just THAT big of a legend that every video talking about him would always be relevant and fun to watch. I'm not even a musician and I couldn't love that guy more
I might not have the details correct, but when Satie heard Debussy’s “La Mer,” he quipped regarding the first movement, called “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea,” “I liked the part at eleven o’clock.”
Satie is just about my favorite composer because he was a serious composer who didn't take himself too seriously. He was just a guy who composed. Like the "weird diet" of his was actually something he said in an interview because he didn't see the point of people wanting to know the non-music parts of artists' lives. So, he went super specific and odd to screw with them. His whole life is full of moments like this. He enjoyed what he did, but he didn't act like he was some grand member of society. And I think that makes him one of the grander people in society.
@AlexisWilliamsinc Another great work from him was after a critic called his music 'formless' so he wrote 'Music in the form of a Pear" so that way it had a defined form
In a time when many people listen to music on their headphones while doing other things, I feel like a lot of popular music has become background or furniture music. On Vexations, I read an account of a performance of the entire 840 repetitions after which some smart ass called out "encore"! 😅
Good video. Super long time ago, at the original Roulette in Tribeca, NYC, I participated in a 24 hours 'Vexations' performance. About 20 performers in total, each took an hour, I took two. Didn't leave the room except to bathroom for the full 24 - mind expanding experience, Satie a master.
I believe that Erik Satie was an absolute genius, like most composers in his day. We should all give them credit for profoundly influencing music today, especially what Erik Satie brought to the table
Forgive me I'm not trying to be nasty but same as today there were a million and one mediocre composers in saties day. We just have the surviving catalogues of the finest composers from the past. But there were many failed and average composers of the classical era. Not to be picky. Just the hyperbole. Sorry.
0:17 - I was introduced to this piece in the late 1960s. It started off *Blood, Sweat and Tears* self-titled album, where they further develop it into a jazzy number!)
videogame music is, in a sense, what he wanted. you don't always pay attention to the music that plays on the level, it's part of the scenario and world, like a tree on the back ground
Me too, but there is games like breath of the wild that the music is so smooth you just acept it as part of the world, not as something else, not like an element, but is the world itself.@@DoofenSpyroDragon16
Satie was a genius. His music has virtually no precedent and no one has ever written anything like this since him. Satie has made freedom his main philosophy. His freedom of mind and totally free of preconceptions and/or clichés remains essentially unmatched, and perhaps not all the implications of his music have been understood and pursued. Satie still has so much to teach. He said, "Learn to look far, in the Great Far". He succeeded.
>His freedom of mind and totally free of preconceptions and/or clichés Reminds me a lot of something Giorgio Moroder said, interesting how that mindset leads to great things...
CSSSA (california summer school for the arts) always did a vexations marathon for 24 hours, I had the pleasure of participating in 2003 and 2004, it's a totally surreal experience both playing and listening, wonderful video on one of my favorite composers thank you charles :D
More Satie examinations, please! He's been my favorite composer for about 25 years and investigating his life and ideas has been endlessly fascinating and fun.
I was introduced to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians via a spot on NPR's All Things Considered some number of years ago. I instantly went out and bought the recording and I still regularly listen to it today. It is powerful stuff!!
I had the opportunity to hear/see Vexations played when I went to Governors School (an intellectually challenging summer program for “gifted” students in NC). It was literally a 14 hour, 2 minute piece (3 movements 1st being one minute, 2nd 840 minutes, each repetition taking exactly 1 minute, and final movement taking one minute.) There was a rotating set of performers and a counter/timekeeper to ensure that it was executed as it should be and was done overnight so it wouldn’t interfere with our other classes. It was definitely an experience.
Those guys were doing on pianos what people are now doing with synths, but without the ability to set clock sources, gates, triggers, and sequences with a control voltage electronically.
I can't believe there's a classical musician that encapsulates the way I've been trying to tackle music my entire life! But, it makes sense... because nothing in this era is truly new or original. Thank you Charles for introducing me to musique d'ameublement and Eric Satie. I never realized the ambient movement stemmed from here. I feel there is a missed opportunity to bring that video game music, as it has to ride the line between this background style of music while still bringing forth memorable melodies and harmonies that can be listened to on loop without getting old. But this has been mentioned on this channel before.
I was just thinking that. The first time I realised this was when my kids were playing Club Penguin (more than a decade ago now) and the music (Clam Waters) was looping and yet we didn't get bored with it, it was even pleasant. Then, a few years later, we discovered The Consouls and our appreciation of vgm was complete!
@@cooldebt are they the guys that arrange the video game awards music? Adam Neely did a 'tour video' of him performing and discussing video game composition... Probably worth watching (again)... I wouldn't be surprised if they at least used some of the consouls arrangements.
@@LuxLucidOfficial The Consouls did make it to the Neely video. I was instantly addicted to their vgm jazz covers the first time I heard them (it was KK Cruisin' but the one that got me was their clever cover of Zelda Main Theme). They are literally my daily bgm as I work as I never get sick of the tunes. (They didn't do the awards music though as they are based in Sydney)
This might feel like it came out of nowhere, but visual novel music where only 12 2-3 minute songs must be played in the background for 40+ hours resulted in songs that focus on harmonies that can resist loops for tens of times while remaining interesting. It's a good lead to where to find more of this. Try MANYO's cherry blossoms Or this RU-vid vid with this title: Instrumental Music Collection Composed by Ryo Mizutsuki with Key
Your pronounciation of "Gymnopédie" was flawless ! I should know, I'm French ! Congrats ! And I love that piece of music ! Did you know that Satie's music teacher said about him that he was the worst student he ever had and that he would have no career... Interesting that Satie remained in History and his teacher only through this anecdote.
We did a minimalism festival at my university, where my musical improvisation group did a couple of Terry Riley pieces including In C, and there were several other performances throughout the weekend, and it ended with a 26-hour performance of Vexations. There were two pianos on the stage and players would trade off after so many repetitions as they went through a rotation of people. As cool as music for airports is, I recommend you check out it's predecessor, discreet music. The A side is the title piece and it's simply wonderful, but even more so, the b side is variations on the three movements of Pachelbel's Canon in D. It involved cutting up and taping together the parts and having them play with dynamics and textures. And honestly brings a whole new life into something that's kind of boring and tiring after so long and so many times playing it normally.
Thank-you Charles. This is really one of the best videos you have made so far. You applied your expertise to one of the greatest originators of ambient and attempted to explain in simple terms the enigma that was Satie. Really enjoyed this. More about Satie please.
I love Satie’s gymnopedies and gnossiennes and this is the most interesting lesson I have heard on him and his music - I never knew that about his intentions for his music. I’m also a huge Bill Evans fan so thank you for connecting the two! Both can hypnotise/put you in a trance with their music.
I never knew any of this about Satie, and it puts a whole new perspective on his music. I'll be thinking about this the next time I played the Gymnopedie.
I hope you come back to Steve Reich. I think it was a bit of a stretch to include him here. Definitely deserves more attention along with the project where DJs/Producers remixed some of his works (named exactly what you'd expect "Reich Remixed") which exposes how his tape loops and often repetitive compositions foreshadowed some aspects of contemporary, electronic and dance music such as the use of samples.
I definitely wouldn’t count Reich’s music as “furniture music” in the same way that Satie’s or Eno’s work can be. It’s mostly highly rhythmic and busy, and demands attention in a way that ambient music isn’t supposed to: it just requires a very different sort of attention from more traditional pieces. But he’s relevant since his phasing and tape works were a direct influence on Eno, especially the idea of “process music” whereby the piece emerges from the systems that the composer puts in place rather than being explicitly specified in every detail.
There are a few pieces by Satie that I think would be worth investigating. Saties' Danses gothiques appears simple but seems to be very intently written to create a very unique soundscape with each note being a separate voice moving in a dissonant harmony. And his Trois Sarabandes are very jazzy in a sense. Also his Uspud (Troisième Acte) has some crazy chords around 4 and and 8.15 minute marks.
I have studied his Trois Gymnopédies and his Gnossiennes and they truly are beautiful works that are hard to 'ignore' even when you try. I mean the structure and form of many of these pieces mimic that of a dance, especially that of the waltz, which in itself is quite interesting. I would also like to point towards Franz Schubert who had similar ideas even with Satie in that not all music had to be in the spotlight. Some of Schubert's best music was not to be performed in concerts, but rather in the private spaces of homes for small and intimate audiences, in which to quote Roger Scruton: "Schubert is the poet of home, and the loss of home."
When I was an undergraduate at U of Maryland, the music department arranged a full performance of Vexations. Took a while, with various pianists taking turns.
Charles, thank you for always doing your videos. I feel like we really know you personally. At least you make us feel like we were there with you and enjoying everything you’re teaching us.
My uni 4 piece guitar ensemble played both Gymopedie 1 and Waltz for Debby in the same semester. Hilariously challenging and a blast mixed with Brazillian pieces! Love this!
I collect a lot of so-called "chillout" and modern ambient music, and I use it to play in the background while I'm working -- typically when I'm doing something that's repetitive, or which doesn't require much creative input. I've always felt it helps me to get into 'the zone' -- and the work becomes almost meditative at that point. If the music were too dynamic, or required my attention in some way, it wouldn't serve that purpose.
The original internet troll before the internet was definitely Franz Joseph Haydn. The guy wrote a symphony so that the musicians could go home during the performance (Symphony No. 45), and he wrote a piece that woke up the audience members who would fall asleep during performances of his piece (Symphony No. 94)
I totally dig your way of describing the letting go and experiencing the music. Sometimes the experience of doing that is way more meaningful than just listening to traditional stuff and can inspire really creative musings. Steve Reich's music for twelve musicians is one of my favorite things of music, it's just so peaceful and beautiful and makes it easy to peacefully fall asleep.
Satie is one of my favorite composers. Technically simple enough to learn some pieces without knowig how to read notes, just by ear and watching slow tutorials on YT. I learned Gnossiennes 1-3 this way. Great pleasure to play them. Beautiful, mysterious music, definitely not "furniture" nor background for me.
I love the music (and art in general) from that time so much. You can clearly see things we know from the 20th century starting to grow and interfere (like jazzy sounding things in the music) and just creative weirdness, but still with so much style
I’d love for you to piggyback off of this video and do a breakdown of Philip Glass and his works, specifically some of the pieces he composed for theatre productions of Robert Wilson. Hypnotic, complex, and arguably brilliant work.
After this, how about a dive into the Organ Symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor? (Yes, entire symphonies written for a single performer on a single instrument.) The Toccata from his 5th is the most famous (and there's even audio on YT of him performing it himself at age 90 or so), but the first/allegro movement from his 6th & the finale movement from his 8th are even better, and that's just barely scratching the surface.
Erik Satie's Gymnopedie no. 1 and Bill Evans's Peace Piece really inspired me to compose a piano piece that is similarly simple, melancholy, and a droning pedal progresion. Incredible how simplicity can emphasise emotion!
Nobuo uematsu's work on the ffvii remake soundtrack has this same character. It's wonderful music but it's also capable of sitting behind the gameplay without being intrusive. It wasn't until I listened to the soundtrack in the car that I realised the genius of it. There's a big trend at the moment for more and more virtuosic composition and I feel the art of simple beautiful music has faded somewhat. Gymnopedie is an great example of a really capable composer dropping back out of super technical into just enough to be right for the piece.
Would LOVE an in depth piece of peace piece. That tune was the first Evans tune my grandfather showed me, and oh my I miss him dearly. Great video Chris.
You may know this already, but Vexations, the piece that’s supposed to be played 840 times in a row, was actually never published by Satie. I think it was John Cage who was eventually given the manuscript after people found it folded up in the inside pocket of Satie’s blazer pocket after they were clearing his apartment in the aftermath of his death. Cage was simply mesmerised by it and made it his mission to get it published and give it it’s first public performance. Had a whole lecture on this when I was at university, and it was really interesting that Satie never even made a decision to publish it himself, let alone being a piece of random niche background/ambient music albeit published. Nothing more than a scrap of manuscript in his pocket…
Satie was my final refuge before I gave up on the piano - precisely because I could just noodle away to myself. I think Satie’s gymnopedies and gnossiennes are wonderfully self indulgent for lazy players like myself lol
I see this like videogame soundtracks. You don't always make ambient tracks but sometimes you want a piece to fill silence with a dull melody. Something to set the tone for a setting but not become a theme.
The idea of music as texture that blends together is how I listed to Sun Ra. If you want to talk about some really wild out there Jazz/funk it might make a good video.
Ooooo when you started talking about Steve Reich that reminded me of John Adams' Halleluja Junction. Wonderful piece for 2 pianos where you do see this melting of the song into just rhythm and sound.
I'd like to add that music for airports has the tact to know exactly when to stop quoting before Satie's melody becomes the only option. He quotes as far as he can without backing himself into a corner. It makes the simple arpeggio infinitely more complex if you expect the C# but don't get it. It's a wonderfully simple choice that yields a delightfully complex experience of subverted expectations from literally one d major arpeggio. The efficiency astounds me
First heard of Satie from the electronic producer Endorphin in the 90s. He did an interpretation of Gymnopedie 1 which was a regular on my studying mixtape.
also lmaoing at one of the pieces literally being called "Phonic Tiling." Just straight up a bathroom floor. OP's description of the snippet is totally perfect too, "one of those things that fades into the background of your mind" It also explains why it's so difficult to do repetitive music. A lot of precision goes into tiling a surface!
Thanks, this is gonna inspire more ambient music!! This was fascinating!! I make ambient music of my own inspired by Spyro 2, as its homeworlds are just ambient music.
Absolutely love Satie! I always include Gymnopedie in my rep list for “background” gigs. Here’s something interesting though - in the 60’s 3M (yes, the tape people) manufactured a music player called the Cantata 700. It played the largest tape cartridges ever commercially played. Each held about 20-ish hours of music on 4 tracks. It was specifically designed for use in shops, supermarkets, offices, and (oddly) factories. The player has an adjustable setting to pause the music ever 30 minutes for 5, 10, or 30 minutes, or not pause at all. These breaks (and the music itself) were “scientifically designed” (according to 3M) to perfectly blend into the background and increase productivity. They even specified which length of break was designed for which application - I think shopping was continuous, office was 10 minutes, etc. The music on the tapes (there are a bunch of different ones) were all recorded by The 3M Orchestra and we’re calm, (mostly) instrumental covers of popular or classical song. I have one and I put it on when I get home for work. It’s perfectly soothing and charming, like 60’s elevator music but really really good. I feel like that also plays in to Satie’s idea of furniture music. It’s not there to be actively enjoyed, but passively enjoyed. It heightens the experience or sets the vibe. Love it. Great video as always! Thanks!!
Techmoan did a great video on the Cantata 700, btw, if anyone is interested in taking a look! It’s a great video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1WQbJ0VFrFQ.htmlsi=hMRNT4XA4a4opVNw
I've been doing way too much research into ambient music, because no one is talking about it. Yes, you could argue that Satie was the first. But then..... In the 1950s, we find "cooljazz", a reaction to the more famous bebop from the time. Certain cooljazz songs are basically "cozy jazz" nowadays. Gerry Mulligan was a major JAZZ musician even though now we would say his stuff is "Starbucks jazz". Or ambient jazz or something like that. Gerry Mulligan was the main guy to create this "ambient jazz" although not the first. In the 1960s, you get the divide between "high class jazz" which is basically this starbucks type of jazz and then bebop jazz as the thing real jazz musicians follow/listen to. (In the Netherlands, we still call starbucks jazz "light jazz" or more broadly "light music". Music is that meant to be easy to listen to.) Since then, ambient music has been through quite a lot of developments; For example, in the 1960s you got infomercial music such as Laurie Johnson's work. In the 70s we get stuff like those piano pieces you showed. The 70s and 80s really had an obsession with producing crazy film music on innocent sounding albums like "John's piano pieces" or something. And in the 90s we got Smooth Jazz doing "a new thing" without anyone noticing Smooth Jazz was actually joining a 40 year old tradition of ambient music. And THEN, in the 2010s, you get RU-vid channels producing massive amounts of ambient jazz making it even harder to find the original stuff! Oh and you get lofi hip hop joining the massive but vaguely defined group of "ambient music". (Don't get me started on those relaxing Nintendo soundtracks like in Animal Crossing and what place they have in this whole history....) TL;DR the 60s were THE moment that ambient music truely became a thing. Music had been produced before and after that with the same idea. But, forgot to mention it, the 60s were also the moment we got that "bossa nova is relaxing" cliché. Because bossa nova was lumped in with all the other cool jazz stuff going on at the time. Oh yeah, and cooljazz originated in the 1950s but entered pop culture around 1960. But the history of Ambient Music is very vague and unclear because no one has ever bothered defining the gren/genres that belong to it! So it becomes very hard to study what makes something e.g. bossa nova or "hotel lobby music" or both.
Satie would have been a GODLIKE Videogame Background Music composer. I'm sure he would've loved the Donkey Kong Country's Stickerbush Symphony video where everyone does an annual "checkpoint", or slept with Chrono Trigger's Secret of the Forest remix with rain sounds. Heck, I'm sure he would have been a fan of World of Horror OST!
"Vexations" was performed in NYC by a relay team of pianists, and the Times sent a relay team of reviewers to it (one of the reviewers had to sit in for a no-show performer). This was in the 1960's. Supposedly, according to Satie's idea, audience members could enter free but had to pay to leave in inverse proportion to how long they stayed.
