Le Piccadilly

With its jaunty marching manner and chugging left-hand accompaniment, Le Piccadilly is the epitome of an American ragtime cakewalk for solo piano—although written by a Frenchman. Dating from 1904, it’s one of the jazz-influenced pieces Satie composed when he was working as a pianist in Montmartre cafés (having failed to graduate from the Paris Conservatoire). That it sounds like Scott Joplin bears witness to its authenticity. Satie ranks among the first French composers to have taken an interest in music coming from America; and there’s evidence that the proposed name for this piece was La Transatlantique—slang for American heiresses who went to Paris in search of aristocratic husbands. The change of reference to a London neighbourhood probably derives from a cabaret song composed by Satie in the same year. Called La diva de l’Empire, the song depicts a music hall artiste at London’s then-notorious Empire Theatre, Leicester Square—where Piccadilly starts. It would have seemed to Satie like an English version of Montmartre.