Gymnopédies

Dreamlike, enigmatic and emotionally neutral—though for many listeners saturated in unfathomable sadness—Satie’s three Gymnopédies for solo piano speak to modern ears as precedents for new-age "ambient" music: meditative sound design that functions in the background rather than the foreground of our listening, like a ticking clock. And the comparison is reinforced by Satie’s own description of his work as sonic "furniture". But his exact intention in the Gymnopédies is as mysterious as the title. It’s a made-up name that probably derives from an ancient Greek festival where young men danced naked. And the music does suggest a trance-like waltz, drifting through three related pieces—all of them marked "slow" (though individualised respectively as "painful", "sad" and "serious") and all of them exploring what’s effectively a common theme and structure, but from different viewpoints. The Gymnopédies were written in 1888 with a provocative simplicity that challenges the complex drama of so much 19th-century Romantic keyboard writing; what you hear throughout is basically a modal tune that undulates like waves of melting jelly, cushioned by a gently rocking left-hand bass and off-beat right-hand chords. Hypnotically repetitive, it has unquestionably influenced much later avant-garde composers from John Cage through to the Minimalists. And in Satie’s own time it impressed Debussy enough for him to orchestrate Gymnopédie No. 1 and No. 3.