Gnossienne 3 - Satie Does it again

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Description

Erik Satie wrote seven Gnossiennes. The third is dated 1890, Like its companions, Gnossienne 3 is radical in conception: It is in A minor and uses only minor chords throughout. Strikingly, the melodic material combines diminished triads (as a melodic shape) over minor chords, and the piece employs a mode of Satie’s invention: a ‘Hungarian minor’ scale with a sharpened 6th. In 1889, Satie had sketched and abandoned a 'Chanson Hongrois' for piano, sensing perhaps that the idiom was a little too conventional (since Liszt and Brahms had already made the Hungarian style popular earlier in the century). However, an element of the Hungarian style affected the modality of the Gnossiennes which he went on to compose in the 1890s. The third Gnossienne also makes extensive use of plagal harmonic progressions (with numerous drops down a 4th) generating a sense of continual downward movement, and frequent cross-rhythmic circling patterns (creating the effect of lostness) over extended plagal cadences. Towards the end of the Gnossienne he employs two expressive downward drops of a third, shortly before the final return of the melody. Satie also pioneered, in this music, an incantatory style that was to have a huge impact on composers in the 20th century. His striking use of accented semibreves with acciaccaturas was much imitated in 20th century music by Debussy, Stravinsky, Varèse, Messiaen and others.

All Satie’s Gnossiennes are composed without barlines, and they all have a gently rocking accompaniment in the left hand, with an majestic and mysterious melody floating above it in the right hand. All the Gnossiennes use modes to create intriguing and mysterious melodic lines. The extraordinary simplicity of the musical texture and syntax belies the prodigious originality of the resulting music. Written before Brahms had composed his late intermezzi, these are fabulously experimental pieces in which the form consists of haunting melodic fragments which circle around without any specific direction or goal. In their circularity and stasis they seem to lay down a challenge to German 19th century dominance: music does not have to be developmental; neither does it have to be goal-directed or hierarchical. It can simply float along and be an evocative mystery.

Satie’s music was enormously influential on several currents of twentieth century music: Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Poulenc (who orchestrated this gnossienne - see below), Milhaud, Varèse, Jolivet, Messiaen and, later on, Cage, Feldman, minimalist composers, Birtwistle, Bill Evans, Brian Eno, quite a few film scores etc. etc.

Erik Satie: Gnossienne 3

Pianist: Matthew King

The first Gnossienne can be heard here: https://youtu.be/4Y42P0G-kGY

The second Gnossienne can be heard here: https://youtu.be/B6OFHvHrtB8

Poulenc's beautiful orchestration of the third Gnossienne can be heard here: https://youtu.be/-8t8mTIr-z4


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Edited by Ian Coulter ( https://www.iancoultermusic.com )
Matthew King (www.matthewkingcomposer.com)
Professor of Composition
Guildhall School of Music & Drama