page_title: Trois petites pièces montées
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: Trois petites pièces montées / Reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Avenue Montaigne (Champs-Elysées theater) - Paris Français&#160;: Avenue Montaigne (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées) - Paris VIII
context_page_description: The Trois petites pièces montées is a suite for small orchestra by Erik Satie, inspired by themes from the novel series Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. It was premiered at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées in Paris on February 21, 1920, conducted by Vladimir Golschmann. Satie later arranged it for piano duet and today it is more frequently heard in this version. A typical performance lasts about five minutes.
context_section_description: Cocteau's "Premiere Spectacle-Concert", as he called his musical event, opened before a select audience at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées on February 21, 1920. Its theme was the glorification of French popular culture, as represented by the newly baptized composers of Les Six and their "master" Erik Satie. The program consisted of an Overture and the song cycle Cocardes (to Cocteau texts) by Francis Poulenc; Adieu, New York!, a foxtrot by Georges Auric performed onstage by two acrobats; Satie's pièces montées; and Le bœuf sur le toit. Although the fully staged "pantomime farce" Le bœuf ultimately dominated the show, the audience responded so favorably to Satie's suite that conductor Golschmann encored it twice. A second performance was held as a benefit for disabled war veterans on February 23 and three more (including a matinee) took place on February 25 and 28, 1920.
  Satie arranged the suite for piano 4-hands and made a separate arrangement of the first piece for solo piano under the title Rêverie de l'enfance de Pantagruel; both were published by Éditions de la Sirène in 1920. On December 19 of that year the composer and pianist André Salomon premiered the duet version during an all-Satie concert at the Galerie la Boétie in Paris. Éditions de la Sirène brought out the original orchestral score in 1921.
  Notable performances of the Trois petites pièces montées during Satie's lifetime include conductor Gabriel Pierné's rendition with the Concerts Colonne on December 17, 1921, and Vladimir Golschmann's four presentations in concerts sponsored by the Ballets suédois (October 25 to 31, 1923).
   In June 1924, choreographer Leonide Massine assembled two of Satie's piano duets, Trois morceaux en forme de poire (1903) and the keyboard reduction of the pièces montées, into the ballet Premier Amour for the Soirées de Paris stage company at the Théâtre de la Cigale. It was a solo number starring Lydia Lopokova as a girl who dreams she falls in love with a doll. Satie and Marcelle Meyer played the piano during its handful of performances. Since Satie's death the original version of the suite has been largely neglected, even by conductors (Maurice Abravanel, Michel Plasson) who committed much of his modest orchestral catalog to disc.
caption: Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, site of the premiere of Trois petites pièces montées. The separate entrance to the Comédie theatre is at right
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