page_title: Sarabandes (Satie)
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Sarabandes (Satie) / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Эрик Сати и Клод Дебюсси у дверей дома Дебюсси на улице Булонского Леса в Париже
context_page_description: The Sarabandes are three dances for solo piano composed in 1887 by Erik Satie. Along with the famous Gymnopédies they are regarded as his first important works, and the ones upon which his reputation as a harmonic innovator and precursor of modern French music, beginning with Debussy, principally rests. The Sarabandes also played a key role in Satie's belated "discovery" by his country's musical establishment in the 1910s, setting the stage for his international notoriety.
  French composer and critic Alexis Roland-Manuel wrote in 1916 that the Sarabandes represented "a milestone in the evolution of our music...pieces of an unprecedented harmonic technique, born of an entirely new aesthetic, which create a unique atmosphere, a sonorous magic of complete originality."
context_section_description: Ravel's admiration for Satie's early music was sincere and lasting, but his promotion of it through the SMI was not without intrigue. One of his aims in bringing to light obscure contemporary composers like Satie was to challenge the reputation of his chief rival, Debussy, as the wellspring of all modern trends in French music. It is significant that the SMI program note enthused over the unknown Sarabandes and said nothing of the Gymnopédies, two of which had been orchestrated by Debussy and performed at his urging by the SNM in 1897. Debussy was quick to recognize that Ravel was using Satie against him. He tried to counter the SMI's propaganda - with its implications that he had done nothing to help his old friend earlier - by adding his orchestral versions of the Gymnopédies to an all-Debussy concert he was scheduled to conduct for the Cercle Musical. Reporting this development to Ravel on March 4, Satie wrote, "That's something I owe to you. Thank You." The two Gymnopédies were the surprise hit of Debussy's March 25 program at the Salle Gaveau. Their success overshadowed Debussy's music, and Debussy did not hide his feelings of resentment from Satie.
  The Ravel and Debussy concerts of 1911 made Satie famous in Paris, but the politics behind them would sour and ultimately destroy his relations with both men - in Debussy's case, probably the closest friendship he ever had.
  Conservative critics in the French capital did not welcome Satie's sudden emergence from obscurity. If he was remembered at all it was for his bohemian antics of the 1890s (challenging the director of the Paris Opera to a duel, founding his own church to attack his enemies) or his association with the Rose + Croix sect. Journalist and minor composer Jean Poueigh, writing under his pseudonym Octave Seré, briefly mentioned Satie in his 1911 book Musiciens français d'aujourd'hui (French Musicians Today) as "a clumsy but subtle technician" whose Sarabandes had deeply impressed the young Debussy; he condescendingly added that "not too much importance should be attached to it." But Ravel's championship, Roland-Manuel's fervent praise during World War I, and later testimony from such distinguished musicians as Charles Koechlin, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric and Alfred Cortot, led Satie biographer Rollo H. Myers to conclude that by the World War II years there seemed to be "a consensus of opinion" that the Sarabandes anticipated some of the harmonic processes of modern French music.
caption: Erik Satie and Claude Debussy in the early 1910s
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