page_title: Trois petites pièces montées
section_title: Music and literary themes
hierarchical_section_title: Trois petites pièces montées / Music and literary themes
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Gustave Doré (Strasbourg, 1832 – Paris, 1883) L’enfance de Pantagruel XIXe siècle, Vers 1873 Dessin à l’encre brune, aquarelle, crayon et gouache sur papier 36 x 47,8 cm Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg Achat en 1992 [1]
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: The common English translation of Satie's collective title, Three Little Stuffed Pieces, loses much of the punning of the original French. A pièce montée is an edible patisserie sculpture made from sugar and other confections, and serves as a centerpiece at a formal banquet; "pièce" can also refer to a short musical composition, and the verb monter variously  means "mount", "climb", "to stuff",  or "go uphill".
  The pieces differ in style and tone and no attempt is made to link them musically, although the bassoon plays a prominent role in Nos. 1 and 3. Yet there is a sense of "mounting" excitement as the music progresses from the gentle Rêverie and the more extrovert Marche to the raucous Coin de Polka. The titles of the outer pieces are chapter headings from Gargantua and Pantagruel, which serve as subtexts for those familiar with Rabelais; the music itself does not follow a literal program.
  Satie scored the suite for a standard music hall ensemble of 25 players (excluding the tuba): 1 flute, 1 oboe, 1 clarinet, 1 bassoon, 1 horn in F,  2 trumpets in C, 1 trombone, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, and strings (1st & 2nd violins, violas, cellos, and double basses). It is dedicated to Madame Julien Henriquet.
  1. De l'enfance de Pantagruel (The Infancy of Pantagruel) - Rêverie
  In Book 2, Chapter 4 of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais describes how the enormous baby Pantagruel drank the milk of 4600 cows straight from the source at each feeding, and was chained to his cradle to keep him from shoving the animals into his mouth. Despite the restraints he figures out how to walk and follows his nose into the royal banquet hall, carrying the cradle on his back "like a tortoise climbing up a wall". Gargantua frees him and rules that Pantagruel in now big enough to dine with the grown-ups.
  The designation Rêverie notwithstanding, Satie's music is quietly lyrical rather than dreamlike. It has a detached quality not far removed from his previous compositions, the  piano Nocturnes (1919), a series he curtailed to write this suite. Satie imbues it with a certain ponderousness by giving the main theme of the A section to the bassoon over an undulating string ostinato, and by what pianist Olof Höjer described as "a heavy-footed, bloated quality in its movement pattern." In the recapitulation the bassoon theme is extended through repetition and a cadential phrase.
  2. Marche de Cocagne (Cockaigne March) - Démarche
  Cockaigne was a mythical land of plenty in Medieval and Renaissance literature, where the skies rained custard, rivers of wine flowed beneath mountains of butter and cheese, and laziness was rewarded. Rabelais does not mention Cockaigne directly but satirizes the premise at various points of Gargantua and Pantagruel, notably in Book IV, in which Pantagruel visits an island whose inhabitants (called "gastrolators") worship the belly as their only god. The myth later became a metaphor for gluttony and excess. In Satie's time "Cockaigne" was a jocular nickname for Paris as well as London.
  The Marche de Cocagne is an exercise in Neoclassical music. The opening reproduces the original 8-bar trumpet duet, while the central section is a stately little processional led by the strings très chanté ("very song-like"). An imposing slow roll on the bass drum suggests the arrival of something big, which turns out to be a triumphant restatement of the trumpet theme by most of the ensemble (except for the horn and percussion).
  3. Jeux de Gargantua (Gargantua's Games) - Coin de Polka
  After the relative earnestness of the preceding two movements, the humorist in Satie takes center stage in this "bit of a polka" bearing the title of Book 1, Chapter 22 of Gargantua. Most of that chapter is devoted to a long list of games young Gargantua enjoyed after meals, among them such amusements as "Plunder", "Torture", "Rape the Ox", "Shit in His Beard", and "Salvo of Farts."
  A droll oom-pah-pah-like phrase introduces a farrago of musical clichés from the French fairground, cabaret and circus, in particular the exaggerated percussion effects (snare drum roll
caption: Gustave Doré, The Infancy of Pantagruel (1873)
exif: {}