Erik Satie: The Velvet Gentleman Who Scored the Absurd

Imagine a man who:

• Owned seven identical gray velvet suits

• Signed letters as “a phonometrician”

• Composed piano pieces with directions like “Play like a nightingale with a toothache”

• Once formed his own church (where he was the only member)

You’re picturing Erik Satie, the French composer who strolled into music history with an umbrella, a monocle, and absolutely zero patience for musical pomposity.

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🧼 The Cleanest Eccentric in Paris

Born in 1866 and raised partly by a music publisher and partly by the Jesuits (so… conflicted), Satie looked like a stuffy accountant but thought like a surrealist stoner. He carried a hammer around, just in case, and insisted that everything he ate be white: “white food only” was his personal culinary aesthetic. Rice, eggs, bones, shredded chicken, milk, and moldy bread. Yes, really.

He bathed regularly (a rarity for 19th-century composers), hated Beethoven with a passion, and once declared:

“I came into the world very young, in an age that was very old.”

Translation: he was ahead of his time, and he knew it.

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🎹 Gymnopédies: Sadness for Gentle Centaurs?

Satie’s most famous works are the Gymnopédies—slow, melancholic piano pieces that feel like the music a ghost might play while folding linens. They glide, they drift, and they don’t really go anywhere, which was the point. He wasn’t interested in development or climax. He wanted atmosphere—like musical wallpaper, but very chic.

🎵 Try this one:
[🎧 Gymnopédie No. 1 – the official soundtrack of melancholy baguette-walking]

The titles themselves were obscure. What is a Gymnopédie? Technically, an ancient Spartan dance performed in the nude. Was that Satie’s vibe? We’ll never know. But probably.

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🎪 Playful, Peculiar, Possibly Trolling

Satie didn’t just write music—he wrote nonsense with flair. Consider this from Embryons desséchés (“Desiccated Embryos”):

• One movement is dedicated to a sea cucumber.

• Another mocks Beethoven’s “funeral march” by ending in a triumphant flourish labeled “Obligatory Cadenza (by Beethoven).”

His score directions were famously unhinged:

• “With astonishment”

• “Like a nightingale with a stomachache”

• “Light as an egg”

• “From the corner of the room”

• “With invisible enthusiasm”

The man annotated his music like it was a script for a dream sequence written by Monty Python.

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⛪ The Church of Satie

Not content with just being a composer, Satie founded his own religion: L’Église Métropolitaine d’Art de Jésus Conducteur. He was the only member, bishop, choir, and congregation.

He issued fierce theological manifestos attacking enemies who were unaware they were part of a holy war. At one point, he referred to one of them as:

“A dirty little underpant-thief of musical depravity.”

Never let it be said he lacked poetic range.

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🐣 Furniture Music (a.k.a. Ambient Before Eno)

Satie invented furniture music—background music meant to blend into the atmosphere. In one performance, he begged the audience to not listen. Naturally, everyone sat and stared in rapt silence, which drove him crazy.

In many ways, he prefigured ambient music by a good 50 years. Brian Eno owes him a croissant.

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🎨 Cubism, Dada, and Pianos in the Rain

Satie kept strange, brilliant company. He collaborated with:

• Claude Debussy (who called him “a gentle medieval monk lost in modern times”)

• Jean Cocteau (who probably fueled the weird)

• Pablo Picasso (costumes!)

• Sergei Diaghilev (Russian ballet impresario with cash and chaos)

His ballet Parade included typewriters, foghorns, and pistol shots. One critic called it “a work of idiocy.” Satie wrote him a postcard that said simply:

“Sir and dear friend, you are nothing but an arse. And an arse without music.”

He was convicted of defamation. Worth it.

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☂️ The Umbrella in the Room

Satie died in 1925, alone in his tiny, dusty Arcueil apartment. When his friends finally entered, they found:

• Over 100 umbrellas

• Two grand pianos stacked on top of each other

• Thousands of scraps of surrealist writings

• Velvet suits. So many suits.

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🎼 The Patron Saint of the Strange

Erik Satie wasn’t just a composer. He was an aesthetic movement in human form—equal parts Dada, dream, and dadaist dreamer.

His music whispers instead of shouts. It lingers like perfume. It’s the soundtrack of gentle absurdity and serious whimsy.

So next time you hear Gnossienne No. 1, try this:

Sit still.
Light a candle.
Picture a melancholic platypus waltzing through a foggy Paris street.
Then raise a glass of milk, in honor of the Velvet Gentleman.