Ratatouille Satirique

Erik Satie, born in Honfleur in Normandy (France) in 1866 is undoubtedly one of the most striking personalities in the history of French music. He composed in various, often quite divergent, styles. Besides light-hearted, entertaining works he also wrote several serious compositions, among which the three ballets: Parade, Rel che and Les Aventures de Mercure. However his piano pieces, such as Trois Gymnopédies or Gnossiennes will remain his most popular compositions. Satie co-operated with almost all great artists of his time: Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Sergej Diaghilev and Georges Braque and the composers Darius Milhaud (Le Groupe des Six) and Claude Debussy. Johan deMeij made an orchestration of three short pieces by Erik Satie: I. Prélude (from: Jack in the Box) II. Rêverie (from: Trois petites pièces montées) III. Marche: Le Piccadilly (1904) It was only after Satie's death in 1925 that the manuscript of the piano piece Jack in the Box was recovered. Satie himself thought he had lost the manuscript in a bus. When his flat in Arceuil was cleaned out, a small notebook was discovered behind his piano and it contained the manuscript which was assumed to be lost forever. The Rêverie (De l'Enfance de Pantagruel) is an extract from Trois petites pièces montées, originally composed for small symphony orchestra. In this suite it is meant as a restful intermezzo. It is clear that, as with Milhaud (La Création du Monde) and Debussy (Golliwogg's Cakewalk; Le Petit Nègre), it is hard to deny obvious influences of jazz music in Erik Satie's compositions. Le Piccadilly, dating from 1904, displays a lot of similarities with the compositions of Scott Joplin.