Twenty Short Pieces for Piano (Sports et Divertissements)

by Erik Satie

Composer Erik Satie (1866–1925) exercised a profound effect on twentieth-century music. His innovative harmonies, freedom of form, and mastery of musical understatement influenced a diverse company of modern masters, ranging from Debussy and Ravel to Milhaud, Poulenc, and Cage. This is a facsimile of an extremely rare collection of the French master's brilliant thumbnail sketches — both musical and verbal — of various outdoor sports and amusements.
Satie created these pieces to accompany an album of charming, sophisticated drawings by Charles Martin, a well-known illustrator of the day. The composer also added droll verbal commentaries and inscribed both words and music in an exquisite calligraphic hand. Published in the 1920s in a limited edition, the album is very scarce today. This modestly priced edition of a rare treasure features black-and-white illustrations and English translations of Satie's eccentric verbal notations.

48 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1982

About the author

Éric Alfred Leslie Satie (17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925; signed his name Erik Satie after 1884) was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.

An eccentric, Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning "someone who measures sounds") preferring this designation to that of a "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.

In addition to his body of music, Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American top culture chronicle Vanity Fair. Although in later life he prided himself on always publishing his work under his own name, in the late nineteenth century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule in some of his published writings.

Reviews

[Adia]

"This publication consists of two artistic elements: drawing, music. The drawing part is composed of lines—witty lines; the musical part is represented by dots—black dots. These two parts combined—in a single volume—form a whole: an album. My advice is to leaf through this book with a kindly and smiling finger, for it is a work of imagination. Don't look for anything else in it. For the Shriveled Up and the Stupefied I have written a serious and proper chorale. This chorale is a sort of bitter preamble, a kind of austere and unfrivolous introduction. I have put into it all I know about Boredom. I dedicate this chorale to those who don't like me. I withdraw."
-Erik Satie