Erik Satie, Five Nocturnes, for piano

From a very young age, Erik Satie showed his bold irreverence and flamboyant sense of humor by casually assigning the name "Opus 62" to his first publication, when he was 19 years old. This was followed by an irrepressible inclination to title his works in a non-traditional way, as shown by the "Three Pear-shaped Pieces", the "Bureaucratic Sonatina", "The True Skinny Preludes", or the "Automatic Descriptions", just to mention a few among an extensive and bulky accumulation of nonsensical and comical titles with which he liked to mock the formality that usually surrounds the practice of academic music.

And of course, regarding his well-known Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies, he did not give much information either, except that the former has something to do with the philosophy of the Gnostics, and the latter with the Greek education of young people. On the other hand, together with a couple of French colleagues, he is also the creator of a curious "furniture music", intended to be listened to while engaged in other business. And as he was no stranger to some mystical tendency, in 1890, at the age of 23, he founded with a friend the sect called "Eglise Metropolitaine de Jesus Conducteur". 66-25

In his old age
But by 1919 Satie had changed. The previous year his friend Debussy had died, without having recomposed the relations that at some point began to cool down for no good reason.
It was Debussy who "discovered" Satie in a Paris café in 1891 and it was Debussy who later orchestrated the Gymnopédies, but he had to leave this world unhappy with Erik. In his old age, Satie would deeply regret that things had gone so wrong.

Erik Satie (1866 - 1925

Five Nocturnes

For all this, and perhaps what else, the Five Nocturnes constitute an absolutely serious work by Satie, with no playful title or amusing extra-musical texts added to the score. Composed between August and November 1919, they are his last works for solo piano, apart from a small piece from 1920.

They originally numbered six, but Satie either failed to complete the last one or simply abandoned the task. However, the video presents here a sixth piece, in the form of a "work in progress", inserted by its editor, and which, for the same reason, ends abruptly. These nocturnes are a clear sign that Satie's musical language had changed by the end of the First War, and although none of them has the features of those of Chopin, or Field, the spirit of the form is certainly evident in them.

Very short, three of them have an initial indication of tempo, austere, with no hint of playfulness:

00        I    Doux et calme

02:35  II    Simplement

04:32  III   Un peu movement

07:21  IV

10:02  V

12:00  VI

The rendition, audio-only, is by the French pianist Jean Yves Thibaudet.