How Erik Satie Invented Modern Music: A Visual Explanation

"Once you hear Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1, you nev­er for­get it. Not that pop­u­lar cul­ture would let you for­get it: the piece has been, and con­tin­ues to be, rein­ter­pret­ed and sam­pled by musi­cians work­ing in a vari­ety of gen­res from pop to elec­tron­ic to met­al. In ver­sions that sound close to what Satie would have intend­ed when he com­posed it in 1888, it's also been fea­tured in count­less films and tele­vi­sion shows."

"Upon "a sim­ple iambic rhythm with two ambigu­ous major 7th chords," Gymnopédie No. 1 intro­duces a melody that "floats above an aus­tere pro­ces­sion of notes," then "moves down the octave from F# to F#." With its lack of a clear key, as well as its lack of devel­op­ment and dra­ma that the orches­tral music of the day would have trained lis­ten­ers to expect, the piece was "as shock­ing as the dance of naked Spar­tans it was meant to evoke.""

Gymnopédie No. 1, composed in 1888 by Erik Satie, features a simple iambic rhythm and two ambiguous major-seventh chords. The melody floats above an austere procession of notes and moves down the octave from F# to F#. The piece lacks a clear key, conventional development, and dramatic resolution, creating a circular melodic motion that avoids arriving at apparent destinations. The music unexpectedly swerves into minor, dissonant sonorities before ending in profound melancholy. The composition startled contemporaries with its pared-down clarity and evoked the dance of naked Spartans. The work has been widely reinterpreted, sampled across genres, and featured frequently in films, television, and online media.

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