Sports et divertissements: Le traineau

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Musical Terms (7)

• anti-virtuosity English
  Satie's deliberate rejection of technical display. His music avoids passage-work, arpeggios, and the conventional signs of pianistic brilliance, presenting simple textures that reveal any excess of ego or sentiment immediately.
  Anti-virtuosity is harder than virtuosity. In Satie, a simple melody in the right hand over a quiet ostinato bass has nowhere to hide: any imperfection of tone, any excess of pedal, any sentimental lingering is exposed immediately. The simplicity demands absolute clarity of touch, perfect evenness, and the discipline not to add expression that the music does not request. Less is always more; silence is always an option.
• furniture music English
  Musique d'ameublement — Satie's 1917 concept of music designed to blend into the sonic environment of a room, like wallpaper or furniture, rather than demand attention. The direct precursor of ambient music and muzak.
  The furniture music pieces are experiments in deliberate background-ness. In performance, they present a paradox: a concert audience will listen to them, which is exactly what Satie said they should not do. Play them with an intentional flatness — no phrasing that invites attention, no climax, no arrival. The musical 'interest' is in the texture's presence, not its shape.
• Gymnopédie character French/English
  The particular quality of nostalgic, distanced lyricism associated with Satie's Gymnopédies — slow, modal, unhurried, suggesting an imagined ancient world rather than depicting it. Neither sad nor happy but suspended between the two.
  The Gymnopédie character requires a touch that is warm but never sentimental, slow but never dragging. The bass should be extremely quiet — barely audible — so the melody floats above it. The pedal should sustain harmonies fully but never blur the melody. The tempo should feel as if it could continue forever in either direction. If you feel the music ending, you are playing too conclusively; Satie's endings are meant to trail into silence, not arrive.
• ironic score text English
  The verbal commentaries Satie embedded in the scores of his 1912–1917 collections — texts printed between the staves that comment on, contradict, or elaborate the music. Satie explicitly forbade these to be read aloud in performance.
  The score texts are for the performer alone. They should influence the character and imagination behind each phrase without being communicated verbally to the audience. Read them carefully before learning the notes — they often reveal Satie's expressive intention more precisely than any conventional marking could. 'Ouvrez la tête' (open your head) over a rising figure tells you everything about the desired quality of that moment.
• modal stasis English
  The deliberate avoidance of tonal direction and harmonic goal in Satie's music. Chords are juxtaposed without functional progression, creating a static, timeless quality quite unlike the directional harmony of the Romantic tradition.
  Modal stasis requires the performer to resist the Romantic impulse to shape phrases toward a goal. In the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, each chord is equally weighted — there is no tension and release, only presence. Play each harmony as a colour rather than a function: it simply is, rather than wanting to become something else. Any crescendo toward a chord destroys the effect immediately.
• Satie's performance directions French
  Satie replaced conventional Italian tempo markings with French verbal directions that are simultaneously descriptive and absurdist: 'Très luisant' (very shiny), 'Du bout de la pensée' (from the tip of the thought), 'Sur la langue' (on the tongue). These are not literal instructions but poetic invitations.
  Do not attempt to translate Satie's performance directions into conventional tempo or dynamic instructions. They are calibrations of mood and imagination, not mechanics. 'Avec étonnement' (with astonishment) means the performer should feel astonishment, not play at a particular speed. Read each direction before playing and let it colour your approach to the phrase — then forget it, so the music can breathe.
• unmeasured notation English
  Satie's early works (Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes, Ogives) are notated with barlines but without any sense of metric stress. The music should flow freely, without the weight of the downbeat.
  In Satie's unmeasured-feeling works, the barline is a visual convenience, not a rhythmic event. Never accent the first beat of the bar. The music should feel suspended — each phrase arriving and dissolving without the sense of counting. The tempo should be chosen for the room and the instrument, not imposed from outside. If you can hear yourself counting, you are playing too mechanically.