En habit de cheval (In Riding Gear) is a 1911 suite for piano four hands by Erik Satie. He arranged it for orchestra that same year. It is a transitional work, composed towards the end of Satie's studies at the Schola Cantorum in Paris (1905-1912) and foreshadowing his pre-World War I "humoristic" or "fantaisiste" period.[1]Robert Orledge wrote that "En habit de cheval offers the best example of Satie integrating Schola teaching with his own composition, and in it he also worked out his own individual concept of orchestration."[2] In performance it lasts about 7 minutes.
The year 1911 was a turning point for Satie, when after decades of comparative obscurity he was suddenly thrust into the public eye. On 16 January Maurice Ravel played some of his early piano pieces at a concert sponsored by his progressive Société musicale indépendante (SMI), which began to promote him as an important precursor of modern trends in French music.[3] This prompted Satie's friend (and Ravel's rival) Claude Debussy to conduct his 1896 orchestrations of the Gymnopédies at the Salle Gaveau on 25 March, an event that was enthusiastically received.[4] Satie was given favorable attention in the Parisian press, publishers began to express interest in his music, and he attracted the first of his many young protégés, the 20-year-old composer and critic Alexis Roland-Manuel. Seizing on this opportunity to gain an audience for his newly developed contrapuntal style, he started work on En habit de cheval in June 1911.
The suite was conceived in a vein similar to Satie's first notable Schola-era composition, the 1908 chorale and fugue for piano duet Aperçus désagréables (Unpleasant Glimpses).[5] At first he considered calling the new opus Divertissement, ironically suggesting a light entertainment, before deciding on the enigmatic title En habit de cheval. Satie later explained that the titular "riding gear" was not that of the rider but of the horse: "for instance...two shafts attached to a four-wheel carriage."[6] This may have been his sly riposte to Schola director Vincent d'Indy, who had told him to "stick to the rules of the past" which he rebelliously overrode in this work.[7][8][9]
Throughout the summer Satie kept Roland-Manuel informed of his progress, noting in a letter on 8 July that the "Habit de cheval fits me pretty well. I am working at it with the necessary calm; it is getting on coldly and turning over very satisfactorily."[10] And on 4 August he happily described showing what he had written so far to his former counterpoint teacher at the Schola, Albert Roussel: "The whole thing entertained him. He has sided with me on this new conception of the fugue, especially the expositions. He loved its little harmonies".[11][12] The suite was finished on 6 September, and thanks to his current notoriety he was able to sell it to Rouart, Lerolle & Cie three days later.[13] It was published soon afterwards.[14]
Encouraged by Roussel's approval and the quick sale of the original keyboard version, Satie immediately set about transcribing En habit de cheval for orchestra - his first mature attempt at the genre. Although he had acquired instrumental technique "on the job" producing arrangements for cabaret ensembles in the early 1900s, he had not been properly schooled in orchestration until his Schola studies with d'Indy, beginning in 1909. Now he felt ready to reveal his new technical abilities.
On 14 September Satie wrote to Roland-Manuel describing the instrumental forces he wanted to use for the work, and dropped some revealing hints about his scoring preferences. He said he "despised" the French horn and that one should never use more than two trumpets because, according to d'Indy, "three mean the end of the world."[15] Satie later came to appreciate the practical uses of the horn in an orchestral setting, but he took d'Indy's curious advice about trumpets to heart and used only one or two in his subsequent large scores.[16] The orchestral version was completed by the end of October 1911, and it was in this guise that En habit de cheval received its first performance.
The premiere took place at the Salle Gaveau on 17 June 1912 at a Société musicale indépendante event that also introduced Roland-Manuel's new orchestral arrangement of Satie's 1894 piano piece Prélude de la porte héroïque du ciel. For this occasion Satie wrote out all the instrumental parts for En habit de cheval himself,[17] evidently because he could not afford a copyist, but in the end he chose not to appear at the concert. He later complained to his brother Conrad that, due to his pecuniary circumstances, he was too shabbily dressed to attend.[18]
Keyboard version
En habit de cheval consists of two interlocking pairs of chorales and fugues, Baroque forms as imaginatively reinvented by Satie:
1. Choral (Chorale) - Grave
2. Fugue litanique (Litany Fugue) - Soigneusement et avec lenteur (Carefully and Slowly)
3. Autre choral (Another Chorale) - Non lent (Not Slow)
Satie's irony is sharpest in the static, dissonant little chorales, which appear to negate the form's primary function by being unmelodic and, for all practical purposes, unsingable. He had minted this irreverent chorale formula in the Aperçus désagréables and would use it again in the violin-piano suite Choses vues à droite et à gauche (sans lunettes) (1914), Sports et divertissements for solo piano (1914), and the ballet Parade (in the revised version of 1919). The introductory chorale is impressive nonetheless, likened by pianist Olof Höjer to "some sort of grandiose portal" that guides the listener to the rest of the work.[19]
The Fugue litanique wryly recalls the medieval and religious influences of Satie's 1890s "Rosicrucian" period, which he had long since rejected as "music on its knees."[20] It is in Dorian mode and grounded in a droning plainsong-like subject. But the real tour de force is the ingeniously-constructed Fugue de papier, in which Satie inverts the classical fugue exposition: the subject begins on the subdominant, instead of the tonic, and is answered by the keynote.[21][22] Satie was proud of this piece, claiming that his ability to create a "new, modern fugue" represented the culmination of his years of hard study.[23]
Satie experimented with different instrumental textures to give each piece a particular sound and carefully balance the dynamics of the whole. The sarrusophone helps add an amusingly plodding heft to the opening Choral, while the oboe is withheld until the concluding Fugue de papier. The 10-bar Autre choral is lightly scored for 5 single winds (flute, cor anglais, clarinet, bassoon, horn) and strings.[26]
During his studies with d'Indy Satie took away the advice that "the writing has an influence on the sonority,"[27] and for his arrangement of En habit de cheval he fashioned a spare, sober orchestral style that complimented the austerity of the material. He would pursue and refine this style for the rest of his career.[28] In an era when lushly scored Neo-romantic and Impressionist music still held sway in concert halls, Satie's "thin" orchestral sound put him at odds with his French contemporaries, some of whom ascribed it to incompetence.[29]Jean Cocteau claimed that Impressionist musicians found Satie's orchestral music poor because "it had no sauce."[30]
Satie's skills as an orchestrator have long been a subject of debate.[31][32][33] Among his defenders, Robert Orledge has challenged the notion that in his pared-down handling of the medium Satie was simply "making a virtue of his technical limitations":
"Satie was never guilty of writing impossible parts for his players in later life (as Ravel was);
his sureness of inspiration meant that he never revised his orchestration once it was finished
(as Debussy did); and he was certainly never guilty of overscoring (as Richard Strauss and
Wagner were). If Satie avoided complexity, rhetoric, drama and sentimentality,
it was because he saw such post-Romantic characteristics as alien to the modern aesthetic."[34]
Biographer Alan M. Gillmor characterized En habit de cheval as not one of Satie's "more endearing creations,"[35] but it stands as a milestone in the composer's development. Satie's quest for objectivity in musical expression, and his modern reinterpretations of old musical forms - both exemplified in En habit de cheval - were influential factors in the rise of Neoclassicism in France after World War I.[36]
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie, who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached.
Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher. His influence as a teacher, in particular, was considerable. He was a co-founder of the Schola Cantorum de Paris and also taught at the Paris Conservatoire. His students included Albéric Magnard, Albert Roussel, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Erik Satie, as well as Cole Porter.
Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin, commonly known as Charles Koechlin, was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things as medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling, Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars, traveling, stereoscopic photography and socialism. He once said: "The artist needs an ivory tower, not as an escape from the world, but as a place where he can view the world and be himself. This tower is for the artist like a lighthouse shining out across the world." Among his better known works is Les Heures persanes, a set of piano pieces based on the novel Vers Ispahan by Pierre Loti and The Seven Stars Symphony, a 7 movement symphony where each movement is themed around a different film star who were popular at the time of the piece's writing (1933).
The Premier Menuet is a Neoclassical piano piece by Erik Satie. Written in June 1920, it was his last composition for solo piano. It was published by Les Éditions de La Sirène in 1921.
The Avant-dernières pensées is a 1915 piano composition by Erik Satie. The last of his humoristic piano suites of the 1910s, it was premiered by the composer at the Galerie Thomas in Paris on May 30, 1916, and published that same year. A typical performance lasts 3–4 minutes.
The Enfantines are three sets of beginner piano pieces by Erik Satie, "written with the aim of preparing children for the sound patterns of modern music." They were composed in October 1913 and published the following year. Two additional sets were published posthumously.
Choses vues à droite et à gauche , commonly translated as Things Seen Right-to-Left , is a suite for violin and piano by Erik Satie. Composed in January 1914 and published in 1916, it is the only work he published for violin-piano duet. A typical performance lasts about 5 minutes.
La belle excentrique is a dance suite for small orchestra by French composer Erik Satie. A parody of music hall clichés, it was conceived as a choreographic stage work and by modern standards can be considered a ballet. Satie gave it the whimsical subtitle "fantaisie sérieuse". It was premiered at the Théâtre du Colisée in Paris on June 14, 1921, conducted by Vladimir Golschmann. The composer later arranged it for piano four hands.
The Prélude de La Porte héroïque du ciel is an 1894 piano composition by Erik Satie, intended as a musical introduction to the play The Heroic Gate of Heaven by Jules Bois. It is considered one of the finest works of his "Rosicrucian" or "mystic" period. A typical performance lasts around 6 minutes. Satie was so fond of the piece he dedicated it to himself.
The Pièces froides are two sets of piano pieces composed in March 1897 by Erik Satie. Unpublished until 1912, they marked Satie's break from the mystical-religious music of his "Rosicrucian" period (1891–95), and were a harbinger of his humoristic piano suites of the 1910s.
Sports et divertissements is a cycle of 21 short piano pieces composed in 1914 by Erik Satie. The set consists of a prefatory chorale and 20 musical vignettes depicting various sports and leisure activities. First published in 1923, it has long been considered one of his finest achievements.
The Sarabandes are three dances for solo piano composed in 1887 by Erik Satie. Along with the famous Gymnopédies (1888) they are regarded as his first important works, and the ones upon which his reputation as a harmonic innovator and precursor of modern French music, beginning with Debussy, principally rests. The Sarabandes also played a key role in Satie's belated "discovery" by his country's musical establishment in the 1910s, setting the stage for his international notoriety.
The Trois poèmes d'amour is a 1914 song cycle for voice and piano by Erik Satie. It is the only set of mélodies Satie composed to his own texts. The performance of the set lasts between 2 and 3 minutes.
Trois morceaux en forme de poire is a 1903 suite for piano four hands by French composer Erik Satie. A lyrical compendium of his early music, it is one of Satie's most famous compositions, second in popular recognition only to the Gymnopédies (1888). The score was not published until 1911. In performance it lasts around 14 minutes.
Le Fils des étoiles is an incidental music score composed in December 1891 by Erik Satie to accompany a three-act poetic drama of the same name by Joséphin Péladan. It is a key work of Satie's "Rosicrucian" period (1891–1895) and played a role in his belated "discovery" by the French musical establishment in the 1910s.
The Préludes flasques – Flabby Preludes – is a set of four piano pieces composed in July 1912 by Erik Satie. In performance it lasts about 5 minutes.
The Véritables Préludes flasques is a 1912 piano composition by Erik Satie. The first of his published humoristic piano suites of the 1910s, it signified a breakthrough in his creative development and in the public perception of his music. In performance it lasts about 5 minutes.
Les Pantins dansent(The Puppets are Dancing) is a "poème dansé" for small orchestra or piano composed in 1913 by Erik Satie. It was commissioned for an experimental theatrical event starring Futurist author and dancer Valentine de Saint-Point. Maurice Droeghmans conducted the premiere at the Salle Léon-Poirier in Paris on December 20, 1913.
Aperçus désagréables(Unpleasant Glimpses) is a suite for piano four hands composed between 1908 and 1912 by Erik Satie. It shows the early development of his mature style, a product of his studies at the Schola Cantorum de Paris. In performance it lasts about 5 minutes.
Danse is a short instrumental piece by Erik Satie. Completed on December 5, 1890, it is his earliest known attempt at orchestral composition. The original score has never been published or recorded, but Satie later transcribed it as the En plus movement of his famous piano suite Trois morceaux en forme de poire (1903). A performance would last about 2 minutes.
↑ Robert Orledge, "Satie the Composer", Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 95.
↑ Ravel played Satie's second Sarabande (1887), the Prelude to Le Fils des etoiles (1892), and the third Gymnopédie (1888). The program note proclaimed Satie "an inspired forerunner" who, "a quarter of a century ago, was already speaking the musical 'jargon' of today." See Joseph Smith, notes to "Erik Satie's First Sarabande", 2012, at http://josephsmithpianist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Satie.pdf
↑ Mary E. Davis, "Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism", University of California Press, 2006, p. 107.
↑ This deviates from Satie's original plan (as told to Roland-Manuel) to include percussion instruments. He also reduced the number of oboes from 2 to 1. See Myers, "Erik Satie", p. 77.
↑ Orledge believes the scoring of the Fugue de papier is not entirely successful, but noted that by the time of Parade (1917) Satie was writing for a large orchestra with complete assurance. See Orledge, "Satie the Composer", p. 118.
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