The Messe des pauvres (Mass for the Poor) is a partial musical setting of the mass for mixed choir and organ by Erik Satie. Composed between 1893 and 1895, it is Satie's only liturgical work and the culmination of his "Rosicrucian" or "mystic" period. It was published posthumously in 1929. [Note 1] [Note 2] A performance lasts around 18 minutes.
In the early 1890s, Satie's fascination with medieval Catholicism, Gothic art and Gregorian chant led him to explore religious influences in his life and music. At first he was drawn to Joséphin Péladan's Rose + Croix movement, for which he acted as official composer from 1891 to 1892, and after breaking with Péladan he associated with the occultist writer Jules Bois, publisher of the religious esoteric journal Le coeur. At the same time he was immersed in a bohemian lifestyle as a pianist at Montmartre cabarets, where his already eccentric behavior took on a growing penchant for buffoonery and exhibitionism. [2]
This paradox came to a head in October 1893 when Satie founded his own mock religious sect, the Église Métropolitaine de l'Art de Jésus Conducteur (Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor), with himself as High priest, choirmaster, and sole member. It was a spoof of the flamboyant Péladan, whose Rose + Croix creed ("the transformation of society through art") and habit of "excommunicating" his critics in bombastic letters to newspapers Satie gleefully adopted. [3] He carried the charade into his daily existence, dressing in monkish robes and referring to his tiny room at 6 Rue Cortot as his abbatiale (abbey). "[Satie] liked to affect the unctuous manners of a priest," his friend Francis Jourdain recalled. "They suited him so well, he played his part so accurately - being careful not to overdo things - that the question arose as to whether a slightly false air was not innate in him." [4]
Against this background, Satie's motives for writing the Messe des pauvres - the sole composition linked to his church - are obscure. Originally entitled Grande Messe de l'Eglise Métropolitaine d'Art, [5] it was his most ambitious work to date, although there was no evident prospect of having it performed. [6] Satie authorities Ornella Volta and Robert Orledge believe he conceived the mass to occupy his mind following his recent breakup with the painter Suzanne Valadon, which had left him emotionally devastated. [7] [8] At the midpoint of their turbulent six-month affair in March 1893, Satie had composed his Danses gothiques as a "Novena for the great calm and profound tranquility of my Soul"; [9] similarly, the first mass movement he completed (in late 1893) was the Prière pour le salut de mon âme ("Prayer for the salvation of my soul"). [10] It is unknown how the mass assumed its final title Messe des pauvres. The texts Satie chose make no reference to the poor at large, giving further weight to speculations that, impoverished as he was, he essentially wrote the mass for his own solace. [11]
In 1895, a substantial cash gift from a friend enabled Satie to publish a series of tracts in which, under the guise of his church, he criticised those of whom he disapproved. Portions of the Messe des pauvres appeared in two of them: an extract from the Commune qui mundi nefas in a pamphlet of the same name (January 1895), and the complete Dixit Domine - calligraphed in faux Gregorian notation by Satie - in the brochure Intende votis supplicum (March 1895). [12] The only contemporary account of the mass is an article by the composer's brother, Conrad Satie, published in the June 1895 issue of Le coeur. He described it as a work in progress, humbly scored for organ and a choir of children's and men's voices. "This mass is music for the divine sacrifice, and there will be no part for the orchestras which, I'm sorry to say, find their way into most masses," he wrote. [13] He also made an intriguing statement about its structure: "Between the Kyrie and the Gloria a prayer is inserted called Prière des orgues." The Gloria movement was not found in Satie's posthumous papers and is considered lost.
Soon after his brother's article appeared, the unpredictable Satie lost interest in his church, the mass, and in composition altogether. That same month he exchanged his robes and religious affectations for the seven identical sets of corduroy suits that would come to define his "Velvet Gentleman" phase, [14] and for the better part of two years he wrote nothing. In his next important work, the Pièces froides for piano (1897), Satie revisited the pre-Rose + Croix style of his Gnossiennes and turned his back on the mystical-religious influences he would later dismiss as "musique à genoux" ("music on its knees"). [15] The mass was not performed during his lifetime.
After Satie's death in 1925, his friend and music executor Darius Milhaud brought the forgotten manuscript of the Messe des pauvres to light. Three of the movements (the Prière des orgues, Commune qui mundi nefas, and Prière pour le salut de mon âme) were premiered by organist Paul de Maleingreau at the Concerts Pro Arte in Brussels, Belgium, on May 3, 1926. [16] An early complete performance was led by Olivier Messiaen at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris on March 14, 1939. [17] The work was first recorded in 1951.
The published score presents the mass in seven movements: [18] [19]
As Conrad Satie noted, the work was intended for organ, children's choir and men's voices, but as the score designates only basses and dessus (high) vocal parts a mixed adult choir is commonly used in performance. The choral writing is strongly reminiscent of plainsong.
In its existing state - two choral movements followed by a series of organ solos - the Messe des pauvres does not conform to any liturgical tradition; but this is partly a result of circumstance. Satie's probable model was the organ mass, [22] in which instrumental pieces (versets) were composed to replace sections of the Ordinarium or Vespers (evening service) that were otherwise chanted or sung. These were performed in alternatim with the chorus and usually improvised by the organist. [23] The genre was most prevalent in France from the mid-1600s. While the French Catholic church attempted to regulate the alternation of chant and organ in mass performance, beginning with the Caeremoniale Parisiense of 1662, its edicts were commonly ignored as regional parishes established their own alternatim mass traditions. [24] Famous Parisian organists such as Claude Balbastre and Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély introduced dances and other secular influences into their liturgical improvisations. [25] [26] Pope Pius X would ban the alternatim practice altogether in 1903, [27] but in the meantime the flexibility the French variety offered can only have appealed to Satie, who was never content with rigid musical forms of any kind.
Then there is the loss of the Gloria, the original fourth movement of the Messe des pauvres. Its inclusion would have made the work acceptable for use in a church service as a missa brevis, albeit a rather unorthodox one. [28]
Examining the score in the 1980s, Robert Orledge found "sprawling uncertainties" in its "assortment of movements" and believed the mass was left unfinished. [29] Sketches of two or three pieces from Satie's notebooks of the period may relate to the work, but whether he planned to expand it or to provide plainsong-like text settings for some of the organ solos must remain speculative. [30] [31]
The mysterious stasis of the music, and Satie's unique reimagining of medieval modes with some of his most innovative harmonic writing, [32] give the mass a haunting, timeless quality that is very effective in performance. [33] Wilfrid Mellers saw in the works of the mystic period "a necessary step in Satie's creative evolution...technically they link up with plainsong and organum...not in any antiquarian spirit but rather because Satie saw in the impersonality, the aloofness, the remoteness from all subjective dramatic stress of this music qualities which might, with appropriate modifications, approximate to his own uniquely lonely mode of utterance." [34]
An anomaly in both Satie's output and in liturgical music in general, the Messe des pauvres remains one of his lesser-known large-scale works. His first biographer, Pierre-Daniel Templier (1932), was almost apologetic over Milhaud's decision to publish the score, even though he found "real gems" in some of the movements. [35] Nevertheless, it has long had its advocates among Satie devotees. There are several arrangements, from musicians as diverse as David Diamond (1949), Marius Constant (1970) and Louis Andriessen (1980). Edgard Varèse enthused, "I've always admired Satie and above all the Kyrie of the Messe des pauvres, which has always made me think of Dante's Inferno and strikes me as being a kind of pre-electronic music..." [36] And Virgil Thomson defined the inscrutable qualities of the mass thus: "It does not invoke the history of music. Its inner life is as independent of you as a Siamese cat." [37]
For chorus and organ:
Marilyn Mason (organ) and chorus directed by David Randolph (Esoteric, 1951, reissued by Él, 2007), Gaston Litaize and the Choeur René Duclos (EMI, 1974), Hervé Désarbre and the Ensemble Vocal Paris-Renaissance (Mandala, 1997)
Transcriptions and arrangements:
For two organs and choir: Elisabeth Sperer, Winfried Englhardt (organs), Münchner Madrigalchor (FSM, 1990); for organ only: Christopher Bowers-Broadbent (ECM, 1993); for solo piano: Bojan Gorišek (Audiophile Classics, 1994), Alessandro Simonetto (OnClassical, 2022); for orchestra: Gerard Schwarz conducting the Seattle Symphony, arrangement by David Diamond, (Koch Schwann, 1996)
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.
The Mass is a form of sacred musical composition that sets the invariable portions of the Christian Eucharistic liturgy, known as the Mass.
The French Organ Mass is a type of Low Mass that came into use during the Baroque era. Essentially it is a Low Mass with organ music playing throughout: part of the so-called alternatim practice.
Missa brevis usually refers to a mass composition that is short because part of the text of the Mass ordinary that is usually set to music in a full mass is left out, or because its execution time is relatively short.
L'Église Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur or the Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor, alternatively translated as the Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus, Leader, was founded by Erik Satie, the French composer and pianist.
Geneviève de Brabant is a theatre piece composed around 1900 by Erik Satie. The score was intended as incidental music for a three-act comedy in verse and prose by J. P. Contamine de Latour, based on the medieval legend of Genevieve of Brabant. Unproduced at the time, its existence was not discovered until after Satie's death in 1925.
The Ludions is a song cycle for voice and piano by Erik Satie, composed in 1923 to five absurdist poems by Léon-Paul Fargue. It was the last of his vocal compositions. The songs are brief and a performance of the set usually lasts less than five 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.
La statue retrouvée is a short composition for trumpet and organ by Erik Satie. Commissioned as a danced pièce d'occasion, it was originally set to a scenario by Jean Cocteau and featured choreography by Léonide Massine and costumes designed by Pablo Picasso. Its only performance in this form took place in Paris on May 30, 1923.
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 Danses gothiques is an 1893 piano composition by Erik Satie, one of the works of his "Rosicrucian" or "mystic" period. It was published posthumously in 1929. A performance lasts around 12 minutes.
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.
En habit de cheval 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. 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." In performance it lasts about 7 minutes.
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. In performance the set lasts between 2 and 3 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 Prélude d'Eginhard is an 1893 composition for solo piano by Erik Satie. It is a notable example of his "Rosicrucian" or "mystic" period. Unpublished during his lifetime, it was issued posthumously in 1929. A typical performance lasts under 3 minutes.
Erich Paul Schwandt was a Canadian cembalist, organist, musicologist and music educator.
The Fête donnée par des Chevaliers Normands en l'honneur d'une jeune demoiselle is an 1892 piano composition by Erik Satie. An example of his Rosicrucian or "mystic" phase, it was published posthumously in 1929. A typical performance lasts about 4 minutes.
Salut drapeau!(Hail to the Flag!), also known as Hymne Pour Le "Salut Drapeau", is an incidental music piece composed in November 1891 by Erik Satie for the historical drama Le Prince du Byzance by Joséphin Péladan. One of the more eccentric works of Satie's "Rosicrucian" period (1891–1895), it was the first example of his "static sound décor" approach to theatre music. The score went unperformed in his lifetime and was not published until 1968. Its duration is roughly four minutes.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
