THE ECCENTRIC HUMOR IN ERIK SATIE’S PIANO MUSIC

Abstract

In early 20th century France, Eric Satie was regarded among the leading figures of humor in high-art music. Many of Satie’s compositions contain different types of humor, such as parody, irony, and satire, and the eccentricity of these works left audiences baffled yet amused. Satie’s compositions with eccentric humor were influenced by his experience working as an arranger and accompanist in cabarets for over twenty years. In the Chat Noir cabaret, Satie, along with other artists, challenged the traditional aesthetic and bourgeois conventions. They composed absurdist songs and plays, providing texts full of eccentric humor in the cabaret’s own journal. These works prefigured the spirit of Dadaism. The purpose of this study is to examine the eccentric humor in Eric Satie’s piano music. First, I will select one piano duet from the period when he studied counterpoint in the Schola Cantorum from 1905 to 1912. I will discuss how he expressed eccentric humor in this contrapuntal work. Second, I will examine some short pieces from his humoristic piano suites written around the years of 1912-1915. Almost all of these pieces parodied music from existing compositions, and Satie liberally sprinkled eccentric annotations throughout the scores of these pieces. Third, I will examine a piano duet inspired by the comic, bizarre, and satiric literature of Francois Rabelais, who was a master satirist and writer in the French renaissance.