'Gnossienne' (No 1) by Erik Satie - played, interpreted and flourished by Rabode.

The French composer Erik Satie (1866 – 1925) wrote his ‘Gnossienne’ (No 1) in about 1890. There were a few other pieces as well all titled the same thing with different numbers (I think he has about 6 Gnossienne pieces), but this is the most well known.

It’s an intriguing piece to me because it’s so melancholic and steady throughout. I have added my own little flourishes that I hear in my head when I play this and I thought on this occasion when I recorded it it came out ok, so thought would add to my channel.

This piece is a bit unusual because Satie didn’t use any time signatures or other traditional musical notation. He seems to just want people to play it freely as they like, but most if not all the versions I’ve heard so far just sound the same, which is strange to me – when a composer basically tells you to get creative with his piece but you just play it as it appears on the page anyway…

Satie left written instructions at various points in the music such as ‘Postulez en vous-même’ and ‘Questionnez’. These quite abstract suggestions as to how to approach a certain passage combined with no time signature or even bar divisions suggests he was really just going against the grain of musical convention and probably trying to stir the pot a little bit within his musical social circle of the time.

I think Satie was a bit of a rebel and many people put the unusual form of this piece down to all sorts of things from Gnostic religion to Minotaurs. However, I just think he was trying to wind somebody up and he just wanted to escape the formality of the musical chains that could bind the composers (and listeners) of his era.

Because of the lack of coherent meaning to the piece from the composer himself (which to me is a good thing) and because I personally don’t necessarily feel or experience any particular meaning beyond the enjoyment of a mystical piece of music myself when I’m playing it, I wasn’t too sure what video to make...

So I just went all floaty like. If this piece speaks of anything it’s mystical and mysticism. Make of that what you will.