Erik Satie: Pièces froides

Composer:
Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Date of composition:
1897

Performer:
Reinbert de Leeuw (1938-2020) (from his album "Satie: Piano Music; Mélodies")

Date of recording:
1980

I. Airs à faire fuir (Tunes to Make You Run Away)
1. D'une manière très particulière (In a very unusual manner) (0:00)
2. Modestemente (Simply) (3:43)
3. S'inviter (Invitingly) (5:35)

II. Danses de travers (Crooked Dances)
1. En y regardant à deux fois (Give it a good look) (9:23)
2. Passer (Go on) (11:07)
3. Encore (Again) (12:34)

"The Pièces froides (Cold Pieces) 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 Unpublished until 1912, they marked Satie's break from the mystical-religious music of his "Rosicrucian" period (1891–95), and were a harbinger of his humoristic piano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.

The title Pièces froides—which can also be translated as Cold Rooms or Cold Cuts—has been viewed as a punning allusion to the dire poverty Satie experienced during his last years living in Montmartre. In July 1896, he had been forced to move from his room at 6 Rue Cortot into an unheated ground floor closet (he called it a 'cupboard') in the same building, which the landlord offered him for 20 francs per quarter. The space was so small that Satie's camp bed all but blocked the door shut, and on frigid nights he kept warm by sleeping fully dressed with the rest of his clothing piled on top of him. These conditions were hardly conducive to composing, but one prospect gave him hope over the bitter 1896–97 winter.

These airs and dances are a return to the graceful simplicity of Satie's Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. They share with those early works clear textures and a tendency to present a single musical idea from a number of different perspectives, but have greater rhythmic fluidity and technical assurance."

(Wikipedia)

Score can be found on IMSLP.