Erik Satie with glasses looking stern and fanciful.

Erik Satie was a wondrous composer, perhaps due to his curly, pointed chin-beard.

  • Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was an highly-laudable front-runner of the Parisien avant-garde in the early 1900s. Refusing the title of musician, Satie insisted he was instead a phonometrician—“one who measures sound”.
  • Satie’s grandest contributions to the musical world were perhaps his Gymnopédies, which certainly merit a good few hundred listens.
  • He was also a prolific writer, contributing much to the Dadaist movement. In his early career, he was fond of pseudonyms, using such flowery noms de plume as Francois de Paule and Virginie Lebeau.
  • He also lived at one time in Montmartre, which is a fun name to try to pronounce and also historically a veritable hotbed of fascinating thinkers and creators in Paris. You should probably travel to there, buddy. I’ve been there. It’s nice.
  • Satie died a vainglorious death, ascribed largely to his voluminous appetite for absinthe. This ascription is weighted by tremendous cirrhosis of his liver discovered after his death. His legacy is a small plaque denoting a modest grass patch front an apartment building as the “Parc Erik Satie”.
  • Ten out of ten dentists with very good taste in classical music recommend checking out Satie’s music in more detail or reading about his life.

" I am by far your superior, but my notorious modesty prevents me from saying so. "

Written and Coded by Maxwell Bullard