There was another excellent music programme on Radio 4 this afternoon, The Unsent Letters of Erik Satie.
It was not dumbed down, and was quite wackily presented...in a way Satie might have approved of.
Alistair McGowan travels to Paris on the trail of his musical hero, the visionary Erik Satie - now most well-known as the composer of the Gymnopedies. Satie was famously eccentric - he replaced traditional musical directions like 'ralentando' and 'fortissimo' with instructions to the musician such as, 'While watching oneself approach' and 'like a nightingale with a toothache' and in order to save time deciding what to wear every day, he bought seven, identical, yellow, corduroy suits - one for every day of the week.
Satie's radical new approach to music was initially dismissed by the musical establishment, but he was to prove a highly influential force in the new French music of Debussy, Ravel and anticipated 20th century minimalism.
Satie's radical new approach to music was initially dismissed by the musical establishment, but he was to prove a highly influential force in the new French music of Debussy, Ravel and anticipated 20th century minimalism.
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