Embryons desséchés (1913)

d’Holothurie: allez un peu

d’Edriophthalma: sombre

de Podophthalma: un peu vif

Like Rossini when committing his “sins of old age” to paper, Satie must have spent a significant proportion of his working time in thinking up his titles, which often seem crazy but are rarely irrelevant. The Embryons desséchés – spoof portraits of three sea creatures written in late June and early July 1913 – are “embryos”presumably because they are not developed and “dried up” because they are anything but juicy in expression. Actually, there is a little development in the first one but only because, in caricaturing the holothurian or sea cucumber, Satie can scarcely send up sonata form without including a development section. Beginning in C major and introducing a second subject in the same key based on Loïsa Puget’s “Mon Rocher de Saint-Malo,” it ends in G major – but not without interpolating another popular tune, “Je n’ai pas de tabac,” just before the disproportionately grandiose ending.

Satie’s sombre tribute to the edriophthalma – a crustacean which, he says, “is very melancholy by nature” – makes a passing allusion to the main theme of the Marche funèbre in Chopin’s Sonata in B flat minor and a longer reference to the middle section of the same movement (identified in Satie’s score as “the celebrated mazurka by Schubert”!). In accordance with its alleged status as a “skilful and tireless hunter,” the podophthalma inspires a hot pursuit to begin with but then meets up with the “Orangutan Song” from Audran’s operetta La Mascotte and the folk song “Il était un’bergère.” The closing cadenza, the pianist is informed, “is obligatory.”