Gymnopedies Nos. 1 and 3

arranged for orchestra by Claude Debussy

While Erik Satie was not the most highly trained of composers working in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, he was one of the most intelligent and one of the most original. He did attend the Paris Conservatoire but at this “local penitentiary,” as he called it, he proved to be the laziest of students and was described by one of his teachers as “worthlesss.” His failure to absorb Conservatoire conventions was not a weakness, however, but a source of strength since it meant he had no inhibitions about breaking the rules or offending against good taste. Most of his contemporaries dismissed him as ignorant but for those with open minds and progressive attitudes, like Debussy and Ravel, his harmonic developments were a revelation.

His genius was not just a matter of outrageous modernism, however. The Gymnopédies, an early (1888) set of three piano pieces, are remarkable for their modesty – their simplicity in rhythm as well as in their modally tinged melody and harmony – and yet have an irresistible, haunting fascination. Debussy was so fascinated that he orchestrated two of them, sensitively    preserving their chastity. He added colour only of the kind, like the gentle cymbal touches, that would support Satie’s contention that the ancient Greek gymnnopaidia was danced “by children and naked men” in Sparta. Basically, slow waltzes their influence on the future of French music was quite out of proportion with their brevity.