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ERIK SATIE, like anyone else, 2002 – Michael Finnissy

But not like anyone else. Not quite belonging. Losing himself in his music. A singer of plainchant, a ritualist, an innovator, lover of ragtime and the American two-step, a classicist. Poised and innately balanced. Keeping an appropriate distance, hieratic. The Wagnerian Chabrier of ‘Gwendoline’ (the mystic orgies of Sâr Péladan), the discipline of the Schola Cantorum (the bizarre curios), the secret allusions and confused, unbidden memories—just like anyone else’s. But this isn’t Satie, it’s me (plus Satie after a hundred years). In which time the poor and lonely man is no longer taken as an absurd joke, or some sort of technical incompetent. In which time ‘cadences’ finally become an obsolete form of punctuation. In which ‘cost’ replaces ‘value’, and diatonicism rises again from beneath the frozen waters of serialism, its bloated carcass hideously cleansed of any life or identity. Satie—hero of my early teens, provocateur and renegade. Fighting the hazy and some say ‘unreal’ battles alongside Ives and Varèse. Soon to be joined by Busoni and Schoenberg. All in a moment of history. This moment. Written specially for Eve Egoyan, the particular character, depth and sensitivity of touch and phrasing with which she illuminates the music she plays: an alchemy, authenticity, and fearlessness. ~MF

ERIK SATIE, like anyone else was commissioned by Eve Egoyan with the assistance of the British Council.

credits

from Weave : works by Martin Arnold, Michael Finnissy, Jo Kondo and James Tenney, released May 5, 2006
Composer: Michael Finnissy

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all rights reserved

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