Description
From the 1913 satirical set Chapitres tournés en tous sens, this piece is titled Regrets des enfermés (Regrets of the Confined). Its subject is people shut away, and the score carries Satie's characteristic story-like annotations.
Written without the usual reliance on key signature and bar-line metre, it unfolds a somewhat heavy atmosphere that evokes a closed-off space, within which Satie blends his characteristic irony with genuine poetic feeling. At about two minutes and some 590 notes, it packs a surprising variety of expressive shifts between stillness and motion, light and dark.
Rated intermediate, its range runs from the lowest A on the keyboard into the high treble, though an octave shift fits every note on 76 keys. The challenge is to feel the spacing from the flow of the music itself rather than from regular beats. Slowing the playback to follow each change of scene, and looping the places where the mood turns with A-B, helps you find its peculiar voice, where heaviness and irony sit side by side.
A three-piece piano suite Satie composed in 1913, carrying his characteristic whimsical, offbeat humor.
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Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
About the Composer
Erik Satie (1866-1925)
Erik Satie was a French composer from Honfleur who worked in Montmartre's cabarets while pursuing a highly individual musical aesthetic. Known for spare, understated music and whimsically titled works, he later influenced minimalist and ambient music. This site includes the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, along with "Danse maigre."
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