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94-599: The region included three departments , Calvados , Manche and Orne , that cover the part of Normandy traditionally termed "Lower Normandy" lying west of the river Dives , the Pays d'Auge (except a small part remaining in Upper Normandy), a small part of the Pays d'Ouche (the main part remaining in Upper Normandy), the Norman Perche , and part of the "French" Perche . It covers 10,857 km, 3.2 percent of

188-402: A chivalric esoteric play (two Préludes du Nazaréen ), had a hoax published (announcing the premiere of his non-existent Le bâtard de Tristan , an anti-Wagnerian opera), and broken away from Péladan, starting that autumn with the " Uspud " project, a "Christian Ballet", in collaboration with Latour. He challenged the musical establishment by proposing himself – unsuccessfully – for

282-463: A county of the United States . At the 2001 census, the median population of a department in continental France was 511,000 inhabitants, which is 21 times the median population of a United States county, but less than two-thirds of the median population of a ceremonial county of England and Wales. Most of the departments have an area of between 4,000 and 8,000 km (1500 to 3000 sq. mi.), and

376-450: A "symphonic drama". Its composition was interrupted in 1917 by a libel suit brought against him by a music critic, Jean Poueigh, which nearly resulted in a jail sentence for Satie. When Socrate was premiered, Satie called it "a return to classical simplicity with a modern sensibility", and among those who admired the work was Igor Stravinsky , a composer whom Satie regarded with awe. In his later years Satie became known for his prose. He

470-506: A Dog)", 1912), Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois ("Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Man", 1913) and Sonatine bureaucratique ("Bureaucratic Sonata", 1917). In his neat, calligraphic hand, Satie would write extensive instructions for his performers, and although his words appear at first sight to be humorous and deliberately nonsensical, Nichols and Griffiths comment, "a sensitive pianist can make much of injunctions such as 'arm yourself with clairvoyance' and 'with

564-435: A Dog)", 1912), Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois ("Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Man", 1913) and Sonatine bureaucratique ("Bureaucratic Sonatina", 1917). Most of his works are brief, and the majority are for solo piano. Exceptions include his "symphonic drama" Socrate (1919) and two late ballets Mercure and Relâche (1924). Satie never married, and his home for most of his adult life

658-637: A close friend of Claude Debussy , who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition. Both were bohemians , enjoying the same café society and struggling to survive financially. At the Auberge du Clou Satie first encountered the flamboyant, self-styled "Sâr" Joséphin Péladan , for whose mystic sect, the Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique du Temple et du Graal, he was appointed composer. This gave him scope for experiment, and Péladan's salons at

752-464: A diet of exclusively white food (including bones and fruit mould), or to drink boiled wine mixed with fuchsia juice, or to be woken by a servant hourly throughout the night to have his temperature taken; he wrote in praise of Beethoven 's non-existent but "sumptuous" Tenth Symphony, and the family of instruments known as the cephalophones, "which have a compass of thirty octaves and are absolutely unplayable". Satie grouped some of these writings under

846-590: A feeling for harmony is to have a feeling for tonality… the melody is the Idea, the outline; as much as it is the form and the subject matter of a work. The harmony is an illumination, an exhibition of the object, its reflection. Among his earliest compositions were sets of three Gymnopédies (1888) and his Gnossiennes (1889 onwards) for piano. They evoke the ancient world by what the critics Roger Nichols and Paul Griffiths describe as "pure simplicity, monotonous repetition, and highly original modal harmonies". It

940-469: A five-month liaison with the painter Suzanne Valadon . After their first night together, he proposed marriage. The two did not marry, but Valadon moved to a room next to Satie's at the rue Cortot. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui and writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet". During their relationship Satie composed the Danses gothiques as

1034-483: A local organist, Gustave Vinot, a former pupil of Louis Niedermeyer . Vinot stimulated Satie's love of old church music, and in particular Gregorian chant . In 1878 Satie's grandmother died, and the two boys returned to Paris to be informally educated by their father. Satie did not attend a school, but his father took him to lectures at the Collège de France and engaged a tutor to teach Eric Latin and Greek. Before

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1128-570: A means of calming his mind, and Valadon painted his portrait, which she gave him. After five months she moved away, leaving him devastated. He said later that he was left with "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness". In 1895 Satie attempted to change his image once again: this time to that of "the Velvet Gentleman". From the proceeds of a small legacy, he bought seven identical dun -coloured suits. Orledge comments that this change "marked

1222-500: A more uniform division into departments ( département ) and districts in late 1789. The process began on 4 August 1789 with the elimination of provincial privileges, and a 22 December 1789 decree (with letters patent in January 1790) provided for the termination of the provincial governments. The modern department system, as all-purpose units of the government, was decreed on 26 February 1790 (with letters patent on 4 March 1790) by

1316-497: A musical iconoclast, and encourager of modernism, Satie was uninterested to the point of antipathy about innovations such as the telephone, the gramophone and the radio. He made no recordings, and as far as is known heard only a single radio broadcast (of Milhaud's music) and made only one telephone call. Although his personal appearance was customarily immaculate, his room at Arcueil was in Orledge's word "squalid", and after his death

1410-513: A population between 320,000 and 1 million. The largest in area is Gironde (10,000 km (3,900 sq mi).), while the smallest is the city of Paris (105 km (41 sq mi).). The most populous is Nord (2,550,000) and the least populous is Lozère (74,000). The departments are numbered: their two-digit numbers appear in postal codes , in INSEE codes (including "social security numbers") and on vehicle number plates . Initially

1504-405: A president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school ( collège ) buildings and technical staff, and local roads and school and rural buses, and a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents

1598-680: A radical socialist party (he later switched his membership to the Communist Party ), but adopted a thoroughly bourgeois image: the biographer Pierre-Daniel Templier, writes, "With his umbrella and bowler hat , he resembled a quiet school teacher. Although a Bohemian, he looked very dignified, almost ceremonious". Satie earned a living as a cabaret pianist, adapting more than a hundred compositions of popular music for piano or piano and voice, adding some of his own. The most popular of these were Je te veux , text by Henry Pacory; Tendrement , text by Vincent Hyspa; Poudre d'or ,

1692-442: A rival to the conservative Société nationale de musique . Satie was suddenly seen as "the precursor and apostle of the musical revolution now taking place"; he became a focus for young composers. Debussy, having orchestrated the first and third Gymnopédies , conducted them in concert. The publisher Demets asked for new works from Satie, who was finally able to give up his cabaret work and devote himself to composition. Works such as

1786-503: A specific homage to Satie's music in his 1996 Century Rolls . Satie wrote extensively for the press, but unlike his professional colleagues such as Debussy and Dukas he did not write primarily as a music critic. Much of his writing is connected to music tangentially if at all. His biographer Caroline Potter describes him as "an experimental creative writer, a blagueur who provoked, mystified and amused his readers". He wrote jeux d'esprit claiming to eat dinner in four minutes with

1880-399: A three-digit number. The number is used, for example, in the postal code and was until recently used for all vehicle registration plates . Residents commonly use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, for example inhabitants of Loiret may refer to their department as "the 45". More distant departments are generally referred to by their names, as few people know

1974-456: A waltz; La Diva de l'Empire , text by Dominique Bonnaud/Numa Blès; Le Picadilly , a march; Légende californienne , text by Contamine de Latour (lost, but the music later reappears in La belle excentrique ); and others. In his later years Satie rejected all his cabaret music as vile and against his nature. Only a few compositions that he took seriously remain from this period: Jack in

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2068-533: Is commonly associated, though not all are officially recognised or used. Unlike the rest of the French possessions in Africa , Algeria was divided into departments just like Corsica or Normandy from 1848 until its independence in 1962. These departments were supposed to be "assimilated" or "integrated" to France sometime in the future. There are a number of former departments in territories conquered by France during

2162-583: Is extraordinary. He's a mischievous and cunning old artist. At least, that's how he thinks of himself. Myself, I think the opposite! He's a very susceptible man, arrogant, a real sad child, but one who is sometimes made optimistic by alcohol. But he's a good friend, and I like him a lot. Throughout his adult life Satie was a heavy drinker, and in 1925 his health collapsed. He was taken to the Hôpital Saint-Joseph in Paris, diagnosed with cirrhosis of

2256-411: Is known as the prefecture ( préfecture ) or chef-lieu de département and is generally a town of some importance roughly at the geographical centre of the department. This was determined according to the time taken to travel on horseback from the periphery of the department. The goal was for the prefecture to be accessible on horseback from any town in the department within 24 hours. The prefecture

2350-562: Is not necessarily the largest city in the department: for instance, in Saône-et-Loire department the capital is Mâcon , but the largest city is Chalon-sur-Saône . Departments may be divided into arrondissements . The capital of an arrondissement is called a subprefecture ( sous-préfecture ) or chef-lieu d'arrondissement . Each department is administered by a departmental council ( conseil départemental ), an assembly elected for six years by universal suffrage , with

2444-490: Is one of the three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities "), between the administrative regions and the communes . There are ninety-six departments in metropolitan France , with an additional five overseas departments , which are also classified as overseas regions. Departments are further subdivided into 333 arrondissements and 2,054 cantons (as of 2023). These last two levels of government have no political autonomy, instead serving as

2538-490: Is possible that their simplicity and originality were influenced by Debussy; it is also possible that it was Satie who influenced Debussy. During the brief spell when Satie was composer to Péladan's sect he adopted a similarly austere manner. While Satie was earning his living as a café pianist in Montmartre he contributed songs and little waltzes. After moving to Arcueil he began to write works with quirky titles, such as

2632-460: Is regarded by some writers as an influence on minimalism , which developed in the 1960s and later. The musicologist Mark Bennett and the composer Humphrey Searle have said that John Cage 's music shows Satie's influence, and Searle and the writer Edward Strickland have used the term "minimalism" in connection with Satie's Vexations , which the composer implied in his manuscript should be played over and over again 840 times. John Adams included

2726-429: Is seen as an influence on more recent composers such as John Cage and John Adams . His harmony is often characterised by unresolved chords, he sometimes dispensed with bar-lines , as in his Gnossiennes , and his melodies are generally simple and often reflect his love of old church music. He gave some of his later works absurd titles, such as Veritables Preludes flasques (pour un chien) ("True Flabby Preludes (for

2820-654: The Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Highways) infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution , France gained territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the end of the Ancien Régime it was organised into provinces . During the Revolution they were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties. The National Constituent Assembly decided to create

2914-671: The 1823 French intervention ending the trienio liberal ) and the 1833 territorial division of Spain , which forms the basis of the present day Provinces of Spain with minor modifications, are also based on the French model of departments of roughly equal size. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the Official Geographical Code, allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques ( Insée ). Overseas departments have

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3008-404: The 9th arrondissement . By this time he had started what was to be an enduring friendship with the romantic poet Contamine de Latour , whose verse he set in some of his early compositions, which Satie senior published. His lodgings were close to the popular Chat Noir cabaret on the southern edge of Montmartre where he became an habitué and then a resident pianist. The Chat Noir was known as

3102-743: The Channel Islands . Then, during the Hundred Years' War , it was regained by the Plantagenets . However, the French recovered the mainland part of the region between 1436 and 1450. By 1453, the French monarchy controlled much of modern France apart from Calais , which remained in English hands. During the Second World War , the main thrust of Operation Overlord was focused on Lower Normandy. The beaches of Calvados were

3196-527: The Franco-Prussian War Alfred Satie sold his business and the family moved to Paris, where he eventually set up as a music publisher. In 1872 Jane Satie died and Eric and his brother were sent back to Honfleur to be brought up by Alfred's parents. The boys were rebaptised as Roman Catholics and educated at a local boarding school, where Satie excelled in history and Latin but nothing else. In 1874 he began taking music lessons with

3290-674: The French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire that are now not part of France: Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Holy Roman Empire : Electorate of the Palatinate Electorate of the Palatinate Kingdom of Prussia : Imperial Free City of Wesel (after 1805) Notes for Table 7: Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884,

3384-474: The ISO 3166-2 country subdivision codes for the metropolitan departments. The overseas departments have three digits. Originally, the relationship between the departments and the central government was left somewhat ambiguous. While citizens in each department elected their own officials, the local governments were subordinated to the central government, becoming instruments of national integration. By 1793, however,

3478-597: The National Constituent Assembly . Their boundaries served two purposes: The old nomenclature was carefully avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after an area's principal river or other physical features. Even Paris was in the department of Seine . Savoy , during its temporary occupation, became the department of Mont-Blanc . The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791. The number of departments, initially 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with

3572-709: The Nouvelles pièces froides of 1907". After concluding his studies at the Schola Cantorum in 1912 Satie composed with greater confidence and more prolifically. Orchestration, despite his studies with d'Indy, was never his strongest suit, but his grasp of counterpoint is evident in the opening bars of Parade , and from the outset of his composing career he had original and distinctive ideas about harmony. In his later years he composed sets of short instrumental works with absurd titles, including Veritables Preludes flasques (pour un chien) ("True Flabby Preludes (for

3666-661: The President of the Departmental Council as executive of the department. Before 1982, the chief executive of the department was the prefect ( préfet ), who represents the Government of France in each department and is appointed by the President of the French Republic . The prefect is assisted by one or more sub-prefects ( sous-préfet ) based in the subprefectures of the department. Since 1982,

3760-586: The Territoire de Belfort ; the remaining parts of Meurthe and Moselle were merged into a new Meurthe-et-Moselle department. When France regained the ceded departments after World War I , the Territoire de Belfort was not reintegrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922 it became France's 90th department. Likewise the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, and a new Moselle department

3854-675: The UMP , said in December 2008 that the fusion of the departments with the regions was a matter to be dealt with soon. This was soon refuted by Édouard Balladur and Gérard Longuet , members of the committee for the reform of local authorities, known as the Balladur Committee. In January 2008, the Attali Commission recommended that the departmental level of government should be eliminated within ten years. Nevertheless,

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3948-495: The "Arcueil School". In addition to turning against Ravel, Auric and Poulenc in particular, Satie quarrelled with his old friend Debussy in 1917, resentful of the latter's failure to appreciate the more recent Satie compositions. The rupture lasted for the remaining months of Debussy's life, and when he died the following year, Satie refused to attend the funeral. A few of his protégés escaped his displeasure, and Milhaud and Désormière were among those who remained friends with him to

4042-516: The "jeunes" – those associated with Ravel – and then a group known at first as the "nouveaux jeunes", later called Les Six , including Georges Auric , Louis Durey , Arthur Honegger , and Germaine Tailleferre , joined later by Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud . Satie dissociated himself from the second group in 1918, and in the 1920s he became the focal point of another set of young composers including Henri Cliquet-Pleyel , Roger Désormière , Maxime Jacob and Henri Sauguet , who became known as

4136-401: The "temple de la 'convention farfelue'" – the temple of zany convention, and as the biographer Robert Orledge puts it, Satie, "free from his restrictive upbringing … enthusiastically embraced the reckless bohemian lifestyle and created for himself a new persona as a long-haired man-about-town in frock coat and top hat". This was the first of several personas that Satie invented for himself over

4230-467: The 10th century. In 1066, Duke William Il of Normandy conquered England . He was buried in Caen. After his death, Normandy went to his eldest son and England went to his second son, separating the two possessions. The victory of Tinchebray in 1106 gave Normandy to the kings of England again. Nearly one hundred years later, in 1204, King Philip II Augustus of France conquered the region, apart from

4324-412: The Balladur Committee has not retained this proposition and does not advocate the disappearance of the departments, but simply "favors the voluntary grouping of departments", which it suggests also for the regions, with the aim of reducing the number of regions to 15. This committee advocates, on the contrary, the suppression of the cantons. Each department has a coat of arms and a flag with which it

4418-546: The Box , music to a pantomime by Jules Depaquit (called a " clownerie " by Satie); Geneviève de Brabant , a short comic opera to a text by "Lord Cheminot" (Latour); Le poisson rêveur ( The Dreamy Fish ), piano music to accompany a lost tale by Cheminot, and a few others that were mostly incomplete. Few were presented, and none published at the time. A decisive change in Satie's musical outlook came after he heard

4512-746: The Conservatoire". In 1882 he was expelled from the Conservatoire for his unsatisfactory performance. In 1884 Satie wrote his first known composition, a short Allegro for piano, written while on holiday in Honfleur. He signed himself "Erik" on this and subsequent compositions, though continuing to use "Eric" on other documents until 1906. In 1885, he was readmitted to the Conservatoire, in the intermediate piano class of his stepmother's former teacher, Georges Mathias . He made little progress: Mathias described his playing as "Insignificant and laborious" and Satie himself "Worthless. Three months just to learn

4606-504: The Conservatoire, Satie volunteered for military service, and joined the 33rd Infantry Regiment in November 1886. He quickly found army life no more to his liking than the Conservatoire, and deliberately contracted acute bronchitis by standing in the open, bare-chested, on a winter night. After three months' convalescence he was invalided out of the army. In 1887, at the age of 21, Satie moved from his father's residence to lodgings in

4700-476: The Conservatoire, which he described as "a vast, very uncomfortable, and rather ugly building; a sort of district prison with no beauty on the inside – nor on the outside, for that matter". He studied solfeggio with Albert Lavignac and piano with Émile Decombes , who had been a pupil of Frédéric Chopin . In 1880 Satie took his first examinations as a pianist: he was described as "gifted but indolent". The following year Decombes called him "the laziest student in

4794-843: The Republic (all created in 1946) – French Guiana , Guadeloupe , Martinique and Réunion – the total number of departments in the French Republic had become 101. In 2015 the Urban Community of Lyon was split from Rhône to form the Métropole de Lyon , a sui generis entity, with the powers of both an intercommunality and those of a department on its territory, formally classified as a "territorial collectivity with particular status" ( French : collectivité territoriale à statut particulier ) and as such not belonging to any department. As of 2019 Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse are still administrative departments, although they no longer have

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4888-423: The administrative basis for the local organisation of police, fire departments as well as, in certain cases, elections. Each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council ( sg. conseil départemental , pl. conseils départementaux ). From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils ( sg. conseil général , pl. conseils généraux ). Each council has

4982-488: The boys returned to Paris from Honfleur, Alfred had met a piano teacher and salon composer, Eugénie Barnetche, whom he married in January 1879, to the dismay of the twelve-year-old Satie, who did not like her. Eugénie Satie resolved that her elder stepson should become a professional musician, and in November 1879 enrolled him in the preparatory piano class at the Paris Conservatoire . Satie strongly disliked

5076-414: The country's capital city, is a commune as well as a department. In continental France ( metropolitan France , excluding Corsica ), the median land area of a department is 5,965 km (2,303 sq mi), which is two-and-a-half times the median land area of the ceremonial counties of England and the preserved counties of Wales and slightly more than three-and-half times the median land area of

5170-422: The creation of the ballet Parade (1917) for Serge Diaghilev , with music by Satie, sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso , and choreography by Léonide Massine . Satie's example guided a new generation of French composers away from post- Wagnerian impressionism towards a sparer, terser style. Among those influenced by him during his lifetime were Maurice Ravel , Claude Debussy , and Francis Poulenc , and he

5264-482: The cycle Sports et divertissements (1914) were published in de luxe editions. The press began to write about Satie's music, and a leading pianist, Ricardo Viñes , took him up, giving celebrated first performances of some Satie pieces. Satie became the focus of successive groups of young composers, whom he first encouraged and then distanced himself from, sometimes rancorously, when their popularity threatened to eclipse his or they otherwise displeased him. First were

5358-401: The end of his Rose+Croix period and the start of a long search for a new artistic direction". In 1898, in search of somewhere cheaper and quieter than Montmartre, Satie moved to a room in the southern suburbs, in the commune of Arcueil-Cachan , eight kilometres (five miles) from the centre of Paris. This remained his home for the rest of his life. No visitors were ever admitted. He joined

5452-405: The end of your thought'". His Sonatine bureaucratique anticipates the neoclassicism soon adopted by Stravinsky. Despite his rancorous falling out with Debussy, Satie commemorated his long-time friend in 1920, two years after Debussy's death, in the anguished "Elégie", the first of the miniature song cycle Quatre petites mélodies . Orledge rates the cycle as the finest, though least known, of

5546-665: The fashionable Galerie Durand-Ruel gained Satie his first public hearings. Frequently short of money, Satie moved from his lodgings in the 9th arrondissement to a small room in the rue Cortot not far from Sacre-Coeur , so high up the Butte Montmartre that he said he could see from his window all the way to the Belgian border. By mid-1892, Satie had composed the first pieces in a compositional system of his own making ( Fête donnée par des Chevaliers Normands en l'honneur d'une jeune demoiselle ), provided incidental music to

5640-464: The four sets of short songs of Satie's last decade. Satie invented what he called Musique d'ameublement – "furniture music" – a kind of background not to be listened to consciously. Cinéma , composed for the René Clair film Entr'acte , shown between the acts of Relâche (1924), is an example of early film music designed to be unconsciously absorbed rather than carefully listened to. Satie

5734-464: The general headings Cahiers d'un mammifère (A Mammal's Notebook) and Mémoires d'un amnésique (Memoirs of an Amnesiac), indicating, as Potter comments, that "these are not autobiographical writings in the conventional manner". He claimed the major influence on his humour was Oliver Cromwell , adding "I also owe much to Christopher Columbus , because the American spirit has occasionally tapped me on

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5828-620: The government; however, regions have gained importance since the 2000s, with some department-level services merged into region-level services. The departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity; the title "department" is used to mean a part of a larger whole. Almost all of them were named after physical geographical features (rivers, mountains, or coasts), rather than after historical or cultural territories, which could have their own loyalties, or after their own administrative seats. The division of France into departments

5922-408: The home of many well-known French authors, including Guy de Maupassant , Marcel Proust , Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly . Notable Norman language authors connected especially with Lower Normandy include Alfred Rossel , Louis Beuve , and Côtis-Capel . In terms of music, composer Erik Satie also hailed from this region. In the visual arts, Jean-François Millet was a native of La Hague. Eugène Boudin

6016-504: The last. The First World War restricted concert-giving to some extent, but Orledge comments that the war years brought "Satie's second lucky break", when Jean Cocteau heard Viñes and Satie perform the Trois morceaux in 1916. This led to the commissioning of the ballet Parade , premiered in 1917 by Sergei Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes , with music by Satie, sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso , and choreography by Léonide Massine . This

6110-588: The liver at the age of 59. Satie was born on 17 May 1866 in Honfleur , Normandy, the first child of Alfred Satie and his wife Jane Leslie ( née Anton). Jane Satie was an English Protestant of Scottish descent; Alfred Satie, a shipping broker , was a Roman Catholic anglophobe. A year later, the Saties had a daughter, Olga, and in 1869 a second son, Conrad. The children were baptised in the Anglican church. After

6204-534: The liver. He died there at 8.00 p.m. on 1 July, at the age of 59. He was buried in the cemetery at Arcueil. In the view of the Oxford Dictionary of Music , Satie's importance lay in "directing a new generation of French composers away from Wagner ‐influenced impressionism towards a leaner, more epigrammatic style". Debussy christened him "the precursor" because of his early harmonic innovations. Satie summed up his musical philosophy in 1917: To have

6298-659: The new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department. The 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe , Moselle , Vosges and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871 following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War . A small part of Haut-Rhin, however, remained French and became known as

6392-407: The numbers corresponded to the alphabetical order of the names of the departments, but several changed their names and some have been divided, so the correspondence became less exact. Alphanumeric codes 2A and 2B were used for Corsica while it was split but it has since reverted to 20. The two-digit code "98" is used by Monaco . Together with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code FR, the numbers form

6486-442: The numbers of all the departments. In 2014, President François Hollande proposed abolishing departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, and transferring their powers to other levels of governance. This reform project has since been scrapped. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for

6580-574: The piece. Cannot sight-read properly". Satie became fascinated by aspects of religion. He spent much time in Notre-Dame de Paris contemplating the stained glass windows and in the National Library examining obscure medieval manuscripts. His friend Alphonse Allais later dubbed him "Esotérik Satie". From this period comes Ogives , a set of four piano pieces inspired by Gregorian chant and Gothic church architecture . Keen to leave

6674-482: The prefect retains only the powers that are not delegated to the department councils. In practice, their role has been largely limited to preventing local policy from conflicting with national policy. The departments are further divided into communes , governed by municipal councils . As of 2013, there were 36,681 communes in France. In the overseas territories , some communes play a role at departmental level. Paris ,

6768-686: The premiere of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902. He found it "absolutely astounding", and he re-evaluated his own music. In a determined attempt to improve his technique, and against Debussy's advice, he enrolled as a mature student at Paris's second main music academy, the Schola Cantorum in October 1905, continuing his studies there until 1912. The institution was run by Vincent d'Indy , who emphasised orthodox technique rather than creative originality. Satie studied counterpoint with Albert Roussel and composition with d'Indy, and

6862-566: The region is used mainly for farming, because of the prairies. Iron ore is mined near Caen. Tourism is also a major industry. The region has direct ferry links to England (via the port of Cherbourg and Caen Ouistreham ). In addition to French , Normandy has its own regional language , Norman . It is still in use today in Lower Normandy, with the dialects of the Cotentin more in evidence than others. Lower Normandy has also been

6956-625: The region was divided into several different city-states. That of Vieux was excavated in the 17th century, revealing numerous structures and vestiges bearing testimony to the prosperity of the Caen region. The region was conquered by the Franks in the 5th century. In the 9th century, the Norman conquests devastated the region. Much of the territory of Lower Normandy was added to the Duchy of Normandy in

7050-412: The revolutionary government had turned the departments into transmission belts for policies enacted in Paris. With few exceptions, the departments had this role until the early 1960s. These maps cannot be used as a useful resource of voter preferences, because Departmental Councils are elected on a two-round system, which drastically limits the chances of fringe parties, if they are not supported on one of

7144-549: The scores of his compositions with all kinds of written remarks became so established that he had to insist that they must not be read out during performances. In 1920 there was a festival of Satie's music at the Salle Erard in Paris. In 1924 the ballets Mercure (with choreography by Massine and décor by Picasso) and Relâche ("Cancelled") (in collaboration with Francis Picabia and René Clair ), both provoked headlines with their first night scandals. Despite being

7238-524: The scores of several important works believed lost were found among the accumulated rubbish. He was incompetent with money. Having depended to a considerable extent on the generosity of friends in his early years, he was little better off when he began to earn a good income from his compositions, as he spent or gave away money as soon as he received it. He liked children, and they liked him, but his relations with adults were seldom straightforward. One of his last collaborators, Picabia, said of him: Satie's case

7332-533: The seat in the Académie des Beaux-Arts made vacant by the death of Ernest Guiraud . Between 1893 and 1895, Satie, affecting a quasi-priestly dress, was the founder and only member of the Eglise Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur . From his " Abbatiale " in the rue Cortot, he published scathing attacks on his artistic enemies. In 1893 Satie had what is believed to be his only love affair,

7426-534: The seven-movement suite Trois morceaux en forme de poire ("Three Pear-shaped Pieces") for piano four-hands (1903), simply-phrased music that Nichols and Griffiths describe as "a résumé of his music since 1890" – reusing some of his earlier work as well as popular songs of the time. He struggled to find his own musical voice. Orledge writes that this was partly because of his "trying to ape his illustrious peers … we find bits of Ravel in his miniature opera Geneviève de Brabant and echoes of both Fauré and Debussy in

7520-757: The site of the D-Day landings in June 1944. Lower Normandy suffered badly during the War, with many of its towns and villages being destroyed or badly damaged during the Battle of Normandy . The region's economy is heavily agricultural, with livestock and dairy farming, textiles and fruit production among its major industries. The region is the leader in France in the sectors of butter, fromage frais , soft cheeses, cider apples, cider, leeks, turnips, and flax. The region also breeds more horses than any other in France. The western part of

7614-428: The status of departmental " territorial collectivities ": region and department functions have been managed by a " single territorial collectivity " since 2018. Despite the intention to avoid the old nomenclature, often the names of pre-1790 provinces remained in use. For example, the name of Berry , though no longer having an official status, remains in widespread use in daily life. The departmental seat of government

7708-746: The surface area of France. The traditional districts of Lower Normandy include the Cotentin Peninsula and La Hague , the Campagne de Caen , the Norman Bocage , the Bessin , and the Avranchin . The traditional province of Normandy, with an integral history reaching back to the 10th century, was divided in 1956 into two regions: Lower Normandy and Upper Normandy. During the Roman era,

7802-593: The territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire . Following the defeats of Napoleon in 1814–1815 the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86 (three of the original departments having been split). In 1860 France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy , which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from

7896-455: The two rounds by a moderate party. After the 1992 election, the left had a majority in only 21 of the 100 departments; after the 2011 election, the left dominated 61 of the 100 departments. (Mayotte only became a department after the election.) Key to the parties: The removal of one or more levels of local government has been discussed for some years; in particular, the option of removing the departmental level. Frédéric Lefebvre , spokesman for

7990-475: The years. In the late 1880s Satie styled himself on at least one occasion "Erik Satie – gymnopédiste", and his works from this period include the three Gymnopédies (1888) and the first Gnossiennes (1889 and 1890). He earned a modest living as pianist and conductor at the Chat Noir, before falling out with the proprietor and moving to become second pianist at the nearby Auberge du Clou. There he became

8084-546: Was a succès de scandale , with jazz rhythms and instrumentation including parts for typewriter, steamship whistle and siren. It firmly established Satie's name before the public, and thereafter his career centred on the theatre, writing mainly to commission. In October 1916 Satie received a commission from the Princesse de Polignac that resulted in what Orledge rates as the composer's masterpiece, Socrate , two years later. Satie set translations from Plato 's Dialogues as

8178-481: Was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire , but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre , Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes . He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he

8272-455: Was a much more conscientious and successful student than he had been at the Conservatoire in his youth. It was not until 1911, when he was in his mid-forties, that Satie came to the notice of the musical public in general. In January of that year Maurice Ravel played some early Satie works at a concert by the Société musicale indépendante , a forward-looking group set up by Ravel and others as

8366-490: Was a project particularly identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès , although it had already been frequently discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers. The earliest known suggestion of it is from 1665 in the writings of d'Argenson . They have inspired similar divisions in many countries, some of them former French colonies. The 1822 territorial division of Spain (reverted due to

8460-481: Was a single small room, first in Montmartre and, from 1898 to his death, in Arcueil , a suburb of Paris. He adopted various images over the years, including a period in quasi-priestly dress, another in which he always wore identically coloured velvet suits, and is known for his last persona, in neat bourgeois costume, with bowler hat , wing collar, and umbrella. He was a lifelong heavy drinker, and died of cirrhosis of

8554-480: Was born in Honfleur and Fernand Léger in Argentan . Important events include Deauville Asian Film Festival and Deauville American Film Festival . 49°00′N 1°00′W  /  49.000°N 1.000°W  / 49.000; -1.000 Departments of France In the administrative divisions of France , the department ( French : département , pronounced [depaʁtəmɑ̃] )

8648-445: Was briefly attached. After a spell in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum , as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910 he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six . A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to

8742-472: Was created in the regained territory, with slightly different boundaries from the pre-war department of the same name. The reorganisation of Île-de-France in 1968 and the division of Corsica in 1975 added six more departments, raising the total in Metropolitan France to 96. By 2011, when the overseas collectivity of Mayotte became a department, joining the earlier overseas departments of

8836-707: Was in demand as a journalist, making contributions to the Revue musicale , Action , L'Esprit nouveau , the Paris-Journal and other publications from the Dadaist 391 to the English-language magazines Vanity Fair and The Transatlantic Review . As he contributed anonymously or under pen names to some publications it is not certain how many titles he wrote for, but Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians lists 25. Satie's habit of embellishing

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