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129-398: The form first appeared in the late Renaissance period. It originated in northern Italy. Several publications of the 1590s include toccatas, by composers such as Claudio Merulo , Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli , Adriano Banchieri , and Luzzasco Luzzaschi . These are keyboard compositions in which one hand, and then the other, performs virtuosic runs and brilliant cascading passages against

258-696: A seconda prattica (an innovative practice involving monodic style and freedom in treatment of dissonance, both justified by the expressive setting of texts) during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In the late 16th century, as the Renaissance era closed, an extremely manneristic style developed. In secular music, especially in the madrigal , there was a trend towards complexity and even extreme chromaticism (as exemplified in madrigals of Luzzaschi , Marenzio , and Gesualdo ). The term mannerism derives from art history. Beginning in Florence , there

387-402: 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

516-450: 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

645-506: 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

774-435: 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

903-589: A brief toccatina as his last published work (Op. 75). From the early 20th century , Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian each wrote a toccata for solo piano , as did French composers Maurice Ravel as part of Le Tombeau de Couperin , Jules Massenet , Claude Debussy in his suite Pour le piano and also " Jardins sous la pluie " (which is a toccata but not in name), Pierre Sancan and York Bowen 's Toccata Op. 155. Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wrote four toccatas for solo piano, while Moises Moleiro wrote two. George Enescu 's Piano Suite No. 2, Op. 10 , opens with

1032-500: A cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of Italian models. Most were for three to six voices. Musica reservata is either a style or a performance practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter half of the 16th century, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text. The cultivation of European music in

1161-580: A chordal accompaniment in the other hand. Among the composers working in Venice at this time was the young Hans Leo Hassler , who studied with the Gabrielis; he brought the form back with him to Germany. It was in Germany where it underwent its highest development, culminating in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach more than a hundred years later. The Baroque toccata, beginning with Girolamo Frescobaldi ,

1290-637: 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

1419-464: 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

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1548-590: 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

1677-524: A few decades later in about 1476, the Flemish composer and music theorist Tinctoris reaffirmed the powerful influence Dunstaple had, stressing the "new art" that Dunstaple had inspired. Tinctoris hailed Dunstaple as the fons et origo of the style, its "wellspring and origin." The contenance angloise , while not defined by Martin le Franc, was probably a reference to Dunstaple's stylistic trait of using full triadic harmony (three note chords), along with

1806-469: 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

1935-408: A jazz-inspired toccata as part of his Four Piano Pieces , Op. 1. Robert Browning used the motif or concept of a toccata by Baldassare Galuppi to evoke thoughts of human transience in his poem " A Toccata of Galuppi's " (although Galuppi did not actually write any piece with the name 'Toccata'). Renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of

2064-647: A liking for the interval of the third . Assuming that he had been on the continent with the Duke of Bedford, Dunstaple would have been introduced to French fauxbourdon ; borrowing some of the sonorities, he created elegant harmonies in his own music using thirds and sixths (an example of a third interval is the notes C and E; an example of a sixth interval is the notes C and A). Taken together, these are seen as defining characteristics of early Renaissance music. Many of these traits may have originated in England, taking root in

2193-483: 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

2322-570: 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

2451-497: 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

2580-515: A piano toccata. Schumann's ambitious Toccata in C major is considered one of the most technically difficult works in the repertoire and the foremost representative of the genre in the 1800s. The Liszt toccata is a very short and austere composition from his late period, and is practically a toccata only by name. Smaller-scale toccatas are sometimes called "toccatina": Liszt's contemporary and well-known virtuoso in his day Charles-Valentin Alkan composed

2709-569: A prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness". Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores were extremely rare, and barlines were not used. Note values were generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of beat was the semibreve , or whole note . As had been the case since the Ars Nova (see Medieval music ), there could be either two or three of these for each breve (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent to

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2838-680: 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 ,

2967-478: A result of the increased use of paper (rather than vellum ), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enforce the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes. Accidentals (e.g. added sharps, flats and naturals that change

3096-442: 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

3225-462: A singer versed in counterpoint." (See musica ficta .) A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together, musicians would avoid parallel octaves and parallel fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians. It is through contemporary tablatures for various plucked instruments that we have gained much information about which accidentals were performed by

3354-448: A solo instrument such as the lute, vihuela, harp, or keyboard. Such arrangements were called intabulations (It. intavolatura , Ger. Intabulierung ). Towards the end of the period, the early dramatic precursors of opera such as monody , the madrigal comedy , and the intermedio are heard. According to Margaret Bent : "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our [modern] standards; when translated into modern form it acquires

3483-503: 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

3612-490: A texture dominated by the highest voice; the other two voices, unsupplied with text, were probably played by instruments. Du Fay was one of the last composers to make use of late-medieval polyphonic structural techniques such as isorhythm , and one of the first to employ the more mellifluous harmonies, phrasing and melodies characteristic of the early Renaissance. His compositions within the larger genres (masses, motets and chansons) are mostly similar to each other; his renown

3741-510: A toccata movement called A Touch , with reference to the Italian verb toccare . The toccata form was of great importance in the French romantic organ school, something of which Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens laid the foundation with his Fanfare . Toccatas in this style usually consist of rapid chord progressions combined with a powerful tune (often played in the pedal). The most famous examples are

3870-521: A toccata. The first piece , "Sévère réprimande " ( Severe Reprimand ), of Erik Satie 's 1912 composition Veritables Preludes flasques (pour un chien) is a toccata. The British composer Peter Seabourne reverted to the earlier multi-sectional manner of Bach in his piano cycle called Steps Volume 6: Toccatas and Fantasias , his six examples being designed to be interpolated between the seven Bach toccatas for harpsichord BWV 910-916. The same composer's earlier cycle Steps Volume 1: An anthology includes

3999-499: A variety of other sacred works. John Dunstaple (c. 1390–1453) was an English composer of polyphonic music of the late medieval era and early Renaissance periods. He was one of the most famous composers active in the early 15th century, a near-contemporary of Power, and was widely influential, not only in England but on the continent, especially in the developing style of the Burgundian School . Dunstaple's influence on

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4128-524: A vehicle for personal expression. Composers found ways to make vocal music more expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music , and vice versa. Popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists. Music also became more self-sufficient with its availability in printed form, existing for its own sake. Precursor versions of many familiar modern instruments (including

4257-456: 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

4386-551: Is best known for his well-written melodies, and for his use of three themes: travel, God and sex . Gilles Binchois ( c.  1400 –1460) was a Dutch composer, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian school and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century. While often ranked behind his contemporaries Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple by contemporary scholars, his works were still cited, borrowed and used as source material after his death. Binchois

4515-409: Is considered to be a fine melodist, writing carefully shaped lines which are easy to sing and memorable. His tunes appeared in copies decades after his death and were often used as sources for mass composition by later composers. Most of his music, even his sacred music, is simple and clear in outline, sometimes even ascetic (monk-like). A greater contrast between Binchois and the extreme complexity of

4644-507: Is entitled "Toccare," again referring to the origins of the word toccata; and the first movement ( Schnelle halbe ) of Paul Hindemith 's fifth Kammermusik (a viola concerto) is written as a toccata. Another contemporary composer who has written many toccatas is Emma Lou Diemer . In addition to several toccatas for organ, she has written three for piano (that of 1979 is frequently played), one for flute chorus, one for violin and piano, one for solo timpani and one for six mallet percussion. Both

4773-583: 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

4902-409: Is largely due to what was perceived as his perfect control of the forms in which he worked, as well as his gift for memorable and singable melody. During the 15th century, he was universally regarded as the greatest composer of his time, an opinion that has largely survived to the present day. During the 16th century, Josquin des Prez ( c.  1450/1455  – 27 August 1521) gradually acquired

5031-427: Is more sectional and increased in length, intensity and virtuosity from the Renaissance version, reaching heights of extravagance equivalent to the overwhelming detail seen in the architecture of the period. It often featured rapid runs and arpeggios alternating with chordal or fugal parts. Sometimes there was a lack of regular tempo and almost always an improvisational feel. Other Baroque composers of toccatas, in

5160-490: 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

5289-460: 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

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5418-429: 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

5547-501: Is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque period. The period may be roughly subdivided, with an early period corresponding to the career of Guillaume Du Fay ( c.  1397 –1474) and the cultivation of cantilena style, a middle dominated by Franco-Flemish School and the four-part textures favored by Johannes Ockeghem (1410s or '20s–1497) and Josquin des Prez (late 1450s–1521), and culminating during

5676-425: The ars subtilior of the prior (fourteenth) century would be hard to imagine. Most of his secular songs are rondeaux , which became the most common song form during the century. He rarely wrote in strophic form , and his melodies are generally independent of the rhyme scheme of the verses they are set to. Binchois wrote music for the court, secular songs of love and chivalry that met the expectations and satisfied

5805-404: 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

5934-447: The Baroque , but for further explanation of this transition, see antiphon , concertato , monody , madrigal , and opera, as well as the works given under "Sources and further reading." Many instruments originated during the Renaissance; others were variations of, or improvements upon, instruments that had existed previously. Some have survived to the present day; others have disappeared, only to be recreated in order to perform music of

6063-544: The Counter-Reformation in the florid counterpoint of Palestrina ( c.  1525 –1594) and the Roman School . Music was increasingly freed from medieval constraints, and more variety was permitted in range, rhythm, harmony, form, and notation. On the other hand, rules of counterpoint became more constrained, particularly with regard to treatment of dissonances . In the Renaissance, music became

6192-527: 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

6321-501: The Low Countries , along with a flourishing system of music education in the area's many churches and cathedrals allowed the training of large numbers of singers, instrumentalists, and composers. These musicians were highly sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers, performers, and teachers. Since the printing press made it easier to disseminate printed music, by

6450-709: 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

6579-415: The cornett and sackbut , and the tabor and tambourine . At the beginning of the 16th century, instruments were considered to be less important than voices. They were used for dances and to accompany vocal music. Instrumental music remained subordinated to vocal music, and much of its repertory was in varying ways derived from or dependent on vocal models. Various kinds of organs were commonly used in

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6708-413: The formes fixes ( rondeau , ballade, and virelai), which dominated secular European music of the 14th and 15th centuries. He also wrote a handful of Italian ballate , almost certainly while he was in Italy. As is the case with his motets, many of the songs were written for specific occasions, and many are datable, thus supplying useful biographical information. Most of his songs are for three voices, using

6837-583: The lute song . Mixed forms such as the motet-chanson and the secular motet also appeared. Purely instrumental music included consort music for recorders or viols and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles. Common instrumental genres were the toccata , prelude , ricercar , and canzona . Dances played by instrumental ensembles (or sometimes sung) included the basse danse (It. bassadanza ), tourdion , saltarello , pavane , galliard , allemande , courante , bransle , canarie , piva , and lavolta . Music of many genres could be arranged for

6966-501: The ordinary of the mass which were thematically unified and intended for contiguous performance. The Old Hall Manuscript contains his mass based on the Marian antiphon , Alma Redemptoris Mater , in which the antiphon is stated literally in the tenor voice in each movement, without melodic ornaments. This is the only cyclic setting of the mass ordinary which can be attributed to him. He wrote mass cycles, fragments, and single movements and

7095-516: The polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school . The invention of the printing press in 1439 made it cheaper and easier to distribute music and music theory texts on a wider geographic scale and to more people. Prior to the invention of printing, written music and music theory texts had to be hand-copied, a time-consuming and expensive process. Demand for music as entertainment and as a leisure activity for educated amateurs increased with

7224-449: The triangle , the Jew's harp, the tambourine, the bells, cymbals , the rumble-pot, and various kinds of drums. Woodwind instruments (aerophones) produce sound by means of a vibrating column of air within the pipe. Holes along the pipe allow the player to control the length of the column of air, and hence the pitch. There are several ways of making the air column vibrate, and these ways define

7353-495: 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

7482-516: 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

7611-401: 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

7740-504: The 14th century, with highly independent voices (both in vocal music and in instrumental music). The beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the composers often striving for smoothness in the melodic parts. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music – in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them to distinguish

7869-617: The 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ars nova , the Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triadic harmony and the spread of the contenance angloise style from the British Isles to the Burgundian School . A convenient watershed for its end

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7998-788: The Americas began in the 16th century soon after the arrival of the Spanish, and the conquest of Mexico. Although fashioned in European style, uniquely Mexican hybrid works based on native Mexican language and European musical practice appeared very early. Musical practices in New Spain continually coincided with European tendencies throughout the subsequent Baroque and Classical music periods. Among these New World composers were Hernando Franco , Antonio de Salazar , and Manuel de Zumaya . In addition, writers since 1932 have observed what they call

8127-484: The Baroque era. The main characteristics of Renaissance music are: The development of polyphony produced the notable changes in musical instruments that mark the Renaissance from the Middle Ages musically. Its use encouraged the use of larger ensembles and demanded sets of instruments that would blend together across the whole vocal range. As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by

8256-561: The Basilica San Marco di Venezia (see Venetian School ). These multiple revolutions spread over Europe in the next several decades, beginning in Germany and then moving to Spain, France, and England somewhat later, demarcating the beginning of what we now know as the Baroque musical era. The Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music in Rome, spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Many of

8385-546: 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

8514-598: The Burgundian School around the middle of the century. Because numerous copies of Dunstaple's works have been found in Italian and German manuscripts, his fame across Europe must have been widespread. Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three connected mass sections, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve complete isorhythmic motets and seven settings of Marian antiphons , such as Alma redemptoris Mater and Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae . Dunstaple

8643-746: 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

8772-504: 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

8901-476: 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

9030-524: The Renaissance period, were masses and motets , with some other developments towards the end of the era, especially as composers of sacred music began to adopt secular (non-religious) musical forms (such as the madrigal ) for religious use. The 15th and 16th century masses had two kinds of sources that were used: monophonic (a single melody line) and polyphonic (multiple, independent melodic lines), with two main forms of elaboration, based on cantus firmus practice or, beginning some time around 1500,

9159-410: The Renaissance, from large church organs to small portatives and reed organs called regals . Brass instruments in the Renaissance were traditionally played by professionals. Some of the more common brass instruments that were played: As a family, strings were used in many circumstances, both sacred and secular. A few members of this family include: Some Renaissance percussion instruments include

9288-437: The Renaissance, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, and many others. Beginning in the late 20th century, numerous early music ensembles were formed. Ensembles specializing in music of the Renaissance era give concert tours and make recordings, using modern reproductions of historical instruments and using singing and performing styles which musicologists believe were used during

9417-543: 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

9546-583: The composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches; stylistically they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a concurrent movement which was much more progressive. By far the most famous composer of the Roman School is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. While best known as a prolific composer of masses and motets, he

9675-480: The continent's musical vocabulary was enormous, particularly considering the relative paucity of his (attributable) works. He was recognized for possessing something never heard before in music of the Burgundian School : la contenance angloise ("the English countenance"), a term used by the poet Martin le Franc in his Le Champion des Dames. Le Franc added that the style influenced Dufay and Binchois . Writing

9804-422: 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

9933-482: 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

10062-543: The developments which define the Early Modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome ; increased innovation and discovery; the growth of commercial enterprises; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation . From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular,

10191-420: The different parts. The modal (as opposed to tonal , also known as "musical key", an approach developed in the subsequent Baroque music era, c. 1600–1750) characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the increased use of root motions of fifths or fourths (see the " circle of fifths " for details). An example of a chord progression in which the chord roots move by

10320-440: The emergence of a bourgeois class. Dissemination of chansons , motets , and masses throughout Europe coincided with the unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style which culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina , Orlande de Lassus , Thomas Tallis , William Byrd and Tomás Luis de Victoria . Relative political stability and prosperity in

10449-401: 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

10578-554: The end of the 16th century, Italy had absorbed the northern musical influences with Venice , Rome, and other cities becoming centers of musical activity. This reversed the situation from a hundred years earlier. Opera, a dramatic staged genre in which singers are accompanied by instruments, arose at this time in Florence. Opera was developed as a deliberate attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece. Principal liturgical (church-based) musical forms, which remained in use throughout

10707-405: 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

10836-850: The ending movement of Charles-Marie Widor 's Symphony No. 5 , and the Finale of Louis Vierne 's Symphony No. 1 . Toccatas occasionally make appearances in works for full orchestra ; a notable example is the final movement of the Eighth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams . It could be said that the finales of Francis Poulenc 's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra and Maurice Ravel 's Piano Concerto are toccatas in all but name. The first movements of Benjamin Britten 's Piano Concerto and Nikolai Medtner 's 2nd piano concerto are toccatas. The final movement of John Adams ' Violin Concerto

10965-578: The era. One of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music was the increasing reliance on the interval of the third and its inversion, the sixth (in the Middle Ages , thirds and sixths had been considered dissonances, and only perfect intervals were treated as consonances: the perfect fourth the perfect fifth , the octave , and the unison ). Polyphony  – the use of multiple, independent melodic lines, performed simultaneously – became increasingly elaborate throughout

11094-665: 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

11223-546: The finales of Samuel Barber 's violin concerto and piano concerto can be described as toccatas. The Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera often utilizes toccatas or toccata-like forms as the finales of his works; notably in the Harp Concerto, Piano Concerto No.1, Violin Concerto, Guitar Sonata, and his Piano Sonatas. Russian jazz composer Nikolai Kapustin composed two toccatinas: one as part of his Eight Concert Etudes, Op. 40 and another, Opus 36. Evgeny Kissin wrote

11352-464: 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

11481-464: 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

11610-480: The harmonization used a technique of parallel writing known as fauxbourdon , as in the following example, a setting of the Marian antiphon Ave maris stella . Du Fay may have been the first composer to use the term "fauxbourdon" for this simpler compositional style, prominent in 15th-century liturgical music in general and that of the Burgundian school in particular. Most of Du Fay's secular (non-religious) songs follow

11739-420: The interval of a fourth would be the chord progression, in the key of C Major: "D minor/G Major/C Major" (these are all triads; three-note chords). The movement from the D minor chord to the G Major chord is an interval of a perfect fourth. The movement from the G Major chord to the C Major chord is also an interval of a perfect fourth. This later developed into one of the defining characteristics of tonality during

11868-504: 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

11997-530: The level of the breve–semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve–minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively) when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as quarter notes ) occurred less often. This development of white mensural notation may be

12126-588: 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

12255-534: 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

12384-410: The lower parts; all of his sacred music is vocal. Instruments may have been used to reinforce the voices in actual performance for almost any of his works. Seven complete masses, 28 individual mass movements, 15 settings of chant used in mass propers, three Magnificats, two Benedicamus Domino settings, 15 antiphon settings (six of them Marian antiphons ), 27 hymns, 22 motets (13 of these isorhythmic in

12513-470: The mid-15th century. Du Fay composed in most of the common forms of the day, including masses , motets , Magnificats , hymns , simple chant settings in fauxbourdon , and antiphons within the area of sacred music, and rondeaux , ballades , virelais and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music. None of his surviving music is specifically instrumental, although instruments were certainly used for some of his secular music, especially for

12642-491: The modern "measure," though it was itself a note value and a measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the next smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note") to each semibreve. These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at

12771-486: The more angular, austere 14th-century style which gave way to more melodic, sensuous treble-dominated part-writing with phrases ending in the "under-third" cadence in Du Fay's youth) and 87 chansons definitely by him have survived. Many of Du Fay's compositions were simple settings of chant, obviously designed for liturgical use, probably as substitutes for the unadorned chant, and can be seen as chant harmonizations. Often

12900-406: The new style of "pervasive imitation", in which composers would write music in which the different voices or parts would imitate the melodic and/or rhythmic motifs performed by other voices or parts. Several main types of masses were used: Masses were normally titled by the source from which they borrowed. Cantus firmus mass uses the same monophonic melody, usually drawn from chant and usually in

13029-461: The notes) were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering notations for guitar-family instruments ( tablatures ) today. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score correctly, even if the accidentals were not written in. As such, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to

13158-488: The original practitioners. For information on specific theorists, see Johannes Tinctoris , Franchinus Gaffurius , Heinrich Glarean , Pietro Aron , Nicola Vicentino , Tomás de Santa María , Gioseffo Zarlino , Vicente Lusitano , Vincenzo Galilei , Giovanni Artusi , Johannes Nucius , and Pietro Cerone . The key composers from the early Renaissance era also wrote in a late Medieval style, and as such, they are transitional figures. Leonel Power (c. 1370s or 1380s–1445)

13287-525: The period before Bach, include Johann Pachelbel , Michelangelo Rossi , Johann Jakob Froberger , Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck , Alessandro Scarlatti , and Dieterich Buxtehude . Bach's toccatas are among the most famous examples of the form, and his Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 is one of the most popular organ works today, although its authorship is disputed by some authorities. His toccatas for organ are improvisatory compositions, and are often followed by an independent fugue movement. In such cases,

13416-596: The period on authentic instruments. As in the modern day, instruments may be classified as brass, strings, percussion, and woodwind. Medieval instruments in Europe had most commonly been used singly, often self-accompanied with a drone, or occasionally in parts. From at least as early as the 13th century through the 15th century there was a division of instruments into haut (loud, shrill, outdoor instruments) and bas (quieter, more intimate instruments). Only two groups of instruments could play freely in both types of ensembles:

13545-574: 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

13674-517: The preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is lost. Secular music was music that was independent of churches. The main types were the German Lied , Italian frottola , the French chanson , the Italian madrigal , and the Spanish villancico . Other secular vocal genres included the caccia , rondeau , virelai , bergerette , ballade , musique mesurée , canzonetta , villanella , villotta , and

13803-686: 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

13932-548: The reputation as the greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression universally imitated and admired. Writers as diverse as Baldassare Castiglione and Martin Luther wrote about his reputation and fame. In Venice , from about 1530 until around 1600, an impressive polychoral style developed, which gave Europe some of the grandest, most sonorous music composed up until that time, with multiple choirs of singers, brass and strings in different spatial locations in

14061-549: 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

14190-524: 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

14319-533: 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,

14448-534: 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

14577-593: The sound of instrumental ensembles. During the 15th century, the sound of full triads became common, and towards the end of the 16th century the system of church modes began to break down entirely, giving way to functional tonality (the system in which songs and pieces are based on musical "keys"), which would dominate Western art music for the next three centuries. From the Renaissance era, notated secular and sacred music survives in quantity, including vocal and instrumental works and mixed vocal/instrumental works. A wide range of musical styles and genres flourished during

14706-449: The subcategories of woodwind instruments. A player may blow across a mouth hole, as in a flute; into a mouthpiece with a single reed, as in a modern-day clarinet or saxophone; or a double reed, as in an oboe or bassoon. All three of these methods of tone production can be found in Renaissance instruments. Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884,

14835-533: The taste of the Dukes of Burgundy who employed him, and evidently loved his music accordingly. About half of his extant secular music is found in the Oxford Bodleian Library. Guillaume Du Fay ( c.  1397 –1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. The central figure in the Burgundian School , he was regarded by his contemporaries as the leading composer in Europe in

14964-413: The tenor and most often in longer note values than the other voices. Other sacred genres were the madrigale spirituale and the laude . During the period, secular (non-religious) music had an increasing distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from

15093-492: The toccata is used in place of the usually more stable prelude . Bach's toccatas for harpsichord BWV 910-916 are multi-sectional works which include fugal writing, rhetorical flourishes, recitative, and aria-like movements as part of their structure. Beyond the Baroque period, toccatas are found less frequently. There are a few notable examples, however. From the Romantic period , Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt each wrote

15222-408: The violin, guitar, lute and keyboard instruments) developed into new forms during the Renaissance. These instruments were modified to respond to the evolution of musical ideas, and they presented new possibilities for composers and musicians to explore. Early forms of modern woodwind and brass instruments like the bassoon and trombone also appeared, extending the range of sonic color and increasing

15351-475: 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

15480-546: 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

15609-481: 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

15738-455: 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

15867-481: 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

15996-562: Was also an important madrigalist. His ability to bring together the functional needs of the Catholic Church with the prevailing musical styles during the Counter-Reformation period gave him his enduring fame. The brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them, is known as the English Madrigal School . The English madrigals were

16125-470: Was an English composer of the late medieval and early Renaissance music eras. Along with John Dunstaple , he was one of the major figures in English music in the early 15th century. Power is the composer best represented in the Old Hall Manuscript , one of the only undamaged sources of English music from the early 15th century. He was one of the first composers to set separate movements of

16254-507: Was an attempt to revive the dramatic and musical forms of Ancient Greece, through the means of monody , a form of declaimed music over a simple accompaniment; a more extreme contrast with the preceding polyphonic style would be hard to find; this was also, at least at the outset, a secular trend. These musicians were known as the Florentine Camerata . We have already noted some of the musical developments that helped to usher in

16383-445: 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

16512-707: 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

16641-410: Was one of the first to compose masses using a single melody as cantus firmus . A good example of this technique is his Missa Rex seculorum . He is believed to have written secular (non-religious) music, but no songs in the vernacular can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty. Oswald von Wolkenstein (c. 1376–1445) is one of the most important composers of the early German Renaissance. He

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