The Saddest of Love Letters: Erik Satie's 2nd Gnossienne

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Erik Satie wrote seven Gnossiennes. The second is dated April 1893, during the period when Satie was in love with the artist Suzanne Valadon, and it is possible that the melancholy character of the music and some of the cryptic comments written over the score, are addressed to her. It was published, with Gnossiennes 1 and 3, in ‘La Figaro Musical’ in September 1893. Like its companions, Gnossienne 2 is radical in conception:, using modes and parallel harmonic movements, and the music is notated without time signature or barlines, employing a syncopated accompaniment pattern of the utmost simplicity although, unlike its companions, Gnossienne 2 sometimes inverts the rhythmic sequence. Unlike Gnossienne 1, which has only 2 chords, Gnossienne 2 contains 8 different harmonic/modal regions, and an unstable tonality. Its tonic hovers between Dorian G minor and Phrygian E minor.

It seems likely that Satie believed that his music was reviving the modes and rhythms of Ancient Greece. It is intriguing that his quiet reinvention of musical syntax was happening the same year as Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony and Dvorak’s New World Symphony!

Satie dedicated his second Gnossienne to Antoine de la Rochefoucauld who, in 1891, along with Satie’s friend Joséphine Péladin, was founder of a mystic sect called 'Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique et Esthetique du Temple et du Graal’, which hoped to merge Roman Catholic theology with various arcane mystical practices, and to promote art works “of an esoteric flavour”. The sect was influenced in its conception by Wagner’s Parsifal, and had a hierarchy of chivalric orders. Satie was involved, as composer and chapelmaster, and composed several pieces for the movement during this period, despite being severely anti-Wagnerian in outlook. He left the order in 1892.

Erik Satie: Gnossienne 2

Pianist: Matthew King.

The first Gnossienne can be heard here: https://youtu.be/4Y42P0G-kGY


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Edited by Ian Coulter ( https://www.iancoultermusic.com )
Produced and directed by Ian Coulter & Matthew King