Satie for kids: his life, his music, and what to play first

Erik Satie was a French composer who lived from 1866 to 1925. He wrote short, calm, simple piano pieces at a time when other composers were writing long, loud, complicated ones. He gave his music funny titles and filled his scores with odd notes to the player. The best first piece for a child is the Gymnopédie No. 1, three slow minutes of piano that many people know without knowing its name.

Quick facts

• Born: 1866, in Honfleur, France
• Died: 1925, in Paris, France
• Era: Modern
• Played: piano
• Known for: the three Gymnopédies, the Gnossiennes, and the ballet Parade

The life in short

Satie was born in a port town on the coast of Normandy. His mother, who came from a Scottish family, died when he was six. He was raised for some years by his grandparents and learned music from the local church organist.

At 13, he entered the Paris Conservatoire. His teachers called him lazy and said he had no talent. He left without a diploma.

He earned his living as a pianist in the cafes of Montmartre, a hill in Paris where painters and poets gathered. At 21, he wrote the three Gymnopédies.

Satie became a friend of Debussy, who was a few years older. Debussy arranged two of the Gymnopédies for orchestra, which helped people notice them. Later, Ravel played Satie’s music in concerts.

At 39, Satie did something unusual for a known composer. He went back to school. He spent several years studying the rules of composition and earned the diploma he had missed.

In 1917, he wrote the music for a ballet called Parade. The painter Picasso designed the costumes. The score calls for a typewriter, a siren, and a pistol shot, and the audience was in an uproar.

For the last 27 years of his life, Satie lived alone in one small room in a suburb of Paris. He let no one in. He walked several miles into the city each day and home again at night.

After he died, his friends opened the room. They found two pianos, one stacked on top of the other, a large collection of umbrellas, and a set of identical gray velvet suits.

What the music sounds like

Satie’s music is spare. A slow tune floats over a few soft chords, and nothing is in a hurry. Much of it sounds a little sad and a little funny at once.

He wrote some pieces with no bar lines at all. Where other composers wrote “slow” or “loud,” he wrote notes such as “wonder about yourself” and “on the tongue.”

He also had the idea of “furniture music.” This was music meant to sit in the background of a room while people did other things.

The titles

Satie named his pieces to make people smile. Among them:

• Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear
• Flabby Preludes for a Dog
• Dried-Up Embryos
• Bureaucratic Sonatina

One short piece, called Vexations, comes with a note that suggests playing it 840 times in a row. A team of pianists first did so in 1963. It took more than 18 hours.

Four pieces to play first

Gymnopédie No. 1. The left hand rocks between a low note and a chord. The right hand plays a slow tune that seems to drift.

Gnossienne No. 1. A winding melody with an Eastern flavor over a steady, repeating bass. There are no bar lines in the score.

“Je te veux.” A sweet, swaying waltz that Satie wrote as a cafe song.

“Le Piccadilly.” A jaunty march in the style of American ragtime, which was new in Paris then.

Things to do together

Name a piece. Play a Gnossienne. Ask your child to invent a title as strange as Satie’s.

Write odd directions. Satie told pianists to play “like a nightingale with a toothache.” Make up three directions and try to sing a song each way.

Furniture music. Play a Gymnopédie in the background while you draw. Afterward, ask whether anyone noticed it.

Rock the bass. On a piano, play a low note and then a chord, at a slow pace, over and over. That is the left hand of the Gymnopédie.

Count the suits. Talk about the room his friends found. Ask your child what one thing they would collect.

Print and play

Fill in a composer study notebook page for Satie. For a closer listen, read Gymnopédie No. 1 for kids. His friends Debussy and Ravel each have a page. For more quiet pieces, see calm classical music for kids at bedtime.

For more composers from the same country, read French composers for kids. For more composers by era, see classical composers for kids.