Lent et douloureux: slow and sorrowful. The left hand sways between two chords while the melody floats above. Let every note ring.
The story
Erik Satie was 22 and playing piano in the cabarets of Montmartre when he published three Gymnopédies in 1888. The marking is “lent et douloureux”: slow and sorrowful.
The title is a mystery. It probably refers to the gymnopaedia, a festival in ancient Sparta where young men danced unclothed, but Satie loved odd titles and never explained it.
The music ignores the rules of its day. There is no development and no climax, only two gently rocking chords and a floating melody. Claude Debussy admired it so much that he orchestrated two of the three in 1897.
Three things to know
- Satie later wrote pieces called “Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear” and “Flabby Preludes for a Dog”.
- The opening alternates two chords, G major seventh and D major seventh, for four whole bars before the melody enters.
- It is often called the first piece of ambient music, nearly a century before the term existed.
How to play it
Keep the left hand’s bass note and chord perfectly steady, like a slow pendulum. The melody can then float freely above it.