Biography
Erik Satie was born on 17 May 1866 in Honfleur and died on 1 July 1925 in Paris. He briefly studied at the Paris Conservatoire, which he left without a diploma, and supported himself in the 1880s as a pianist in the cabarets of Montmartre. With spare, often wryly titled piano pieces such as the Gymnopédies (1888) and his idea of "furniture music" as background sound for everyday life, he deliberately turned away from late Romanticism and Impressionism. In 1917 he composed the score for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes production Parade, a ballet built on Jean Cocteau's scenario, Pablo Picasso's set design and Léonide Massine's choreography, which caused a scandal with everyday noises such as a typewriter and a siren. Satie is now regarded as a key forerunner of Minimalism and a model for composers such as John Cage.
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