SATIE - Variations for Orchestra was composed in Holland-On-Sea, Essex and was completed on 28th June 1993. It lasts around 20 minutes.
There are three perspectives or levels of variation in SATIE:
No-one, including presumably the piano tuner, ever entered Satie's apartment. The theme is played a semitone flat by an out-of-tune piano and is heard as it might be by a passer-by on the street.
The choral-theme is played slowly by the woodwind and stopped horns whilst metal percussion instruments gently decorate. Lower strings bustle. The violins mark the phrasing by introducing the first variant on Les Fils Des Étoiles. At the back of my mind whilst writing this variation was the curious and probably spurious fact that Satie and Sibelius were almost exact contemporaries. A global trill and harp glissando lead to:
This is a highly charged, very rhythmical and occasionally violent variation with intimations of Stravinsky. Anvils are a significant feature of the percussion section. A solo tuba is responsible for the Les Fils Des Étoiles variant. The note D is the one to which the players invariably return. The last few quiet moments introduce a solo bassoon.
The first part is a ruminative bassoon solo accompanied by sustained string chords derived from Les Fils Des Étoiles. The second part transforms the bassoon material into a two-part canon between the violins and bassoons/violas/cellos. Celeste, vibraphone and later the harp provide Les Fils Des Étoiles-based harmonic accompaniment; woodwind and muted trumpets play gentle arabesque-like figures in the background; bass drum, timpani, contrabasses and bass clarinet explode from time to time.
This first "third-level" variation is based on Le Tango from Sports et Divertissements. Varying between different types of pizzicato and col legno, the violins hold to the Choral material. A typewriter (borrowed from Parade) is included. Satie's "liberation" of this extra-musical sound source looks forward to Variation 6. The "endless" structure of the original has later implications.
This places the trombone section in high relief. The ever more recurrent ostinato figure is from the second Avant-Dernières Penseés (Aubade, à Paul Dukas) whilst the two slow, contrasting celeste solos are lifted from the second Embryons Desséchés (d'Edriophthalma), and were themselves lifted by Satie from Schubert. The impetus for this variation was the idea of Satie's collaboration with Cocteau on a "circus" production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, although none of that music is present here.
commences with a trio of short wave radios. This is a direct homage to John Cage, who acknowledged an enormous debt to Satie, particularly with regard to the latter's "object-based" approach to composition and use of unconventional sound sources in a musical context. The employment of a short-wave radio is the logical consequence of the typewriter, the gun and the ship's siren - or at least it is for the purposes of this variation! Out of the static and white noise, comes the distant sound of the piano. Satie transcribed several of his café songs for piano solo (Je Te Veux, for example) but sadly not one of the loveliest, Tendrement, so I did. Solo strings join in in Palm-Court fashion but are rudely interrupted by:
The Choral is deconstructed as process music by the strings: a Satie-Thompson-Reich-Ligeti link is implied. Simultaneously, flutes, piccolo and celeste play a mutant version of Celle Qui Parle Trop, the first piece of Chapitres Tournés En Tous Sens. They are occasionally joined by the contrabassoon. Oboes, clarinets and bassoons underpin the proceedings with frank reminders of the Choral's original chording. Short, sharp brass and percussion shocks alter the course of the variation as we also become aware that the piano has forgotten to stop playing Variation 6. The strings return pizzicato and palindromically. Celle Qui Parle Trop reappears. The brass gradually die away to the end.
A gentle, murmuring sort of variation which excludes the lower brass and bassoons but includes cup-muted trumpets. Two pairs of crotales, tuned as in Prélude à l¹après-midi d¹un faune are used. The variation closes with a reference to Variation 4 (Tempo di Tango) which in keeping with its "endless" structure, is still going.
Some ten years or so ago, a close friend of mine, who also happened to be my first composition teacher, suffered a heart attack. One of his recuperative medicines caused him a rather bizarre auditory hallucination whereby the last chord of a piece would continue for a good half an hour after the record had stopped. The last chord of the above variation leaks into the next in a similar way, but not for the same length of time!
This variation is subtitled "anti-gymnopédie". The Debussian connection hinted at in the previous variation is extended by the characteristic use of the suspended cymbal.
All of the earlier variations take a bow in the course of this final variation. The Choral theme is heard for the very first time in its home key, played by horns and trombones in extreme registers. The piano is the last thing we hear - a C major chord dying to nothing - a return from the composer's interior world to the passer-by in the street - the opening perspective.
Gary Carpenter
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