Stately and serene, Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies offer music of radical simplicity and transcendent beauty, from a composer who defied convention in his music and in his personal life. M. Erik Satie was ...

Today I heard–for the thousandth time– Satie’s famous solo piano tryptic 3 Gymopedies—the title refers to an ancient Spartan dance performed by naked men. Satie was an eccentric who gave his ...

Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No 1 might be a pop classic, but there’s much, much more to the fascinating and eccentric French composer Film-makers have missed a trick with the life of Erik Satie. A biopic ...

At some point, most pianists try picking their way through the slowly waltzing chords of Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1, the famous down-tempo piece that appears on relaxation podcasts and got its ...

Publicity image for Alistair McGowan's radio drama about Erik Satie: Three Pieces of a Pear I've hero-worshipped the French composer Erik Satie for many years. Not only was he a hugely innovative and ...

Thank the gods of funny, then, for the French composer Erik Satie: surrealist, satirist, top-notch eccentric and a man whose output is joyously impossible to categorise. These days Satie, who was born ...

Safe at home this spring has not necessarily meant sane at home. One antidote is a mega-dose of Erik Satie. The French composer’s most beguiling and languidly becalming piano pieces, particularly the ...

Pianist Aldo Ciccolini broke new ground at the Naples Conservatory in 1947 when he became its youngest professor of piano. Ciccolini went on to a distinguished career, bagging top prizes at several ...

Satie would, without doubt, come top of any list of eccentric composers. After all, can you imagine anyone else writing a set of Flabby Preludes for a Dog or Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear? His ...