{"id":1645,"date":"2010-07-19T09:29:20","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T08:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/?p=1645"},"modified":"2010-07-19T09:41:33","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T08:41:33","slug":"turkish-delight-satie-vs-mozart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/07\/19\/turkish-delight-satie-vs-mozart\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish Delight: Satie vs Mozart"},"content":{"rendered":"

1913 was a year of destruction: it saw the beginning of the First World War, and the premi\u00e8re of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring<\/em> which smashed the homogeny of the orchestra, as well as principles of rhythm and harmony.<\/p>\n

\"Erik
The Master of Arcueil: Erik Satie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But it also witnessed annihilation on a smaller scale: Erik Satie<\/a>, the master of Arcueil, took on Mozart and destroyed him. Satie turned his satiricial eye on Mozart’s famous Rondo alla turca<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>in his set of three piano pieces forming the Croquis et agaceries d’un gros bonhomme en bois.<\/em><\/p>\n

Satie’s exaggerated parody in the first of these, his Tyroliene Turque<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>skewers Mozart harmonically, rhythmically, and structurally.<\/p>\n

Satie has introduced strange dissonances into Mozart’s harmonies, and altered the time-signature from Mozart’s original 2\/4<\/a>\u00a0to a rhythmic feel of three beats in a bar (although, by this stage, Satie had long abandoned anything so traditional as time-signatures and bar-lines, so the score has neither<\/a>). The right-hand octaves in Mozart’s piece have been split by Satie, such that the melody is distended further by having each note repeated an octave higher.<\/p>\n

And then: the music returns to the opening ostinato, which seems to be in G major, but with a prominent flattened seventh on the third beat of each repetition suggesting that the music may move to C major – which, being Satie, of course it does not. These repeating, endless patterns, implying harmonic motion on the one hand whilst denying it on the other, are typical of Satie: ” listen, I’m going to modulate: oh, wait, no I’m not!”<\/p>\n

That’s the great thing about Satie: his music is murderous in a brilliantly concise fashion. Don’t underestimate him: there’s always more to Satie than meets the ear.<\/p>\n