{"id":1762,"date":"2010-08-24T10:27:10","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T09:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/?p=1762"},"modified":"2010-08-24T14:32:58","modified_gmt":"2010-08-24T13:32:58","slug":"send-in-the-clowns-satie-and-%e2%80%a6-take-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/08\/24\/send-in-the-clowns-satie-and-%e2%80%a6-take-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Send in the Clowns: Satie and \u2026 Take That ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"United across centuries: weird composer Erik Satie and Brit pop group Take That. Surely not ?<\/p>\n

But yes. In Satie\u2019s ballet-realiste Parade<\/em> from 1917, three Actor-Managers set up a side-show outside their tent, in an effort to attract an audience to see their show. Sadly, their efforts prove in vain: the spectacle outside the tent becomes the main attraction, and no-one is enticed in to see the proper performance inside.<\/p>\n

You can hear this sense of desperate futility in the episode of the Chinese Magician<\/a><\/em>, where the jollity of the music and the whistling in the percussion are overwhelmed by ponderous orchestration and repetition leading nowhere. At the end of the piece, exhausted by their futile efforts, the characters slump to the ground in defeat.<\/p>\n

\"\"This sense of desperation is also captured to great effect in the video to Take That\u2019s Said It All<\/a><\/em>, released in 2009, where all the energy and antics of the clowns cannot move the audience, because the tent is empty. There\u2019s no-one there to appreciate their manic efforts: as with the Satie, the main focus of the show, the audience, is absent, and the characters can only act out their performances with a sense of\u00a0forlorn hope.<\/p>\n

Shot in muted and washed-out colours, thereby depriving them even of the imposed jollity of their colourful outfits, there are some beautiful sequences; there’s a sense of resignation about them as they dress for what they know will be a\u00a0pointless show. Clowns are rescued from the ludicrous nature of their garb and their slapstick antics\u00a0through audience laughter, redeemed through the\u00a0mirth they create for others.\u00a0There’s none of that here: no redemption for them at all.<\/p>\n