Mark Richardson

I was ripping some CDs today and one of them was a CD of Satie’s piano music. It starts, of course, with ”Trois Gymnopédies”. And I started thinking about this piece of music and and what it sounded like when I heard it the first time. I was about 16 or so and my brother played it for me. I can’t remember where he got it. He was really into Brian Eno at the time, his records with Harold Budd and so on. So I understood it in that lineage but i didn’t know when it was from. But it was one of those things where I suddenly felt like I understood the beauty of music in an entirely new way. It changed my hearing in an instant. Is this a common experience? I don’t know. But now here we are many years later and it’s been in a million car commercials and in the background at the pharmacy and the musical accompaniment in a 100 terrible performance pieces and you know what? I still love it. It’s some kind of platonic ideal, just sits there, a huge lump of a thing radiating beauty in every direction in spite of cliche. 

Posted at 3:08pm and tagged with: Erik Satie,.