1916 song cycle by Erik Satie
Trois mélodies ("Three Songs") is a 1916 song cycle for voice and piano by Erik Satie. One of Satie's rare excursions in mélodies (French art songs), it lasts under four minutes in performance.
The composer's first English-language biographer, Rollo H. Myers, thought this work contained "the essence of Satie the ironist, the wit, and the skillful parodist".
Songs.
The cycle consists of three songs set to whimsical verses by three contemporary French authors. Apart from a general light-hearted tone, there are no unifying elements in the music or texts. Satie conceived it for mezzo-soprano voice but it has been successfully performed by soprano and baritone vocalists.
The drollery of the "Trois mélodies" would appear to link it with Satie's humoristic or "fantaisiste" compositions of the 1910s. But in this song cycle, apart from the "genre Gounod" reference, he refrained from using the witty playing directions and extramusical commentary that helped define the public perception of his music in the pre-World War I era. He had apparently grown weary of the formula. Satie would revert to it only once more, for his spoof of 18th-century piano music, the "Sonatine bureaucratique" (1917).
History.
Satie wrote the "Trois mélodies" for mezzo-soprano Jane Bathori, a star of the Parisian opera world and a vigorous promoter of new French music. Although Bathori knew of Satie's reputation through their mutual friend Claude Debussy, the two did not actually meet until early April 1916, in preparation for an upcoming Ravel-Satie Festival sponsored by the Société Lyre et Palette. Satie immediately agreed to provide two new vocal numbers for her, and the songs "Daphénéo" and "Le chapelier" were completed by April 14. They were first performed by Bathori and pianist Ricardo Viñes at the festival, held at the Salle Huyghens in Paris on April 18, 1916.
Bathori was then invited to perform the two songs at a more prestigious event, a benefit concert "for artists affected by the War" sponsored by Germaine Bongard, sister of fashion designer Paul Poiret, scheduled for the following month. It would be staged in conjunction with an exhibition of modern painting, and Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were commissioned to design the programme. Satie habitually preferred to construct his compositions in groups of three, and on May 16 he sent Léon-Paul Fargue a note requesting a bit of verse to cap the Bathori cycle – "something very short &amp; terribly cynical". Fargue's brand-new poem, "La statue de bronze", was duly delivered and Satie completed his setting on May 26. The complete "Trois mélodies" was premiered by Bathori and Satie at the Galerie Thomas in Paris on May 30, 1916. The score was published by Rouart-Lerolle et Cie in 1917.
In his last years, the irascible Satie severed ties with two collaborators on the "Trois mélodies", René Chalupt and Léon-Paul Fargue, over petty misunderstandings. But Jane Bathori continued to promote his music after the composer's death in 1925. With Satie disciple Darius Milhaud as her accompanist she made the first recording of the "Trois mélodies", issued by Columbia in 1929.
Notes and references.
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