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 ...

Aldo Ciccolini at the piano. Back in the 1960s, composer Erik Satie’s limpid, odd, but wonderful solo piano music became known largely through the recordings of the late Aldo Ciccolini, who very ...

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 ...

‘He was certainly the oddest person I’ve ever known,’ said Stravinsky. Stately and serene, Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies offer music of radical simplicity and transcendent beauty, from a composer who ...

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 ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. On the centenary of Erik Satie’s death, music critic Ian Penman wants to downplay the few garish facts people ...

What is the purpose of a poem, an illustration or a nonsensical phrase in a score? If it makes musicians stop and think, that’s a good start. By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim A century after the ...