Erik Saties Musique dAmeublement, some

ninety years later

(v.1220 2008-11-23)
Nicola Bernardini
A few days ago it rained. I should be out gathering
mushrooms. But here I am, having to write about Satie. In
an unguarded moment I said I would. Now I am pestered
with a deadline. Why, in heavens name, dont people read
the books about him that are available, play the music thats
published? Then I for one could go back to the woods and
spend my time protably.
John Cage, Erik Satie in Silence, 1961, p.76 [Cage, 1961]
1 Introduction
After having been ignored or despised during his lifetime, composer Erik Satie and his
concepts and ideas are an alltime favorite target of colonial appropriation by art
and industry alike. His Musique dAmeublement is no exception. Perhaps the boldest
and most provocative intellectual gesture of his production, the series of the Musiques
dAmeublement was, as we will see later on, essentially a failure during his existence
and went on being forgotten for about another thirty years after his death, until John
Cage resuscitated them out of oblivion with his longtime dedication and wit. Since
then, the cohort of eccentric artists of all sorts that call themselves followers of Satie,
his Furniture Music, his Vexations, etc. grows every day with unresting pace. The
Musiques dAmeublement are said to be at the origin of musique concr`ete, then of min-
imal music, then of ambient music, and so on (cf.[Rowley, 2004]). Even Cage seemed
attracted more by the ability of Saties surrealist ideas to explain his own thinking about
music at an early stage rather than by their extraordinary appearance in the context
in which Satie was operating (cf.[Cage, 1961]).
There is little surprise in this since Saties musical and aesthetic intelligence is by
all means exceptional and any kind of artistic production may powder itself with a
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This work is licensed Creative Commons BY:
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(possibly pale-ish) halo of humor and prestige by simply mentioning it. However, one
might wonder instead if a closer understanding of Saties thinking embedded in his
own days, rather than a simple appropriation of his ideas out of context, would not
produce a stronger appreciation of the aesthetic wealth that we have inherited from the
Maitre dArcueil. This short paper will attempt to sketch a dierent point of view on
the Musique dAmeublement setting it as a starting point for a wider exercise on the
evolution of the functions of music.
2 The Musiques dAmeublement
The Musiques dAmeublement are well described by a number of sources (for ex. [Volta
and Pleasance, 1998, Orledge, 1990, Templier, 1932, Shlomowitz, 1999, Wikipedia, 2005
2008]) relieving this author to extend this paper with another lengthy description. While
the Musique dAmeublement might have become a compositional procedure in his last
works (cf.[Orledge, 1990, p.4]), the term is ocially used in three sets of pieces, rang-
ing from 1917 to 1923 (cf.[Wikipedia, 20052008]). Only the second set was played by
Satie (counting Milhaud as a fellow player, follower and longtime friend) during his
life. The three pieces composing the set were created as intermission music to Max
Jacobs play Ruan toujours, truand jamais at the Barbazanges Gallery in Paris. Be-
sides the provocative description embedded by Satie and Milhaud in the scores of the
rst performance (Furnishing music completes ones property; its new; it doesnt upset
customs; it isnt tiring; its French; it wont wear out; it isnt boring, cf.[Gillmor, 1988,
pp.325326]), and in the descriptive text written in the program (We are presenting
today for the rst time a creation of Messieurs Erik Satie and Darius Milhaud, directed
by M. Delgrange, the musique dameublement which will be played during the inter-
missions. We urge you to take no notice of it and to behave during the intervals as if
it did not exist. This music, specially composed for Max Jacobs play claims to make
a contribution to life in the same way as a private conversation, a painting in a gallery,
or the chair on which you may or may not be seated., quoted by [Templier, 1932]),
a really enlightening detail is revealed by a wellknown anecdote concerning this play.
Apparently, the artists invitation neither to listen nor care for the music being played
and to visit an exposition of childrens drawings which was concurrently showing in the
same gallery went unnoticed. When the ensemble started playing, the public stopped
and sat, listening attentively to the music being played much to the dismay of the
creators.
While Saties descriptions are often deceptive and subtly satirical and indeed the
ones related to this second set are like that this detail is enlighting because it shows
the real intent with which Satie conceived his Musique dAmeublement: breaking the
representational model and function of bourgeois music performance, possibly recover-
ing/discovering other functions for music. Another wellknown characteristic of Satie
was his elaborate opposition to a vast number of musical styles which were very trendy
in his times: these range from the late German romanticism to the fauve composers,
from impressionism to expressionism, etc. In general, Satie was attuned to the Dadaist
movement in his animosity towards crystallized functions and roles in music: it is easy
to think that he did not hold in high consideration the bourgeois public of his time
and that his Musique dAmeublement (along with the Vexations) constitute the sublime
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insult to that public.
Musically speaking, the Musique dAmeublement is very ingeniously conceived. It
consists of very short pieces which may be repeated an indenite number of times. In
the case of the 1920 set, the composer considered the number of repetitions in function
of the duration of the entracte. The astounding feature of this music is that its har-
monic texture and its counterpoint are designed to create a circular endless form whose
repetition constitutes always a new starting point while being completely expectable.
Satie has not used all the musical tricks and shortcuts that were used later on by his
wouldbe epigons. No simplistic modal progressions or pedal notes are being used, no
melodic device is put forth to smooth the endless repetition. The harmony is tonal,
the music features cadences, pickups, salient points and catchy melodies. The form of
Saties Musiques dAmeublement show even less resemblance to any minimal music, not
to mention muzak: repetitions are always strictly identical, there is no identiable mu-
sical form related to them, there are no variations, no extensions, there is no evolution
in the strict sense. The message is exasperatingly static, and it does not seek to oer
any solution nor escape to its staticity.
3 Plundering followers
The idea that the Musique dAmeublement was the rst muzak ever conceived was pro-
posed by Milhaud at a later time: Satie was right: nowadays, children and housewives
ll their homes with unheeded music, reading and working to the sound of the wireless.
And in all public places, large stores and restaurants, the customers are drenched in
an unending ood of music. It is musique dameublement, heard, but not listened to
(quoted by [Orledge, 1995]). Again, Saties wit can indeed serve to many purposes, but
the distance between Saties Musique dAmeublement and presentday muzak is simply
incommensurable on musical terms.
The same goes for ambient music, another category that pleases itself with the idea of
deriving from the Musique dAmeublement. Again, the dierences in musical conception
would suce to dismiss any connection between the two.
But there is also an opposition in another dimension that is worthwhile mentioning
here. This opposition is made by the fact that Saties Musique dAmeublement was
conceived as a tribute to the making of a culture: the claim that Musique dAmeublement
was pure entertainment which does not deserve attention nor intellectual speculation
is obviously deceptive and it indicates that Satie was concerned with the deviations of
the society of his time, unable to conceive music as a social bonding device any longer
leaving all its functions to its representational capabilities.
Muzak and ambient music are two commercial categories that have exactly the op-
posite function: they exist to anesthetize the musical speculation functions of the brain
of their listeners, possibly benumbing it to convert its owner to a more accommodating
consumer and/or voter. There is no provocation, no satirical intention whatsoever.
4 Culture versus Entertainment
How is it possible that the opposition between the Musiques dAmeublement and its
wouldbe followers muzak and ambient music has been rarely (if ever) caught by analysts
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and scholars, while the general trend has been to claim Saties precursor abilities
towards these and other musical endeavors?
The problem is precisely the one that had been perceived by Satie himself. The role in
which the bourgeois society has conned music that of representation has ended up
blurring the distinction between what is the making culture and what is producing
entertainment.
Entertainment is a service provided by a specic industry for mass consumption. It
is a unidirectional production of contents aimed at satisfying the largest public it can
reach. Mass production systems like sound and video reproduction have been readily
adopted by entertainment to extend its market share to planetary dimensions. There
is no communication, no feedback between content producers and content consumers in
entertainment other than market success. Content is designed by marketing managers to
t specic market segments art is just a glossy external cover to make products rec-
ognizable and palatable. Fashion replaces cultural heritage. While there may indeed be
a high degree professional craftmanship, there is hardly any space for cultural processes
in entertainment.
Culture is not a service. It is the essential binding glue of any human society. It is the
fuel that feeds its growth and prosperity. It is not unidirectional, it is omnidirectional:
while some humans may be more culturally productive than others, the making of
culture requires that all human beings related to it are capable of forming individual
perspectives about it. Not all such perspectives may be equally interesting, but it is
their interaction that is the quintessence of culture production.
Music is the perhaps the archetypical human activity to illustrate this opposition
(cf.[Blacking, 1973]). It can certainly be used to entertain (to the extent that today it is
its almost exclusive function), but it can be and it has been used to produce intellectual
speculation, to identify expressive urges and intentions of given communities in given
periods and to create the cultural identity of entire societies in brief: to create culture.
Whether Satie was consciously aware or not of the strong dichotomy between culture
and entertainment, the Musique dAmeublement seems to indicate that this is one of
Saties contributions to the culture of his own time certainly not an entertainment
product in the way this word is intended nowadays.
5 Concluding remarks and sound design
Finally, whether Satie can be considered a precursor of all incidental sounds and music
or not, be them muzak or ambient etc., it is quite clear that at this point in time even
these functional categories hardly exist any longer. While mass production of furniture
has generated what we now know as design, the massive usage of sound in everyday
appliances and signalling has lead to sound design.
Musical sound is used nowadays as a vehicle of specic information, with the result
that our soundscapes are polluted with sonic interjections of all sorts produced by the
most diverse appliances. The imagination exercise of how Satie would have reacted to
our world of mobile phones, kitchen appliances, alarms, security devices, supermarket
booths and so on in short, to the intoxicating sound environment in which we live in
can be left to the reader. One thing is clear, though: like in many other ecosystems
that have a strong impact on our daily life, our society must learn to handle its sonic
environment in a much better way than it has done to date.
Luckily, some signs of attention are starting to emerge. Science is beginning to step in
to study this phenomenon under its many aspects (acoustical, physiological, psycholog-
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ical, and even musical and artistic). For example, the European COST research action
on Sonic Interaction Design
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is a clear indicator of the interest the European research is
expressing toward these issues. Satie showed us that sound and music creation should
not be deprived of its cultural functions. May he exert a positive inuence on scientic
research too.
References
John Blacking. How musical is man? University of Washington Press, 1973.
John Cage. Erik Satie, pages 7683. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, USA,
1961.
Alan M. Gillmor. Erik Satie. Twayne Publishing, 1988.
Robert Orledge. Satie the composer. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.
Robert Orledge. Satie remembered. Amadeus Press, 1995.
Caitlin Rowley. Erik saties crystal ball. http://www.minim-media.com/satie/index.
html, 2004.
Matthew Shlomowitz. Cages place in the reception of Satie. http://www.af.lu.se/
~
fogwall/article8.html, 1999.
Pierre-Daniel Templier. Erik Satie. Rieder, 1932.
Ornella Volta and Simon Pleasance. Erik Satie. Hazan, 1998.
Wikipedia. Furniture music. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furniture_music,
20052008.
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SID, COSTIC0601, http://www.cost-sid.org
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