Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

SATIE TIME OUT

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his won't take a minute. I just want to say, while we're on the subject of Loopy Erik, I think it's fair to say that Satie was keeping up his reputation for coming up with the best tides EVER for pieces of music. The man who would have given his publishers sleepless nights because of his tendency to write his scores in red ink without bar lines was also the man who came up with some names for classical music pieces that just haven't been bettered. I've mentioned Limp Preludes for a Dog, for example, but there's also The Bureaucratic Sonata and, my personal favourite, Trois Pieces in the Shape of a Pear. Delicious. Just what the doctor ordered. Right, time in again.

1917 was an up and down sort of year for art. The Old Guard were doing what the Old Guard did best, namely dying. Rodin, Degas, both of them gone in 1917. (Special mention to Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, one of the best names in French art. Lovely.) At the same time, though, the new lot were really enjoying being a part of one of the golden periods in art: Modigliani's Crouching Female Nude s» In fact, it is largely unknown that Mozart's Musical Joke calls for a police siren in the score, although it is always played at a section when the horns are playing too loud for it to be heard. As I say, this is largely unknown, because it is largely untrue. was from 1917. So was Pierre Bonnard's Nude at the Fireplace as well as the lithographs by Georg Grosz, The Face of the Ruling Classes. Good year, huh?

Puccini came up with a little corker in 1918, an aria called 'O mio babbino caro'. Gorgeous stuff. To be fair, it is more or less the highlight of three one-act operas called The Triptych, or II Trittico - just to prove that the Italians can make anything sound fantastic. 'O mio babbino caro' - or 'O my beloved Daddy', to give it its proper translation - is from the third of the operas, Gianni Schicchi, with the other two, The Cloak and Sister Angelica, barely ever getting a look in. In March 1918, the world lost Debussy, too. Sadly, I imagine it had more pressing things on its mind, at the time, because the West was still firmly in the grip of world war. But, following the second battle of Marne, the German retreat to their own territory, the conference of Versailles and the declaration of a German republic, the world witnesses the Armistice of November 11th.