Sarabandes

The Sarabandes are three dances for solo piano composed in 1887 by Erik Satie. Along with the famous Gymnopédies (1888) they are regarded as his first important works, and the ones upon which his reputation as a harmonic innovator and precursor of modern French music, beginning with Debussy, principally rests. The Sarabandes also played a key role in Satie's belated "discovery" by the French musical establishment in the 1910s, setting the stage for his international notoriety.

Alexis Roland-Manuel wrote in 1916 that the Sarabandes represented "a milestone in the evolution of our music...pieces of an unprecedented harmonic technique, born of an entirely new aesthetic, which create a unique atmosphere, a sonorous magic of complete originality."

The Sarabandes emerged at a point in Satie's life when he was beginning to assert his independence as a man and artist. In November 1886, the 20-year-old composer dropped out of the Paris Conservatoire and volunteered for the French army. His close friend and collaborator at the time, the poet Contamine de Latour (1867-1926), claimed Satie had persisted with his hated Conservatory courses only so he could qualify for a student exemption that reduced his five years' compulsory military service to one year in the reserves. Satie was duly assigned as a reservist to the 33rd Infantry Regiment at the Citadel in Arras, nicknamed La belle inutile ("The Useless Beauty") for its fine architecture and lack of strategic importance. But even this comparatively mild duty proved too onerous for his liking. He sought to make himself ill by sneaking out of his barracks at night and strolling about bare-chested in the winter air, with the result that he came down with a severe case of bronchitis. By April 1887 he was back at his family's home in Paris on a two-month medical leave.

During his convalescence Satie reunited with Latour, read Gustave Flaubert's Salammbô and The Temptation of Saint Anthony, and discovered the writings of Joséphin Péladan, the future founder of the Mystic Order of the Rose + Cross with which Satie would be associated in the early 1890s. In May he was thrilled by a performance of Emmanuel Chabrier's new opera Le roi malgré lui, with its daring use of unresolved seventh and ninth chords. As a tribute he visited the composer's home and left with the concierge a copy of one of his early scores, with an extravagant dedication inscribed in red ink. Chabrier never responded to Satie's gesture.

...
Wikipedia