Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No. 1

Subscribe for more:    / @classicalmusicsociety   "Gymnopédie No. 1" is the most famous of three solo piano pieces, the Trois Gymnopédies, composed by the French composer Erik Satie in 1888. Known for its simple, sparse, and melancholic melody, the piece is a foundational work of modern minimalist music. The Gymnopédies, or Trois Gymnopédies, are three piano compositions written by French composer and pianist Erik Satie. He completed the whole set by 2 April 1888, but they were at first published individually: the first and the third in 1888, the second in 1895. The work's unusual title comes from the French form of gymnopaedia, the ancient Greek word for an annual festival where young men danced naked – or perhaps simply unarmed. The source of the title has been a subject of debate. Satie and his friend Alexis Roland-Manuel maintained that he adopted it after reading Gustave Flaubert's novel Salammbô, while others see a poem by J. P. Contamine de Latour as the source of Satie's inspiration, since the first Gymnopédie was published in the magazine La Musique des familles in the summer of 1888 together with an excerpt of Latour's poem Les Antiques, where the term appears.