Alice

Gnossienne no.4 (fast tempo) by Erik Satie (1866-1925) composed in 1891

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• published: 31 Oct 2012
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To buy this song and other popular recordings of mine on Loudr or iTunes, or to listen on Spotify go here: Loudr: http://www.loudr.fm/artist/daigoro789/YG5fe iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/daigoro789/id853371490 Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/album/4ujkSnqDkuzNzdaWZD7Yu0 Facebook fan-page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Daigoro789/330163270336943 This is Gnossienne no.4 played in a fast tempo, by the French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) and was composed in 1891. The piece is marked 'Lent' - 'Slow'. Those of you familiar with this, the fourth Gnossienne will immediately notice that my tempo choice, although never really 'set' with Satie's music (the piece is marked 'Lent' - 'Slow'), is way way faster than is usually played for with this piece. As a result alot of the mystery of the harmonies are lost - but - I just wanted to see if I could give it a slightly fresher approach as I still feel that the piece holds together at a tempo about twice that of what is usually picked. There are alot of grace notes here, as there are in his other Gnossiennes, and much discordance - the whole thing feels very much like a strange dance of the mystics. The music itself in these pieces is also very interesting to look at - as it is written in 'free-time', with no bar lines or time signature, and can appear quite unusual to the eye to those more useto looking at more 'conventional' forms of musical notation. But I love the amount of freedom with rhythm and interpretation that such writing allows the performer! Feel free to check out my Gymnopedie and Gnossienne playlist to hear more of these wonderful pieces :) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDF8828B48FAD1900&feature;=view_all "The Gnossiennes draw upon the cult of round-dances and stepping dances of the inhabitants of the town of Knossos; the Greek word gnosis, however, also means 'insight' or 'judgement'. Once more Satie plays with various possible interpretations within a genre. The harmonic, musical and even technical proximity of the Gnossiennes Nos. 1-3 (1890) to the Gymnopedies is clearly to be felt. In a departure from his customary 'ecriture musicale', Satie leaves out bar-lines and time signatures, for example. A Grecian-Oriental model sense of harmony takes the place of conventional major/minor tonality. What is striking in these works is Satie's method of composing with 'build-ing-blocks', where the small phrases that are the substance of the piece can be interchanged and repeated at whim. The Gnossiennes Nos. 4-6 (written between 1889-1897) differ from the first three in their harmonic complexity and in the greater technical demands of thier accompanying figures" Taken from the preface to the Schott edition of the score. On a different note, for those of you who like to read, I've written a novel - a work of absurdist fiction which falls somewhere in between Alice in Wonderland and Kafka - which can now be found on Amazon Kindle. Here is a link to the US store. The book is also available in other territories too, like the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy etc. Check it out! http://www.amazon.com/Kierkegaards-Apple-ebook/dp/B005GLG2PK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid;=1322431558&sr;=8-1