Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Migrated podcast image for: Composer Of The Week

Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Composer of the Week: Erik Satie (1866-1925): Episode 1: Dada Futurist

Episode 1

Episode 1: Dada Futurist

Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Dada Futurist

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Erik Satie (1866-1925), Dada Futurist

Donald Macleod focuses on Erik Satie's legacy and his controversial Dadaist final works.

Donald Macleod focuses on Erik Satie's legacy and his controversial Dadaist final works. With Gymnopedie No 1, Vexations, Jack in the Box, Ludions and an excerpt from Relache.

Satie the Onion: his surreal life viewed in reverse. Donald Macleod peels off the layers, starting with his legacy and his controversial Dadaist final works including Relâche.

Erik Satie's existence was a self-consciously surreal one. He reinvented himself throughout his life, rather like a proto-David Bowie, changing his clothing, his friends, his beliefs, and his music. Though he claimed not to want to, he influenced countless others, but he had a tendency to dramatically fall out with almost everyone he was close to. This week, marking the composer's 150th anniversary, Donald Macleod peels off the layers to examine Satie's life in reverse, beginning with his significant posthumous influence and working back to the early music which is still a household name.

Several contemporary schools of composition draw on Satiean inspiration, not least Minimalism, celebrating Satie since John Cage's championing of his work in the 1960s. Such celebrity was denied Satie for much of his life, but when it did come in his final years, rather than rest on his laurels he courted controversy, ditching earlier friends including Les Six and embracing extreme Dadaism, epitomised in the remarkably forward-looking "Cinema", the filmed entr'acte for the ballet Relache. 

Sonnerie pour réveiller le bon gros Roi des Singes (lequel ne dort toujours que d'un oeil) 
Pierre Thibaud, trumpet
Bernard Jeannoutot, trumpet

Gymnopédie No 1
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Vexations 
Alan Marks, piano

Satie orch Milhaud: Jack in the Box
Jack Lanchbery, conductor
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Cinéma (Entr'acte from Relâche) 
Sandra van Veen, Jeroen van Veen, pianos

Mercure
Pierre Dervaux, conductor
Orchestre de Paris

Ludions
Eva Lind, soprano
Jean Lemaire, piano

Seven Monkey Dances from Le Piège de Méduse
Bernard Desgraupes, director
Ensemble Erwartung

Producer: Dominic Jewel.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod explores the surreal life and work of Erik Satie in reverse

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Composer of the Week

Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Episode 1: Dada Futurist

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3