Satie, Erik. (1866-1925)
Sonneries de la Rose + Croix
Paris: E. Dupré [privately printed]. [1891]. First edition. 28 x 22.5 cm. 12 pp. Engraved cover, "Fragment de la guerre de Puvis de Chavannes." On fine hand-cut paper, superbly printed and in very fine condition."The three Sonneries, "Air de l'ordre," "Air du grand maitre," and "Air du grand prieur," are all fanfares, intended to be used at meetings of the Rosicrucian brotherhood. The Rosicrucians, under the leadership of the novelist and mystic Joseph-Aime Peladan, were a sect of aesthetes whose artistic aims included the "ruin of realism," and the promotion of idealism. Satie was, for several years, a member of the brotherhood, essentially its court composer as it were. He produced a number of works under the influence of Peladan and his brotherhood, but later distanced himself from the bizarre and eccentric Peladan and his followers."
"Sonneries de la Rose+Croix, like much of Satie's music, features little or no true development. Instead, as Satie scholar Alan Gillmor notes, Satie alters texture and dynamic rather than motives or themes in order to achieve variety. Typically Satiean harmonic structures abound in this work as well, in particular, chains of unresolved triads. Perhaps the most important aspect of this piece, however, is its mathematical proportions, the details of which were first outlined by Gillmor. Gillmor describes Satie's use of numerical symbolism, noting that he was probably influenced in this direction by his friend and contemporary Claude Debussy. In the Sonneries, Satie employs the Golden Section, a particular mathematical ratio dating back to Pythagoras and popularized by French Symbolists in the later decades of the nineteenth century. Satie's use of the Golden Section, or the "divine number," resulted in what Gillmor calls the work's "subtle proportional balance." The Golden Section dictates the proportions of two of these pieces, such that the number of beats in each piece may be divided into two parts, in an approximate ratio of 3:2." (All Music Guide)
"The Order (more probably, La Rochefoucauld) paid for their publication by Dupré, in the same kind of lavish edition that Satie had commissioned from that printer for his Third Gymnopédie...the Sonneries [title] page contains, in the space between Satie's name and the work's title, an engraved detail of La Guerre by Puvis de Chavannes, showing three heralds on horseback with straight trumpets held aloft, as if to symbolize Satie's three fanfares." (Steven Moore Whiting, "Satie the Bohemian," p. 144-145) (5806)
Printed Music Classical Music