A charming and expressive solo for marimba that allows the modern marimbist to get a second look at Satie's music from another angle. Perfect for an interim piece on your next recital.
Erik Satie's piano work Pieces Froides (1897) is comprised of two three-movement pieces, the first of these being Airs A faire fuir (tunes to make you run away), the second, Danses de travers (slanted dances). Satie (1866-1925) often wrote music around a single idea yet, approaching it from several different ways-much like a visual artist studying a subject from many perspectives before painting. His music is at times, antithetical to, and perhaps reactionary to the soaring heights of the late nineteenth-century virtuoso performer, and the Wagnerian sense of 'music-for-posterity' that the twentieth-century inherited. Upon first hearing Danses de travers, I was immediately drawn to the work not only by its unfussiness and charm, but by it's sweeping elongated phrases. The more I listened, the more I began to hear the expressive possibilities of a marimba adaptation. The arpeggiated triads in the left hand-1-5-3, 1-5-3, 1-5-3-seemed to establish the perfect foundation on which to overlay Satie's crooked melodies in octaves. Satie in the first measure of the score, in a whimsically nonsensical way-perhaps with a touch of dadaism-instructs the performer, 'En y regardant A deux fois.' This adaptation affords the modern marimbist the opportunity to 'get a second look at' Satie's music from another angle, and with a new perspective. ~Mark Berry.
