Musique d'ameublement

“Acoustic tiles”: sheet music page of the second piece from 1917

Musique d'ameublement ( French , roughly: "furniture music, interior music") is the title or genre of five pieces of music for salon orchestras in different line-ups by the composer Erik Satie from 1917, 1920 and 1923. These are very short pieces to be repeated over and over again. The furniture music was as provocative musical concept and as stated functional music big impact in the time when the minimal music since the 1960s, including through the mediation of John Cage .

Five pieces

The first two pieces, Carrelage phonique ( acoustic tiles ) and Tapisserie en fer forgé ( wrought iron wallpaper ) from 1917 probably weren't performed during Satie's lifetime.

The second episode, Sons industriels ( Industrial Sounds ) from 1920, was played as entracte music during the two breaks in a theater performance by Max Jacob in the Barbazanges Gallery in Paris, while the audience had the opportunity to view an exhibition of children's drawings. The two sentences are headed Chez un bistrot , Un salon .

The fifth piece was written in 1923 as a commissioned work for the American financier Eugene Meyer and is entitled Tenture de cabinet préfectoral (roughly: wall hanging for an executive office ). - The sheet music and sound recordings were not published until the 1970s.

Intentions

Satie tried to musically recreate industrially produced decorative elements, such as those found on wallpaper patterns or textile tapes . The industrially manufactured wallpapers robbed the visual artists of an important source of income around 1900 (see the history of wallpaper ).

In a letter to Jean Cocteau in 1920, Satie stated: “The Musique d'ameublement creates vibrations without any other purpose. It fulfills the same role as light, warmth and comfort in all variants. "

Today audio design can have similar goals.

literature

• Pierre-Daniel Templier: Erik Satie. Rieder, Paris, 1932. Reprint: Éditions d'aujourd'hui, Paris, 1976.

Web links

• Wrought iron wallpaper as a sound recording on Youtube
• Matthew Shlomowitz: Cage's Place in the Reception of Satie. In: satie-archives.com. San Diego, 1999, archived from the original on April 25, 2013 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ornella Volta: Satie - Cocteau. An understanding in misunderstandings. Wolke, Hofheim 1994, ISBN 978-3-923997-61-9 , p. 124.