It’s one of those tracks that pops up all over the place including chill out albums (you know the ones that are supposed to help you come down from that post-clubbing high) and it’s on one of these albums that my wife first heard Gymnopedie No.1.

When we got married a few years back and were considering the music for signing the register we both independantly chose this tune.

Satie was born on 17th May 1866 in Hornfluer in France and wrote his first musical composition aged just 18. During his life, Satie had been artistic in all incarnations of the word having produced musical compositions, art and contributed to a number of publications including Vanity Fair. Most of all he was the sort of guy that stuck to his ideals and called a spade, a spade.

That said he lived his life with certain eccentricities; he formed his own church, lived in relative poverty and produced the Vexations – a short piano piece that is repeated 840 times! He was also considered to be a forerunner of minimalism and devised ‘furniture music’ – music that was supposed to be in the background rather than listened to (the elevator music of its day?).

From what I’ve read he was always considered as an ‘outsider’ and valued his privacy so highly that he never let anyone see his apartment in Arceuil (suburb of Paris), where he lived for 27 years until he died in 1925.

After his death they found further evidence of his unusualness in his home including:

• four pianos: two of which were back to back, two of which sat upside-down on top of the other two
• a portrait of Satie by his former lover, a trapeze artist called Suzanne Valadon and
• love-letters and drawings from his romance with Valadon
• his collection of drawings of medieval buildings
• seven velvet suits
• dozens of  never been used umbrellas

His music was rather unknown  until the early 1960s but his now thought by many as composer that was ahead of his time. It’s also claimed that he influenced others such as Debussy.

I’m still not sure I can decide on whether he was a genius or a nutter but I do know that I love Gymnopedie No.1.