048 - Gnossienne I

Gerald Kemner, whom I’ve mentioned previously, famously told us composition students, “If you hear something you like, steal it.”

I happen to be fond of the music of Erik Satie. Many of my earliest compositions were imitative of his style.

He coined the word Gymnopedie for one of his most famous pieces. I’d always assumed he also coined the word Gnossienne, and I still believe that is the case, but in doing some small dab of research for this post I stumbled upon this definition:

gnossienne

n. a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you’ve never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.

Very strange.

Saties Gnossienne’s are largely static and hypnotic. Mine here, not so much, but I was trying to get a bit of that weird melodic charm that came so easily to Satie.