Tale About Title, Hen, Sea Cucumber, Octopus and Other Creatures - Part II

If you read the part one of this tale, you know that I can be very childish and sarcastic. I can't help it.
I have this same feeling about Erik Satie. He often comes through as an irreverent, ironic, and rebellious teenager.
If I were a composer, I would be Satie. I identify a lot with his humor. Satie writes descriptive music, just what I was complaining about in the previous post. However, I enjoy the conciseness and simplicity of his compositions. Just like him, I rebel against virtuosity and excessive romanticism.
Satie is to music what Coetzee and Jorge Luis Borges are to literature. They only write essential things. Nothing redundant and unnecessary. Nothing needs to be added or removed.
Satie foreshadowed the Dadaism, Impressionism, Neo-classicism and Surrealism. He was known for saying "I arrived too young in a very old world".
His work can not be ignored by music teachers and students. Poulenc, Ravel, and Milhaud have confessed that Satie was the composer who most influenced them. Stravinky's Sonata for two pianos uses (on the second piano part) chords almost identical to the ones on the first Gymnopedie.

I recommend you to read the first important work published (1948) in English about Satie. It has a very good section about his piano work. It is called Erik Satie by Rollo H. Myers.
The recording I recommend is Satie Oeuvres Pour Piano by Ciccolini.

Even if you don't like this eccentric and humorous composer as much as I do, his music is a great source of material for sight-reading. Young students are usually fascinated by the titles (as most people are) and his writings.
Milhaud has stated that Satie was a miracle who would always remain young and the younger generations would always stand up for him because of "the perfection of his music and for complete and uncompromising sincerity".

My next posting will be a description of several Satie's works and their relevance to sight-reading.