1994 - "Futurism Events"

Satie and Friends - Socrate

SOCRATE

During the autumn 1916, the Princess Edmond de Polignac, born Winnaretta Singer, asked Satie to compose a work that could be used for her private receptions. Since she was studying Greek, Satie imagined to make her read some extracts from Plato's original dialogues together with an Athenian friend, while one of his works would be played as "decoration" music added to the text.
Satie worked two years to complete this project which was then gradually transformed. He preferred to use a French translation of Plato made during the First Empire by Victor Cousin, leader of the Spiritualist movement, considered by Satie and his friends as a very academic and dreary author: Satie's idea indeed was still to propose Plato's texts with a musical comment as monotonous as possible, because the emotion created by the tale and its ineluctable drama had to remain far from any musical emphasis. "I owe to my cubist friends this concept of classical purity combined with our modern feelings", used to say Satie.
In order to maintain the so-called "distinction" between characters and comedians, the French composer chose feminine voices to impersonate masculine roles, Albiciade, Socrates etc. He would even have chosen four sopranos, who would have given the impression of a dialogue between voices of the same gender but of different timbres. But the Princess of Polignac preferred only one person (Jane Bathori), because she knew Satie's humorist fame and was afraid he would plan a transvestite performance.
The first representation of Socrate with voice and piano took place in the Adrienne Monnier's Maison des Amis des Livres bookshop, on March 21st, 1919, and provoked great enthusiasm in the audience, compounded by Paris �lite's members like Joyce, Gide or Stravinsky. The director F�lix Delgrange proposed the orchestral version one year later, in the Conservatory Hall. On the occasion of this performance, the audience believed in another Satie's humorist creation and started laughing when the description of Socrates's death began. "It seems as if I created the Socrates character!" replied, disgusted, Satie "And this happens in a city like Paris!". After Satie's death, Virgil Thomson played and sung Socrate to Gertrude Stein in his Parisian mansard, and she was particularly impressed by the permanent use of the present tense.