Product Code Database
Furniture music, or in French musique d’ameublement (sometimes more literally translated as furnishing music), is background music originally played by live performers. The term was coined by Erik Satie in 1917.
The first set was apparently never performed (nor the score published) during Satie's lifetime.
The second set contained reminiscences of popular tunes by, amongst others, Camille Saint-Saëns and Ambroise Thomas. It was premiered in Paris the year it was composed, as intermission music to a lost comedy by Max Jacob. During these intermissions the audience was invited to visit an exposition of children's drawings in the Galerie Barbazanges that was hosting the premiere.
Indications of the intentions of the artists giving the first performance are found in the manuscript of the score:
Furnishing divertissement organised by the group of musicians known as the "Les Six"
Furnishing music replaces "" and " fantasias" etc. Don't be confused! It's something else!!! No more "false music"
Furnishing music completes one's property;
it's new; it doesn't upset customs; it isn't tiring; it's France; it won't wear out; it isn't boring
--quoted in Gillmor, 1988, p 325-326
See also the Entr'acte article for more details regarding the circumstances of this first, and only documented, public performance of furniture music during Satie's lifetime, assisted by the composer himself.
The separate commissioned piece was sent to America. There are no known public performances or publications of this music prior to leaving the European continent. This piece is sometimes presented as furniture music No. 3.
As Satie's pieces of furniture music were very short pieces, with an indefinite number of repeats, this kind of furniture music later became associated with repetitive music (sometimes used as a synonym of minimal music), but this kind of terminology did not yet exist in Satie's time.
These and other related ideas were picked up by several composers of the neoclassical/20th-century school of music, accentuating atmosphere and texture over traditional form and movement. The minimalist references and anachronisms were not solidified until composer John Cage performed Satie's "hidden" piece Vexations 840 times as requested by Satie's own scribbled notes on the original sheet music.
|
|
