Erik Satie, Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes, Art by Preciada Azancot

“A great owl watches from his tower in the red night. Two notes in golden irises dance like two pears. He takes an umbrella and puts on his hat. Then he closes his tower and dances in silence.”–Preciada Azancot

Music as anti-revolution revolution. Music going nowhere, Lent et doloreux. A Gymnopedie or Gnossienne does not raise its hand, thump its breast of emotions as the powerful and the politicos and the Beethovens do. A Gymnopedie is “furniture music,” background settings in a cabaret or café. A Gymnopedie’s a throwaway slow-motion waltz.  1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3.  A waltz lacking sway or swag. Bass note, chord, rest. Bass note, chord, rest. Add a simple, short melody in quarter notes, barely a phrase at all. It should all be played evenly as if sipping a drink, sipping all life out of any romantic gesture. The Gnossiennes, born later, are more melancholy, gnostic. Satie’s haunting of gothic cathedrals, Rosicrucian sects. Gnossiennes more eccentric, witty, too. They include Satie’s unintelligible, intelligible directions for performance: not “allegro,” or “elegantly,” or “with passion.” But play this phrase “very shiny.” Play this one “ask.” Play this one “with the tip of your thought.” Satie grabs one of his 100 umbrellas, takes another long walk through Paris.

Satie’s Gymnopedie #1
Satie’s Gnossiennes

Artist Bio (From Wikpedia): Preciada Azancot (1943-2017), was the creator in human sciences of MAT (the Metamodel of Analysis that Transforms), and in oil painting of the pictorial trend Transformational Expressionism.

MAT represents for the human sciences the equivalent of what the Theory of Relativity represented in its day for physics. It is the discovery of the emotional and sensory engineering of the human being’s seven-dimensional personality structure – and not four-dimensional as believed since the time of the Ancient Greeks – and is known as being the first precise science (universal, objective, transferable and measurable) of the functioning of the human being in all his facets, personality typologies, creations and ways of being. As a writer, Preciada Azancot has written more than twenty books and published 18 related to this science.

Since 1986 Preciada Azancot has also developed another facet of her personality as a painter, holding several individual exhibitions in prestigious art galleries of Madrid, Barcelona and museums and foundations such as the Fine Arts Museum of Santander and Caja Madrid foundation in Barcelona. Preciada is particularly known for her portraits of major composers like the portrait of Satie above.

(*) Portions of this bio have been translated into English from the Wikipedia page in Spanish.

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