Gymnopédie No. 3
in A minor
Erik Satie 1866–1925
A minor
Key
Lent et grave
Tempo
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Difficulty
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Themes & character
Solemn stillness·Modal color·Third of the set·Understated close
At a glance
- Key
- A minor
- Tempo / character
- Lent et grave
About the piece
The third and most solemn of Satie's Gymnopedies, marked lent et grave, slow and grave. It completes the set of three that Satie composed in 1888, all built on the same principle of a simple repeating harmonic pattern left to breathe without development.
Quiet and modal in color, it has been arranged and recorded almost as often as the famous first Gymnopedie, though it remains slightly less well known.
The composer
Erik Satie
1866–1925
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie, better known as Erik Satie, was a French composer and pianist. The son of a French father and a British mother, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire but was undistinguished and did not obtain a diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabarets in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached.
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