Gymnopédie No. 2
in C major
Erik Satie 1866–1925
C major
Key
Lent et triste
Tempo
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Themes & character
Sparse texture·Wandering melody·Companion piece·Quiet melancholy
At a glance
- Key
- C major
- Tempo / character
- Lent et triste
About the piece
The second of Satie's Gymnopedies, composed alongside the first in 1888. It shares the same hovering, unresolved harmony but carries a more melancholy character, marked lent et triste, slow and sad.
Like its companions, it strips piano writing down to almost nothing, a single chordal pulse and a wandering melody, and was largely ignored in its own time before being rediscovered decades later.
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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