Erik Satie captures inner dialogue

I have always loved Erik Satie. The French composer wrote beautiful modern music, tying much of his creativity to the explosion in avant garde modes of expression sweeping Europe in the early part of the last century.

This piece is called “Gnossiennes No. 1.” and the score has little verbal instructions for the pianist that are intended to guide one’s approach to the music: “Shining”, “Questioning”, “From the tip of the thought”, “Wonder about yourself”, “Step by step”, “On the tip of the tongue.”

Taken together, this short piece captures the process of the emergence and expression of a thought and all the internal voices at play between conception and the moment of speech.