Erik Satie
Satie was involved with dance, theatre and cabaret for most of his life and that is what much of his music is written for. He was always trying out new ideas in his music. He was capable of writing in a late Romantic style with chromatic harmonies, but he also wrote in more modern styles, often using very simple ideas. He was always more interested in beautiful melodies than in writing complicated rhythms. His three Gymnopédies are still extremely popular. They seem to come from an old-fashioned world where there is great simplicity. His three Gnossiennes (1890) sound more Oriental, and Satie wrote some very strange remarks in the music. His piano piece Vexations (1893) is a short piece with strange, chromatic chords, which the pianist is then supposed to play 840 times. Uspud was an early example of what later became the “Theatre of the Absurd”. The text was all written in lower-case letters: the first time this had ever been done. He wrote many cabaret songs.