Erik Satie wrote the music for René Clair's 1924 film, Entr'acte. He was also in the film, romping on the rooftops of Paris with a canon and his pal, Francis Picabia (see  image for a still).  4Hands plays an excerpt of the music, which captures the joie de vivre of early French modernism. 

Entr'acte Part One

Erik Satie wrote the music for René Clair's 1924 film, Entr'acte. This excerpt accompanies a funeral cortège that runs out of control.  Can't you just see all those men in top hats chasing after the coffin?  4Hands plays an excerpt of the music, which captures the joie de vivre of early French modernism.  Can you hear the influence of Stravinsky?

Entr'acte Part Two

Germaine Tailleferre's Jeux de plein air was originally written for two pianos. 4Hands made a four-hands arrangement of the first movement, Le Tirelitentaine.

Jeux De Plein Air, I. Le Tirelitentaine - four-hands arrangement by 4Hands

Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof) was originally composed as the music to a Charlie Chaplin silent movie, but this project never saw the light of day. Chaplin was always a popular figure in France, most likely due to France’s long tradition of mime. Instead of accompanying Chaplin, however, the piece was used for a ballet, described as a Pantomime Farce. This was set in Brazil, had no real story, but did have a series of scenes featuring a bookmaker, a dwarf, a boxer, a woman dressed as a man, and a policeman who is decapitated and miraculously brought back to life by clowns. Milhaud had spent two years in Brazil and wrote much music influenced by South American popular and folk music. The basic rhythm which pervades this piece recalls the tangos and habaneras which pervaded South American music and made their way up as far as New Orleans where they featured as part of the idiomatic mix which became jazz.

(Recorded at High Cross House on the Dartington Estate in Devon in August 2012 as part of the Totnes Festival.)  

Le Boeuf sur le toit (excerpt), Darius Milhaud

Satie composed La Belle Excentrique in 1920. Like so much of his music, it consists of a set of four short pieces. They show strong influences from popular music of the time and place. The beautiful eccentric of the title was the dancer Caryathis to whom the music is a homage. 

(Recorded at High Cross House on the Dartington Estate in Devon in August 2012 as part of the Totnes Festival)

Waltz of the Mysterious Kiss in the Eye from La Belle excentrique, Erik Satie

Erik Satie wrote the music for Parade, a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau, in 1917.  The ballet depicts a publicity parade in which three groups of circus artists try to attract an audience to an indoor performance.  The premiere of Parade by the Ballets Russes in Paris resulted in yet another riot in the audience (the more famous one belonging to the premiere of the Rite of Spring in 1913) as well as a court case.  In response to an unfavourable review of Parade by the music critic Jean Poueigh, Satie sent him a postcard, which read "Monsieur et cher ami - vous êtes un cul, un cul sans musique! Signé Erik Satie"  The critic sued Satie, and Satie was sentenced to eight days in prison. 

Other notable artists involved in the production of Parade included Léonide Massine (choreography), Pablo Picasso (set and costume design), and Guillaume Apollinaire (programme note). 

(Recorded at St John's Church in Totnes in August 2012 as part of the Totnes Festival.)

Chinese Conjurers from Parade, Erik Satie

Claude Debussy’s delicate Six Epigraphes Antiques were inspired by the Chansons de Bilits of the poet Pierre Louÿs. This set of erotic lesbian poems, published in 1894, was written in an ancient Greek manner, Louÿs claiming to have found them on the walls of a tomb in Cyprus. He fooled the scholars of the day. He was a close friend of Debussy who, from 1897 onwards, used the poems as the basis for songs for female voice and piano. In 1901 the Six Epigraphs were composed, scored for two flutes, two harps and celesta, but later put into their definitive form for piano/four-hands by Debussy himself. Originally some of the poems were recited between each piece, but Debussy subsequently used them in their own right as piano pieces, replete with his trademark qualities of touch, sonority, Javanese influences, whole tone scales and the rest.

4Hands2Pianos

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