Using a 12 bar sketch left by Satie in 1919, James Nye has written a complete new nocturne. Here it is performed by James Nye in 2011. 

Track is from the CD "Erik Satie - Autour des Nocturnes" which contains two more versions of this nocturne composed and performed by Robert Orledge and Jamie Crofts, plus other rare Satie material. All three versions of Satie's Nocturne 7 are available in score form from www.SOUNDkiosk.com

Nocturne 7 by Erik Satie & James Nye

I wrote this as a playable but tricky solo piano piece in June 2012 after seeing a magnificent, majestic Sun Fish swimming round and round on its own in an aquarium in Tokyo. Over a year later, I've made a virtual ensemble version for harps, flutes, bass clarinet, tubas, cor anglais and glockenspiel. It's mainly in 5/4. I hope you enjoy it.

The Sun Fish

Princess Moomintwinkle likes minor seconds. The first bars of this tiny piece - which is dedicated to Princess Moomintwinkle's devoted servant, composer Sadie Harrison - consist of the notes Moomintwinkle can be seen playing in the photograph.

Moomintwinkle Tinkle

This - a sort of scherzo march - is the second movement of a suite of short piano pieces inspired by Princess Moomintwinkle and her housekeeper and companion, composer and pianist Sadie Harrison. It's to be played 'Joyoulsy, triumphantly - like a naughty cat at play.'

Mad Kitty March

Horlogeries — Sept tout petits morceaux et demi pour le 75ème anniversaire de Monsieur Robert Orledge (2023) by James Nye

This suite of 7½ tiny pieces, my first of 2023, was written for the 75th birthday of my friend Robert Orledge*. I wrote them for piano, but the recording here is of instrumental arrangements using Sibelius software and Garritan sound libraries.

I wrote these Horlogeries incorporating a musical cypher to encode Robert's name and some birthday greetings in French, as per the 'French system':

A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N
O P Q R S T U
V W X Y Z

In the fifth piece I also used Morse code to create rhythms from the letters of Robert's name.

There are references to Satie throughout the pieces and titles, and a few quotations from his pieces. The final piece is modelled on Satie's infamous Vexations, but incorporates Robert's name in an inner voice, and a final Happy Birthday in the coda.

Here are the titles of the pieces and the translations:

I. Aubade – Matin d’anniversaire [Aubade – Birthday Morning]

II. Rêverie du gâteau [Daydream about cake]

III. Valse mécanique [Mechanical waltz]

IV. Canotage sur le lac de crème anglaise [Rowing on the custard lake]

V. Hymne aux soixante-quinze bougies [Hymn to the seventy-five candles]

VI. Prière pour les cadeaux abondants [Prayer for bountiful presents]

VII. Méditation fonctionnelle [Functional meditation]

VII½. Vexatoire (mais pas trop) [Vexatious – but not too much]

As with Satie's Vexations (which he suggested might be played 840 times, having prepared "in the greatest silence, with serious immobilities"), my Vexatoire might be played 750 times (given the same preparations). However, the recording here only repeats the entire sequence once and ends with a coda.

A final note in the score points out that the number 750 is enneagonal or nonagonal.

*Robert Orledge is a composer and musicologist who has specialised in the music of Fauré, Koechlin, Debussy, Satie, and Tailleferre. He has found many unknown and sometimes unfinished pieces from the notebooks and sketches of Satie and Debussy and created attractive and ingenious performing versions. (One of my favourites of these is Satie's L'Embarquement pour Cythère for violin and piano, which you can hear here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNsMFEAAKmU )

You can find more about Robert's work here:
www.robertorledge.co.uk/

The photo that accompanies this recording is of Robert Orledge, borrowed from his website.

Horlogeries by James Nye

Horlogeries for Robert Orledge

A minimalist piece written in the 1990s for harps, flutes, brass and voices. Realised in 2011 using Sibelius and Garritan. Sounds a bit like a tribute to Wim Mertens?

Moon-Dance

The third movement of my Princess Moomintwinkle suite of piano pieces. Inspired by Sadie Harrison's cat, and dedicated to them both.

Moomintwinkle's Nocturne

Here is the suite of 3 pieces inspired by Princess Moomintwinkle, the cat belonging to my friend, fellow composer Sadie Harrison. A year ago Sadie posted a picture of her cat walking across her piano keyboard playing minor seconds - and the pieces were inspired by this. The pieces are Moomintwinkle Tinkle (a short prelude), Mad Kitty March, and Moomintwinkle's Nocturne.

Moomintwinkle Suite (piano)

Erik Satie wrote the first four bars of this "Hungarian Song", originally for piano, in 1889, having recently heard Javanese gamelan and Romanian folk music at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The fragment, which is kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is written on the same manuscript as an untitled piano piece which was published posthumously as his similarly inspired fifth Gnossienne.

He abandoned the piece, probably because it didn't really fit with his musical style and aesthetic. Whether his four bars represent a transcription of an actual piece of Romanian folk music, or something he made up inspired by what he heard, I do not know.

I took Satie's four bars and wrote a piece which, while it has some references to early Satie (especially his Gnossiennes, his Rosicrucian music, and the Airs à faire fuir from the Pièces froides of 1897) perhaps sounds more like Bartók than Satie.

I recently arranged the piece for a virtual ensemble which includes one of my favourite instruments, the cimbalom.

Chanson Hongroise by Erik Satie & James Nye

Groucho the parrot lives with her friend Antonia Owen in north London. She likes whistling and chewing things, but her party trick is her cat impression.

Groucho the Parrot's Party Trick - Miaow!

This is a collaboration with Erik Satie. Using a 12 bar sketch Satie wrote in 1919 for a projected seventh nocturne, I created a piano score. You can hear a performance of the piano version below. Jamie Crofts and Robert Orledge also made versions. I have orchestrated mine using Sibelius notator with Garritan Personal Orchestra sounds. Here it is, for the first time.

The piano score for all three versions of Satie's 7th Nocturne can be obtained from www.SOUNDkiosk.com

Recordings of all three piano versions (by Orledge, Nye and Crofts) are available from www.wight-trash.com here:

http://www.wight-trash.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=166

Erik Satie - Nocturne 7 - Ensemble

A manuscript sketch for this had been lurking around for ages, so I fleshed it out a bit and added instrumentation to make a little piece of jolly train music. I love the use of harpsichord in lots of 1960s soundtracks, especially Burt Bacharach's theme tune to the 1967 version of Casino Royale, Edwin Astley's theme and incidental music to Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), and John Barry's use of it in the incidental music to Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, and some of his film and TV themes of the period. Anyway, I thought it worked quite well here.

Chuffle Shuffle - An Imaginary Train Journey (soundtrack)

One of Satie's most beautiful pieces, Satie's 4th piano nocturne was published in 1919. Here is an ensemble arrangement recorded using Sibelius notation with Garritan sounds. I'm also working on arrangements of the first three nocturnes.

Erik Satie - Nocturne 4 - Ensemble

Erik Satie's third piano nocturne (1919) arranged for ensemble. Uses Sibelius software and Garritan sounds.

Erik Satie - Nocturne 3 - Ensemble

Another favourite Satie piano nocturne arranged for ensemble.

Erik Satie - Nocturne 2 - Ensemble

The first of Satie's piano nocturnes (published in 1919) arranged for ensemble using Sibelius notation software with Garritan virtual instruments. This one originally had a text, and was called "Faux Nocturne" (false nocturne), but Satie eliminated text and title for publication.

Erik Satie - Nocturne 1 - Ensemble

A piano miniature written in April 2012 while my mother was in her final months of life. I am trying to express the ephemeral nature of thoughts and feelings, and the melancholy associated with their impermanence.

As Moments Pass

I am a composer living on the Isle of Wight. Early on, I discovered a passion for the sound and textures of the piano, and a life-long obsession with the music of Erik Satie. As well as piano, I learnt oboe and also played cor anglais, soprano saxophone and any other instrument I could get my hands on.

Whilst growing up, I liked jazz and film music, and at an early age got into Stravinsky, Ives, Messiaen, Boulez, Ligeti, Varèse, Scelsi, Cage and many more contemporary composers. I like some 'minimalist' composers' work - particularly Wim Mertens.

I went on to study at the University of Surrey, gaining a B.Mus (Hons) in 1987, and becoming a Master of Music in Analytical Musicology in 1989. I then started a Ph.D in composition techniques at The City University, London, but eventually abandoned it due to ill health and boredom with academia.

My first dissertation was on the music of Thelonious Monk (for which I painstakingly prepared many detailed transcriptions), and my second was an overview of the music of Vic Hoyland.

I write in a range of styles, and most recently have been working on completions and transformations of unfinished sketches by Erik Satie. In the past, I have worked with pop and jazz artists, including performing and composing for "Sunshine Hit Me", the Mercury nominated first album by Isle of Wight band The Bees. I have also contributed to albums by O.H Krill and Stromba.

I am currently working on Night Thoughts, a radiophonic poem written by my late friend David Gascoyne for the BBC in 1955. The original broadcast had music by Webern's pupil Humphrey Searle (who himself became teacher to Michael Finnissy). The original recording included my percussion tutor, James Blades. I hope the new version, which includes the voices of the poet himself, his wife Judy Gascoyne, and actor and admirer Simon Callow, will bring David's poem to a new audience.

I am also working on an electro-acoustic piece called Chain Ferry Soundscapes using recordings of the local Cowes-East Cowes 'floating bridge' - one of the last of its kind in the UK. The piece is gradually becoming a sort of concerto for chain ferry, voice and trombone.



James Nye

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