The èrespenséAvant-dernières pensées (Penultimate Thoughts) is a 1915 piano composition by Erik Satie. The last of his humoristic piano suites of the 1910s, it was premiered by the composer at the Galerie Thomas in Paris on May 30, 1916, and published that same year. A typical performance lasts 3–4 minutes.
Background
The outbreak of World War I in July 1914 was a setback for Satie just as he was gaining belated recognition as a composer. Although at age 48 he remained a civilian, wartime conditions seriously disrupted French musical life. Publishers ceased commissioning his music and the pending publication of his 1914 compositions was suspended for two years or more. As he had renounced playing piano in Paris cabarets – his primary source of income for many years – Satie had only the generosity of friends and occasional private teaching to subsist on. In August 1915 he appealed to composer Paul Dukas to help him get financial assistance from charitable organizations, remarking, "For me, this war is like a sort of Apocalypse, more idiotic than real." Some aid must have been forthcoming, for he was soon at work on the pensées.
Description
Originally entitled Étrange rumeurs (Strange Rumors), the three pieces comprising Avant-dernières pensées were completed between August 23 and October 6, 1915. Satie dedicated them to three important colleagues:
1. Idylle, for Claude Debussy
2. Aubade, for Paul Dukas
3. Méditation, for Albert Roussel
Debussy was Satie's closest friend for over 20 years, but their relations were growing strained at this time and would end bitterly in 1917. Dukas was a faithful friend to both. Roussel was Satie's teacher of counterpoint at the Schola Cantorum (1905–1908) and guided him through the development of his mature contrapuntal style. In the 1920s Satie vociferously defended Dukas and Roussel against their critics in the French musical establishment.
Unlike most of his other piano suites of the period, the pensées contain no musical quotations for parodic effect, nor does Satie attempt to pastiche his fellow composers. In each piece bitonal melodic phrases evolve over an unchanging ostinato played from beginning to end: a four-note motif in the Idylle, rapid triplets in the Meditation. In the Aubade it takes the form of two arpeggiated chords (the second played twice) that suggest the strumming of a guitar or mandolin. The conclusions of the outer two movements are quietly punctuated with a single chord; the strumming obstinato has the final say in the Aubade.
The whimsy of Satie's extramusical commentaries is somewhat subdued here. Each concerns a poet, further described in the Aubade as an "old" poet, calling to mind how Satie categorized composers as either "poets" or "pundits." Robert Orledge has proposed that the texts for the first two pieces are "observations" of the dedicatees. The nature-loving poet of Idylle contemplates a tree-lined creek under sun and moonlight but takes no pleasure in it because, he confesses, "my heart is very small." The morning serenade of Aubade originally bore the subtitle "A fiancé beneath the balcony of his fiancée", and could well allude to Dukas' courtship of Suzanne Pereyra, 18 years his junior, whom he finally married in 1916. Orledge further writes that the Méditation, despite the dedication to Roussel, is a self-portrait: A poet is locked in a tower, where he is beset by winds that are manifestations of the devil (which he mistakes for the spirit of genius) and indigestion brought on by "bitter disappointments."