Erik Satie

(1866 - 1925)

Enrolled in the Paris Conservatory in the early 1880s, Erik Satie was called by teachers “the laziest student” and “gifted but indolent.” He dropped out, took work as a café pianist, fell in love with a trapeze artist who kept a pet goat, and by 1898 had isolated himself in a Paris suburb. Though he preferred to call himself a “gymnopedist” or “phonometrician” rather than a composer, his avant-garde pieces, often irreverent and parodic, had far-reaching influence on twentieth-century music.