‘A Saturday Satie memory’

     
For some reason—I don’t know why, and I’m not necessarily proud of it—many of my earliest memories are of things seen on television. Bill Jorgensen with that day’s Vietnam body count on the Ten O’Clock News. Nixon’s resignation speech. Munich. A snippet of some cartoon showing anthropomorphized vegetables (e.g. an ill-tempered tomato) splashing down inside a stomach, or maybe a garbage can, and bickering among themselves about it.

One day at age three or four—definitely before kindergarten—I squeezed in a full morning of Sesame Street and other such programming before it was time for a nap. I abandoned the television in the master bedroom, but left it turned on, and walked a straight line of no more than twenty feet to my bed. Sacking out for a while and still able to hear the TV, I held still as haunting music reached my ears. A melody so laden with pathos that it made me afraid and sad. My eyes began tearing. I listened for maybe a minute more, feeling very uneasy, before venturing back to my parents’ room to see whatever trouble the program was. It showed wild animals, in slow motion, running through the grass and trees of some jungle-like setting. Which animals I do not remember; the music stayed with me for life.

Erik Satie

It was Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, as I would learn some 35 years later, in an arrangement—if I really can recall correctly—for guitar.

Erik-Alfred-Leslie Satie, says Encyclopædia Britannica, was a French composer “whose spare, unconventional, often witty style exerted a major influence on 20th-century music, particularly in France.” If you’re a fan of John Cage, you are acquainted with the sparse composition style and unconventional harmonies that are Satie’s legacy.

My proper introduction to M. Satie came courtesy of the Rose Circle Research Foundation, specifically Trevor Stewart’s lecture at our first conference, held in April 2006. Trevor spoke at length on the Salon de la Rose + Croix movement, led by Joseph Péladan in fin de siècle Paris. In short, it was an artistic movement wed to Péladan’s self-styled Rosicrucianism, a highly idiomatic esoteric Christianity indeed. (Now that is a subject any Rosicrucian ought to explore for personal edification.) The goal of the annual art salons was to restore the expression of spirituality to the Paris art scene, which at the time was devoted almost entirely to Realism. The art itself expressed themes from mythologies, mysticism, dreams, and other such intuitive inspirations. We can tell these paintings were generations ahead of their time because today they are merely awesome. A hundred and twenty years ago they were explosive.

Armand Point's poster promoting the 1895 Salon de la Rose Croix depicts Greek mythical hero Perseus, slayer of Medusa the Gorgon, holding up decapitated Emile Zola. 

In the liner notes of the CD Musique de la Rose-Croix (LTMCD 2469), James Nice summarizes Satie’s involvement with this arts movement:

A Templar Knight Rose Croix meets
Leonardo da Vinci in this Salon poster.

For a short period Erik Satie was appointed official composer for the esoteric Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique du Temple et du Graal, founded in Paris by the flamboyant mystic ‘Sar’ Joséphin Péladan. The first Salon de la Rose-Croix was held in March 1892, at which Satie’s solemn Trois Sonneries de la Rose + Croix were performed for the first time. Satie also composed music for Péladan’s play Le Fils des Étoiles (Son of the Stars), as well as two preludes for a chivalric play, Le Nazaréen. Satie subsequently broke from the Order in August 1892.

It would be too wonderful a coincidence for the sublime melody that upset me in a moment of early childhood to be among the composer’s Rosicrucian works I enjoy in middle age, and that is not the case, but I am delighted—très content—to connect the pieces and enjoy them. Erik Satie was born on this date in 1866, and when today settles down enough so I may sneak off with some tobacco and a glass of whiskey, I surely will toast his memory.
     

‘Deism defined in its time’

     
The good people at 18th Century Bibles, through their Facebook page, today posted several definitions of "deist" and "deism" as published in The Encyclopedia Britannica in 1770 and An Universal Etymological English Dictionary of 1761.

From The Encyclopedia Britannica:

"Deists, in the modern sense of the word, are those persons in Christian countries, who, acknowledging all the obligations and duties of natural religion, disbelieve the Christian scheme, or revealed religion. They are so called from their belief in God alone, in opposition to Christians. The learned Dr Clarke taking the denomination in the most extensive signification, distinguishes deists into four sorts.

Courtesy 18th Century Bibles

1. Such as pretend to believe the existence of an eternal, infinite, independent, intelligent Being: and who teach, that this supreme Being made the world, though they fancy he does not at all concern himself in the management of it.

2. Those who believe not only the being, but also the providence of God with suspect to the natural world; but who, not allowing any difference between moral good and evil, deny actions of men; these things depending, as they imagine, on the arbitrary constitutions of human laws.

3. Those who having right apprehensions of God, and his all governing providence, and some notion of his moral perfections also; being prejudiced against the notion of the immortality of the human soul, believe that men perish entirely at death, and that one generation shall perpetually succeed another, without any future restoration or renovation of things.

4. Such as believe the existence of a supreme Being, together with his providence in the government of the world, as also the obligations of natural religion; but so far only as these things are discoverable by the light of nature alone, without believing any divine revelation. These last are the only true deists; but as the principles of these men would naturally lead them to embrace the Christian revelation, the learned author concludes there is now no consistent scheme of deism in the world."

From An Universal Etymological English Dictionary:

"Deism... is the Belief of those, who, denying all Revealed Religion, acknowledged only the Natural, viz. the Existence of one God, his Providence, Virtue, and Vice, the Immortality of the Soul, and Rewards and Punishments after Death."

Courtesy 18th Century Bibles