Alfred Erik Leslie Satie was born in Honfleur (Normandy) in 1866. He died in Paris in 1925, aged 59. His mother was Scottish and his father was a ship broker.

Satie started playing the piano at age 7. At 17 he spent a year at the Paris Conservatory. At age 40, already an accomplished musician, he entered the Schola Cantorum. Here he studied counterpoint and orchestration with Albert Roussel and Vincent D'Indy. After three years he received a Diploma marked "tres bien" (very good).

Satie was a composer who feared no man, but always did what was right in his own eyes. He was an exponent of several important trends in the 20th Century composition including bitonality, polytonality, Jazz and non-triadic harmony.

Erik Satie was one of music's great originals, both personally (an eccentric) and artistically. From his one-room flat in a working class suburb in Paris, he exercised a remarkable influence over a generation of composers who were seeking to escape the dominance of Richard Wagner.

His simplicity, innovative harmonies, freedom of form and mastery of musical understatement made a strong impression on composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and later younger composers such as Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud and John Cage.

His strange sparse scores, often written without bar lines in red ink are peppered with whimsical instructions : "Light as an egg", "Here comes the lantern", "Open your head", "Muffle the sound", "With astonishment", "Work it out yourself", etc.

Satie's early interest in Mediaeval music shows in the simple plainsong like harmonies of his famous 'Gymnopedies' and 'Gnossiennes'.

In the 1890s he became interested in, and the official composer for, the religio-mystic-occult sect of Rosicrusianism which also had a strong Mediaeval leaning.

He was a close friend of Claude Debussy, and during World War 1 also befriended Cocteau, Diaghilev and Pablo Picasso. This association with the Cubists resulted in the ballet 'Parade' which he wrote in collaboration with Cocteau and Picasso.

An eccentric and humorist, he was not well accepted by the general public of his time, despite efforts by Debussy and Ravel to promote his works. During the past 20 years his work has received worldwide appreciation and the recognition of his importance he so truly deserves.