Erik Satie and golden section analysis

Music and Letters

Volumn 77, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 242-252

  Adams, Courtney S ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 63849343324     PISSN: 00274224     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ml/77.2.242     Document Type: Review

References (23)

1. Alan M. Gillmor (Erik Satie, Basingstoke, 1988, pp. 86-89) suggested that Satie may have used it in the Trois sonneries de la Rose + Croix, and Robert Orledge (Satie the Composer, p. 175) also examined Parade from this standpoint
2. See Howat, Debussy in Proportion, passim
3. In the art world, several recent articles argue that claims for the use of GS in works by Georges Seurat, Juan Gris and Le Corbusier have been exaggerated. See Roger Herz-Fischler, 'An Examination of Claims concerning Seurat and "The Golden Number"', Gazette des beaux-arts, ci (March 1983), 109-112
4. Roger Fischler & Eliane Fischler, 'Juan Gris, son milieu et "le nombre d'or"', Revue d'art canadienne, vii/1-2 (1980), 33-36
5. Roger Fischler, 'The Early Relationship of Le Corbusier to the "Golden Number"', Environment and Planning [ser.] B, vi (1979), 95-103. In musicology, Ernö Lendvai's analyses of some of Bartók's works come immediately to mind
6. See, in particular, his Béla Bartók: an Analysis of his Music, London, 1971 (repr. New York & London, 1991)
7. A good summary of the problems in Lendvai's work and a survey of later Bartók studies appear in Roy Howat's review-article 'Bartók, Lendvai and the Principles of Proportional Analysis', Music Analysis, ii (1983), 69-95
8. See, respectively, David Neumeyer, The Music of Paul Hindemith, New Haven & London, 1986, pp. 39-42, 208-10
9. and Glenn Watkins, Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists, Cambridge, Mass., 1994, pp. 263-4
10. Historically, its earliest applications were in the areas of architecture and art. Good background discussions of its historical and aesthetic significance may be found in Roy Howat, Debussy in Proportion, and Clive Pascoe, Golden Proportion in Musical Design (unpublished dissertation), University of Cincinnati, 1973
11. A critical review of its application to musical works from Gregorian chant up to the nineteenth century appears in Allen Dorfman, A Theory of Form and Proportion in Music (unpublished dissertation), University of California at Los Angeles, 1986
12. J. H. Douglas Webster, 'Golden-Mean Form in Music', Music & Letters, xxxi (1950), 238-48, at p. 248
13. Sonneries II represents an extreme in this respect with the highest note appearing fifteen times and the lowest note twelve times
14. Gillmor, Erik Satie, pp. 85-89
15. This point has been made by several authors; Roger Shattuck was among the early ones in The Banquet Tears: the Arts in France, 1885-1918, New York, 1958, p. 111
16. Orledge has investigated Parade (Satie the Composer, p. 175); I have found no evidence for the use of GS in Socrate
17. Erik Satie: Ecrits, ed. Ornella Volta, 3rd edn., Paris, 1990, p. 261 n. 2
18. Richard S. Parks finds GS proportions in Debussy's song 'Beau soir' of 1880: see The Music of Claude Debussy, New Haven & London, 1989, p. 209
19. Jacques Villon, ed. Daniel Robbins, Cambridge, Mass., 1976, p. 49
20. See also Howat, Debussy in Proportion, pp. 170-1
21. Lendvai, Béla Bartók, pp. vii-viii
22. That Satie was close to these three artists is clear from their appearance on his behalf at his trial (12 July 1917) to answer the charge of slander brought by the composer and critic Jean Poueigh. Proof that these artists understood and used GS principles around 1917 comes from several sources. Jacques Lipchitz claimed that he helped Gris construct a golden section with plaster and armatures for Harlequin (1917), Gris's only sculpture: see James Soby, Juan Gris, New York, 1958, pp. 75-76
23. Gino Severini notes the construction of a window according to GS principles in his painting Maternité: see Du cubisme au classicisme: esthétique du compas et du nombre, Paris, 1921, p. 52