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| Satie as a young man when he lived in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris. |
Here is the obituary in the NYTimes, although both the date and Satie's age are incorrect - Satie was 59:
PARIS, July 3.-Erik Satie, composer of modern music and founder of the "Groupe les Six." of which with Honneggaer, he was a leading member, died today in Paris at the age of 56. A friend and associate since boyhood of Claude Debussy, Satie, although studying music at the Paris Conservatoire, for many years maintained the attitude of an amateur rather than professional musician. He was already approaching the forties when he returned to study at the Schola Cantorum, to perfect himself in orchestration and musical science. One of his most eccentric musical innovations was the introduction of a typewriter in the orchestra. Critics agree that some of his scores and other works are likely to survive. In his recent "Survey of Contemporary Music, Cecil Gray thus alludes, in part, to Satie and Les Six: "They combine an undoubted talent for advertisement, with a complete lack of artistic ability. Les Six have no logic, no method, no esthetic purpose any notes could be taken away or added without any appreciable loss of effect, without even the composers themselves noticing it, one is fairly certain. They are not even mad-nothing nearly so interesting for the most part they are merely fools."
And that's it.
Wow, not exactly pro-Satie. Others have liked Les Six much more than Cecil Gray and the New York Times did.
It doesn't even mention Satie's Gymnopedies, which is how most people have heard of Satie.
There is a very cool YouTube channel that has just about everything Satie ever wrote.