brettworks

“Certain pieces by Satie are like someone took the lovely opening minutes of Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert and cut away all the subsequent faff and bore and chaff and chore and ego moan.” (54)

“IN-BETWEEN All those in-between emotions it’s hard to name. Old time feelings in danger of disappearing. Staring into space vs staring at a screen. Digital culture nullifies our capacity for blankness, boredom, the ability to just happily accept the passage of time; just to let something break off, drift, straggle. Noncapitalist measures of time. Gambling, according to Walter Benjamin, converts time into a narcotic. Music may likewise grant us access to certain threshold states: daydream, longing, reverie. A different form of purchase, contra the tightly coiled world of commodity capitalism and its binary model of working and spending. Wistful, resigned, both pin-sharp and blurry round the edges. The embodiment—or disembodiment—of this tone, for me, may be the 1959 album Chet on the Riverside label. Featured players: Pepper Adams, Chet Baker, Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, Bill Evans, Philly Joe Jones, Connie Kay, Herbie Manna.” (93)

“Whole half quarter eighth sixteenth thirty second sixty fourth … what if we could do something similar with our own emotional responses? What if we each had our own personal notation or alphabet to describe or classify our feelings? Like naming clouds and grasses, coral or moss.” (102)

“8/11/23 The tempo and volume of his world is something we will never have experienced; its wholly different ambient sound, all its silences and vibrations. His music is informed by waltzes, operettas, cabaret bustle; haunted by the looming threat of automation, industrialization, war.” (164)

“9/13/23 Everyday emotions without designated names. Does Satie provide a soundtrack to such phantom emotions? Is this why we find so much of his music both unnerving and obscurely comforting? When we say of such music it’s ‘haunting’ is it actually ourselves we’re haunted by?” (167)

“9/23/23 Two poles of music criticism: utterly personal, preoccupied with one recurring voice or tone, its particular catch or purr; versus the world of genre, musicology, technique, its formulas like map, battle plan or chemical symbol.” (168)

“5/23/24 I am a devotee of what might be called The Bill Evans Way. Nothing resembling straightforward confession or disclosure—this isn’t a proof or a passport or a CV. Instead: glints, suggestions, undertones. Playing at the edges of grief; playing at the edges of bliss. Any set form—it could be a waltz or a fugue, a diary or a list—can be as deeply personal as more upfront expression.” (193)

“7/24/24 We all house our own encyclopaedia, even if we don’t know it. Arcane or specialized knowledge, prejudices and predispositions, long forgotten details both grand and trivial, comparisons no-one else would think to make, connections we intuit that no-one else would countenance. What makes us laugh, what makes us cry.” (200)

Ian Penman, Erik Satie Three Piece Suite (2025)