Socrate is a work for voice and piano (or small orchestra) by Erik Satie. First published in 1919 for voice and piano, in 1920 a different publisher reissued the piece "revised and corrected". A third version of the work exists, for small orchestra and voice, for which the manuscript has disappeared and which is available now only in print. The text is composed of excerpts of Victor Cousin's translation of Plato's dialogues, all of the chosen texts referring to Socrates.

Commission – composition

The work was commissioned by Princess Edmond de Polignac in October 1916. The Princess had specified that female voices should be used: originally the idea had been that Satie would write incidental music to a performance where the Princess and/or some of her (female) friends would read aloud texts of the ancient Greek philosophers. As Satie, after all, was not so much in favour of melodrama-like settings, that idea was abandoned, and the text would be sung — be it in a more or less reciting way. However, the specification remained that only female voices could be used (for texts of dialogues that were supposed to have taken place between men). Satie composed Socrate between January 1917 and the spring of 1918, with a revision of the orchestral score in October of that same year. During the first months he was working on the composition, he called it Vie de Socrate. In 1917 Satie was hampered by a lawsuit over an insulting postcard he had sent, which nearly resulted in prison time. The Princess diverted this danger by her financial intercession in the first months of 1918, after which Satie could work free of fear.

[Self portrait by Winnaretta Singer, Princess Edmond de Polignac

(Fondation Singer-Polignac, Paris) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Winnaretta///Singer10.jpg]

The musical form

Satie presents Socrate as a "symphonic drama in three parts". "Symphonic drama" appears to allude to Romeo et Juliette, a "dramatic symphony" that Hector Berlioz had written nearly eighty years earlier: and as usual, when Satie makes such allusions, the result is about the complete reversal of the former example. Where Berlioz's symphony is more than an hour and a half of expressionistic, heavily orchestrated drama, an opera forced into the form of a symphony, Satie's thirty-minute composition reveals little drama in the music: the drama is entirely concentrated in the text, which is presented in the form of recitativo-style singing to a background of sparsely orchestrated, nearly repetitive music, picturing some aspects of Socrates' life, including his final moments. The work differs from the musical forms of the period. The work is not acted and no scenery is required, unlike opera. Furthermore, the text is delivered by female voices, including the words of male characters. It lacks any musical sections that might be considered arias, with the text delivered instead as recitative. This procedure is similar to secular cantatas for one or two voices and instrumental accompaniment written by many Italian and German Baroque composers such as Vivaldi (RV 649–686), Handel (HWV 77–177), Bach (BWV 203, 209), etc. However, these older compositions all alternated recitatives with arias, while Socrate is composed entirely as recitative. The three parts of the composition are:

The music

The piece is written for voice and orchestra, but also exists in a version for voice and piano. This reduction had been produced by Satie, concurrently with the orchestral version. Each speaker in the various sections is meant to be represented by a different singer (Alcibiades, Socrates, Phaedrus, Phaedo), according to Satie's indication two of these voices soprano, the two other mezzo-sopranos. Nonetheless all parts are more or less in the same range, and the work can easily be sung by a single voice, and has often been performed and recorded by a single vocalist, female as well as male. Such single vocalist performances diminish however the effect of dialogue (at least in the two first parts of the symphonic drama – in the third part there is only Phaedo telling the story of Socrates' death). The music is characterised by simple repetitive rhythms, parallel cadences, and long ostinati.

The text

Although more recent translations were available, Satie preferred Victor Cousin's then antiquated French translation of Plato's texts: he found in them more clarity, simplicity and beauty. The translation of the libretto of Socrate that follows is taken from Benjamin Jowett's translations of Plato's dialogues that can be found on the Gutenberg Project website. The original French text can be found here.

Part I – Portrait of Socrates

[From Symposium, 215a-e, 222e]

Part II – On the banks of the Ilissus

[From Phaedrus, 229a-230c]

Part III – Death of Socrates

[From Phaedo, 3–33–35–38–65–66-67]

Whiteness

Satie described he meant Socrate to be white, and mentions to his friends that for achieving that whiteness, he gets himself into the right mood by eating nothing other than "white" foods. He wants Socrate to be transparent, lucid, and unimpassioned – not so surprising as counter-reaction to the turmoil that came over him for writing an offensive postcard. He also appreciated the fragile humanity of the ancient Greek philosophers to which he was devoting his music.

Reception history

First performances

The first (private) performance of parts of the work had taken place in April 1918 with the composer at the piano and Jane Bathori singing (all the parts), in the salons of the Princess de Polignac. Several more performances of the piano version were held, public as well as private, amongst others André Gide, James Joyce and Paul Valéry attending. The vocal score (this is the piano version) was available in print from the end of 1919 on. It is said Gertrude Stein became an admirer of Satie hearing Virgil Thomson perform the Socrate music on his piano. In June 1920 the first public performance of the orchestral version was presented. The public thought it was hearing a new musical joke by Satie, and laughed – Satie felt misunderstood by that behavior. The orchestral version was not printed until several decades after Satie's death.

Reception in music, theatre and art history

Summarising the critical reception at the time of the first performance, Hanlon states that "A small minority of critics praised this audacious aesthetic approach, however, the consensus was that it represented a form of musical impoverishment". In 1936 Virgil Thomson asked Alexander Calder to create a stage set for Socrate. New York Times critic Robert Shattuck described the 1977 National Tribute to Alexander Calder performance, “I have always gone away with the feeling that Socrate creates a large space that it does not itself completely fill… Here, of course, is where Calder comes in: He was commissioned to do sets for Socrate in 1936.” In 1936 the American premiere of Socrate, with a mobile set by Alexander Calder was held at the Wadsworth Atheneum. The work then traveled to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center for the opening week of the FAC. John Cage transcribed the music of Socrate for two pianos in 1944 for Merce Cunningham's dance, titled Idyllic Song. A later dance, Second Hand, was also based on Satie's Socrate. When in 1969 Éditions Max Eschig refused performing rights, Cage made Cheap Imitation, based on an identical rhythmic structure. In 2015, ninety years after Satie's death, Cage's 1944 setting was performed by Alexei Lubimov and Slava Poprugin for the CD Paris joyeux & triste. The Belgian painter Jan Cox (1919–1980) made two paintings on the theme of the death of Socrates (1952 and 1979, a year before his suicide), both paintings referring to Satie's Socrate: pieces of the printed score of Satie's Socrate were glued on one of these paintings; the other has quotes of Cousin's translation of Plato on the frame. Mark Morris created a dance in 1983 to the third section of Socrate, The Death of Socrates with a set design by Robert Bordo. Morris later choreographed the entire work, which premiered in 2010 (costume design by Martin Pakledinaz, lighting design and decor by Michael Chybowski).

Recordings

Recorded in 2015 and released in 2016 on the Winter & Winter CD label: Barbara Hannigan, soprano, and Reinbert de Leeuw, piano - Socrate with melodies by Satie. Also search Barbara Hannigan Socrate on Youtube. Orchestral version recorded in 1954, available in the INA [French Institut national de l'audiovisuel] "memoire vivre" series of CDs [Suzanne Danco No. 2]: Suzanne Danco, soprano, Symphonic Orchestra of Rome of the RAI conducted by Darius Milhaud. Also search Suzanne Danco Socrate on YouTube.