#parlophone

Interestingly, though, Satie wasn’t a radical in the vein of, say, Schönberg or Cage. Though he’d briefly explored Rosicrucianism via novelist Joséphin Péladan’s Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix as the house composer there, that wasn’t atypical for the period — mysticism and the occult were a favorite hobby of forward-thinking Parisians at the time. And though the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes suggest a purposeful break with the past, Satie was grounded by his own origins his entire life. Following the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, his father Alfred moved the family to Paris and set up as a publisher of cabaret and music hall songs. Not long after, Erik began taking music lessons with an organist who activated his love of old church music, specifically Gregorian chant, which would inform his musical career. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire despite being kicked out for indolence. He was, essentially, a childlike conservative in a radical cloak whose most comfortable home was among the cabarets of Chat Noir and Auberge du Clou.

That simple vigor is evident right from the start of a new collection of 27 “lost” works recently pieced together by Japanese composer Sato Matsui and British musicologist James Nye, who found sketches and incomplete manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and in a private collection in Boston. In addition to their own works, each are Satie experts: Matsui currently serves as Chief Editor of the complete songs of Satie for Universal Music Group, while Nye has recorded for Satie before with 2010’s Autour des Nocturnes. Pianist Alexandre Tharaud does the lion’s share of the labor on Satie: Discoveries, but he’s briefly joined by violinist Nemanja Radulović (for three songs) and cellist Gautier Capuçon (“Parade: Prestidigitateur chinois”) to shed further light on a composer whose legacy doesn’t necessarily match the output.

To wit, we start with a sub-two-minute can-can. Its liveliness rightly ought to throw any listener conditioned by Gymnopédies off balance, freeing the ears to absorb the composer’s multitudes. It’s tough to read the tea leaves too much on these compositions despite the delicate nature of their construction in part because hardly any of them last long enough to do so — fully 18 of the 27 tracks here are less than a minute long, so we’re getting ideas in chrysalis rather than anything totally mapped out. Nevertheless, the color commentary provided here shows that while Dada artist Francis Picabia called him "a sad child, whom alcohol sometimes renders optimistic,” such an affliction never clouded his musical judgment.

Following “La belle excentrique: III. Cancan grand-mondain,” there are pieces that unleash a flurry of notes but are easy to follow — “Bourrée” and “Le Féraudy Valse (Extrait de ‘Pousse l'amour’)” are genuine earworms. Still, the urge to resist the metronome is evident and time signatures don’t always hold up even in miniature, perhaps nowhere more so than on “Soupirs fanés: Poil - Recrudescence” and in the “Esquisses bitonales” triptych.

The most exciting songs may be those that jibe least with one’s idea of Satie, but for my money, he’s still at his best when his sadness scythes through the coming cirrhosis in the form of the nocturne. The dissonant elements of the three “Réflexions nocturnes” split the difference well, while “Mélodie (Version pour piano seul)” offers a wistful tinkle of the ivories. The three Radulović pieces are modest and mostly avoid a fortissimo, but the simply titled “Mélodie” has to be my favorite and might be my favorite of any song here, a lullaby or a call to close the café.

More than anything, Satie: Discoveries shouldn’t just be about discovering these works; really, it should be about rediscovering the composer’s range. Erik Satie has too often been reduced to a sliver of the prewar bohemian arts picture, but with these additional bite-size missives from the past, a small braintrust’s efforts attempt to shake up the narrative and offer an outstretched hand to our attention-deprived present — a simple gesture from the sad child to all of his children, us, the listeners left with the legacy of his influence.