page_title: Descriptions automatiques
section_title: Satie and Schoenberg
hierarchical_section_title: Descriptions automatiques / Satie and Schoenberg
caption_attribution_description: detail
context_page_description: The Descriptions automatiques is a 1913 piano composition by Erik Satie. The second of his "humoristic" keyboard suites, it set the tone for the rest of the series by introducing elements of musical parody, and in the increasingly important role played by the verbal commentary. In performance it lasts about 4 minutes.
context_section_description: After World War I, some of the earliest performances of Satie's music in Central Europe were promoted by Arnold Schoenberg. On January 30, 1920, three Satie piano suites from 1913 - the Descriptions automatiques, Chapitres tournés en tous sens and Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses - were programmed at an event sponsored by Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna. The pianist was Eduard Steuermann. They stirred enough interest to be repeated at four additional Society concerts through 1921, including one at the Mozarteum in Prague on March 8, 1920. Steuermann performed on all but one of these occasions (June 17, 1920), when the pianist was Ernst Bachrich. Schoenberg's advocacy reflected the altruistic aims he had for his short-lived Society, which folded in 1922. Most of his followers in the Second Viennese School regarded Satie as a trivial farceur.
  For his part Satie ventured no public opinion about Schoenberg as a composer, but in 1921 - when anti-Germanic sentiment was still a factor in France's postwar music scene - he defended his Austrian colleague as a matter of principle: "We know that Art has no homeland...poor thing...its lack of fortune prevents it...So why not play Richard Strauss and Schoenberg?"
caption: Arnold Schoenberg helped introduce Satie's music to Vienna and Prague, including the Descriptions automatiques