Messe des pauvres

Composer: SATIE, Erik
  • Satie composed this work between 1893-5.1 
    • This composition marked the end of Satie’s so-called “Rose+Croix” period (1891-1895), when he was the official composer for the “Order of the Catholic Rose + Croix of the Temple and the Grail,” a mystical sect founded by Joséphin Péladan, which proposed to study ancient magic, as well as sponsoring symbolist art shows and Rosicrucian Salons.2
    • Satie’s Rose+Croix pieces combine mysticism and modernist experimentation with his unique sense of humor.3
  • Satie’s Messe des pauvres: Grande messe de l’Eglise Metropolitaine d’Art (Mass of the Poor; Great Mass of the Church of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), for choir and organ, is by no means a setting of the ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass. It is a collection of movements for organ with outlandishly religious titles.4
    • The work does begin, as a Mass setting would, with a setting of the “Kyrie eleison” for choir and organ; and it appears to have once contained a Gloria, now lost. However, after that, the choir is never heard from again. (Probably. See below.) 
    • Several other jokes within Satie’s Messe des pauvres include:5
      • The work’s second movement, entitled “Dixit domine,” features grammatically confused and garbled text from the “Dixit dominus,” a Latin psalm, printed above a line of unbarred organ music, without a vocal line. Is anyone supposed to try to sing along? Is this an ode to those times you show up drunk to choir rehearsal? 
      • The third movement, entitled “Prayers of the Organ,” is an organ solo with unusual performance instructions placed throughout the score, including “très chrétiennement” (“Very Christian”), “sans ostentation,” and “avec un grand oubli du présent” (“With a Grand Forgetfulness of the Present”). 
      • The sixth movement is entitled “Prière pour les voyageurs et les marins en danger de mort, à la très bonne et très auguste Vierge Marie, mère de Jésus (Prayer for travelers and sailors in danger of death, to the very good and very august Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus).” The title takes longer to read than the movement takes to play.  
      • After six movements of moderately sacrilegious nonsense, the final movement is understandably entitled “Prière pour le salut de mon âme” (“Prayer for the salvation of my soul”).  
  • During the Baroque, it was customary in some French Catholic churches to play solo organ music written to accompany various portions of the Mass, rather than choral music. These works are called organ masses,6 and Satie’s Messe des pauvres is surely some kind of homage to that tradition (though it is not structured in such a way that it could actually be played liturgically as an organ mass).  
  • David Diamond arranged this work for orchestra in 1949. He was a fan of Satie and orchestrated a number of his other works as well, including the Gymnopédie No. 2.7

Sources

  1.  Robert Orledge, “Satie, Erik,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed July 28, 2021,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040105.
  2. Alex Ross, “The Occult Roots of Modernism,” The New Yorker (June 19, 2017), accessed July 28, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/the-occult-roots-of-modernism. 
  3. Orledge, “Satie, Erik,” Grove Music Online
  4. Ibid.
  5. Erik Satie, Messe des pauvres (Paris: Rouart, Lerolle et Cie., c. 1920).
  6. Edward Higginbottom, “Organ mass,” Grove Music Online (2001),accessed July 28, 2021,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000020438. 
  7. Mary Wallace Davidson, “Diamond, David,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed July 28, 2021,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000007718. 

Cut IDs

45737