Born in 1866, Erik Satie was a French composer, pianist and writer. His spare, unconventional, often witty style held a major influence on 20th century music.

Satie studied at the Paris Conservatory, dropped out, and later worked as a café pianist. About 1890 he became associated with the Rosicrucian movement and wrote several works under its influence, notably the Messe des paupers which he composed in 1895. From 1898 he lived alone in Arcueil, a Paris suburb, making an eccentric way of life and permitting no one to enter his apartment. Beginning in 1905, he studied at the Schola Cantorum under Vincent d'Indy and Albert Roussel for three years.

Satie’s music represents the first definite break with 19th century French Romanticism, standing out from contemporaries such as French composer Claude Debussy. Similarly to the Surrealist movement in art, it refuses to become involved with grandiose sentiment or transcendent significance, disregards traditional forms and tonal structures, and characteristically takes the form of parody, with flippant titles, such as Trois morceaux en forme de poire (Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear) and Embryons Desséchés (Desiccated Embryos), and directions to the player such as 'with much illness' or 'light as an egg', meant to mock works such as Debussy’s preludes.

Satie’s flippancy and eccentricity, an intimate part of his musical aesthetic, epitomised the avant-gardeideal of a fusion of art and life into an often startling but unified personality. He sought to strip pretentiousness and sentimentality from music and thereby reveal an austere essence. His ballet Parade (choreographed by Léonard Massine, designs by Pablo Picasso) was scored for typewriters, sirens, airplane propellers, ticker tape, and a lottery wheel and anticipated the use of jazz materials by Igor Stravinsky and others. Satie's masterpiece, Socrate for four sopranos and chamber, is based on the dialogues of Plato. His last, completely serious piano works are the five Nocturnes. Satie’s ballet Relâche (1924) contains a Surrealistic film sequence by René Clair; the film score Entr’acte, or Cinéma, serves as an example of his ideal background, or 'furniture', music.

Satie was dismissed as a charlatan by musicians who misunderstood his irreverence and wit. They also deplored the nonmusical influences in his life—during his last 10 years his best friends were painters, many of whom he had met while a café pianist. Satie was nonetheless deeply admired by composers of the rank of Darius Milhaud, Maurice Ravel, and, in particular, Claude Debussy—of whom he was an intimate friend for close to 30 years.