First Minuet

The piece was inspired by the minuet, a stately dance popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1909, during his period at the Schola Cantorum, Satie produced a handful of unpublished minuet exercises with offbeat titles such as Le prisonnier maussade (The Sullen Prisoner) and Le grand singe (The Ape). When he returned to the form a decade later he studied Mozart minuets in preparation. The finished work bears the outward trappings of its classical antecedents - 3/4 time and ABA structure, with the B section imitating a trio - though it avoids traditional development and is subjected to Satie's characteristic unexpected harmonic progressions. Unlike his previous Neoclassical keyboard work the Sonatine bureaucratique (1917), there are no elements of pastiche or parody in the Menuet; instead it reflects the sober, abstract style of his 1919 Nocturnes.