Gymnopédies

[1] The work's unusual title comes from the French form of gymnopaedia, the ancient Greek word for an annual festival where young men danced either naked or, perhaps figuratively, simply unarmed.

Satie and his friend Alexis Roland-Manuel maintained that he adopted it after reading Gustave Flaubert's novel Salammbô, while others see a poem by J. P. Contamine de Latour as the source of Satie's inspiration,[1][2] since the first Gymnopédie was published in the magazine La Musique des familles in the summer of 1888 together with an excerpt of Latour's poem Les Antiques, where the term appears.

[1][3] Oblique et coupant l'ombre un torrent éclatant Ruisselait en flots d'or sur la dalle polie Où les atomes d'ambre au feu se miroitant Mêlaient leur sarabande à la gymnopédie Slanting and shadow-cutting a bursting stream Trickled in gusts of gold on the shiny flagstone Where the amber atoms in the fire gleaming Mingled their sarabande with the gymnopaedia.

[1] Pierre Puvis de Chavannes' symbolist paintings might have been an inspiration for the atmosphere Satie wanted to evoke with his Gymnopédies.

1 (shown below) consist of an alternating progression of two major seventh chords, the first on the subdominant, G, and the second on the tonic, D.[citation needed] By the end of 1896, Satie's popularity was waning and financial situation deteriorating.

[a] As of the second half of the 20th century, the Gymnopédies have often been erroneously described as part of Satie's body of furniture music, perhaps because of how John Cage has interpreted them.

[7] In 1980, Dame Cleo Laine and Sir James Galway released a version for jazz vocalist and flute entitled "Drifting, Dreaming (Gymnopédie No.1)", with lyrics by Don Read.

[10] Gymnopédies have been heard in numerous movies and television shows, such as the documentary Man on Wire,[11] Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums,[12] and Community Season 2 Episode 19 "Critical Film Studies".