Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses

Veering from the modal to the chromatic, the music slowly builds to a quote from "La Ronde du Veau d'Or" ("The Dance of the Golden Calf") from Charles Gounod's opera Faust (1859).

This "Armor-plated Dance" is a set of variations on the famous French bugle call Aux champs en marchant ("To the Field of Battle"), transported to Ancient Greece.

Ostensibly a march with a "Noble and military step", it sounds closer to tiptoeing due to its p dynamics and restrained handling of the G-major melody, harmonized with Satie's delightfully quirky chromatics.

It begins with a story at the top of the score: Every day a young boy is given "a kind of odd little course in general history" dredged up from the vague memories of his aged grandfather.

Both were adult satirical songs mocking those in power (royalty, foreign enemies), cleverly disguised as nursery rhymes to sneak past the authorities.

Le bon roi Dagobert dates from around the French Revolution and depicts the monarch as a selfish, absent-minded brat, constantly scolded by his advisor Saint Eligius.

(Alfred Leslie, his middle names), Satie announced that the Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses would bring to a close his "curious and pleasingly original series" of humorous piano suites.

Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses was premiered by pianist Marcelle Meyer at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris on December 11, 1917, during a concert of contemporary music organized by singer Jane Bathori.

In January 1922 Meyer produced an important three-concert series in Paris in which she presented Satie's music in historical contexts, playing it alongside works from the early clavecin masters to the current avant-garde; this event saw the long-delayed premiere of Sports et divertissements.

[14] And in June 1924 they teamed up on short notice to play two of his piano duets as an impromptu ballet score called Premier Amour for the Soirées de Paris company.