"In the midst of an art opening at a Paris gallery in 1902, Ambient music was born. Erik Satie and his cronies, after begging everyone in the gallery to ignore them, broke out into what they called Furniture Music—that is, background music—music as wallpaper, music to be purposely not listened to. The patrons of the gallery, thrilled to see musicians performing in their midst, ceased talking and politely watched, despite Satie’s frantic efforts to get them to pay no attention."

I was digging through the YouTube crates tonight, and somehow ran across this great article on Erik Satie.

For me, Satie is one of those artists I instantly get. I usually struggle with Classical, but as the article notes, the music Satie was writing was so strongly influential on XX century music, there’s no musical language to relearn.

Also, the man led a fascinating life worth reading about.

(Source: whatsinmyipod.blogspot.com)