Summer Evenings

Erik Satie - 3 Gymnopedies and 6 Gnossiennes played by Pascal Roge

Evenings in the height of summer, as the day simmers down to a thick broth of mixed colors and smells, then begins to dissipate, you realize that this seemingly boundless splendor of light is only one flower, resting in the lap of an even greater darkness, which waters it and surrounds it on every side. The petals are fully unfolded now, but soon they will begin to curl up. By winter it will have condensed to a single seed hidden in the blackness, until the light emerges again - from where?

Or, in the midst of a conversation, when you listen past the other person's words into the timbre of their voice, that unique tone appearing only once in this world, stamped with the grain of their personal fate, and you think that every living thing is like this, a lone voice singing, uncomprehended by the rest of creation, from whom to whom? 

These mysteries, utterly transparent, utterly unfathomable, entered through the Rosicrucian obscurities that fascinated him or through daily life, Erik Satie manages to evoke with the solitary notes of the piano sparkling against silence, in these, his most famous pieces.